Posts made by surreality

@HelloProject I have like, zero authority to do anything more than suggest. (Though I strongly encourage the use of 'Pedantic Semantics' for a thread title if anybody actually does it, because... yes.)

@Bobotron I have a list of 'consent subjects' I can send you, if it helps. I have a few things on there that might be helpful if you're looking for some of the 'potentially squick-based exceptions' that generate enough angst and drama that I feel it's easier to just require consent for them. Rape stuff, pregnancy stuff, also on that list. Also 'total personality change' (if somebody wanted to make a character with that totally different personality, they would have) and 'template change' (which is relevant if you're on a game that restricts alts by template, since it means the player could be forced to choose between two of their PCs that would otherwise be allowed to continue to exist -- this is typically a MU* only issue because alts and alt policy are a thing).

@Warma-Sheen said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

No one ever socially forces anyone to do anything they don't want to do.

I think this actually nails it.

Social combat isn't about directly achieving a specific end. It's about creating the underlying conditions (wanting to) to get to that end.

Even physical combat works this way: you don't typically one-roll-kill someone. You add to damage, in stages, to bring about their death.

@Wolfs No worries! Not mad or anything, it's an interesting discussion, just one we have a lot, and it probably deserves its own topic since language use comes up a lot (and in like... 2-3 threads just this week alone) so it's worth collecting them.

...also I kinda want a home for bad typos to live, because sometimes, they're golden. Let the taunt abdomen thread commence! <cymbals>

...can the semantics argument move to a new thread? Please? Maybe a thread just for semantic arguments? (We have plenty of them on the regular, it'd doubtless be a busy thread! )

That moment when you're not sure if you're experiencing deja vu, or if this same reasonably obscure argument didn't happen in another thread just the other day, I have just had it.

@Ghost There's a place like this where we are. They tore down the (much needed because there's not a lot of it around here) small low-income housing to put up grossly overpriced townhouses that look so cookie-cutter it's atrocious. They're incredibly cramped together, barely have parking to speak of, are smaller than the average area home, and almost twice the average home price. It's so beyond stupid it boggles the mind.

@Three-Eyed-Crow Plus, I think you can get tax deductions for a mortgage, which is also a help in the long run.

@Auspice I sorta just can't imagine doing that as a measure of 'that isn't my property, and I wouldn't think it was cool if somebody did that to me, no matter who they are'.

I know I've played characters of mixed race, but I don't think I've ever played a character that isn't either white, or half-<something else>. I have had a lot of 'there are like twenty things going on here' characters that are deliberately hard to pin down re: a specific racial origin. This model is one of the most jaw-droppingly stunning women I have ever seen, and there's a lot going on there and it would be easy to read other things into it all, too. (She's part Irish, part Jamaican, from what I recall, but it would be easy to guess at other things, too.)

I don't pretend to have a clue about the experience of somebody who isn't white, and don't trust myself to play that well. Somebody who is facing 'you don't fit either "side"'? That I can empathize with more due to some other stuff in my life, even though on the surface, it seems more complicated.

@Tinuviel said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think it's important that a game keeps internal records of troublesome players, especially games with a high staff employment rate (be it through simple turn-over or expansion). Naturally those records should be as confidential as we can make them.

I think this is actually pretty important regardless of the staff turnover rate. I have a pretty good memory, but I know I have misremembered things, or initially thought someone I was warned about was actually someone else (especially if a number of people were brought up in the conversation, and there's not really any conflict on a game that only involves one person, since it takes at least two for there to be friction of some kind). Confusion like this happens pretty easily, and it's usually an innocent mistake. It's why records help: they avoid memory glitches, help to avoid misattributions if they're made in the moment and can be reviewed for a quick 'ok, so this is what happened' (as in, if there's a mistaken attribution, it can be spotted before it becomes ingrained, repeated, etc.).

It helps keep new staff updated if they weren't around when Incidents 1-3 occurred, but making a record in the moment of the issue helps keep everybody on a more accurate track for a bunch of reasons.

One of the things I was looking at, generally, included a number of pools derived from character attributes. One was physical, one social, and one mental.

The reason I mention this is that some of what you're describing I wouldn't necessarily call 'social', but mental -- argument and debate would fall in there to me, as would things like mind control and similar if the game has things like that. Social things are more emotionally-based in terms of how I was looking at things.

...and each of these can technically influence or enhance the others. For instance, a successful appeal to emotion may provide a modifier to a mental challenge, just as a good logical approach might tamp down soaring tempers or a physical threat may cause emotional distress. In other words, I look at it more as a trinity than as a binary; this is one thing I do think WoD got right in terms of core divisions.

Edit: One of the attributes in the game is 'Identity'. It's essentially a social manipulation resist trait, in some respects. It is 'how well does the character know their own mind/understand their own core motivations'. Each point of Identity also allows the player to define one 'core motivation', which is something like 'I will not betray my team' or 'I will not kill' or 'I will not turn down the chance to make a profit' (not all of these things are necessarily moral; they're the character's essential drives).

If a challenge would impact one of those core motivations, it grants a +/- modifier in one direction or the other; talking someone into something they already want to do is easier, trying to make them go against a deeply held belief is harder. This is something that allows a player to define their character in a way I think is highly cool, and also allows for that 'wandering personal modifier' issue that comes up so often. Plenty of people claim those as an excuse, but the system here makes them actually choose them and decide which ones are really, actually going to count.

@Ghost I think we're probably stuck with the forum for that, unfortunately. While it's kinda slapdash and definitely random, some kind of database/permanent record sort of thing in any more formalized fashion has three potential pitfalls I can foresee:

• It wouldn't be as visible as the forum as a resource re: 'as a new game runner, where would I look for data?'
• It wouldn't be as easy to add data to the pile as quoting a log into a post that collects the data, and people may refrain from reporting if there are extra hoops to jump through or it's more formalized somehow
• ...though I hate bringing this part up, it could potentially be legally iffy to formally compile data like this as an endeavor more organized than what we've got now, whether it's in terms of stalking, cyberbullying, etc. -- and considering how much most of the problem children love to play the victim, this would be a concern for me personally, at least. (I am one broke bitch. All I'd need is some jackass suing me.)

@Paris said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Z-01 said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@surreality said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Meg I think in the case you had specifically, I'd call it too few staffers available rather than laziness, but there are some times I've seen lazy as the cause. Sadly, sometimes 'too many' staff creates the same problem, since no one is sure who has the responsibility to do this, so you have lower tier staffers afraid to say anything without approval from on high, and upper tier ones thinking the lower tier staff will handle it.

Sometimes, things really are so black and white there's no conversation to be had. ('Is VASpider/Rex/Jeurg', for instance, at least to me. <cough>)

This can be a pretty complex issue in my experience. One of the biggest reasons I've personally seen that an investigative or preventative conversation might just not happen, or not happen in a timely manner, is that the person who needs to be talked to will inevitably emotionally exhaust you in the course of the conversation. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, and people just aren't very understanding of it when you try to draw boundaries with these people because it's easy to portray it as just clubbing whoever you're trying to handle.

You deal with that enough times and you stop wanting to try to engage people like this if you can avoid it.

You just kind of do it anyway, and make sure there's at least a second person on staff to handle it if it's either on a day that you can't, or it involves you, so you shouldn't. It's just an inevitable part of staffing anything, from a shop to a mush to whatever.

This, exactly, is why I tapped @Coin to be my second if I ever run a thing. Because I know he can communicate with me effectively, and has zero qualms telling me to simmer down when I'm being ridiculous.

He could double as 'a person with testicles' in a pinch, too, but really, the other friend is looking forward to that job if/when I decide to pick up the project again.

You would think the university itself would have something like a 'donation pile' that they would collect of things like this, to take to a local Goodwill, or perhaps to have available in a big yard sale or something at the start of the next year when people are filling up their rooms for the next semester (with generally the same kinds of things) for fundraising.

Considering what a nightmare it is to dispose of appliances/computer gear in my state, for instance, you can't just drop it in the bin, you actually have to take it to a specialized dropoff and whatnot, so I'd think this'd be fairly double-duty helpful in some respects.

I packed for college in one of these two-seaters with delusions of grandeur. (It liked to think it had a back seat. FOR ANTS!!! </Zoolander>)

...it's even the right color.

When I say I have car-packing fu down to a science, I fucking mean it.

@Arkandel Still, that chick already has enough problems, clearly, internally and from external sources antagonizing her, that dropping all the blame at her feet for something like that just... I can easily see some 'worst case scenario' horror stories growing out of that characterization of events that could do harm in the long run when it would inevitably get referenced again in the future.

@Arkandel She didn't force them to do anything.

The collective antics of crazy people did, her included among them.

Go take a look at the Batshit Crazy thread, at the trolling I got, where someone pretended to be my abusive (recent) ex, and insisted they were angry with me for having them banned. (Never did. Never gotten anyone banned from Shang.)

That is one of the people who was fucking with that girl for sport. He has admitted doing exactly this. If he was using similar tactics, and was part of a group doing the same? Yeah, she might not be stable, but people were actually fucking with her in some dark-as-fuck sicker-than-that ways for their amusement, and that is absolutely not OK.

@Rook Oh, I know it's coming, and don't really disagree, but a verbatim cut and paste from someone with testicles can drive that point home without losing a potentially otherwise useful (but backward-ass) player in the process.

That I'm writing the system I'd be using won't even matter, either.

Just look at the 'how sad nobody knows how to math' at @faraday for an example; she absolutely knows how to math. Women are expected to prove ten times the competence in terms of stuff like this far more often than I feel like dealing with, there is already plenty to do, and nobody's got time for that on top.

@Meg Hey, that's 60% pure, serious business!

...that's better than most of us do.

@Meg People think I'm joking when I say I have a dude willing to repeat whatever I just said to guys who refuse to accept rulings on or interpretations of mechanics/etc. when they're presented by a female staffer.

I'm not.

Which is my roundabout way of saying, '...yeah, it's important, and sometimes you gotta plan for some of the DUMBEST shit because it is eventually gonna happen.'