Posts made by surreality

@Warma-Sheen said in The Apology Thread:

I didn't understand the community for a long time when I started MUSHing. I played online the way I played at tabletops and LARPs. We played hard, competitive, and to theme. And that was really fun. But it wasn't the way other people on MU*s were expecting to play. And that caused some conflict.

I think this is something that the community, collectively, could be a lot better about, too. It is full of a lot of unspoken 'how things are done' that serves as a major barrier to new folks joining in and creator of conflicts that need never happen.

There are probably a lot of new players we all owe apologies for expecting them to automatically acclimate to a hobby culture that has evolved a lot of quirks that have come to be expectations over its lifetime.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Policies:

@Arkandel No. There are people playing Arx that I didn't get along with at all in other games. Heck, there are people I DESPISED at other times/in other games playing Arx.

The exception would be if someone had been excessively creepy in other games, like stalking or harassing players or being generally gross and scary.

That's pretty much the criteria I use to select them, too. It has nothing to do with liking the person or not, and everything to do with the kind of damage they do -- creeping, harassment, cheating, etc. as repeated patterns over multiple games, enough to observe that they see nothing wrong with these behaviors that would prevent them from engaging in them on any site I ever eventually run.

@Arkandel Fuck yes. I have a list.

@Arkandel Not as easy as it sounds, since most of the unwelcome sort are likely to use VPNs. Rex/Sovereign, for instance, apparently boasted about an intent to do so.

There are a handful of people I consider so fundamentally toxic to a game environment, I would pre-block them if able.

If not able, and they are discovered, it'd be 'first minor strike and gone'.

@GangOfDolls said in Policies:

This is the only game where I've seen this policy but there may be other places. The reason that I was told when I wondered about it is the game owner is personally affected by this issue to some extent (I don't know/didn't ask for specifics) and often finds that people who play mental illness tend to play it as unhinged crazy or socially maladjusted, that it borders on offensive stereotype or is just entirely unpleasant to have to RP with.

But it makes sense that other games would ban these concepts, as well.

A lot of people run with the fishmalk, too.

I have a pref for this one for people to clarify if they have issues interacting with this sort of char so people can self-select. It just feels more fair than banning it. People can warning label themselves as playing a 'crazy' alt, and people who have sensitivity to certain types of portrayals can say so in a non-confrontational way. It just 'felt right' as a way to give people the tools required to find/avoid what they're looking for/looking to avoid.

@Lotherio said in Policies:

The one I'm on the fence about is pose courtesy. Pose order or 3pr or pose at will is more the consensus of the group in my book. The only common courtesy I like is waiting a few poses before jumping in, but don't think there needs to be policy on this either. Some folks like 'page before coming' just to see what's happening and if it all fits, but I'm more a fan of, if you're in a public place, you're in an open scene. There's tons of places to find 'private' scenes from personal rooms to TP/RP/Plot/Anything rooms.

Stuff like this you can put into a 'best practices' or a 'style guide' that's more of a resource or a reference than a rule. It's the kind of thing that can be the most helpful for newcomers to the hobby, really; just noting, 'some people prefer being asked before you join a scene in progress/some assume blah/etc.' can go a long way to simply remind people, or initially educate, that there are different preferences about such things and ultimately, whatever people agree on is what's easiest to run with.

For instance, I have a style guide thing I've been working on that addresses stuff like 'please don't use ANSI all over your poses, while some games are cool with this, we're not' and 'writing style default for the game is third person, present tense, if you want to use second person please check with your scene partner first as this can make people uncomfortable' and so on.

@Miss-Demeanor said in RL Anger:

@silentsophia If its any consolation, nobody in my household will be setting foot outside until at least Sunday.

This is me, too. Out there? Oh hell no. Oh hell no and y'all can't make me nope nope nope.

Reno's event clock was dodgy on Reno1 -- I am not sure if it still is or not. That happened sorta a lot. While I know that's no consolation at all, it's been something that caught a lot of folks over time, and you're not alone in it.

Eh, I can see a place for it. If you want to apologize to a broad group, for instance. @Tinuviel's example is a good one of this and I don't doubt the sincerity of it.

@Thenomain Agreed re: staff behavioral standards. IMO, they should always be a lot higher than for a player. A player screws up on ethics, the damage is usually pretty minimal unless it's an exceptional circumstance, and is almost always fixable. A staffer screws up on ethics? Just the opposite -- the damage is generally pretty big with rare exceptions and is usually irreversible.

I take a pretty hard line on staff gossip behaviors especially. Once that stuff starts, you're basically doomed. It will get out. People will find out. It is inevitable, it will destroy players' trust in staff in the blink of an eye, and once it's gone, there's usually no getting it back, and it hits staff as a whole, not just the guilty parties.

@Thenomain said in Policies:

The most honest policy I've ever seen: "Don't make us care."

I adopted this one re: TS/Adult Content/etc. with the 'provided it's within the rules of the game'.

Which is basically just 'consent required, no kiddie fucking', for any place I run. If someone was violating either of those things, yeah, then it becomes staff's business. Other than that? No.

It is amazing what players sometimes expect staff to care about, and much of it comes down to gossipy crap that is not just not staff's business, but not the business of the complaining player, either, as it does not involve them. Sometimes it's not mature content! ...but usually it is. The number of 'OMG THEY NEVER LEAVE THEIR BEDROOM DO SOMETHING!!!!' and similar pages I've gotten as staff from people who have never interacted with either character, nor are involved with any faction they're in/etc. to have even the vaguest cause for concern about it, just never fails to amaze me. Nipping busybody behavior like this in the bud is, I think, a very good idea, and the more direct you are about it, the better, in the long run.

Players will still gossip amongst themselves, but the more you make clear that you do not want complaints about it without specific cause, the less likely they are to gossip about it to you. And let's be honest, the moment someone hears 'so-and-so complained to staff about Bob and Suzie never leaving their room', it's typically assumed staff's OK with gossiping about players, which is never a good impression to make on one's playerbase.

@Lotherio said in Policies:

Myself, I always have something about TS. Only because I don't care, but I don't want to have to field questions form players (hey, can we fornicate with furniture? - me: don't ask, don't tell, I don't care). Some people may not be interested in a place with such policies because some leap to the idea that TS is encouraged or something.

"What you do in private locations, provided it does not break any other game policy or rule, is your business and your business alone. It is not the business of other players or staff. Players not directly involved in such scenes should not approach staff with concerns about who may or may not be engaging in roleplay of mature themes that do not violate game policy; if they are not breaking a rule, it isn't staff's business, and it isn't yours, either."

@Wizz said in City of Angels MUX (CofD/nWoD 2E):

@Cobaltasaurus said in City of Angels MUX (CofD/nWoD 2E):

Demon is fundamentally not very good on a MU* from everything I've heard about it. The aspect of ULTRA secrecy above and beyond the other splats is often times not fun, ignored, or taken to the extremes. The idea of the ever presence of angels and the god-machine is also a lot of staff work.

Yeah we really just need a Demon MU*. And it should really be set in the 80's BECAUSE WHY NOT TWO THINGS I CAN NEVER HAVE

I would love to see this set in the 80s, because OMG 80s LA. I know this is very unlikely to happen, but... I still pine.

@Miss-Demeanor I like both of you. Genuinely. I'm not trying to defend him. I'm not trying to attack you. I know just enough about the situation (I think) you're upset about to think that both of the people I like just fine probably owe each other an apology for their respective parts in the conflict, but also that that wasn't the situation he was posting about. Neither of you thinks you're wrong about any of that, and you're both stubborn enough (I empathize, not criticize here, 'cause I'm the same goddamn way) that I don't think either of you will ever budge about it, or change perspective on it. Which sucks, because neither of you suck.

This is the snarkiest thing I'm going to say in this thread, and then I'm going to leave it there: When nitpicking someone else's wording, be more careful of your own.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The Apology Thread:

@surreality said in The Apology Thread:

@Miss-Demeanor said in The Apology Thread:

@Misadventure I'm not a millennial pansy that needs a 'safe space' from 'scary words', so no.

Yeah, sorry... I have to agree with @Misadventure on this one, the dismissiveness here is a bit much.

PTSD is a real thing, and if people could control what sets it off, I'm pretty sure 'those millennial pansies' be much happier about it than the people who are in proximity when it's set off and feel the need to look down on them for having a delayed emotional reaction to trauma.

Agree all you want. I will totally answer dismissively when asked if I was 'triggered' by a mean person on the internet. If I couldn't handle someone being a jackass on a game, I would have lost my mind decades ago. And considering I've been gaming RL and online since my early teens... I would say I'm doing okay. Angry? Absolutely. Triggered? ....AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The fucking problem is, it's not him you're being dismissive of. It's people who have a real fucking issue.

Be as snarky about him as you want -- but doing it by categorizing anyone who has ever had their PTSD fire off on a game is not insulting him, it's insulting them.

There is absolutely a motherfucking difference between the two.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The Apology Thread:

@Misadventure I'm not a millennial pansy that needs a 'safe space' from 'scary words', so no.

Yeah, sorry... I have to agree with @Misadventure on this one, the dismissiveness here is a bit much.

PTSD is a real thing, and if people could control what sets it off, I'm pretty sure 'those millennial pansies' be much happier about it than the people who are in proximity when it's set off and feel the need to look down on them for having a delayed emotional reaction to trauma.

@GirlCalledBlu MUDrammer works pretty nicely, thus far. It's not super amazing, but it has worked consistently for me. I think there's a free and a paid version, not sure of the differences between them.

@mietze The only thing is, you can absolutely trip over someone's trigger and it is entirely unexpected. Most people do feel horrible about it when they do, and they don't know it's there.

Land mines are a thing. (Not a thing I think need a public airing, mind, but a thing.)

"I didn't know you have issues with <subject>, I'm really sorry that scene was upsetting for you, I won't bring up <subject> again, is there anything I can do to help?" is not shaming or mocking by a long shot, so there's not only the "Well I'm sorry you're a whiny baby made entirely out of butthurt who should grow the fuck up but I won't do that again" way of handling such a situation when it arises.

@Sunny Oh, that, no.

(I still have the dumb today, a whole three days of people-people-people craft show and then jury duty. It is entirely possible I may not have brain again for some time. )

@Sunny I think there probably is a way to go about this -- people can still be hurt/have bad feelings about something even if no one did anything wrong, and it's important IMHO to recognize and respect that. It is HARD AS HELL to phrase that without it being 'I'm sorry you got upset, I didn't mean to do that and I'm sorry it happened' even if you genuinely truly do feel bad and want to make things better.

That tends to be more, "I didn't realize that would upset you, I'm sorry it happened, I will not do that again, is there anything I can do to help make it better?" territory.