Posts made by surreality

@Roz Yeah, you'd need the third element of the player ID they're using or it would be a total nightmare, even in the cases of big games like TR with multiple names often being re-used.

@Arkandel You can't, really, which is the downside.

Thing is, all adds and edits are identifiable on mediawiki by default, so someone maliciously changing things, or making strange claims, are going to be visible in the doing of it.

The bigger practical issue is figuring out a page naming structure for the character/alt pages that doesn't mean we have Catriona, Catriona1, Catriona2, Catriona99...

...which could be something more like Edge@TheReachMUX-surreality, but that's one hell of a mouthful for a pagename.

It's definitely doable. Probably pretty quickly, too, even without making too much use of the explicitly semantic features.

I'm hosting a pile of things right now though so I can't afford to add this to the stack, even if it could probably be set up and done in a couple of days.

Re: what people list themselves as, I'd aim for more 'community name', like the names we use here.

...so this is very not current, and I know I'm missing a pile of alts from over the years.

Former
Ghostwheel MOO: Spiral (builder), Jasper, a handful of characters whose names I don't recall after 20 years...

Cybersphere MOO: Michael Kalir (aka 'Mayor Mike'), Regret

Darkmetal: Lethe/Amarante, a pile of others I have long since forgotten

Castle D'Image: ...I remember none of them, but I was there?

Nightscape: Skarlett, Daedalan/Callah/Belladonna/Apolline

Manifestation: Hong Kong: Poe's Angel (kami/mutant staff), Vervaine

Shangrila: (lots of names that will never be repeated in public)

Denver: some random human chick I played all of four times, with a name I forget

Akashat: Ziavyth

Seradus: Creator/HS (though I forget the bit name at this point), Elena, Jasper, probably others

TR: Baia (mortal admin), Edge, Tavi, Ophelie, Dalya, Katryna, Zillah, others that mostly never made it to the grid

Reno1.0: Tarocchi (werestaff), Nora, Zoe, Lethe, Raven

BITN: surreality (wiki-ONLY staff), Zillah, Nim, Tribulation

Reno 2.0: Taisce and Anais (Yes I finally made a vamp, she has history holes so feel free to link up with her however, y'all. )

HorrorMU: The Visionary, The Costumer (wiki staff)

Current
...zilch...

Updated. I'm out, y'all. Once people openly admit to ongoing intentional harassment, and that doing you as much harm as possible is ethical, moral, and just, it'd be foolish to stick around, so I'm not doing that.

@Roz It's definitely the place to try things out, I would think. Since it's mortals only, there's not anywhere near as much reading or stuff to learn as there would be in a game with supernaturals. That in itself is a huge plus when dealing with a new system and setting.

I don't think we've ever played, but:

1. OMG do we ever have similar taste in names, and
2. Yay, someone else who remembers Nightscape!

@SunnyJ Thank you. I am glad they let me test some of my crackpot theories on it.

@faraday I agree that a week or two isn't a really huge deal. With the reality of everyone's schedules, that may only really ever have an impact on the smallest number of scenes for the affected parties. That isn't terribly unreasonable.

It's the extended leaves that really do bother me -- and the 'what do you mean things aren't saved, frozen in time, for me to step back into at my leisure?' mentality, which really is sometimes quite the issue.

For instance, on a game I will refrain from naming, there was someone who ran an active IC business. This player would regularly vanish for a month or more at a time, and was in and out of the deep freeze as this went on. All of their employees would have to figure out what to do with themselves, adjust for this serial vanisher, and finally when they had been gone for a rather egregious length of time, the business was handed off to someone else by staff. (This also included things like maintenance of the faction commands, channels, etc. -- which needed tending in this player's repeated absences.)

When they finally returned, there was enormous drama about all of this, and when apparently staff came down on the side of, "Sorry, this is far from the first time you've completely flaked and left everyone in limbo, so we're not taking things out of the hands of the people who have been running everything for the past several months to give back to you," not only did the player throw a whole summer stock festival season's worth of drama, they sought means of making all of those other players utterly miserable in and out of character in retaliation.

Personally, this is the kind of situation in which I have zero empathy for the missing person. Were I staff, and observed this transpire, the next 'month off' for that player would not exactly be voluntary.

@Sunny said:

@faraday said:

And btw, in either case Jane could've avoided the conflict by coming up with an internal justification for Jane wanting to move on, rather than making it have anything to do with a presumed IC reason for Bob's OOC absence.

And this is what I'm advocating for at the end of the day. It's possible, and I do think people should take that little bit of effort to do it -- it causes less problems for everyone involved.

Here's the thing: say Jane has decided to take up basketweaving and leave Bob to pursue her career as a basketweaver extraordinaire.

If the absent Bob is of such concern, Bob's player can just as easily say, "Bob would have actively pursued Jane to prevent her from leaving!" for that reason, too. Realistically, he would have been present IC, and if 'what Bob would do IC if he could be bothered to be around' was critical, it is entirely reasonable for him to believe he could have taken action to prevent this from happening. Whatever the reason, Bob has lost his spouse, and if he's mad about the 'neglect' reason, odds are very good he'd be just as annoyed about the basketweaving reason.

There are horrible ways people can overdo it on this front, but forcibly tying the hands of active players for the sake of players who (usually, barring the far more rare actual emergency) have for whatever reason gotten bored and flittered off is simply not that reasonable.

There is an onus on a player who is being made uncomfortable (and considering departure due to their unease) to communicate this. It is just as possible for the soon to be absent player to communicate this to staff if they're too uncomfortable talking to the other player, rather than pulling a vanishing act, and it's weird to me that I'm not even seeing this come up as so much as a suggestion. Not only is it the responsible course of action, it's entirely possible that the intending-to-remain player they are having an issue with has caused the same kind of trouble in the past, and staff should absolutely be made aware so if intervention is necessary, it can occur before anyone feels they need to leave, or feels like they have to sit there twiddling their thumbs for weeks on end.

Instead, everyone around them is supposed to sit on their thumbs, their RP stifled, sacrificing for the sake of someone who has either gone off chasing pixies on another game or in another hobby, or could not be bothered to express their concerns to their play partners or to staff.

I just don't see that behavior as the kind of thing to encourage, or to severely disadvantage others to coddle.

A lot of people treat a MUX the way they treat a video game. They expect all the little sprites to be at the same save point where they were left a week ago, or a month ago, or a year ago. That just isn't how it works.

Couples, in the end, are no more likely to 'trade info' or 'abuse OOC knowledge' or anything along those lines than any room mates, friends, or anything else. Depends on the people involved.

There's people who are shady, and there are people who aren't. Couple status has more or less nothing to do with it. If somebody's going to be shifty about their dealings, being in or not in a couple isn't going to change that up any, in the end.

Plus, like @Gingerlily and @Wretched mention, sometimes couples love to play 'best of enemies' or something along those lines. Playful, good-natured rivalries are a thing that can be healthy (if not taken to extremes) in any kind of relationship -- from casual gaming buddy to soulmate.

@mietze said:

Some people would say that should mean that anyone who plays a ghoul should be ready to yield their PC in case of a freeze, but we don't really ask that other other templates usually, and there are workarounds.

Agreed; this isn't something demanded of other templates, and while the circumstances are unique? There are viable options possible to deal with it.

Part of this gets sticky, too, in that the person's absence can severely restrict you.

For instance, take a look at the 'Protected' merit for ghouls in WoD. Your regnant vanishes from the grid (or even just can't be around that day). Well, the merit straight up says that if you've got that merit, they will conveniently happen to show up if you get into some kind of trouble.

This leaves you with two options: do nothing that could even potentially get you into trouble while they're gone (which is impossible if you RP at all, considering the reality of WoD games, where risk is supposedly everywhere all the time), or you could NPC them (ALL THE NOPE!).

...the realistic solution is just to pretend you don't have the benefit of the merit in that case, but really, that one is a real 'I guess I'll sit here and twiddle my thumbs, then' gridlock otherwise.

@skew said:

@tragedyjones was actually thinking April 1st. So, he did move the opening date... that fiend.

That was the actual April Fool's prank: not actually opening on April Fool's Day.

@silentsophia This year's cold/flu thing is especially like that. 2-3 days of sheer hell, 2-3 weeks of lingering gunk and bleah.

@faraday There are reasonable, and unreasonable, permutations of that, though -- from both ends.

Unreasonable: "Oh, Bob? He's been gone a while now, haven't seen him, I feel horribly abandoned and the world is ending, I don't know how he could do this to me! So, no! I'm not going to be able to pass along your 'hello'! Not while I'm grieving!"

Reasonable: "Nope, haven't run into Bob today, but I'll pass along the message when I next see him." <OOC> You say, "Bob's player hasn't been able to be online in a few weeks, so I am not sure what's going on with that."

At which point any sane, non-asshole will change the subject and not pursue that further.

Most anything else, you're being expected to take up the slack for another player to their specific preferences (which you may not even be aware of) -- which is absolutely not OK to simply expect of someone without some kind of pre-existing arrangement or understanding to that end.

@faraday In the situation you're describing, there are sometimes no way around it. Yes, in these circumstances, you could attempt to confirm or check in with the other player, and ideally should -- but sometimes this isn't possible, they don't respond, you don't have means of contacting them, etc.

In such a case, unless they've left instructions that 'all proceeds as normal' in case of their absence? They kinda have to suck it up.

That said, people can leave instructions like that. Not many people think to even if they know they will be gone for a while, but it can and does help. It is especially helpful since often people don't know if and when circumstances may take them away for a while, so if things going a certain way in their absence is important to them? Yeah, there is some responsibility they need to take to make that known, even if it is just 'in case of absence'.

Which, in itself, is a good conversation to have with players that are in some way key to whatever you're playing. It opens up the opportunity for you to essentially say, "Fine," "Fuck that," or "I can go along with that for a while, but if it goes on too long, or IC circumstances arise that change things for my character considerably, I'm going to go where the activity is," and so on.

When the Microsoft tech support scammers, who never stop calling, are too stupid to change their faked called ID.

I consider them my improv training at this point.

Today, a milestone:

When seeing the name come up (again) on caller ID, I answered with: "Hi, you've reached Microsoft Headquarters <town>, how may I direct your call?"

They didn't even speak.

I've gotten my share of 'fuck you's out of them, and lots of angry sputtering over time, but this is the first 'did not even speak'.

It's definitely an area in which people have to set their own comfort zones, re: what they're comfortable with.

I've been living with the same person since before I started MUing (OMG... 20 years) though he doesn't MU; it was actually one of his friends that introduced me to MOO way back when. We used to tabletop together, though, and he keeps insisting he'll join in on playtesting anything I eventually put together, so inevitably, he will someday, heavens help him. He's heard 20 years of MU drama stories and is still willing to do that -- now that's dedication.

@mietze said:

@skew said:

I also can't stand the OOC angst, anger, snide comments, etc, that I've seen an OCC/RL partner pull, when the other partner's IC persona is flirted with!

I don't know. I've seen that far more strong/toxic from online-only people than I ever have with MUing couples (though of course there are exceptions). But all the most crazy ass attacking people for messing with their "wo/man" and +where stalking and all that? Almost exclusively online only people.

Thirding this.

I suspect it's stronger in these cases because this is the only connection these couples have. When there's an RL co-habitation thing going on, you can get whatever reassurance you may need that your partner is 'still there' and so on by just looking across the room, if that's something you feel you need to be reassured about. (As in, when said partner is still sitting there eating a bowl of cereal in his underwear, being super glam sexy, as they most assuredly do while watching cartoons on youtube, you know he hasn't run off with that hussy.)

That's the kind of emotional security that people get very weird and fickle about online, if online's all they've got -- which is something I can wrap my head around and understand, even if it sends me over the moon bonkers when I have to put up with the absurd extremes of it.

(I have my own cereal-eating, cartoon-watching-in-his-underwear guy. I don't need somebody else's.)

I think he's looking for vampire specifically -- which won't be an option on the one he's running, from the original list.