Posts made by surreality

I'm guessing this may be a communication issue -- asking to clarify:

Would the intention here be 'anything in the books is fair game and available to play', or 'we'll go through the books and determine what is and isn't available to players, but what we decide is available is available to all players equally and there will be no quotas, caps, justifications, or hoops to jump through for any character of the proper splat who has the book pre-reqs for the thing'?

It also could be both, but in reading the exchange, this is where I'd guess the potential confusion may be coming from.

@Cirno said:

@surreality

Well, that escalated quickly.

I wonder if anyone told that guy that he could have just gone to Shang or Taps or FS if he was desirous of that.

In all seriousness? He does.

On Shang, he asks for consent for a scene with certain parameters that are reasonable, gets it, and then proceeds to do something that vaguely follows that format but goes so far beyond what was asked for and granted permission that I know of at least two instances of players either having to call in support from faction/establishment authority figures of some kind or disconnect to avoid him, since if you point out that he's gone beyond what he has permission for (which will be by miles, not inches), he will immediately accuse you of creating drama, going back on your word, and being unreasonable. Never mind that the other player was asked, "You cool with a scene where you're tied to a chair and teased?" and what was then posed involved engaging setting NPCs (not under his control) to aid in tearing her apart and raping her character to death with demonic weirdness and brutal, mutilating torture and gore. He doesn't see anything wrong with this. (I was the poor fucker who ran the establishment where he tried this who had to look over the logs I was sent in case the player needed IC assistance or asked if we could use the code we had for the business to ban him from the premises.)

This is not the kind of player this hobby needs, but... yeah, in terms of escalating quickly? So much 'unfortunately, yes, pretty much that.' Just not how one would expect. Basically, he found a whole new way to be abusive and horrible even with what the standards of behavior are for Shang.

Actually, the guy in question from HM wasn't exactly subtle -- at least when I ran into him on TR.

He was quite direct about his intentions and ideas, they were just so impressively over the top it's really easy to dismiss them as a joke. As in, "This guy cannot possibly be serious," levels of 'over the top'.

You don't find out it's anything but a joke until you laugh along, and he explodes.

So it is actually -- or at least potentially -- a lot more possible to catch these people than might be expected.

I'm not suggesting that people take everything ridiculous seriously, because that would be equally ridiculous. It isn't hard, however, to see a pattern of things that could be problematic that make you think, "This guy must be kidding... " and check in on that front.

Spider posted her example exchange with him back on WORA. If someone had bothered to ask, "Dude, is your actual notion of what you want to do on this game coercing female players to RP drinking horse semen for your amusement or preventing them from advancing in their faction?" I suspect the problem would have become rapidly apparent in his particular case, as the problem, in part, was the player's absolute faith in the rightness and acceptability and reasonability of these objectives, and that those uninterested or unwilling to gleefully participate in them were a problem that should be punished. (Really.)

This kinda thing really is overdue for it's own thread, though, since a lot of points have come up about these kinds of issues that are worthy of discussion on their own, IMO.

@Cirno said:

http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/

There's actually a whole book on that now, I think. I half recall hearing about it many moons ago, anyway.

But the situations I'm talking about aren't what I would at least personally consider to be abusive on the part of the target -- as in, "I just don't feel like my character should have to be intimidated no matter how big the other guy's dice are" or "but I wanted that position, too, and it's not fair he won the vote and not me!"

The situations I'm talking about are more like this:

1. Z takes a look at B's wiki page, and decides the PB is hot, they want TS. Z starts using +where and other OOC means to constantly show up wherever B is and push this agenda out of the blue. B is not into this and is already leaving scenes wherever possible to avoid Z, who simply will not stop and has escalated to creepy pages and OOC comments, and won't stop doing that either after being told it's unwelcome. Once B pagelocks, Z continues the pursuit with another alt -- repeatedly.

2. Q is new to the game, and her ambitions are to become Prince. C is already Prince, and has been around for a long time and invested time and effort organizing the faction and puts in time to make sure they create RP for others, STs often, and has always played fair. C is generally well-liked and considered fair and a benefit to the sphere. Q decides to start a whisper campaign OOC, making a number of false claims about C in hopes that OOC anger and upset over their crazy stories will get C ousted from the spot so she can claim it.

3. D is constantly abusive on channels, and drives people off of them in droves. They pursue anyone leaving the channel in pages to continue to mock and deride them for leaving the channel and not listening to their crazy ranting. Newbie Y asks if this is the norm for the game channels, and starts getting the worst of it, and is pursued to further the OOC harassment through any means D has available.

4. H's girlfriend, N, breaks up with him IC. H promptly goes to the wiki and defaces the wiki pages of N and everyone on her contacts list.

5. J pages every female character on the game with explicit and lewd propositions and won't stop when told no, and continues this behavior with his alts if pagelocked. If they ever are in OOC areas, he insults them and calls them whores.

6. M really hates that one splat. She cannot ever shut the fuck up about how much that splat is full of cheaters and horrible people and you'd have to be terrible to ever play in that splat. Any time she comes across a player in that splat on grid, her OOC dislike of the character type causes her to behave in an aggressive manner toward the other character until it is unplayable or her OOC negativity makes the players miserable. She has driven half the splat sphere off of their characters already with this behavior, and since she's been thus far successful, chooses to redouble her efforts to wipe out the rest.

7. V is the prima donna of Public Faction. She does not want any other female characters to steal away her attention in Public Faction, so any time another female character joins, she goes out of her way to sabotage the other player's experience OOC through rumor-mongering and bullying.

Other than the wiki example, I've seen all of this shit go down first hand. Every bit of it is actively damaging to a game, and none of it is 'fair play'. All of it is deliberate and the people doing it know damned well it's at the very least, Not The Right Thing To Do.

If you want your games made up entirely out of these people, yes, absolutely, 'If somebody does something you don't like, leave the game and never come back' is the perfect solution for you to suggest for the players who are the targets of these behaviors.

@Alzie said:

@Surreality If you are so attached to something intangible that you would rather put up with abuse than simply move on to another intangible thing then that's another problem all together. Amusingly, every time we have these arguments people always say that it's not as simple as hitting quit. The thing is, it legitimately is. Being abused online is not the same as being abused by another person physically face to face. Those situations are heads over hands different and when you say 'It's not as simple as leaving,' then you're right it isn't. However, in the case of an intangible thing on a game represented by nothing more than a line of text, there is no excuse. It IS as simple as never connecting again. You may not want to give up your investment, maybe you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick, but that's a cost-value decision you have to make yourself. Is the investment worth more than the abuse or is avoiding the abuse worth more than the investment? Nobody can make that decision for you, but don't give me that shit about it not being as simple as clicking exit, nobody is physically abusing you, there is no legitimate reason that you can't just leave.

You really just... utterly fail to see the real flaws in this logic.

Someone doing nothing wrong should not have to trash their efforts -- in any respect -- because someone else is doing something inappropriate.

You're also seemingly blind as to how this actually encourages and fosters abusive behavior on games, as what you're saying is that the target of inappropriate behaviors should simply go away, and nothing should be done to the person who is actually behaving inappropriately.

It sends the following message: if you behave wretchedly enough to someone you dislike, you can force them off the game, and if they don't leave, it is entirely OK to continue to behave abusively toward them, and abusive behavior is totally acceptable.

That is simply beyond astonishingly stupid and damaging to a game on the whole, and sooner or later, you're left with nothing but abusive assholes on your game.

If that's not what you want your game environment to be? You do, actually, need some basic codes of behavior on a game, and authority figures to enforce them.

It is the abusive behavior that is not OK, here, ffs.

@mietze Pretty much that exactly.

Suggesting that anyone with an issue just scrap their character and move on the moment someone is unable to behave themselves is not the answer.

That drives away players good and bad and leaves the person unable to demonstrate respect for others in their place.

This can certainly happen between two reasonable players, but that tends to be staggeringly rare. More often, one poorly socialized player with little respect for others instead drives a number of characters into retirement, sometimes with the players leaving the game outright along with them, sometimes clearing out factions or ruining spheres as they go.

See: Jeurg@HM; Rex@Reno for examples of the type.

@Lithium said:

@surreality said:

@Alzie said:

@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.

This is still more than a bit overly simplistic.

It isn't really 'click exit', it's 'potentially scrap a character you may have been playing for years and otherwise have excellent experiences on because a specific individual can't behave maturely enough to leave you alone'.

If it was as simple as 'click exit', this hobby would have substantially less angst-ridden bullshit in it than it does.

That's not entirely true. It is as simple as click an exit, or type quit and hit enter.

Nothing lasts forever and these are games not life and death. They're really not. If something is happening you simply cannot handle, then quit is an option.

There's also the option of talking to staff, page locking, leaving situations with the person who is the problem, or trying to resolve that problem.

There are /other/ options, but quit is most definitely one of them.

Sometimes it's the only one left when a game has stopped being fun or entertaining.

Does it suck? Sure, it can, but in the end we have to be willing to let go of a character or it leads to even /more/ asshattery. Nothing lasts forever and if the time spent on a 'game' is more frustrating than fun, it's time to go imho.

Quit is definitely one of them, yes.

It is not, however, a solution without complications or consequences, which means it isn't a simple or flawless, catch-all solution as it's presented to be by @Alzie's statement that's being addressed by the comment.

I'm not suggesting that anything should last forever... anywhere, unless you're reading the notion of someone having invested a fair amount of time into something (as a factor that someone will likely weigh in on their decisions on how to handle the situation) as that person necessarily having some delusion that they can't be harmed or that a character will live forever. People, by virtue of basic human nature, don't tend to invest much time in something that has null value to them, and 'quit/discard' is not always going to be a universally satisfactory solution if the consequences of it mean sacrificing the sum of those efforts as it is being presented by @Alzie.

I'm also not saying that if things are more frustrating than fun, someone shouldn't leave -- in fact, I stated the direct opposite of this in the example.

@Alzie said:

@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.

This is still more than a bit overly simplistic.

It isn't really 'click exit', it's 'potentially scrap a character you may have been playing for years and otherwise have excellent experiences on because a specific individual can't behave maturely enough to leave you alone'.

If it was as simple as 'click exit', this hobby would have substantially less angst-ridden bullshit in it than it does.

@Arkandel said:

Most of my plots are composed of long arcs even though I often run one-shot scenes which seem disconnected at a first glance, and those arcs themselves are acts in a larger story. If that's what you mean by 'campaign' then I have some experience in this area.

This is how I tend to approach things, too. It allows you to get a number of people involved in disparate ways that eventually come together -- or don't -- in whatever combination appeals to them. It allows for people to play to their strengths toward common -- or opposing -- goals, too. Added benefit of those with limited time still being able to become involved in a less time-intensive way and participate in aspects of the broader story arc that are of interest, but don't obligate them to be there or everything falls apart.

I think it's actually a half beat/day or .1xp, but I could be wrong. Cold meds, they fuck with the brainmeats.

@Apos said:

@surreality said:

I get the 'you must be a guy' all the time on Shang. When I ask why, I tend to get, "Because all the real girls around here are sweet and giggly and affectionate!" (I'm not.)

All the actual female players I know there... uh... yeah, they're more or less like me, so I never know whether to laugh or cry when I hear that answer. (Which is the same every. fucking. time.)

That just strikes me as so odd. I can think of a few dozen female MU players, and I'm trying really hard to think of any I would ever describe as 'giggly' and coming up with a blank. It's so different from all the ones I know I just don't even know where that would be coming from.

It's a case of the more clueless male players pretending to be female players (as opposed to just playing female characters) thinking this is what girls are like, lying about it, and even more clueless people falling for it.

@Coin I am reasonably certain a handful of reasonably creative people could freeform RP up plots and melodrama in a modern fantasy setting and the CW would pick it up at this point.

It could not possibly come out worse than Star-Crossed and I really mean it.

The CW is going to be so pissed. MTV apparently has beaten them to a supernatural/fantasy creature of some kind, leaving them with one less 'My Boyfriend is a... <insert supernatural creature here>' show to run with. (No, really, we've had vampires, witches, and even aliens, and I bet I'm missing a few in there.)

I get the 'you must be a guy' all the time on Shang. When I ask why, I tend to get, "Because all the real girls around here are sweet and giggly and affectionate!" (I'm not.)

All the actual female players I know there... uh... yeah, they're more or less like me, so I never know whether to laugh or cry when I hear that answer. (Which is the same every. fucking. time.)

I love how much this thread shows us how old we all are. Well, except @tragedyjones. Whippersnapper.

The one concern with that -- which I'll elaborate on more when I have a keyboard that isn't wonky -- is that you could run into the 'brat' mentality.

What I mean is this: "When I do undesired thing, staff provides me with lots of stuff to do!"

That can add up to a lot of work on staff's part providing for someone who is enjoying the consequences of doing what you really didn't want them to be doing in the first place, and it can drag you even further off-theme.

It's something to be mindful of in the realm of unintended consequences.

@Entropy You seem to either not be grasping what's being said, or... something else is going on. Considering how you presented the contents of this thread in the BNW thread, I'm not terribly optimistic about your level of understanding or comprehension, since I haven't seen a single instance of anyone in this thread stating that 'being fair' is impossible, unrealistic, or even an uncommon goal.

In fact, every example you've provided as your methods of ensuring fairness is already standard practice on most games. And you've been informed of this by multiple people at this point.

What seems to be sailing over your head is that even with that being the case, things will not necessarily go smoothly because people may, for whatever reason, not perceive that to be the case, and you'll have to be prepared to contend with this situation when it arises.

That you, yourself, seem to perceive that 'most games are totally unfair due to staff malice and corruption' and whatnot, well, think about it a moment. Again, the things you talk about implementing to ensure fairness are already in place on most games... and you still perceive that the majority of games are unfair.

You, yourself, are an example of the perception problem most of us have been trying to explain to you as something you need to be prepared for, because no matter what you do, you will be on the receiving end of it.

I'm going to steal @Coin's line here, because I agree with it wholeheartedly: "More games is better." DO IT. Just be prepared for the reality of the situation, which is going to include a lot of people insisting you're unreasonable, malicious, corrupt, etc. no matter how ethical or fair or reasonable you actually are.

@Arkandel said:

@surreality said:

Personally, I'd be a lot more comfortable with a command that creates a job or similar along with that. The oversight factor of staff handling the matter with eyes-on is one that's worth keeping, even if automation may simplify other aspects of it.

I thought about a +job but then - unless the +job system itself is modified - we'd lose the anonymity, which @Coin correctly pointed out some people like for immersion purposes.

I'm not sure if it's entirely feasible in MUX, but it could be possible to have the job created and attributed to an object author, with the first entry being the name of the person making the attempt and how they're going about it, along with their roll/stat-related whatever with it's successes and so on. Since not all comments on jobs are viewable broadly, there's potential there to keep confidentiality. Similarly, resist rolls and such could be added into the job in the same way, with something to process the 'verdict' the only thing visible to both parties to say, "Target, please enter what you were doing at X time on Y date into the job." if it's successful, or "No information is required at this time and no information is gained." if it's not.

Something like that, anyway. I think it's viable in theory, at least. Still predominantly automated, but with potential for oversight and intervention when/if needed, which would turn a potential lengthy arbitration into something more in line with the +asp system in terms of staff workload.

I know TR had an anonymous setting somewhere/somehow for one job board until it was removed, so it's possible in theory?

Personally, I'd be a lot more comfortable with a command that creates a job or similar along with that. The oversight factor of staff handling the matter with eyes-on is one that's worth keeping, even if automation may simplify other aspects of it.

There's also a fairly big difference, I think, between IC spying and OOC spying.

IC spying can be part of the game -- and in some games may be a central part of the game, depending on its themes and setting and whatnot. It's also, ideally, vetted like the examples above rather than simply done without any sort of oversight at some stage of the process. It isn't, OOC, a secret in the same way as someone dropping dark into the OOC room to listen to OOC chatter amongst the unaware, or even just dropping into an IC scene dark to observe without ever saying anything about it.

There's a purpose and intent to the IC form that's recorded, too; there's usually a scope of time or purpose. It isn't too different than, say, a search warrant -- it's valid for X location at X time and there's some level of supervision to ensure people don't stray beyond the permitted scope.

OOC spying? That's a complete crap shoot and doesn't have the same kind of in-game or story purpose. They're really very different animals.