Posts made by surreality

...and where does this leave us re: staff being obligated to TS someone on an NPC or obligating a PC to TS the NPC to get X?

I think the immediate moment is always going to vary some, and it's always going to color the over all experience to some extent.

I don't know, in this moment, if I've had more fun than not. I've had a lot of bleah, a lot of bad, and a fair share of apocalyptically bad in various ways over the years.

I've not had an equivalent amount of awesome. I can say that as objectively as I can say, well, anything.

I don't necessarily think it's awful vs. awesome that's the key balance here, though: it's awful vs. optimism, instead.

I still think there's the potential for the awesome to balance or outstrip the awful.

When I can no longer say that, then it's time to fuck off.

@Auspice I will keep my fingers crossed she means top-down center.

I know that feel, though. I have not yet unboxed the new craft tool of doom because I know I can't set it up yet. The box sits there, taunting me.

@Auspice Like... not top down center, but center? Brave!

@Auspice Double-knitting isn't too evil, I swear. The idea of doing it while shaping even a basic triangle is making my brain hurt, I will admit, but you should be able to nail this one.

OMG stereotypical surreality response: It depends.

Literally, it depends on the week. Some are amazing!!! Some suck rotten eggs.

@Tinuviel Kinda sounding like that, or that this is rare. It's kinda not. As staff on the game, there have been a few similar requests prior to that I've seen (and staff has zero issue with).

In it's ideal form -- and bear in mind I think quietly noting to staff sans drama 'I would prefer to not be paired up with X for stuff' is the closest thing to ideal we can get here -- this is not going to be glaringly obvious to anyone, provided people behave reasonably.

Except, you know, the whisper games. But they always come back around to whoever is getting whispered about. Always.

@Tinuviel This is definitely one person. The behavior itself isn't something I'd consider incredibly rare, however.

I don't consider myself 'a horrible problem' for wanting to stay away from this person, or not wanting to have them shoved in my face.

Additionally, I don't think I should have to leave the game to avoid having to deal with them being shoved in my face.

In this instance, it's simple: "Please don't put me and X in the same faction, due to a personal conflict I am trying to avoid them."

Y'all can talk about how this is the 'death of the hobby' and how it's 'just so awful that anyone does this', but when someone's done something spectacularly awful within the past month? No, I'm not going to be inclined to engage them in any way.

@Sunny I'm dealing with this right now, in fact.

The person in question kept carping on for months about how they were completely disenchanted with the game, probably weren't sticking around, etc., and yet, the moment things went south, they tripled down on being present and as omnipresent as possible, with some noticed changes in the normal, long-term patterns of their behavior.

It is not charming, at all. Or subtle. There's already bullshit whisper game nonsense that's made it back to me.

Whee?

I do my best to ignore it, but really, I play on one game, and I've decided I'm not willing to give it up for someone who behaved horribly on a personal level and has broadly declared being proud of themselves for having done so.

@Tinuviel said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

The idea of this place is to talk about problems, and solve problems, and bring issues to light. Not to talk about the people talking about things.

Eh, there's some of that in the non-game section. People are people-ing fairly well.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

There is NOBODY on this board (that doesn't get banned regularly) that I would not stop to help if I saw them broken down on the side of the road (and I knew what they looked like). Pretty sure that could be said for everyone here.

The sad thing is, this isn't remotely true. (The bolded bit, not your statement about yourself! I believe you.)

I would really like to believe this is the case.

It'd be a much better world if it was.

There is also a lot more leeway to do whatever with an NPC from a player bit in a player-run PrP. Yep, even as a staff member, you should be able to do this, too, within the limits allowed for any other player on the game to do the same.

That's where 'run things for your buddies' is probably better handled.

@Ganymede said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

I am of the opinion that a blanket ban, while constraining the otherwise-ethical staffers in how they may engage with players, provides a baseline of behavior -- an ethical rule -- that can inform or assuage players as to what sort of RP staff may press them into.

I think this also goes both ways; it informs players of something that they cannot demand staff to provide for them. That's a non-trivial protection for members of staff, and cements their right to say 'no' as well, even to players who have firmly adopted a 'you are here to provide a service for me and give me the scenes I ask for' mentality.

@Auspice That would be amazing plot food, but holy shit. Yeah. I've been to a few Nopevilles here and there and that's... yeah. Yep. Accurate. That dizzy skin-crawl stomach-drop can fuck all the way off.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

but then I remember the one time a prof out of Indiana U called us to investigate a thing and it was.......... well let's just say it has been plot fodder for years.

...share this story? Please? All curious now.

@Too-Old-For-This I forget all the things I had seen Peter Dinklage in before this. I recall Nip/Tuck off the top of my head, but there was definitely something else as well. He's been working fairly steadily in television for a while, and it's great to see him getting further still.

In fairness, part of me feels this was a bigger issue before we all got old and lazy and believed in things like 'enough sleep' and 'work in the morning', and getting laid was a much bigger priority in those horny college age days, but that could be my need for a nap talking.

@Ghost The trust factor for me isn't about 'ooh now I can share my real kinks!' because I don't; not really anyone's business. It's all about 'is not going to become an overly attached horror show that makes my life a living hell because my text nethers bumped around with their text nethers'.

Something not in my job description as staff: providing a player with strokebait.

I don't believe I have to type this out loud, but here we are: once someone tells you, the player/staffer/whatever you are, that whatever you've just done has inspired a real world orgasm?

The dynamic has definitely changed on some level.

Is that a relationship? No.

You have, however, wittingly or no, just 'inspired' some very physical sexual reactions from another player, not their character.

Whether you are OK with that or not.

That's not a character interaction any more, y'all.

@Ganymede Was about to ask the same. I am... guessing things like 'letting Spider claim she was stepping down rather than was being fired because she was caught cheating' or whatever that was, but I may be off-base here.