What, people sometimes play games to portray special snowflakes? Gasp! It's like people see cool things in media and want to enact those!
I'm not making fun of you, by the bye. I'm making fun of this entire hobby for missing out on some wildly key concepts and at once encourage and complain about them.
For decades.
I love our broken hobby.
But if I'm playing a Private who thumbs their nose at the Commanding Officer, it's damaging to the brand of the game to let that go. I mean, why are we playing Space Soldiers?
In a tabletop, we can say that we're playing Dirty Dozen Space Edition.
In a Mu*, it's a harder proposition, and if someone doesn't want to deal with someone stepping off-brand then I don't blame them.
All of this goes both ways, which means everyone must try for the sake of the game.
@Ghost Makes Me Think Of:
We all game for different reasons. I've had mild tense fights with my board game group because I get frustrated and bored when they take too long to play a game I'm mostly there to play because I'm being social, and they're some of my best friends. Ultimately the paradox is that the vast majority of us socially game for selfish reasons. I don't think most people want to make the game boring for other people, but other people are going to think what you think is right is frustrating, and that's going to create some drama that is going to have to be dealt with by someone. Every time I see someone on this forum say, "Well it's not up to me!", I cringe. It's not always up to you, no, but if you have no introspection then how do you know?
You don't.
And if you can't express this, how can anyone else know that you do?
They can't.
Sometimes you just don't care if someone else thinks the game you like is frustrating. This attitude can be healthy. This attitude can be toxic. And the difference between one or the other can be wide as the gulf between telling someone to calm down and them freaking out on a public channel, or as thin as the line of perception of a joke taken the wrong way.
It's that fine line that I'm interested in. Of course every scene or game night doesn't need a decompression or talking-through, but damn the knowledge that it's an accepted option is one less fine-line situation to worry about.
@TheOnceler said in Recommendations: Neo-noir book theme.:
All Cyberpunk - Do you like questions of identity and/or humanity in the face of high technology? Extreme differences between the haves and have nots? A dark setting where trust and hope are in short supply? Then you might enjoy every cyberpunk novel, movie or tv show.
Someone reminded me that Max Headroom was a thing. We agreed that it was Cyberpunk but it was much more satire than noir.
Also that we missed it quite a lot.
@faraday said in Consent in Gaming:
@Thenomain It's come up a couple times - I believe Sunny mentioned it originally. But regardless, my point isn't about length it's about the prevalent sentiment that it would inherently be boring and is "exactly the sort of scene that would mostly be glazed over in a book or a movie". (Which is not really my experience with books/movies either, but that's neither here nor there.)
If there's character development, sure, but because our experiences differ, I try to lean toward being more forgiving.
"I'm going to chew you out now."
You're asking me to trust you and that your idea of fun, character development, or propriety even considers me or mine. The idea broached a little earlier that people shouldn't play purely for their own concerns, that goes every direction.
Staff, players, protagonists, antagonists, kobolds, child magicians, all of them should play to see what happens, and that means wanting the best for everyone around them.
I have been in plenty of scenes where my character has been chewed out. Those times where I've nope'd out is because it was not interesting, immersive, or developing. I was just a stand-in for some other player to play out their character.
Being a static prop to someone else's idea of fun, character development, and/or propriety is boring. As. Hell. Whether or not this is a dressing-down, a combat scene, torture-porn, a public meeting, if I am doing my best to take the consequences without playing out the scene then I'm still playing the game.
And I've played through every dressing-down anyone's ever brought to me.
"I'm going to chew you out now."
If you're not trustworthy to treat me like a member of the game, I'm going to not give you the satisfaction. If this upsets anyone, they are selfish and wrong.
So it comes down to trust.
"I'm going to chew you out now" does not itself indicate trust. Only duty. And this is a game, a hobby; duty is something we pour into it as love, and that love demands respect just as the game demands respect. There are no islands on a Mu*.
@faraday said in Consent in Gaming:
So I don't know how we got sort of fixated on the "CO yells at subordinate" as this hours-long ordeal of boringness
To note: Only Arkandel said "hours-long". I said "even minutes-long" and Insomniac didn't give any indication of length of time, but I got the impression that they and I are on the same page.
So as far as I can tell, we didn't.
@Arkandel said in Consent in Gaming:
On the other hand sure, a 'yelling at me' scene shouldn't take hours, that's nuts. I'd be bored of that even iRL.
A yelling-at-my-character scene that takes even minutes can be considered boring. I have enjoyed yelling-at-my-character scenes, but it's because the person doing the yelling is engaging me and my character, not just yelling because that's what's supposed to happen. Going through the motions is boring. I'd be tempted to skip out on that too.
But playing a game with a strict hierarchy, ignoring such a scene ("okay you yelled at me lol") could be considered ignoring the theme and setting of the game. I'd be disappointed by anyone who doesn't abide by a game's theme.
I will gladly ignore a rule that says I can't FTB because I'm having a bad day or I'm not feeling it. And only in part because nobody can stop any of us from FTBing:
@Pandora said in Consent in Gaming:
The little red X in the upper right corner is always there.
The other side of that coin is that I should be willing to work with or accept the consequences levied on my character, and that I had better play those through as though they really happened (except in extreme consequences). To ignore the persistent nature of the game outright is disruptive to what is The Game, and that can be actionable.
--
@Arkandel said in Consent in Gaming:
What are your options, both thematically and as a character?
This is up to staff. If someone is blatantly ignoring theme and setting, well, we've had this discussion recently. When it comes to us as player, we play the game before us as best we can.
Because it's entirely possible that we're all playing for different reasons.
Because we are.
So we all agree: FTB is a right of all players in all situations.
Cool.
@Derp said in Consent in Gaming:
I called it out for being a bad translation to MU.
Like you did.
This is true! We both said it wouldnât translate well.
I do think you went too far, tho. Instead of skimming my post like you did the book, maybe read it entirely, because we donât come to the same conclusions.
Except the one.
The irony is his dogmatic definition of "smart people".
I personally don't look at Mucks and Moos because my learning curve from Mush is more than I care for. This is what you get when you stick to a niche. It's not toxic, per se, but it is what it is.
I mean, I am American.
@faraday said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:
@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:
When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'
That's great unless you're also talking about people who are already into text-based roleplaying (e.g. forums, storium, discord, tumblr, MUDs, etc.) It can be helpful to have some way to explain how MUSHes differ from that, and how MUSHes differ from each other.
The same can be said about coding. There's style and there's language and there's goal and AIGH!
So perhaps we can treat it like we do coding: We start with "I code" and go from there. There is always a level deeper we can get, and that's okay.
@Auspice said in Consent in Gaming:
What had people concerned is the concept of following up with every player after every game to make sure they're 'okay.' That does lean a bit into 'therapy' territory.
If by "people" you mean the two posters and the 10 total upvotes they illicited, sure.
I think @Derp especially is over-reacting, though I don't natively disagree with his point. The text we're reading is meant for tabletop, and for tabletop I largely agree with it.
FOR TABLETOP.
One of the dumbest things we have ever done in this hobby is take tabletop role-playing and translated it directly to online persistent role-playing systems.
The same goes for this text.
I will start a fight, however: Any staff who doesn't care about their player-base is a shitty staffer.
I'm not talking therapy, I'm talking about caring.
I'm not talking about caring deeply, I'm talking about caring at all.
I'm not talking about individuals, I'm talking about all the individuals that make up the game.
Anyone who thinks that caring about the mental health of their game is delving in to therapy is an idiot.
THAT SAID, here's what I think of Consent In Gaming in relation to this hobby.
It's alright.
That is, it's not bad.
It can help some people figure out what they want out of a game and how to communicate that. It can help some staff how to create their policy. If it does this, great. If not, whatever.
I do believe a few things that coincide with this text. Communication of expectations is key. Period, full-stop. What that communication is can be different, but I think all people should be understanding and respectful of where other people come from. I agree that people need to be self-aware. I think the text infers the idea that it's staff's responsibility as staff to facilitate interaction and wherever possible of enjoyment of the game.
I think the text is too short and a little disingenuous, but I can't really fault it because it states its thesis up front: This is a text about dealing with consent issues. Period. Full stop. I feel that it promises much more than it delivers, but that's just, like, my opinion, man. It sprinkles a few ideas, links to a few others, but doesn't really dive into it. The text is an academic essay or thoughtful blog post.
That is, it's alright. It's fine. If it can help some people in the hobby, great. If not, I don't think reading it is time wasted.
I was in the middle of writing a reply when I noticed that @Seraphim73 covered all of it.
The book isn't a how-to, it's a self-help guide, no different than Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads and any other "how to run or play in an RPG" book or article ever written by anyone ever.
c.f., This entire web site.
I can't imagine that anyone at Monte Cook Games cares if you disagree with it, but there's a nontrivial movement in the RPG community about emotional self-care. Monte Cook Games has at least one game where the emotional stakes can can get pretty high. This document is probative to his consumer base.
What I'm saying is that each table does its own thing, but making sure that the table is comfortable playing a game is important.
That said, if anyone wants to read the opinions of a man who has written many (kill kittens for satan) RPGs (dogs in the vinyard) about (poison'd) being (in a wicked age) assholes (apocalypse world), then here is David Vincent Baker's blogforum, anyway and the more forum-y Barf Forth Apocalyptica.
For the people negatively reacting to the "wouldn't it be nice if we everyone were nice" nature of MCG's Consent in Gaming, go there. The man knows what he is doing.
Here's the summary. This content is 
2019 Monte Cook Games, LLC, so if anyone from Monte Cook Games wants me to take this down, sure.
THE BASICS
RECOVERING FROM CONSENT MISTAKES
AFTERCARE & CHECKING IN
THE CONSENT CHECKLIST
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Two non-baity threads about Podasts:
https://musoapbox.net/topic/1482/podcasts
https://musoapbox.net/topic/2132/podcasts-podcasts
Enjoy!
It wasn't about fashion. It was about everything.
@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
#1 reason I miss working from home: I get really terrible cramps and so tired I can barely function during my period.
I swear I've nearly dozed off at least half a dozen times today.
Me: I hate wearing ties at work. At least women get to wear a much wider array ofâ
Every Woman Ever: <glares>
Me: Yup, ties! I love ties! Tiestiestiesties!
