Posts made by Tinuviel

@il-volpe said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

You know what sucks? PET RESCUES.

I want another parrot.

What I don't want is to have a white upper-middle-class neurotypical straight woman interrogate me and inspect my home to see if I'm a good enough person to have a pet.

I dunno, man. I want to be on your side, but I've seen far too many abused animals (used to work for a vet during college) and I definitely see the desire to make sure the pet isn't going to be treated super goddamn poorly.

Adopting a pet should be more like adopting a child than just buying a toaster.

@ganymede It's also a flaw in our neurochemistry. We're wired wrong.

@mietze said in Battling FOMO (any game):

I wonder sometimes if stating "i feel like I'm behind/missing out" is knowingly or even unconsciously said because it is safer than saying "I'm worried that no one will want to RP with me/think I'm worth playing with now/if I'm not around, including people I like a lot."

There's probably an element of that.

I, thankfully, don't really suffer from FOMO in that I actually fear missing out. I just get bored because I'm missing out.

People with ample time to dedicate to a game dictate its pace more than anyone else, and so a game can launch ahead if I have to miss a week because of work or whatever. Things happen about as fast as they used to when I could do eighteen hour MUing days, and I can't keep up.

So it's less about being afraid to miss out, it's more about being irritated that I can't contribute in any meaningful way because it's just going at speeds I can't keep up with.

@ganymede You're typing like there's any sort of logic behind how people feel. People can know perfectly well that how they're feeling is unreasonable, but they still feel that way. Just repeating "you're going to miss out" isn't going to help people that have an actual fear of missing out.

@il-volpe said in Battling FOMO (any game):

Participation points are given by GMs when GMs GM.

Most games I see these days rely on players to do much of the day-to-day storyrunning, not staff members.

@greenflashlight said in RL Anger:

a person suddenly gains superhuman strength, becomes imperious to pain, and then dies for absolutely no reason

Without context, I'd probably chalk that up to a PCP overdose.

The only psychiatric or psychological assessment of 'excited delirium' I've been able to find is a statement by a police psychologist that says it's bullshit brainwashed into the police by Taser International.

Delirious mania, a similarly named but apparently unrelated condition of similarly dubious medical understanding (with journaled evidence dating back to 1849), does have some proponents in the psychiatric and psychological communities - more as strange combination of symptoms (delirium and mania) than a disorder in itself... you know, in case one googled it and got those two conflated.

@aria said in RL things I love:

Unless they know you're lactose intolerant, in which case they're a monster.

Unless they know you're lactose intolerant, in which case they know you're going to eat it anyway.

@too-old-for-this said in Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition:

Hey guys? Can we maybe split this off into its own thread?

Given we stopped talking about it three hours before your request... no?

@aria said in Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition:

But I assume that this is because the title Prince of Wales is higher in precedence than his father's title of Duke.

Either that or because it was his title, independent of any title from his father. Whereas his sons didn't have an independent title until they married.

@aria said in Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition:

Whether or not that would change when Lizzie passes and everyone moves up a rank in the succession, I don't know....

It probably would, assuming Charles follows precedent and his heir becomes the Prince of Wales. That said he'd also still be the Duke of Cambridge, so it's possible that George would use it as a courtesy title.

@rinel said in Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition:

are there actually rules

Yes, there are. Lots of them.

When a royal needs to use a surname, they don't generally use their house, they use the name of their title. Prince Charles uses Wales, as did his sons prior to gaining their own titles, for instance.

@rinel Technically it's Philip Mountbatten, if you're not going to use the titles.

@faraday said in A healthy game culture:

That's just not what that phrase means in common parlance.

In common parlance, it's an excuse for poor behaviour by externalising the blame. "Alcohol brings out the worst in me."

@kanye-qwest said in A healthy game culture:

or pick apart things according to standards that don't exist, whatever.

Anyway, this is wildly off-topic and bordering on philosophical. We disagree, and we're not going to change minds. So let's drop it.

@roz said in A healthy game culture:

No one is talking about using it as an excuse?

@faraday said in A healthy game culture:

This. Saying that something "brings out the worst in people" is observational. It doesn't absolve people of the responsibility for their own actions.

"Brings out the worst in people" is an excuse. It is putting all the blame on the game, and not on the people. If that's not what you mean, don't say it like that.

"The game attracts assholes" is fine, and true. "The game enables assholish behaviour under the cover of simple IC action" is fine, and true. "The way the game is usually run lends itself to more overt PVP activity." Also fine, also true. "The game brings out the worst in people" is inaccurate at best and an excuse at worst.

@faraday said in A healthy game culture:

Nobody is saying it's acceptable or good. Some of us are saying it's reality.

That's not what I said. I said it's not an acceptable answer.

@faraday said in A healthy game culture:

It is naive to deny the fact that people behave differently

People choose to behave differently. Choose. Putting all the blame on the game itself is taking all the blame away from people that act like fuckwads.

If you run a game, any game, on which people feel free to act like assholes? Either you are at fault, or they are. Or likely a combination of the two. Nobody gets to use "the system we're using is designed that way" as an excuse.

ETA: To summarise: Stop taking away the agency of the players when they act like assholes. There's competitive, and then there's assholery. We're talking about the latter.

@roz said in A healthy game culture:

@tinuviel said in A healthy game culture:

I mildly object to the idea that a game can "bring out the worst" in people.

It seems short-sighted to refuse the idea that different structures and environments bring out different behaviors in humans. Yes, the problem is still the people, but insisting on a sort of universal view wherein all game types/settings/etc. are the same and generate the same results and behaviors seems like it would hamper the overall goal of trying to develop a healthy game culture. There are some universals, but the challenges of different games are -- well, different.

The game is run practically the same everywhere. The one time it wasn't is the one time we have been told, in this thread, where the behaviour was different.

So, no. The game is not at fault. The way it is run is at fault.

Don't put words in my mouth.

ETA: Secondly, suggesting that it is the game bringing out the worst in people removes agency and responsibility from the people. That is never an acceptable answer. I would be willing to believe that more assholes play the game because the game allows you to get away with being an asshole. But that is not at all the same thing.

If you're an asshole when you drink, stop fucking drinking and don't blame the booze. You're the asshole.

I mildly object to the idea that a game can "bring out the worst" in people. People are the problem, not the game. The game is just an excuse people use to be toxic. It's the "what was she wearing" of our little community - along side the actual "what was she wearing."

ETA: I'd also like a moratorium on the word 'toxic'. We have plenty of other adjectives we could use.

@mietze said in A healthy game culture:

@pyrephox It also relied heavily on staff intervention, mediation, and quality control. As soon as that was replaced by staff who were not as invested in ooc quality control as far as channeling players' learned and natural tendencies into more constructive pvp it devolved very quickly.

The entire game required heavy staff intervention. From one staffer, at least for the majority of the time.

While it had some good points, it's important to remember just how heavily invested the game-runner was in every inch of it. It's not necessarily feasible for anyone to do that.

@too-old-for-this said in A healthy game culture:

nWoD took that away, and that's when I lost interest in Vamp

No, it didn't. There's Belial's Brood, there's VII, Hunters... plenty of enemies.

ETA: This is to say that there are enemies designed into the books, they're rarely used - and when they are, they're rarely used well.

People are going to be dicks regardless of the system or the theme. Dicks are dicks.

I don't know about the rest of you, but the backstabbing and the politics is the main draw of WoD (specifically vampire) to me. It's almost the entire point. That and the fact that there are no good guys, everyone is fucked.