@Jumpscare

Egelman et al. (2020) and Ferreira et al. (2021) both report that negative interpersonal interactions—ranging from subtle pushback to overt incivility—can provoke frustration, stress, and defensive reactions. Both highlight the role of code review processes, organisational policies, and power imbalances in shaping negative experiences. Ferreira et al. (2021) provides detailed evidence of uncivil behaviours, including name-calling, impatience, and personal attacks, with 66.66% of non-technical emails in their sample exhibiting such features.

Behroozi et al. (2019) finds that technical interviews are perceived as arbitrary, high-pressure, and disconnected from real-world work, with systemic biases favouring younger candidates and those with more leisure time. They also report that candidates experience dismissive attitudes, lack of empathy, and adversarial interviewer behaviour, leading to feelings of humiliation and offence.

So it seems, at least in corpo-professional contexts, that process design, power dynamics, and communication styles are the primary drivers of cynical interpersonal behaviours, rather than individual predisposition. But this is just based on a very brief skim of the literature, more research must be done, etc, etc, etc.

ETA: tl;dr people=shit and if you treat coders like shit they’ll not be happy, I guess.

References:

Spoiler

Egelman, C. D., Murphy-Hill, E., Kammer, E., Hodges, M. M., Green, C., Jaspan, C., & Lin, J. (2020). Predicting developers’ negative feelings about code review. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering, 174–185. https://doi.org/10.1145/3377811.3380414

Ferreira, I., Cheng, J., & Adams, B. (2021). The “Shut the f**k up” Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW2), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479497

Behroozi, M., Parnin, C., & Barik, T. (2019). Hiring is Broken: What Do Developers Say About Technical Interviews? 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1109/vlhcc.2019.8818836

@Jennkryst said in Missed Settings:

Actually, everyone in Small Town knowing about the supernatural enough that the Masq/Veil/whatever is lax, but also somehow forced to not tell outsiders about it… feels like it has legs? Now you can idly chat in the bar about your werewolf’s cool kill and maybe get looks because murder/death is gross, more so than because it’s a horror from beyond reality.

But it’s also not giving ‘reality, but secret monsters’, because the monsters aren’t really secret.

This definitely would be fun, though to some extent it steps away from canon in oWoD games – I would say specifically, since CofD/nWoD often feels a little looser with the various Masqs with the exception of certain groups that have a personal stake in upholding the Masquerade or Veil or whatever like the Guardians of the Veil.

But yeah, I think this would be interesting! Fictionally/genre-wise it would probably feel like True Blood or Twilight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a thing.

@Jennkryst said in Character Death:

Taking a moment to think about it and remember that the L5R 20 questions includes ‘how should your character die’ because the idea of death is always in the back of their minds… Im wondering if that is a factor in the L5R MUs I’ve seen not doing terribly great for too long, or if addressing this and everyone going into it knowing there is supposed to be an almost romanticized view on a good/noble death… if that will somehow help it out? I dunno.

three cartoon characters are chained to a wall with the word death written on the bottom

@Jennkryst said in PyReach:

I guess I’m finally finishing that post about one of trans ally and author of Animorphs Katherine Applegate’s other series, Everworld.

I remember that book series. I read the first book, it reminded me of that old Canadian kid’s show The Odyssey in a way, and I didn’t finish the series because the first book did nothing for me. It seemed well written, but it just didn’t hook me.

@Solstice said in Your first game?:

In hindsight, I was really waaaaay too young to be on the wild west internet of 1996

oof, saaaame.

I am not quite sure I remember which one was first, but it was either The Lion King MU* or Heroes and Villains.

hilariously I tried to apply to Project Infinity for literal years and one of the appstaff replied to one application something like “I just want to say, your writing has improved so much” and I was too embarrassed to admit that it was because I had been like 13 when I first started trying, lol

@Pavel said in Minigames in MUSHes:

@Muse said in Minigames in MUSHes:

@Pavel Or maybe a self limiting factor, like clues know how long since the last clue and will stay in hiding until it’s time again.

Just let me have my slap-upside-head tool okay. 😞

Fiiiiiine, but only because I’m a sucker for a sad face.

A peeve I have is sometimes staff -try- to disperse plot hooks, but like… end up giving three plot hooks all to people in the same insular group, failing to solve the bottleneck problem at all when they proceed to treat a gamewide plot like it’s their own personal treat.

i think you’ve got three dials: game size, nuance/specificity, and staff involvement. Cranking any of these up or down is going to affect the others. You can (and should! if you want!) make a game that is highly specific in a historical or fictional setting, but doing so is going to turn down max players and probably increase staff involvement in direct relation. You can turn down staff involvement and let your players mostly self-police if the guardrails are broad and high enough, until that player size gets to a certain limit.

I think you can pull off most any kind of niche or historical setting if you are willing to accept and spend your time curating a small and like minded player base.

@Jenn if this was discord I’d respond with a laughing emoji. Holy shit my brain is rotted

@catzilla

91fa71ba-f07c-4ad8-a602-5cd4b92a4cf4-image.png

But in all seriousness, I could elaborate on it. I just vastly prefer the theme of nWoD changeling to oWoD changeling and think it fits the mould of a pet project of mine… which is kind of a small-town Americana murder/mystery thing. I could actually read nWoD werewolf, but I don’t wanna and I like Apocalypse more!

@Third-Eye shhhhh they were beautiful and I loved your poems

This is a community-building issue.

Okay, yeah, probably you can never have outright let’s-murder-each-other-on-sight factions and have it work. But why would you want to? If they only interact to fight, there is no reason for the opposing group to be PCs.

But stuff like “Green apple Fossoways hate red apple Fossoways and they’re each trying to be the ruling branch of the house,” and the deal where everybody’s trying to steal the McGuffin from whoever has it right now, can be fine fun.

It needs a supportive community to be fine, though. It works on private games because everybody there thinks everybody else’s feelings count and actively wants every other player to have a good time. When this trust is broken things crumble.

Which is no surprise. There are big differences between:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “Yeah, the dice were cruel to you! But that was great, loved the way you played it out, I had a blast.And you’ll get yours once you climb out of that hoiy-water-contaminated well.”

And:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “I understand that you’re very upset. In this essay I will explain how you are wrong and a problem…”

And:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “It sucks to suck.”

Also, yeah. There’s gonna be drama. There’s just gonna be drama. Making some space for the dramas of RPG-related fee-fees is part of gaming. Gamerunners and players can draw a line about how much space and what kind of expression of ye feels. But “never express any kind of upset about the game or your interactions with others on it” isn’t reasonable. Games nobody cares are not good games. You want players to be invested. Passions will rise. Characters don’t have to die for passions to rise.

Players in general and game runners in particular really ought to try to avoid drawing that line at who’s drama rather than what kind of drama. 

Drawing the line at a who is how you get bullshit like it not being ‘drama’ when Abelard raises a “Bridget refuses to compromise in RP!,” fuss, but when Bridget replies, “You refused to turn off your camera, you were obviously bluffing, I’m more afraid of proposed-betrayee I am of your threat, and I don’t even have the information you were trying to blackmail me to get,” somehow Bridget is the drama-creating problem.

@somasatori said in Multisphere pressure:

@Warma-Sheen said in Multisphere pressure:

I suspect… that some of them are looking for a “specific” type of RP.

The other meaning of the acronym “CBT”

a man with a mustache and a sweater that says i mean that 's nuts

Also contractually obligated to make that joke.

I keep glancing here, and keep meaning to make a joke about how the address involves gaslighting, but then I don’t do it, so now you all get to see that train of thought.

@MisterBoring said in FAT BEAR WEEK 2025:

Chunk is the winner. Also, I found out he’s got a broken jaw, so the injured contender story probably pushed a lot of votes his way.

“His face looks sad and that makes me sad” versus “his belly is very round and that makes me happy” definitely came into play in a few of my votes for Chunk. The broken jaw is going to be a permanent issue for him, so I hope he continues to have several more years of being a very fat bear despite it.

@Babs FATE dice are funny.
alt text

a cartoon character says

@Ashkuri said in MU Peeves Thread:

My idea is so good I just need a coder

a drawing of a dinosaur with the words

The tattooist I know using magic markers to draw these elaborate fake tats on his four-year old. Biomechanical sleeve, MOMMY’S #1 across the knuckles.

@Hobbie This sounds a lot like what my friend’s ex said about him…