Why is Pack closing?

[CuriousGamer]

I’ve come across Macha in the wild previously a couple times, though at the time didn’t know much of the history.

I can say the behavior isn’t limited to a scene. Gaslighting, crap-talking, and trying to manipulate opinions is something I’d experienced from her just being on the fringe from her.

For as bad as things were that Cobalt experienced, I have to wonder what’s out there that hasn’t been reported.

[CuriousGamer]

@Cobalt Also I have to add to the pile of thank you’s for sharing a difficult post. While I believe that we can all mature, get better, and there are those that learn from mistakes. Take things to heart. And we learn from making bad decisions. People have to want to change. In life I’ve learned that some can, but some just don’t have that ability.

Looking at people’s behaviors when it’s this glaring, and seeing it’s a pattern. Talking about things openly like this is the only way that anything is going to be done. It’s not often you find something that is so obvious and glaring in a log.

[mietze]

While I think that being aware of how predatory, creepy, or high-demand people are likely to utilize your game to get off on other people is useful for /every gamrunner/ to think about on /each game/ that is opened, I don’t think that there is any theme that doesn’t attract it.

Lords and Ladies games (I personally would lump Fading Suns into this one) attract it just as much as WoD from what I have seen.
Battlestar games attracted many as well, at least from what I have seen.
Shadowrun definitely did.
Comic based games while I cannot say that I’ve seen it since I don’t play there, but I’ve heard plenty about it from our community over many years.

Something I have also observed is that there is considerable overlap on multiple types of games by each predatory person that we know. They go where the people are, and what they’re familiar with. I think for those that are strategic about it they will go for less supervised places, but I think most of them will just go to the places they hear about until they get called out.

I am also relatively certain that we are all on the same page about this, no?

[Lucidmoon]

I dealt with Macha briefly on Infinite Adventures. She was playing Betsy Braddock. As soon as someone made a Warren, she chased him like it was her job, and when she didn’t like the RP that happened with him she threw a tantrum to the headwiz. He sent me a mail warning me that she wanted to “have a talk with me”, before she went on a twelve hour screed to him about what would need to be done to make reparations for behavior that she considered to be untenable. These conditions included forcing Warren into a scene to apologize for his behavior toward her, retcon a scene that she was not even part of that was private because it “made her look bad.” and various other things that were just as wild and crazy.

We honestly should have thrown a party when she was banned.

[mietze]

I am not sure how to really delve in to how to head these problems off at the pass (I think proactive removal of problem people or first strike policies can help with some specific people, but I think a LOT more of this behavior goes on by people not them.)

I love the newer policies that most games have as well as the less tolerant atmosphere for OOC pressure in RP. But even in a first strike policy, it still means that someone HAS to deal with it first for it to be noticed, and there are times when that first time is horrible. Most of the time it is.

One of the hardest things is that these people use what a lot of people see as a core to their enjoyment of any game (relationships) as part of what they fixate on, use to isolate others, lash out at perceived rivals about. I think a majority of people see building that web as building story with others but nobody OWNS it. I do think on a certain level problem folks tend to view it as currency and and control and so when they have it, they are very controlling about it, and when they don’t have it or the ones they want they go off the rails.

[Polk]

@mietze You can’t prevent a first time, but you can create a culture that won’t put up with it, which hopefully will reduce first times to begin with.

And will encourage people to REPORT first times, so that first time isn’t actually 5 first times of people who all just endured it instead of reporting it.

[Meg]

hello, i just dropped into this thread to state that i don’t even RP anymore.

[mietze]

@Meg that’s good, it’s the first step towards being the voice for the voiceless!

[Meg]

@mietze i’m just WAITING for the DMs to come rolling in for those people that don’t feel comfortable to talk to you bullies that do RP.

[mietze]

@Polk I think that many games do have that. Or try their hardest. Unfortunately we also have long memories and many people after getting a bad experience on one game with reporting are very shy about doing it ever again. There’s no easy solution. Just that we’ll all have to keep trying. Calling out that shit when one sees it in public or in a log, even if it’s not targeted at you. Kicking people off for it, without some legalistic X amount of chances first. Making behavioral expectations clear. I think there have been huge improvements towards that culturally in many circles. There are a lot more people I trust to make good decisions now in the community that I would have felt in the past.

[Cobalt]

Woah, I took a nap for a couple of hours and the train rolled off the tracks like Charles was chasing them.

A couple of things:

1. Thank you again to everyone for the support. I appreciate it. It is nice to know that I wasn’t overreacting or being overly sensitive because of my own personal experiences.

2. This hasn’t put me off of running a game. It has, currently, put me off of running shapeshifter-centered games. I do have an idea for a new game that I’m idly workshopping the theme/setting for with friends and peeps in discord. But I’m moving in literally a matter of days, so I’m not really in the space to start actually doing the work to make it be something other than an idea in my head.

3. I do not believe anyone was blaming me for creepers being around because I opened a shapeshifter-centric game. I do, however, agree that there is something about shapeshifter-centric games that appeals to creepers. Most likely all the fiction out there where shapeshifters are primal, alpha, dominating creatures. I thought I had done enough to combat this when I wrote my theme files and that those sort of social hierarchies did not exist in my game world, but apparently I did not.

[Roadspike]

@GF I get what you’re saying, and to some degree I agree with it.

But I also don’t think that any (or at least that most) of the comments above were coming at it from that perspective. I, at least, read them as being more like, “Oh yeah, that setting/theme has some problematic structures that can draw in creepers (as well as perfectly reasonable people), so it’s extra-hard to run a game in that theme because creepers flock to that theme.”

It’s not saying that it’s anyone’s fault, or that there’s any guilt to be had, just acknowledging that certain structures and themes can draw in people who like to push the envelope – because the envelope is already larger than in other themes/settings.

To @mietze’s and @Cobalt’s points, all themes attract creepers, because creepers don’t care about anyone else. I do think that some make it easier to creep on, because more “out there” behavior is acceptable either in the explicit setting or the assumed setting (the difference between WoD and The Pack, from what I’ve read: these behaviors are baked into the WoD setting, and it was assumed that they applied to The Pack because of other similarities between the settings). Comic games can also be problematic because of histories of misogyny and sexualizing characters in comics.

That said I appreciate the vigilance against victim-shaming, and definitely see how it could have been taken that way – I didn’t take it that way, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t legit to take it that way.

[Pavel]

Alright folks, official modvoice time: If you tell someone to stop talking, and they say they’re going to stop talking, don’t just immediately tag them in the conversation again. It’s no bueno.

[bear_necessities]

For what it’s worth, at no point did I demand silence from anyone nor do I have the authority to make such demands. I merely asked for the targeting of a single person in this thread over semantics to stop because it was getting nonsensical.

But please, carry on.

[GF]

@Roadspike Your response is very nice and did not harm me in any way, but back there at the end of the argument I noticed myself having a little panic attack because the responses I’ve mostly received have stirred up some shit that I don’t want to talk about. I’m still kind of dealing with that right now, so–and again, nothing you said contributed to this; I’m only writing this as a response to you in this because, ironically, you having done me no harm gives me faith that you will be good enough to honor this request–I’d appreciate not being tagged in this thread for a little while.

I hate to ask you to do that at all instead of taking responsibility and blocking this thread in a way that prevents notifications, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to do that, if there is one. Please forgive me the presumably unnecessary drama.

[Pavel]

@GF

Set it to ‘Ignoring’.

[helvetica]

@Pavel I mean, could you have done that without tagging.

[Roz]

I also don’t know that ignoring a thread will keep you from getting notifications of specifically being tagged in it.

[Pavel]

@Roz It doesn’t. But it’s a decent enough step.

[Tez]

@Pavel It does seem to work, actually! Just made Roz be a test monkey.