But Why

[Pavel]

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

Hey, hey. Not all the L&L games are about the British.

[Jenn]

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

@Jenn
I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

It’s like making a game where everyone is a billionaire out to maximize their portfolio. Much more horrific than WoD ever could be.

I can absolutely see that being a critique of the over-all genre. But I’m not sure it’s a fair critique of the specific games, or their players… I think a lot of folks play fancy nobility specifically because they know that it’s about the only fine silks and jewelry they’ll ever have. When we know we’re living crushed by a capitalist society we’re not likely to escape… We find those escapes in other ways.

I can absolutely get how some people are not able to escape that in any format, even fictional ones. But I’m not someone who questions the coping skills that work for other people. It’s ok when something doesn’t work for me, as long as it’s working for them and others aren’t getting intentionally harmed in the process.

I face a lot of medical and disability stuff. Sometimes, my characters do, too. I fought with a LOT of internalized ableism when I had to start relying extensively on a wheelchair to be upright for more than about 5-10 minutes max. So one of my favorite characters of mine I’m currently playing is ALSO in a wheelchair. And she’s SUCH a badass, and it doesn’t stop her or slow her down. Because unlike in the real world? Horrors in modern-day Winnipeg don’t include on the screen a world without ramps and rails and the ability to navigate a full life. And that is freeing af.

But I also fight a lot with food and nutrition, and getting a feeding tube last summer almost killed me, even if having the tube is simultaneously keeping me alive. So almost all of my characters are eaters, of foods I miss and crave but cannot enjoy. Because sometimes what we need isn’t to make what we’re going through more tolerable, sometimes what we need is to escape it entirely for a while instead.

I don’t think that either option is a bad choice, or that people picking either are doing it for bad reasons. We just have to find what works for us and stick with it. But we /do/ have to let others do the same. Folks who play L&L probably DON’T always do it for good reasons. There are probably plenty who do it with some really ugly assumptions and bad intentions. Sadly, that’s rampant on the internet. But they don’t usually survive all that long in gaming communities, either. At least, they don’t in the communities I choose to be a part of. I don’t really know what happens in the communities I choose NOT to participate in, because obviously I’m not there participating.

I genuinely hope that no one tries to make you feel bad for your preferences. You have every right to have them. I hope you find sci fi themes and stories of taking down the wealthy and building collective communities with strong social contracts and mutual aid. Honestly, those sound like AWESOME stories. Just… Try not to write off everyone else who enjoys other things. There is more than enough room for both, and for so much other stuff, too. One doesn’t have to detract from the other. And sometimes, it’s in those differences that we find the most space to grow and to improve, as each of those different perspectives meet and join up and collaborate.

This is a social construct that gets a LOT of valuable and reasonable push-back against it. Because it is easily manipulated by violent and oppressive sides. If you KNOW someone is always going to choose it, it’s VERY easy to use against them. But one of the things I learned working with co-ops over the years is that some communities add a ‘rule’ to their community agreements of “Assume best intentions”. And I absolutely get how there are power dynamics where doing so is NEVER going to be possible. But. Sometimes, there’s a lot of power to be found in doing it anyway. At least, there has been for me.

I don’t always read social cues well. I don’t often know if something said my direction was meant as a compliment or an insult, because the words are the same even if there are a lot of ways to have meant it. But I do know that if I assume it was meant well and react as if it was a kindness… If I was right? I haven’t damaged a relationship needlessly. And if I was wrong? I’ve reacted kindly to a mean-ness. And in the end, that’s still usually a better outcome than having met cruelty in return with more of it. You can always still cut ties and walk away after that kindness is clarified to have not been there at all. But it’s a lot harder to walk back the mistaken intent of someone looking to have hurt you where they weren’t meaning to do that at all.

Changing the world is hard but necessary work. But it’s work that starts with changing ourselves. We have to give each other space to learn and to grow, and to trust that even when that growth comes in different directions and preferences from one another, it’s still growth that is leading each of us to where we need and want to be. That’s probably FAR deeper than MU theme preferences ever needs to or even should be. But I wouldn’t write off all fantasy settings and L&L games just from what is considered a faulty premise. Give them a chance to see what happens. Play a few, if you’re interested. Play in none if you’re not. But give folks who DO play them chances when their spaces overlap with your own preferences. They may well manage to surprise you anyway.

[Faraday]

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

There have been Star Wars MUs where people play members/supporters of the literal fascist Empire; Wild West games where people play racists, outlaws, and robber barons; supernatural games where people play vampires and werewolves; and modern-day games where, indeed, people play super-rich elites.

This fixation that fantasy settings are bad and other genres are good seems weirdly out of step with what people actually do in those other settings.

[somasatori]

I can definitely understand the critique, especially from a Marxist perspective. I mentioned in the Concordia thread that this is the first L&L game I’ve played because of many reasons that were illustrated as being common in those genres. (To some extent, I wonder how this might inform why I picked a roster character who is an economist and historian, so fantasy dialectical materialism?)

As Faraday mentions, there is no shortage of problematic options in games. We may have gotten out of the really egregious options with most places not allowing you to play characters like the Black Spiral Dancers (for WoD) or what sounds like a major focus being on rebels/independents in some Star Wars games. I’m not too familiar with the other themes that are common these days. But anyway, what I think Jenn is saying is that a lot of times we use these ideas or games to explore concepts or constructs and that our individual ludonarrative might have a kind of instructional capacity. It’s probably seriously not that deep now that I realize I’ve used the word “ludonarrative,” but it could be possible.

[TNP]

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

You really need to read more history.

[Pavel]

@TNP said in But Why:

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

You really need to read more history.

Or less.

[Polk]

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about how I’d deal with a historical setting, since I’m coding a MUSH setup I intend to use for a game in a historical setting.

My thoughts go like this being some sort of mission statement on the site:

This game is set in 1880. The past is a foreign country. People thought differently. People had different standards of conduct. The structure of society was different.

For example, chattel slavery of the most brutal kind was still common in many parts of the world, and was recently banned but still in living memory in the English-speaking world.

In the US, the country was four years past the end of Reconstruction, 5-10 years past the destruction of the original Ku Klux Klan. Jim Crow laws were being enacted, and many people that previously elected black representatives to state and federal government were being barred from voting in those elections.

Women and men were seen as having distinct vocations in society. The tremendous leveling of the sexes that saw Rosie the Riveter become a national hero, was still 60 years away.

After the 15th Amendment was passed, many women who had fought for abolition of slavery and equality in society, were now asking for a chance to vote themselves. 8 years ago, Susan B. Anthony was put on trial for attempting to vote in the Presidential election, found guilty, and fined $100.

She told the judge she would never pay. He took no action against her. California would not grant voting rights for women for another 30 years, and the US would not do so nationally for another 10 years after that.

That’s all pretty bleak by modern standards, isn’t it? Well, here’s the thing. We’re not telling stories about this. We’re not telling stories about personal oppression by a sleeper society that doesn’t understand how to unlock the potential people have. We’re not telling stories about people casually hurling slurs at people on the street.

We’re telling stories about Mage society. These are stories about secret societies of elites with tremendous powers. These societies have social hierarchies based on ability. They are fundamentally meritocracies in a way sleeper society cannot yet comprehend.

I’m not saying we’re going to whitewash history in this setting. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying I’m not going to be approving PCs who have a problem with women who aren’t birthing babies, or who miss whipping slaves on pappy’s plantation.

PCs here are Awakened or Enlightened, or work for people who are. These are elites who earn respect from what they do, more like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Marie Curie, C. J. Walker, George Washington Carver, or Frederick Douglass.

This is a game that seeks to have a more heroic tone than some might have. I will not tolerate edgelording on this. I don’t want to hear “This is the World of Darkness, not the World of Rainbows.”

This is not a game to tell stories about being racist or sexist, any more than this is a game to tell stories about rape or incest. This is Mage. It’s about people who defy reality, and pay the price for that hubris.

[mietze]

@Polk i understand what you are trying to do here and have very enthusiastically played in a similar setting that also did not allow racist or sexist play.

But if i saw this as written on a game the tone of it would instantly turn me off. I’ll have to think about how to explain why.

[Polk]

@mietze I’d love to know why, because I’d love to address concerns. So please do share if it occurs to you why you’d have a negative reaction. I’m sure I’m missing concerns here. I’m only just starting this process.

thank you,

[Coin]

@Polk said in But Why:

@mietze I’d love to know why, because I’d love to address concerns. So please do share if it occurs to you why you’d have a negative reaction. I’m sure I’m missing concerns here. I’m only just starting this process.

thank you,

I think part of it is that you’re attributing it to the “elite nature” of mages, as if being Awakened is why they aren’t sexist or whatever as a society. At least, for me, that’s pretty eh.

[Jenn]

@mietze

For me… The tone is off because it’s like it’s LOOKING for all of the ways people can be awful, and making sure to elaborate on all of them.

It’s one thing to write a policy about as a game, and as a theme, we will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.

It’s something else entirely to actually make mention of whipping your chattel slaves on the plantation and incest as being SPECIFICALLY excluded.

Which, I mean. I absolutely get that if you don’t make it excluded down to nitty gritty that there are some people who will try to do it and then cry foul with: No one said I couldn’t!

But. There are ways to say people can’t be total asshats about things without elaborating down to the details the kinds of asshats you aren’t going to entertain. If I read a disclaimer that had THIS MUCH detail, I’d probably skip the place, too. Because either there is this much detail because staff is thinking WAY TOO DEEPLY about how awful people can be to one another… Or else they’re assuming they’re going to gather a player-base that wants to think way too deeply about it.

I think having a consent policy is important. I think having anti-isms policies is essential. I don’t think any of those policies needs to be quite so vividly explained. Because people who want to do horrible things will ALWAYS find the line of what they shouldn’t do that something in depth will have forgotten to add. You will never be able to elaborate all of the awful things you don’t have any desire or will to have on your games.

It’s not about keeping every single example documented. It’s about blanketly saying there will be NONE of it tolerated, and then enforce that as needed, and the broadest sense and scope of zero tolerance on being a shitty person is enough elaboration of the ‘why’.

[Polk]

@Jenn @Coin Thank you both.

I guess I wrote that defensively. I worry about bothering people who care deeply about history and don’t want bad things swept under the rug. I don’t want to be accused of trying to rewrite women and minorities out of history.

I’m going to think more about how to convey this. Thank you again.

[mietze]

@Jenn said in But Why:

Which, I mean. I absolutely get that if you don’t make it excluded down to nitty gritty that there are some people who will try to do it and then cry foul with: No one said I couldn’t!

You know, I actually don’t find this to be true. The truth is, you can have a 46 page document with every known instance…and the people who wish to play that type of thing are still going to do it. So it’s not that that is troublesome to me.

[Jenn]

@Polk Of course! Like. To be fully clear, I don’t think at all that it was the tone you intended to have. I think you’re trying your best to make sure you run a respectful and intentional world. And that’s a GOOD thing. You’ll get there with the wording.

[mietze]

@Polk the people who need to have absolute historical accuracy (sometimes just in general, sometimes as a justification for wanting to play a bigot or have that be an absolute focus of their RP that they cannot stray from even if their character is not bigoted) will not want to play on your game anyway. Or any game, probably. In my experience it’s really often much less of a headache to kick people off who can’t leave it alone (absolute historical accuracy) because their constant pontificating on the public channels or arguing “playfully” oocly in every scene will drive a lot of people away.

[Polk]

@mietze See I’m thinking about the opposite. I don’t want to annoy the people are keenly aware of injustices in the past.

The people you’re talking about, yeah. I can spot THEM a mile away. I’ve moderated political forums in the past. I know ALL their tricks, ALL their games, and I see right through their bad faith ‘just asking questions.’

But yeah. This was very useful.

[mietze]

I think the first thing maybe is to take this out of a format of a lecture. I don’t mean a lecture in a the pejorative sense, but like…a lecture, given by the authority/professor/headwiz to the audience. I don’t feel that gets off on the right foot. Yes, there will be some players that are very ignorant of history, but there are going to be plenty of your peers or even more educated (or they’ll certainly THINK themselves to be) and may take this as a special, irresistible invitation to argue. But also, unless you are a scholar of American history and the subsets of the groups you’re trying to represent, don’t underestimate your ability to get it wrong as you’re trying to educate the less educated audience. A lot of the figures you name kind of have a more…complicated history. Especially Susan B. Anthony. I do think that’s one of the things that bugs me actually, because a white suffragette who did good things for a great many people but still left a unified movement with black suffragettes because she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not believe that black men should receive the vote before white women did.

Is that important to a game? No, not really. But that’s one of the pitfalls of a lecture type statement that’s opening yourself up to things like that. To me, I see a guy centering a white woman with the people of color crammed together as a list of people that’s almost like an afterthought. Oh yeah, them too. I know that’s not your intent and I believe you when you say you don’t want to whitewash things, but you do kind of unintentionally in a way in your statement.

That’s why I think it’s better to keep a statement short and to the point.

“We acknowledge that American history during this time is rife with genocide, racism, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and classism and that often times the contributions and experiences of people other than rich white men and people in power has been whitewashed, mythologized, or there has been the attempt to erase it. We acknowledge that in setting this in an alternative reality in many ways, there will be some that feel we are doing the same. We respect those feelings. But as a setting choice that we will enforce, we are setting up a scope and framework for play where discriminatory play will not be part of the on screen RP. (or at all, if you’re not permitting that to be in in the backgrounds or not), and because of that we acknowledge that not everyone will wish to RP here.” Or whatever.

It feels like you’re trying to prevent people’s discomfort, but look. There ARE going to be moments of it on any historical game especially right now when we are seeing yet another resurgence of bigotry based violence and laws being passed.

[mietze]

I played on an alt-history game set in the 1800s fairly recently. And even though it was a safe place, run by people I trusted, and also a closed game which meant a more selective group of people, I’ll just be straight up honest, there were many times where I wrestled internally with my own PC because of the inclusion of historical events in her life that honestly I was not super well versed about and knew my understanding largely came from writings by white English speaking scholars with a sprinkling of women but mostly men. I enjoy wrestling with hard, difficult stuff in my RP. And most of my thoughts and wrestling were internal as i tried to inform how I RPed her BUT I did not want to introduce much of that at all to anyone else because it wasn’t necessary, and again–you /never/ know someone’s background and the last thing I wanted to do with put a stumbling block in front of a RP partner that jarred them. I don’t know that i was always successful at that. I’m not sure I would play an 1800s game in the US with a rando/open game, tbh. There’s a lot of hopeful stuff going on but also a lot of really dark stuff and we’re moving through a very dark period of history right now too.

[Faraday]

@mietze said in But Why:

I’m not sure I would play an 1800s game in the US with a rando/open game, tbh.

Same. I love historical fiction. I once ran a Western game. But I don’t think I would do so again having both that experience and the awareness I now have.

The main thing for me is - it’s fine to say that the PCs are enlightened for whatever reason (a progressive town, mage society, etc.) but they still have to exist within the wider world. I think that opens you up to either feeling that you’re whitewashing the setting, or risking that you might invoke problematic topics (even unintentionally or tangentially).

[Polk]

I discarded the entire idea for a long time since I wasn’t sure it would get ANY interest. But I’ve recently come to believe it will get SOME interest, so I’m doing it.

Worst case, I end up with Evennia WoD MUSH in a Box, and can use it to make something else.