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MU Peeves Thread
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It just seems pretty standard to me of late that even L&L fantasy games now tend to have a very strong “nobody gets knocked up or knocks anyone up unless they purposefully do something to not prevent it” component. Its most often in the form of free access to all people birth control and if one person takes it then that’s enough to ensure you don’t (giving people freedom to know that they are not going to conceive) , rather than you have to take something to make it so and both have to take it in order to conceive (so you know that if you don’t do that its not going to happen).
I do understand how either of those ways is going to hit different from different folks. But I don’t see what we are talking about as more mind-blowing than allowing true free and uninhibited access to prevention at least in my experience as a woman.
Maybe it’s just because of my personal background, but to me giving a woman equal agency over opening up the possibility each time with the default being its not going to happen unless both people wholeheartedly agree seems just as liberating in a way that I wasn’t allowed to think of as a kid.
But most of the time I don’t really have to think about it much on games because I prefer not to make that a focus in my RP anyway (and why I don’t choose to be part of time skip or high speed games where that becomes an important focus of the game, because that “you must be fruitful and multiple and carry the blood forward” as a hyper or primary focus is one of those things that make me uncomfortable probably as much as infertility does other folks.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’m not sure if you mean that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare or not, but when we stood up our L&L game we made it very explicit and purposeful that there is no discrimination or social mores against same-sex relationships, and children either adopted or born from one partner biologically but not the other are treated the same as children born biologically, etc. It was extremely important to us to create a safe space where people of all genders and inclinations could play the way that they wanted.
This is what I meant, yeah. On the one hand, Samurai do not care about who you sleep with as long as it doesn’t interfere with your duty to or dishonor your Lord. Romance is not inherantly dishonorable. But this is also a game where ‘my spouse and I get along and enjoy eachother’s company, actually’ is a stat you traditionally had to spend XP on, in a world where holding hands is scandalous, let alone other forms of PDA.
With Iweko I being a female Emperor, and the nobility of Samurai transcending gender, there is nothing aside from tradition stopping Rokugan from going full trans and letting people live the lives they want. Plenty of majikz in the world to let people do what they want.
… except a big theme of L5R is the internal struggle between what you want, and what your Lord/Clan/the Emperor demands. So… it be tricksy.
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Respectfully, of course I do not mean to say that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare. That would be a ridiculous thing to say.
What I was saying is that in my (personal, subjective) experience of the genre, I see/have seen very few examples of it actually happening, whether the support is there or not.
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
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@Alveraxus I’ve been seeing some videos on YouTube suggesting a new edition is coming out which will rewrite a lot of the lore to make it less yucky, but I can’t tell if this fabled new edition is actually coming out (I can’t find news about it) or if the video creator is presenting their own ideas as if it’s happening.
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Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years? Why can’t we just admit that things change? ARX I BLAME YOU.
I admit, major theme changes do tweak me more. Minor clarifications, fine. You need that all the time. Major changes? Unless it’s a developing thing, it’s a little weird to insist major theme has always been like this, for real.
But systems always change in live games. Policies and theme always need clarification in live games. That’s not beta. That’s LIFE.
she/they
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@Tez maybe you are just so used to life as a beta you don’t even recognize it anymore did you think of that
fr fr
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
What I was saying is that in my (personal, subjective) experience of the genre, I see/have seen very few examples of it actually happening, whether the support is there or not.
AH, that makes sense. I’m not sure how the trends are going. Based around “active” characters, we’ve got 3 NB characters (and one about to come out of chargen) versus about 80 binary. I obviously am not tracking orientation. But that does seem low, even though we offer it and encourage players to play as they would like.
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
I agree, and to be fair, I think a lot of games are. We’re not alone in making a specific and emphatic statement about inclusivity, but I also know other games may not have it written as a policy but do encourage a community of that. I think generally MUSHers (and of course we have outliers) are a more accepting group in general as a population. I’d like to think so, anyway.
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@hellfrog D:<!!!
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@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years? Why can’t we just admit that things change? ARX I BLAME YOU.
I think some major video games started that trend as a way to avoid accountability to their fans, and it just caught on everywhere. (I got curious when it started because I have a distinct memory of logging into a game regularly and it always saying it was “in beta” (like Orna or something), and quick google fu showed me a post on Steam in 2013 complaining “When will this trend of forever beta going to end”?)
I agree, though. At least for us, we have a very specific planned cadence - Alpha (now) to test out the specific systems we want to test out where things are going to explode or not (one recent test totally exploded, for example) and we change things on the fly, and then hopefully one Beta generation where we stick with what we learned in Alpha. And then that’s it.
It doesn’t mean we can’t change something that doesn’t work, but we won’t be actively looking to change things after Alpha/proof of concept stage.
That being said. There is some comfort in saying you’re always in beta because it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have. “It says Beta on the box, so you know what you are signing up for.”
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
Out of curiosity – do you mean OOCly inclusive, or that themes on all games should be ICly inclusive?
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have
That has to be one of my least favourite parts of all this nonsense Beta-maxing. Obviously, it’s not my game, not my vision, and YMMV, but if you’re going to radically change the IC world to match your “vision,” you should do that before you open, not when people are actively playing your game for months.
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@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have
That has to be one of my least favourite parts of all this nonsense Beta-maxing. Obviously, it’s not my game, not my vision, and YMMV, but if you’re going to radically change the IC world to match your “vision,” you should do that before you open, not when people are actively playing your game for months.
Having the flexibility to do something and the wisdom sometimes not to are two different things.
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
Out of curiosity – do you mean OOCly inclusive, or that themes on all games should be ICly inclusive?
I know you’re asking Pacha, but since it came up with regards to our game I figured I’d share my philosophy.
OOCly goes without saying, IMO.
I think it’s an interesting question regarding ICly inclusive. I know that we made a choice to support the idea of “any gender can perform any role” and the various other precepts, and we acknowledge that it stands in contrast to the historical periods we are somewhat trying to emulate. And yes, I can see some people saying that it “breaks their immersion”. Even thought we are an “original” theme, we’re still drawing heavily from a tropey tradition.
Our attitude is that we realize that may limit our audience, and we are ok with that. We would rather have a safer space to allow anyone to play what they want, even if it defies traditional roles (not saying we agree or disagree with those roles, but in many cases, they are traditions) than make anyone feel othered or not, or not free to express who they are.
Yeah, I’m sure there are some folks who find that a turnoff and won’t play. That’s ok.
This isn’t necessarily to criticize any game who does things differently, it’s just a statement of what I (and the rest of the team) feel about our game.
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Let me say my old catchphrase, ahem:
I promise that the Reach will remain in an alpha state for only a few additional months before our grand opening! -
ngl, I am finding the Game Ads tone that some of this convo has taken to be a little off-putting.
re: The distinction between IC and OOC inclusivity… yo, word, everybody is entitled to their fantasy. Structuring any setting along lines of racial, gendered, or sexual hegemony in this day and age would be a choice. (Although, I guess that Pern game has stuck to its guns.)
But also… I don’t want to play in some kind of pre-established utopia. I’d rather play fighting for one and building one. Having no adversity and no socially structured limitations on a game sounds boring as fuck.
I did arch an eyebrow when Concordia opened up with a total lack of significant social strata for PCs. No commoners, no lesser nobles, no house leadership – some of which did change in later iterations of the theme. It significantly alters the type of stories the game can tell. Which is fine. (It also alters type of headaches staff engages with, valid.) But that is an OOC limitation not backed up by lore, so the game-running strategy for that issue is admittedly different.
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@helvetica Yeah, this is very much aligned with my feelings, and kind of why I was wondering and asked the question. Because yeah, OOC inclusiveness in regards to players, 100%!!! And where a staff chooses to design their theme around IC inclusiveness, I will defend the theme if I’m playing on that game.
But I would disagree with the idea that every game needs to have a theme that’s 100% ICly inclusive. Ideally IMO we could have a mix of things, a variety, different games trying out different stuff. Because players have different interests here. I’ve dealt with RL sexism plenty, but I’m a player who still enjoys exploring that in stories. This is different from some of my friends! But I absolutely don’t think it’s wrong for a game to explore or reflect these sorts of prejudices that exist IRL (either in modern days, or historically). Some people who have experienced prejudice or trauma don’t want to touch anything that resembles it in their hobby space, and some of those people actively want to engage with it in their hobby space. It’s just different preferences here.
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On marriagey things and preferences: On Atharia you can be any gender and marry any gender. Each kingdom has their tradition (like 1 is patriarchy, one is eldest, one is whatever child, one is matriarchy, another is trial by combat, another wealth and power, another democratic, and the last by merit) with minor differences by families in the kingdoms. None of the genders are considered ‘less’ it is simply a ‘The first ruler was this so this is the way it will be’. Each gender BAby-prevention is flawless so there is no surprise baby since both parents need to actively make the choice.
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Yeah, I’ve definitely softened my stance on historical “accuracy” these days - especially given most games are going down the history-inspired fantasy world route most of the time.
But there’s a certain point at which progressiveness makes a setting not the setting you’re claiming. For example, it’s hard to play a rebellious suffragette in a 1910-set game if everyone’s already equal.
But it’s absolutely a choice, and usually one that is about exploring those themes rather than having an incidental relationship to them.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
But also… I don’t want to play in some kind of pre-established utopia. I’d rather play fighting for one and building one. Having no adversity and no socially structured limitations on a game sounds boring as fuck.
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
…But I absolutely don’t think it’s wrong for a game to explore or reflect these sorts of prejudices that exist IRL (either in modern days, or historically). Some people who have experienced prejudice or trauma don’t want to touch anything that resembles it in their hobby space, and some of those people actively want to engage with it in their hobby space. It’s just different preferences here.
Agree with you both here. I think what’s most important for me is just that it says on the box what you are getting into. I don’t want to find out a year in that actually I’ve been living under authoritarian jam control.
I quite enjoy playing scrappy underdogs fighting against a terrible status quo. @Yam and other friends have run some great little games that let me tell amazing stories in those kinds of worlds. You wanna talk wish-fulfillment, man. Fulfills my wishes to think we can overthrow corrupt institutions. :')
I get where game runners are coming from when they try to push against the tide. I think there’s a tendency to over-correct and avoid some of the more uncomfortable elements of theme because you always run the risk of getting the players who actually think it’s super cool and fun to run around slinging slurs and call it historical. They are not there to overthrow institutions. There are there to be institutions.
As ever, the problem is players.
It’s easier to just lean hard into a more progressive setting rather than navigate the sticky bits.
