Eddie is certainly doing a good job of making the original accusations seem very likely to be spot on.

@Coin 500 words a day. Every day. It worked for Terry Pratchett.

Moreover, it worked for me. I finally published my first this spring.

@kalakh I had somebody pull the ‘some people expressed concern to me’ line on me as late as last week.

There is only one appropriate answer. If these people will not stand up themselves and voice their concerns, or at the very least allow their names to be used, then their complaint is invalid.

People with concerns should go to staff and make themselves known. At the very least they should allow the person they pick to talk to staff to identify them. Because it’s bloody easy to pull ‘some people agree with me, actually everyone does’ out of your arse, and there is no way to verify that these people even exist.

Being a disabled person who can only leave the house with a helper and isn’t even able to drive a car themselves – and still being able to be part of a community of people and have a social life.

That’s what Mushing is for me.

Agreed. Tone policing is essentially a tool to silence those whose polite protests got them nothing, in order to maintain the status quo.

I had one of those sleepless nights where old stuff finishes ruminating in your mind and finally bubbles to the surface. Now to unload it so I can go on to other ruminations.

Red flags. I’ve had a few experiences in this hobby with people who I would, without being a medical professional, definitely armchair diagnose as malignant narcissists at worst – and players who use and discard other players like NPCs at best.

If somebody says this to you in a private conversation, run.

“I have a black belt in charm.”
“I am/we are the darlings/power couple of the game.”
“I can win anyone over.”
“Many players are jealous of my success but I know you’re different.”
“I play for me, others will have to find their own fun.”

And other things like them, I’m sure.

These statements aren’t all one hundred per cent wrong: We are all responsible for finding our own fun instead of having it served up on a plate, for example.

But they’re also all direct quotes from people who – well, let’s just say that I don’t need to talk to any of those people again.

Personally, my experience is that people are willing to accept amazing and terrifying amounts of consequences, even very negative such, as long as they feel that it matters.

No one wants their character to lose a leg and no one cares. But if losing a leg means the villain gets outed and everyone goes around all ‘thank you for your sacrifice’, then it’s juuuuuust fine.

People want to matter.

On popular request: The story of the girl who thought she was marrying my partner.

So, this was back in the 1990s – 'round 96 if I remember correctly. The date matters because cybersecurity and whatnot really wasn’t a big thing yet. Partner and I both played on LegendMUD.

Partner hung out a lot with a chick from Detroit and her friends. I had my crowd I went stabbing things with so nothing unusual there.

One day, a large care package arrived. Chocolate, a vinyl with ‘our song’, Red Sox kit (partner has no interest in hockey), scented candles.

In retrospect, this is where we should have started to question but, we weren’t really sure what to think.

Then she announced to partner that she’d bought the plane tickets and was arriving in a couple of weeks. Couldn’t wait to get married!

That, of course, rang all the alarm bells and set off an investigation on the game – where I was a builder at the time so I had a pretty decent rapport with the admins.

Partner had complained a few times that they lost gear or logged into the game somewhere else than expected. They’re a forgetful type though, so…

So the admins looked through paging history and private correspondence. And it turned out that some other guy from Denmark had been logging the character in and, to be blunt, convinced this American girl to come to Denmark to marry him.

This is where the obvious question is, how the hell can I trust partner to not be the culprit? Well. To be just as blunt again – partner’s English levels aren’t up to what those pages and letters contained.

Needless to say there was quite an uproar. Girl accused partner of abuse and gaslighting – other guy denied everything – and obviously, the trip to Europe was cancelled, more so when girl found out that partner and I were in fact already married.

https://twitter.com/lbheuschkel/status/1536026867471466496

Have to link the video rather than a picture. Those are my girls, running around for the joy of life.

Not just youth. Also standards.

When I was 25 and had all night and nothing to compare with, I would jump into anything. Even the most atrocious, brain-numbing roleplay was good roleplay.

Now I’m 51 and I don’t have all night and I’m not going to waste time and energy on stuff that’s boring the hell out of me while hoping that a miracle happens.

Long time no see, Jules! Hope everything is well!

Ye gods, DiscworldMUD. So many coded minigames, from crafting to shop running, to actual, literal games – poker? Board games? It was all there.

@somasatori With a lot of international players, we do see discussions that are genuine discussions. But they’re between people who disagree on fairly minor issues – not from either extreme. Frankly, I don’t think that gap is bridgeable anymore, and I’m not sure it should be even attempted.

@Yam said in Strike Systems:

I’m curious if anyone has actually legitimately witnessed a fundamental change in someone with regards to MUSH behavior, perhaps due to some fallout, maybe in the form of banning or lost friends.

Yes. On several games. But to no one’s surprise whatsoever, those people who do learn and reform also tend to keep very quiet about it, in order to leave the past well buried.

@Juniper said in Strike Systems:

@Rucket said in Strike Systems:

At this point if I ran a game and someone spoke some right wing shit id ban them.

Amen to that.

“A-bloo-boo-hoo, freedom of speech, blah blah”
Nah. Go away. I’m tired of playing how far they can boil the frog before there’s a problem.

Not going to lie here: I like to think myself pretty open-minded, but I too object to being slow boiled like a frog. Don’t be pushing around Overton windows on my game.

It’s fine to discuss politics. It’s not fine to propagandize – and while I won’t ban you for being right-wing, I somehow don’t think you’re going to feel very welcome in the general community. Most of us are too fed up with this shit.

@Yam I’m going to venture a guess that at least some of the reasoning is habit from the 1990s when it really did matter how many people were connected.

The MUD I played back then lagged to the molassis and random disconnects point when more than 50 people were online. So the guys standing around doing nothing were not in generally in favour with the rest of us.

However, this is not an issue today as far as I’m aware.

@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):

It’s also perfectly acceptable for Staff on a game to see players who aren’t meeting their expectations, and approach them politely and discuss the matter, and if they’re not able to reach an understanding, ask them to leave.

It is. On Keys, the requirement is, don’t idle out. Other games have tighter restrictions. Set it up the way you want your game to work. Much as I’m a laidback nature, it is on the potential new player to read your terms and conditions. The social contract they’re agreeing to, if you will.

I’m going to just quickly point a spotlight at another variant that hasn’t been mentioned so far (from what I saw): The player who wants to RP with everyone but can’t.

Whether it’s social anxiety, bad health, busy life – at least on Keys, we have a couple of folks who never or almost never actually RP. When they do, it’s one on one, with only a few chosen folks.

They’re not harming anyone, though. They just want to be part of the OOC community even if for whatever reasons they don’t have spoons to actively play. They hang around and chat, and in that, contribute to a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.

I think Roadspike put it well above; if the player isn’t hoarding plot or otherwise obstructing things for others, they’re still a gain for the game.

I think grids serve a different purpose today than they used to. Today, at least on Ares games, the grid is a showcase – it tells new people what the place looks like, what the atmosphere is like, and what staff thought was important to the stories being told.

My em-dashes, my semicolons, and my words of more than three syllables. Ain’t giving them up in order to write ‘less like AI’. LLMs are mimicking me, not the other way around.