Happy Pride Month, everyone!

I woke up this morning a wee bit sad as I had to close a tab open to MSB on my phone, and reminded myself:

The forum was never the community. It was just where the community agreed to hang out. It could have been Reddit or Discord or a MUSH but - for a few years - it was the MSB forum.

If WORA was ever a thing, it is here now. The spirit of open, lively debate is here.

What we left behind are admin who admit candidly that they wanted us off their forum, so we are gone.

The people left behind on Derp’s forum are a separate community.

People can decide where they would like to belong. (Except for those of us who were banned but I also think that just reinforces what most of us had already chosen.)

I am happy to be part of this community. 🥰

@GF said in Bannings:

At some point, it has to become a vibes-based decision.

Honestly? At every point. Even looking down the barrel of logs and screenshots, you’re still gonna have to make a decision based on your instincts.

I’m not sure people grasp how much even the most flippant of us wind up agonizing over these decisions sometimes. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this” is probably the most common phrase people say to me when they want to put someone on my radar, and that’s sort of a sad state of affairs. Even on GH, which was a hot mess, we only ever got a handful of actual complaints about behavior from people; most people who are getting harassed just leave rather than go through the whole process of reporting someone.

The only false report I’ve ever gotten on any game, to my knowledge, was from Ruiz. Who went right for the throat with a job to complain about the person it turned out she was harassing. Neither player got banned over it, though the other player eventually quit.

^ See above re: wrong way on a decision before. I should’ve banned Ruiz right then (or at least shortly afterward when her creepiness started to twig @bear_necessities), but no one had receipts and it felt somehow wrong to ban someone just because my co-admin thought they were creepy.

Which is just the dumbest rationale I’ve ever used, and it embarrasses me to this day.

tl;dr - be a good admin and swing the ban-hammer freely till you achieve the desired PEACE & QUIET

I forgot this thread was here. I stand by my “let Derp’s forum lie” mentality, but also…

Derp has been completely honest about why certain bans were lifted and others weren’t: He doesn’t like us.

Which is completely fair. I don’t like him, either.
When he was made admin, I had every intention of just bouncing. But I realize now that I fucking care about this community, and he doesn’t, so I’m glad I came back.

I don’t expect to ever be unbanned there. Derp can’t handle people speaking truth to him, especially women.

The community that was WORA - that Arkandel handed over to Ganymede - isn’t fractured. It’s right fucking here.

WORA has never been an immutable line in the sand. It’s always a party that’s popped up at someone’s house 'cause their parents were out of town.

When Nymeria threatened copyright infringement and we had to flee off Proboards (or whatever that was), the community moved to a new location. This is the same thing: Ganymede torched our old neighborhood and gave the keys to Derp, so we just moved on.

It’s really hard to explain how much of this is because… honestly… Derp is such a mansplainy little turd, that it is hard to swallow that he “wins.” He and Ganymede essentially have the keys to our shared history. And it hurts to think of losing that (for the 4th time?) because of this narrow-minded little man who doesn’t have the common decency to yield to the will of the community he was supposed to be entrusted to oversee.

Derp should have done the right thing and stepped aside when it became obvious how upset so many of us were.

Ganymede should have done the right thing and asked him to step aside when it became obvious how upset so many of us were.

The misplaced trust in Ganymede over the years compiled by the smug crowing imagined in the background by that tiresome manchild…

It still stings.

So that’s why I’m still reading, even though I know I shouldn’t. I’ll grow out of it soon.

They won’t.

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

Yep.

Sometimes people lie.

Please show me the receipts where people have lied about being harassed. If this is such a prevalent problem, you should have no trouble producing them.

We lost our CKCS recently. So now we have 1 & 1/4 Boston Terriers.

@Cobalt lordy, just when it feels like it can’t go any lower

Just from my own past experience? Don’t give away your DB. Don’t let someone take it over. We did that with GH, and I regret that decision big-time. Stuff only got worse, and - even though I publicly walked away - there’s still a sense of responsibility. And people who still think I was responsible for shit that I had no control over.

If they love it so much, let them make an homage.

LOLOL and Gany banned us all to protect this nasty weirdo

this hobby, man

@Cobalt just jumping on the bandwagon.

Derp’s knee-jerk assumption was that YOU are the bad actor in this scenario, and everyone agreed - right up until you walked into the room, when suddenly they realized they weren’t just talking about someone who couldn’t defend themselves. Then Ghost and Macha did their frantic back-pedaling, and Derp of course ignored the fire he just started.

They’re not there for discussion. They have BANNED everyone who actually wants to discuss things.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes

Thank you for clarifying, as I also read it that way, and was like… damn, I tried to explain that it just doesn’t hit me as fun, and people were like NO I BELIEVE YOU DO LIKE IT!!!

Alas, all the games where I used to play are no longer open to grab my default RP prefs, but they generally went something like:

• YES - Action, adventure, travel, cool scenery (and then generally something theme-specific, like “dark magic” or “rebel alliances” or something)
• NO - Slice of life

Specific examples?

• Always enjoy playing weird NPCs for story purposes, so currently enjoying storytelling with some friends; historically enjoyed lots of scenes on GH where I got to play the weird creatures.
• The whole zombie arc on Crimson Compass.
• On Horror2 where we used the holy water in the stupidest possible way, which I think was just a 2-3 scene arc?
• The training montage on LA (even though I wasn’t actually in that scene).
• When my character exploded himself as a weyrling on HT.
• “Travel” scenes are always fun for me, especially travel to a surreal or impossible place. Preference for me is as a storyteller, but I’m down to be along for the ride.

Hopefully, this helps.

p.s. r u fr rn?

p.p.s. Double-edit to add… as I’m rereading the past few go-rounds…

I am not trying to sell this to anyone as a better or even good way to be. I wish I could still enjoy playing pick-up scenes the way I used to. I’ve spent at least a year trying to find that old oomph, and it just is not there.

If anything, I do not wish for others to fall off the same way that I have. So take my story as a warning, for I do not play right now, and that is not what I would wish for the rest of y’all.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???

Sorry, that’s more an issue of replying on my phone.

My entire point is just that I know what social RP is, I have enjoyed it in the past, I do not enjoy it anymore. I do enjoy many other types of RP.

Whether or not you believe that is irrelevant.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i think that what people generally mean is that they don’t like RP that turns out to not be fun. which is universal.

I think that’s what people generally mean, yes.

I also agree that I do not like RP that turns out to be not fun.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i don’t actually believe anyone would eschew a social scene with a new character that turned out to have great chemistry and was an awesome time.

I’m fine if people don’t actually believe this.

Edit to fix quote issue.

@Yam Interesting.

I guess it is just a matter of differing tastes. I used to enjoy random social interactions, but I do not anymore. They just do not entertain me, the same way that I am not entertained by Bridgerton or MMA.

@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I definitely agree with this, which is why I’m always baffled about why people declare no bar RP/no social fluff.

Hm. Are you equally baffled by people who declare no smut? Or no lords and ladies?

People like different things.

@Trashcan I’ll be damned.

Thank you!!!

@sao I used to do this, too. If it helps you any…

You can also do this by going to the /locations directory on the game, finding the room, and clicking “Start Scene” from there.

It still marks them as Temp Rooms, but it imports location name and room description into the scene for you. Which I like.

The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.

This is an extremely small sample, but between the three games mentioned as having a live RP cohort (Keys, Aegis Company and Empty Night)…

1 scene got posted yesterday (Aegis), and 1 scene got posted on 2/24 (Aegis).

There are 6 scenes shared from 2/23 (Empty Night & Aegis), but I’m not sure if those went up on 2/24 or 2/25. If we assume they were all played and posted on 2/23, then there are 8 live scenes shared across 3 days across 3 games.

Just some food for thought. If live RP is on these games, it is not getting shared publicly on a regular basis.

@Yam Genuinely surprised that this conversation happened 3 years ago.

https://brandmu.day/topic/346/social-bar-rp?_=1771967913235

So take that into consideration when viewing my tolerance for async. I am old; time flows differently now.

And pretty much I am looking for every scene to have some sort of contribution to the narrative, yes. This doesn’t have to be as action-oriented as robbing the 7-11. It can be staking out the 7-11 before the robbery, trying on ski masks, hotwiring a getaway car, etc. Ideally, these provide moments that give characters depth without breaking the momentum or repeating themselves.

As to how well it works for me… My tolerance for social RP used to be higher. I used to genuinely enjoy flirting and random goof-offery, so the amount I RP (in public) was a lot more frequent in general before I got crochety. I’ve had a few characters and a few games over the years that have been full-throttle, with every single scene leading into the next and each of those scenes bringing something clutch. But these are few and far between.

I just play (mostly async, to steer back to the topic) in private for now. Something will come along eventually. It always does.

@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I have to be “on” mentally, like, ready and prepared to work with what the players are dishing out or attempting, and if I have to be that level of attentive over the span of a week, I think my brain would melt.

I get this, 100%.

I know I’m losing an emotional component when I’m playing async, in that there’s no way that I (and I assume my RP buddies) feel the same way at 2pm on Thursday that I did when we started this scene at 8:45am on Tuesday.

But I get more time to craft a thoughtful response, and it makes it possible to play with people that I otherwise wouldn’t connect with, so

I just really don’t like random social fluff. I don’t understand why someone would knowingly sign up for days and days of that, and I would also hate async scenes if that’s all I was doing in there all the time.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I care less about the pacing, much more about the content. I’ll take good RP however I can get it thx!!!