This is quite amazing.

24 years in this hobby and it’s the same old patterns, over and over and over again. 24 years of ‘X is a creeper and staffer Y is protecting him’ from A, with B to G arriving to agree and support and #metoo. And then Z pitches up to defend X and Y by demanding evidence and discrediting A to G and discrediting the place we’re reading it on. At first it worked, because the world was a different place and we were younger and many of us hadn’t met it before, but as more happened and more came to light and the world around us changed, we’ve seen the patterns and realised what was actually going on.

24 years later, and while most of us have grown and changed and learned, it seems that X and Y and Z still think their old tactics work.

Find a new strategy, guys. This one’s old enough to go drinking with its mates in the USA, and has been for a few years now. We see you and we see through you, and we know that whether the original story was credible or not, people who use Z’s strategy are not to be trusted.

Bleed is a) an absolute bastard, and b) what we play the game for.

If we aren’t trying to evoke an emotional response in ourselves and others, really, what do we spend all this time typing at each other for? Laugh or cry, smile or rage, we do this daft hobby of ours in order to feel - and to fail to acknowledge that is to set ourselves up for insanity.

Emotional bleed, in and of itself, isn’t the problem. It’s the failure to control that bleed that’s the problem. We can be in tears over what just happened, while at the same time relishing those tears. This is normal - for us at least - and this is good as long as we all stay friends, or at the very least cordial. There’s trust involved in giving people license to manipulate you, and if people break that trust it hurts, and that too is normal. Backbiting, whisper campaigns, releasing logs of private scenes on taboo/secret topics - all those are a betrayal of the trust we’ve put in others to allow them to affect us. We extend our trust to those we extend deep IC ties to - whatever that tie may be - and we can only hope that they have a similar understanding of what they’ve been entrusted with.

And if someone’s staffing, especially using NPCs to push story, that’s a position of special trust, because we’re giving them license to mess around with our emotions while they remain insulated. A game’s staff have many more ways to break our trust, which is why the good staffers are trustworthy - and why we react so badly if and when it happens. Trust is a fragile thing, easily destroyed and very difficult to rebuild.

Belatedly, I’m going to add to the VulgarKitten stuff. She’s been doing this same thing for more than a decade, and I am both annoyed and irritated that she just can’t seem to grow the fuck up and stop hurting real people over pretendy funtime games. I am so sorry that she did that to you, @IoleRae ; all I can say is that the pattern seems to happen when she starts getting jealous because someone’s being a responsible feature/staffer and engaging with people who aren’t her.

I mean really, WTF? What is she, 5, and in need of all of daddy’s attention to the point of trying to throttle the baby?

So yeah, when I said I wasn’t going to be returning to RtA if she was the one drumming up support, I… wasn’t kidding. There are very few people on my own personal will-not-RP-with list beyond the standard bunch of idiot creepers, but she’s got pride of place at the very top. And had I had my way at RtA, she’d have been banned.

@IoleRae It’s only a few days ago that I found out who she’d been, and I immediately raged. There aren’t many people I remember from a decade ago without prompting, but that character name is etched in my memory with a massive flashing light and a really loud warning siren.

It’s not just you. It hasn’t been just you.

And to anyone she’s made a victim of, or who’s feeling isolated, or just isn’t connecting to people? Reach out to me on game or on the board, and if I can I’ll help, just as I’ve done many times before. I can usually help connect people to other bits of a game, to plots they might find fun, or people they’ll get on with. It’s more difficult on Arx than it was when I had a staffer’s view of what was going on, but I’ll help. And I’ll even mitigate my arse of a character to do it, because helping people find fun is far more important.

@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:

everyone wants to take down The Man! everyone has different ideas for how to do it and wants the credit

Everyone wants to take down The Man, until they themselves are The Man, at which point everyone else has to be delighted with the idea and nothing can ever go wrong ever again…

We lived in the country - mice in the house was standard - when we gained a crotchety old tomcat who was ludicrously intelligent. We rapidly came to an arrangement with Zappa; he brought us dead mice, he got tuna. 14 mice in 10 days, worked like a treat.

Unfortunately, this cat was too smart. After he’d emptied the house of its rodents, every time he wanted a bit of tuna in his diet, he brought us a dead rodent. So after a while he was getting a bit podgy, and we stuck him on a diet.

5 mice in one day.

He got his tuna, and we decided that a cat who can catch five mice in a day probably didn’t need a diet. Diet ended, everyone was happy, and we realised that our cat had grasped the basic principles of economics.

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

@STD
In those dark dystopias you fight the corporations to make the world a better place for everyone. In the dark ages, it was a struggle to survive just being a human.

Think about the fantasy genre and the themes it has.
Lord of the Rings - Take the ring of power, resist it’s call to make you all powerful and destroy it.
Game of Thrones - Kill everyone and take power for yourself.
Beowulf - Kill monsters and take power for yourself.
Robinhood - Kill the nobles and take power for yourself because you think you can do a better job.

It’s all about selfishness. It’s an entire genera based on the idea that getting what you want is the only important thing. You are just replacing one self-important jerk with a nicer self-important jerk and nothing ever gets better for anyone else in a dark ages fantasy. Look at Lord of the rings, all those books, all that adventure and the only thing that really changed was 1 ring got destroyed and one human village got roasted by a dragon. Then life pretty much went back to normal.

If this is what you took away from the fantasy genre, I pity you. If all you see about you is selfishness, then perhaps you should look beyond the mirror.

You know, maybe you really ought to try actually doing some reading, given that Lord of the Rings has no dragons in it and Robin Hood is actually a name attached to a legend which wasn’t actually about taking any power at all. Beowulf isn’t even fantasy, it’s an epic poem told a millennium and more ago, and Game of Thrones was a specific reaction to all the fantasy novels about honourable people with good and selfless endings.

Reading can broaden the mind!

@Tez said in Admin Accountability:

@Meg said in Bannings:

this situation happened very specifically because of power invested in one person.

Pulling this thread out bc I was thinking about it last night, you know, in that ‘lie in bed and think about things as you fall asleep’ kind of way. I wonder if there are good ways to build checks for that kind of thing, have some kind of accountability baked in. Right now, I own the server. Glitch handles the subdomain stuff. Pyre and Pavel are admin. But if I suddenly fired everyone, like – in the end, that’s where it stops. With the person who has the keys to the server account. How do you build in checks?

As the USA is finding out right now, with the best will in the world, the checks and balances don’t always work as intended.

Be transparent. Be accountable. Be open to discussion. And if the people you think have integrity are looking dubious, stop and ask why rather than warming up the banhammer.

My characters often spawn conflict. I am conflict-avoidant.
My characters are often deeply flawed. I try to find and correct my flaws.
My characters often consider the law to be an inconvenience, for one reason or another. I think the law is a necessity.
My characters are often killers, either in the form of soldiers or flat-out murderers. I feel guilty if I kill an ant by accident.
My characters are usually sociable and charismatic, or at least capable of dealing with people at times. I’ve learned a lot about how to do the whole people-ing thing from them.
My characters are often over 6’. Me, though, I am definitely not.
My characters are generally male. I’m becoming more open about the fact that I am not and have never been male (although I have been mistaken for it quite often in RL, and even told I’m in the wrong bathroom before now).

I find it hard to play a character who isn’t deeply flawed in some way, and attempts to do so invariably fail. My characters are not me; they are warped and twisted reflections of me as seen through a fun-house mirror, then grown through their own experiences.

In game settings where telepathy exists, and on games where thought-posing is annoying me, I will make a telepath and those thoughts will get read for maximum effect.

You have been warned.

Ray started from nothing, just a criminal henchman with a cliche’d backstory.

He found out over time that he was a quarter Nox’alfar. He found out that his father had been a holder of part of the Will of Baalphrigor who’d sacrificed thousands to the Abyss in a war, and who’d killed Ray’s mother.

He found a woman who could cope with him and got married, and a man who could cope with them both but couldn’t get married but was a not-quite-husband. He found a goddess who could cope with him and swore to Her service. He rose to be a Second of his crime family and one of the top-ranking members of the criminal underworld. He made friends and he made enemies, and he was the protege of the Queen of the Compact, while his wife was a successful businesswoman and a ‘successful businesswoman’ and a protege of a Voice of the Crown and his not-quite-husband was a Knight-Lieutenant of the King’s Own.

He ended up dying to save a bunch of souls in a shardhaven, and his goddess and his patron brought him back to life. He became an Aspect - and then went and performed the Paladin rite on his own and for one goddess only, and became the Paladin of Death, because that was a much safer title to use. The Wheelspinner came to him, and in the last battle he did what he could.

House Mazetti tried to ennoble him, often. House Velenosa made the offer as well. He’s accepted on behalf of Tanith and his child(ren), and House Calvaria will rise.

He started with nothing, and he ended up with so much, and I’d like to thank Herja for a truly stunning storyline and Tanith and Austen’s players for some absolutely amazing times - and the rest of Ray’s friends for putting up with the irritating murderous git and letting him be around regardless.

It’s been a whale of a time.

I mean I understand the complaint and where it’s coming from, but I’ve been the one left holding the bag for someone else’s RL emergency, and it sucks.

Whatever you do is wrong. Whatever you say is wrong. You aren’t enough and you can’t be enough, because what’s needed is the one whose bag this is and you’re just hanging onto it right now.

And it’s their RL, so you either turn into someone unreasonable, or you accept that RL comes first and this sucks.

And in the meantime, when someone puts a post up like this, it’s just pure demoralisation. There’s only one person who can answer these questions and - for whatever reason - they aren’t in the conversation right now.

Sure, the post may be accurate and it may be on point and it may be whatever, but it doesn’t help. And it won’t help. And it can’t help. All it can do is get people talking around in circles about their grievances, while also making the people who’ve been left with the bag feel like shit.

Congrats, I guess?

@hobos VK/Hella lies. A lot. She did the same shit on Arx that she was doing a decade ago.

I missed you when you got yourself booted from Arx, but, well. I hope you manage to get yourself out of the hole she’s encouraging you to dig for her.

@Jennkryst Don’t look. Just leave them to stew in their pit.

The reactions to my departure told me a great deal. I haven’t looked back since.

I’m very bad when it comes to paging people - even close RP friends - and asking for RP. I was raised to never be a bother, and paging people to say ‘Would you like RP’ feels like being a bother unless there’s a specific arrangement already in place or something that needs to be directly discussed - and, like STD, I really don’t want to be That Player Who Seems Kinda Obsessive.

I’m much more inclined to drop myself on the grid, hit an LRP flag, say on channel that I feel like RP if anyone’s interested, and so on. I try to be available, rather than seeking specifically.

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

@Evilgrayson
If Elon Musk had all his billions stolen by Jeff Bezos then raised a mercenary army of criminals to kill Bezos and steal everything he had, would you consider that a heroic story?

Well that’s the story of Robinhood with the names changed. He was the son of a nobleman who had all his wealth taken by the corrupt Sheriff while the king was away fighting a war. He only became an outlaw because he was suddenly poor. He didn’t give a wet squirt about the poor people until he was one of them.

In some versions of the story the Sheriff killed his father, in some versions he was a knight who returned from the crusades to find his home had been plundered, but the one thing that holds true is that the start of the story is rich-guy-on-rich-guy violence and the rest of the story is all about taking back what was stolen from him.

Disney may have romanticized it with adorable foxes but make no mistake, this was a story about a wealthy lord standing along side a band of thieves to take what they felt they were owed.

Even in the Disney version he didn’t start giving away money until the Sheriff started squeezing the peasants and offering high rewards for Robin’s head. His generosity was a move made out of tactical necessity, not out of kindness.

One version of Robin Hood is the son of a nobleman, sure - but there are many versions. Son of a nobleman plays better on TV and in movies, partly because the USA is obsessed with nobility and it panders more to modern sensibilities - but in a lot of other versions, including most (if not all) of the historical ones, he’s just some bloke, partly because his fabled weapons were not noble’s weapons.

Any idiot can pick up a quarterstaff, and any idiot did. Waving it about in a reasonably-competent fashion isn’t difficult. Being good with a quarterstaff, though, that takes practice, and it’s fundamentally a peasant’s weapon. Any idiot can pick up a longbow, but if they do they’re in for a world of pain. It’s a weapon that takes decades to master, and archers were most often started in childhood. Archeologists can tell you which skeletons belong to archers because it deforms the bones. And again, the longbow is fundamentally a peasant’s weapon.

And it’s Robin Hood. Robin, as in the first name. Hood, as in the garment. Robin Hood, as in a pun or play on words. There are many legends and there were probably just as many Robins because it was the John Doe name for outlaws in the day. But the legends that have come down to us are not about taking power. They’re about tweaking the noses of the powerful in what was a horrifically unjust society run on the backs of people who were tied from birth to death to their lord’s land. This was a hero of the people, as told by the people - why would they elevate one of their oppressors into legend?

You can’t rely on Disney for anything. If you’ve ever read Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Yes, people have been making money off the back of D&D. But. That was actually the point of the OGL to start with. It’s how D&D managed to crowd out so many other systems, it’s why the Player’s Handbook is the best-selling TTRPG book of the lot, it’s why so many people have only ever played D&D and expect to mod D&D to what they want to play rather than going to find and learn another system.

D&D has become synonymous with tabletop, and WotC/Hasbro has both eliminated a chunk of their competition over the last two decades and change, and sold a copy of the Player’s Handbook to each and every person who got into it. Over the last couple of days I’ve mentioned on multiple Discords that other RPGs exist to heartbroken nerds who’d thought the entire hobby was dead. Many of them are now looking at other games with interest they never had before D&D’s shot its entire ecosystem in the foot. WotC/Hasbro just killed their golden goose, and the world of tabletop now has a lot of people who’d never looked outside a single system turning to see what else is out there.

The ‘freeloaders’ were serving WotC/Hasbro’s initial purpose by making D&D both ubiquitous and endemic, and that was the whole point from the start. After all, how many tabletop gamers do you know who don’t have a copy of the Player’s Handbook knocking around?

@STD In my experience, some players will roll with anything. Some players will roll with anything if they trust the people involved. Some players will roll with most stuff, but have hard lines in the sand. Some players will roll with some stuff, as long as it doesn’t make them look bad, for a ‘bad’ of their own definition. Some players will roll with some stuff if they can make it someone else’s fault. Some refuse to roll with anything that doesn’t fit with their vision of their character. And some just won’t roll.

And there are some who’ll rewrite a scene, a story, or the whole game world, to make themselves right and you wrong, whoever you happen to be or whatever you’re trying to do.

A lot of it’s tied in with the ones who have to win at all costs.

@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.

20 years I’ve been at this hobby. As a result I’ve been many people and places and forgotten a lot of them, but here goes. WoD-wise I’ve tended towards oWoD and werewolves (but not always).

Current:
Arx: Raymesin
Liberation: Snake

Past staff bits:
Aether: Herne
Aether II
PokeMUSH Evolutions: Shadow
Denver: Dark Destiny: Judge Dredd
Windy City
Road to Amber: Halifax
Dark Spires: Lincoln

Player bits:
Spheres: Kreeth
Aether: WolfEyes (Apisachi), Roxana, Draco (Mongrel slave/gladiator), Mahmut (masochistic Healer), a mute Lirite Atlantean telepath, and a few more.
Aether II: Ankle-Biter, and the lionfish Atlantean who wore a sari
PokeMUSH Evolutions: Grayson (Go Team Rocket!)
SouCon: Jimikal
Truelands: Jaymesin
Haight-Ashbury: Grayson (Garou)
Tempest: Snake (Garou)
Pern game set in Ista or Igen I forget which: D’thor
Denver: Snake (Vampire), Grayson (Psychic), Saint (Consor and Mage), Ivan, Angharad, Eztli, Liz, Silver, Mack (all Garou)
John Wayne’s Idaho Garou Game: Grayson (Garou)
Metro: Astrid, Nasir (Garou)
Cajun: Rohan (Garou)
Ephemera: Rohan (Garou)
The WoD Game set on Hawai’i: Valkyrie (Glass Walker Garou)
Windy City: Iain, Amalesh (Vampire), James/Grayson (Mortal and Vampire), Jack (Psychic Wererat US Marshall… from England), Frank (Wereleopard), Hassan (Were-honeybadger, because why not)
The Anitaverse Game in Las Vegas: Grayson (Vampire)
The Anitaverse Game in New Orleans: James (Wereleopard)
Ataru’s Star Wars Jedi Game: Karinye
Haunted Memories: Hans (Uratha)
St Petersburg: Vasili (Uratha)
One of the Dark Waters: Snake (Uratha)
Road to Amber: Jaymesin, Cefyn, Jean, Roxana
Dark Spires: Grayson, Snake, Cefyn
From the Ashes (Detroit): Grayson, Fred
Arx: Dycard I
Gray Harbor: Raymond
Tenebrous Isles: Grayson, Fred
Sheltering Skies: Grayson
GarouMUSH: Wintersbite, Eztli, Charisma, Snake
Stargate: Green
NOLA: Fred
The Network: Fred
Trelawney Cove: Edward