@Gashlycrumb said in Liberation Drama!?:

And sure enough, a person can build a not-very-interactive model-world MU if they wants. It’s the thinking that such a thing is a good game that’s the error. Alas, Sundance appears to have fallen into the trap of only taking seriously those people who are least likely to criticise her. So she does that stuff listed in those numbered points because it protects/serves/maintains the model world following her plan/vision. She appears to take objections as just being haters who don’t think she’s allowed to have fun with her own game – her trusted group don’t criticise, so she can dismiss others who point out how that shit is not fun.

You’re describing a chicken/egg situation.  Does she listen to the people that don’t criticize her?  Or does she just make her own decisions? Then it just looks like she’s ignoring people that have a different opinion and listening to the people who agree. Its impossible to put yourself into someone else’s’ head. So you can only guess at what is actually happening. Either way, she should protect her world model. 100%.  That’s not a bug, its a feature.  Otherwise, you just end up with a chaotic mess of characters breaking shit in a game world that spins out of control quickly, because some/many/most players are greedy and ungrateful and nothing is ever enough for them.

I actually found Liberation to be very interactive (when it was active, years ago).  The problem is that some players think they are entitled to win everything all the time and do whatever they want without consequences.  And if they can’t, then it isn’t “fun”.  There’s a reason the WoD and RL are so closely matched in terms of what the world looks like.  There’s a reason the WoD isn’t a stark raving mad planet of supernatural creatures run amok terrorizing whoever they want with whatever they want whenever they want with God-kings and mortal slaves by the billions. There are absolutely people/individuals/things that can appear as if from nowhere and tell you to shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and follow directions.  And if you have an issue with that, then be prepared to lose your head. How else is it that the existence of all these 80 bajillion types of monsters have been kept unknown to most of the world for thousands of years? Ex. You think you’re the first vampire to ever think of ghouling the mayor? Get real.  If it hasn’t happened already, there’s a strong reason for that. But it just isn’t feasible to play out those reasons on an constant ongoing basis in a way meaningful enough to remind players to stay in line.  That’s what theme is for.  To sum it all up and let you know how things work. You have to buy into the theme of the game or you’re gonna just keep running head first into walls, then trying to blame your frustration on the game runner.

NPCs aren’t always “unkillable” just because YOU can’t kill them. There’s just things out there that are higher up the food chain than PCs.  Older, stronger, more powerful. And by orders of magnitude. Might makes right.  They make the rules.  They say what goes. So when they say stay out of the public eye or don’t use powers on public figures or don’t create a cult or don’t say the word ‘kazoo’ on Thursdays or whatever the hell rules they want: you follow the rules and keep things the way they want it or get stomped the fuck out.  That’s not Sundance’s world model. That’s WoD’s world model.  That’s just the setting of the game. And it is intended to be untouchable.  WoD built a world model then directed you into very specific areas of play in different books that you have access to as a PC. You don’t get all of it, at least according to the setting of WoD.  And by the nature of MU*s that throw everyone into one big mix of different books, what happens is up to the game runner.  If you want to play outside of that sandbox, you need to go to a game that intends for that.  If you want to take on characters that are thousands of years old with your 9 months of xp and expect to win, go to a game that will let you do something so silly.

TL:DR The game is what Sundance allows it to be - which is closer to what WoD is supposed to be than pretty much any WoD game since. If its not for you that doesn’t mean Sundance is doing it wrong. It just isn’t for you. Just find a different game.  Or better yet, make your own game. Best of luck.

@Pavel said in AI Megathread:

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

The LLM doesn’t know whether something is true, and it doesn’t care.

I know this may seem like a quibble, but I feel it’s an important distinction: It can’t do either of those things, because it’s not intelligent. It’s a very fancy word predictor, it can’t think, it can’t know, it can’t create.

(This very obvious rant is not directed to anyone in particular but I still feel like it needed to be said…)

Neither can a computer. It can’t think, it can’t know, it can’t create any more than an AI can. It can’t get nearly as close as AI can. But every person here still uses computers. No one’s given up the machine and accessories filled with toxic metals that have been clawed from the earth as quickly as possible without regard for the environment it might be disturbing for the purposes of profit. Metals that are so valuable they mean the potential end or continuation of wars that kill hundreds of thousands with body counts that go up every day that possession of these metals aren’t agreed upon or bargained away to stop the death and dying. Metals that will go into these computers we all use that will likely return to the earth to sit in a landfill forever with parts that will never biodegrade in exchange for being of limited, non-thinking, non-knowing, non-creative use for just a few short years.

Everyone here also uses the internet with all the filth and hate and disgusting things that can be found online. Darkwebnuffsaid. The same internet that contributed to the death of newspapers and the decline of journalism as well as people’s recognition of truth and facts. The same internet that allowed Amazon to put countless small businesses out of business across the world. But no one here has stopped using that. Everyone is still contributing online to the companies that track and store massive amounts of information on as many people as possible on servers around the globe that devour energy like a bottomless pit and exude heat like a hell-connected furnace, then weaponize that information for profit and political leverage so intense it can turn elections in the most powerful country in the world, very specifically by weaponizing fear and hate and turning those dials up to 11 on people’s internet feeds to sway votes with no regard for what those people might do with their fear and hate outside of the voting booth.

How is it that AI is the problem?

You can’t be serious.

Please.

One might think you are being just a tad too…

Critical.

But okay. Rant done. Get on your computer and tell me on the internet how AI is so problematic you won’t use it.

I’m totally listening.

@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:

Brass tacks, we needed like… maybe another 4-6 months of germination time before releasing.

That’s good to know, actually. I didn’t have a great experience, but in my head it is easier to get over it and keep an open mind knowing “the game” wasn’t designed that way, for me to encounter those things.

It is still Beta, though, so it isn’t the worst thing. And I know that these days a lot of games seem to live in Beta and then just use that as an excuse when things aren’t optimal, but it would help people, staff and players, to remember that DI is in a for reals actual Beta phase and that things are still being changed and adjusted.

I think some people I’ve talked to have made a final judgement on it based on where it is at now and the experience they’ve had (and I am probably in that group too if I don’t actively remind myself otherwise). But if there’s still plenty of work planned before settling on “this is the game we want people to play” and presenting it that way then that is promising.

@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:

I did want to note, btw: I’m not headstaff there, really.

…who is? That could be a substantial part of the problem.

It seems like this place kind of suffers from a lack of experience. I haven’t dealt with all the staff, but it seems like some are just having their growing pains with being a staffer and making decisions. Marid clearly knows what they are doing both mechanically and thematically. If that was the experience everyone was getting when dealing with staff, the place would be hopping. But since Marid seems to be deep into messing with the code, the players are left with… everyone else. But there’s a sharp, steep drop off from interacting with Marid to dealing with some other staffers.

It feels like they kinda just forgot what fun was about. It seems like they built this place and then certain staffers never wanted to give up control. You app a PC and immediately they go about trying to turn your PC into their NPC, talking to you about your character like they know it better than you, telling you who your character is and what it needs. Its more than just condescending and talking down to you (which is bad enough, I know) but in my case, I was specifically told what abilities and secondary abilities (???) I needed to take, some of which didn’t have anything to do with my concept, they just wanted to see it. And oh, yeah, this character is a vanilla mortal. Not some high powered supernatural combat twink that needs to be reigned in for fear of breaking the sphere or the game. Just a regular vanilla mortal.

And all that might be worth the grief if something happened with your character once your in play, but like most place, you’re just kind of abandoned to the grid… except with a character that doesn’t feel like yours that you’re no longer excited to play. And only after the fact do you find out the staffer admits that they aren’t the best with (game) mechanics. FFS… So why are you badgering me about what abilities I should be taking if you aren’t even sure what abilities apply to what actions?

That said, this is just my experience. So YMMV.

When you go into the game you can feel the lack of engagement. If you’re on for any substantial amount of time you can see all the names of characters that come through then just stop showing up.

I do want to say that I don’t think that any of the above is done with maliciousness. I don’t think they are bad people, just not very experienced with staffing and very out of touch with the player experience they are providing. I know they side loaded a staff coordinator who has been helpful, but it looks like most of the horses (maybe just some) have already gotten out of the barn.

P.S. To DI: The fact that you’ve got Tijuana relegated to one grid square with no builds is… not… great. I don’t want to assume the reason, but it would appear to me that either your cultural or political biases are showing - or you’re just not that familiar with San Diego. Maybe a mix of all of them. But just on the population numbers alone, you should be able to tell that you’re ignoring a huge resource and influence. Tijuana is the most populace city in the area. It is bigger than the largest three (or four) cities in San Diego county combined. Excluding LA, there’s not another city bigger than it for 1500 miles. Just saying. From a gameplay/thematic standpoint, that’s a huge missed opportunity. Culturally, a bit cringe.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it looks like anyone that wanted to play Mage without Polk’s presence or influence now has an opportunity to do so. App up.

Message: 1/5 Author: Sphinx Fri Nov 17 2023
Brian’s Player removed 19:26:18

Brian’s player (Polk) has been removed from the game. When I confronted him about information I received, he showed his true colors and resorted to name-calling, gaslighting, and berating staff. This is not tolerated and is strictly against game code of conduct.

ETA: This was a message from the game’s board from the head wiz. I didn’t format it properly, but wanted to be clear on that part.

These do not seem to be people that are familiar with MU*s or the community in general, which is probably why there was such a glaring reluctance to understand things that had become obvious years ago.

They converted an existing game system into a custom system, as is obvious from the missed entries that had not been entirely rewritten, but their custom system isn’t really complete. Especially when it comes to combat. They just have some loose guidelines. And in SW, that’s… well… wishful thinking.

They also still nitpick backgrounds which are almost guaranteed never to come up again and have you spend days and days rewriting things that won’t ever matter. I’ve heard they ask you to justify every single stat you take, even if there’s only a point in it. Who wants to be tortured like that just to get a character approved?

All in all its a pretty amateur operation, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Every place can improve. But all the lessons of MU*ing over all the decades seem to need to be learned all over again from scratch for this place.

@Pan said in Liberation MUSH:

@mietze said in Liberation MUSH:

Perhaps the person posting stuff that was obviously from Sundance’s screen that was shared probably in confidence (also an unwise move that real friends should have warned about) thought better of it (hopefully) or was asked by someone else to knock it off?

I hope that’s a lesson learned too, should be easy to figure out who broke confidence.

Oh Roz says its still up, so apparently no to realizing that was a not great thing to do.

She (Sundance) openly shared it all and discussed it all in the game for transparency.

“Transparency.” Sundance takes action and suddenly the logs are free flowing.

Of course they are. This was the one time she actually held him to account, so why not expose his bad behavior? I’d love to see a log of all the times where he did all the other abusive, manipulative, and unethical shit and see the logs of her explaining over and over why she’s doing nothing at all. That would be real transparency.

Because it wasn’t just this one incident that caused this. Even she said that. So exposing the logs of this one incident isn’t really the whole story. Its just a snippet of a narrative that looks good for her: “Polk flips. I call him on his stuff. He freaks. I stand tough. He flips the table. The game goes down, but only for a short while because I already had brilliant backup plans in place thanks to my great wisdom and foresight.”

But that’s not the whole story. So it isn’t “transparency” so much as a slightly dipped down opacity of one part of one day amidst years of shit that happens to cast her as the stalwart hero in this one curated moment.

@Warma-Sheen said in Liberation MUSH:

But realistically, I don’t think Sundance forgot about me. Or my contribution. Or why I left. I think she made a calculated choice to do what she thought would be in the best interest of the game and people’s enjoyment of it. So she just straight up lied. The end goal was to protect the experience of the people who were still there from being tainted by the question of whether they had ever been screwed over by Polk and just never known it, with perception being more important than the facts.

As other people have said, she is consistent. She’ll do what she thinks she needs to do to keep her game going. If some people/ideas/values/integrity need to be sacrificed to make that happen, then so be it. And I know that sounds harsh, but I really don’t mean it to be. Sometimes there are no good choices, but choices still have to be made. I can both recognize that and be annoyed by it.

I’ll casually disagree. I think she lied because if people knew the true, full extent of how much shit she overlooked from him, they’d lose all respect and faith in her. I think we’ve seen over the years that most people won’t leave a game just because bad shit has happened there. Especially when the person behind it has been fired/left.

I think she’s embarrassed, and rightly so, by how much she left him get away with and how many people were abused and exploited by him so that she could keep her game running. She was an enabler and a co-participant in his exploitation of the people he fucked over, but she can’t bring herself to admit the truth: “I knew the shit he was doing and I let it happen because it was only happening to a few people at a time and keeping the game up was more important and we both knew it. So he kept doing it and I kept letting him.”

Using your case specifically, once you got booted out of the mage sphere, no one wanted anything to do with you. Not because of you, but because at that point everyone knew Polk didn’t want you there and no one wanted to be associated with you or they’d also be targeted along with you. Because everyone knew he played favorites and anyone associated with you would also get the shit end of all sticks. It didn’t matter that Sundance put you back in. You were finished. Your experience there was a dead end. And whether you stayed or not, whether Sundance put you back in the sphere or not, he got exactly what he wanted and not even Sundance could do anything about it.

@Warma-Sheen said in Liberation MUSH:

Sundance(sun) pages: There’s two elements to this. The first element is 1) Polk should absolutely not have disapproved you on his own initiative. He knew that the moment he did it, and he already apologized to me in page about it, before I sat down. I had him immediately re-approve you, since I’m the only one who can carry out OOC discipline here.

Notice how he apparently immediately apologized to her for his unethical move? Pure, predatory manipulation. But did he apologize to you? I know he did not. I doubt he’s apologized since then, cause… its Polk.

But he still got what he wanted, didn’t he? And how many people/players has he exploited/manipulated/abused like this or in other ways over the years? How many people told Sundance, who did nothing? This particular incident happened almost two years ago. She can’t say she didn’t know. She knew exactly. And she knew each and every time someone said something since then that it was true. Because she had already seen who he was and what he would do. She just didn’t care as much as she did about keeping her game open.

So, no, I disagree. I don’t think she was making hard choices. I think she was making selfish ones to protect herself and pretend like she didn’t know what was really happening. Pretend she didn’t know he was being unethical, like she would have done something if she had known. She did know. She knew full well. She just won’t own it.

@Polk said in Comic Games Are Fun!:

So I wish there was a very, very gentle way to suggest that a person quit a game, that doesn’t come off cold and a little condescending. Because I’ve done that, and I hate how I sound when I say it.

Polk pages: Don’t contact me in nay way. GEt out of my life.

If only there were a better way. /sarcasm

You giant, performative, insincere phony.

@Mourne said in Liberation MUSH:

@Warma-Sheen shrugs The entire ‘problem’ was the completely arbitrary nature of how things happened.

Being respectful of all the players hasn’t really been a high priority for Liberation. There are a few players that matter and the rest are just background noise to fill the atmosphere. Like extras in a movie. So not a lot of care or concern goes into things like consistency and fairness.

But if you’re willing to kiss up and do a little ‘slap and tickle’ you can benefit greatly from the complete lack of fairness you’re talkin about. The more important you make yourself, the more of an edge you can get over the other players. Fairness, shmairness.

@Warma-Sheen said in Liberation MUSH:

it doesn’t take away from the potential the game has if/when it is being done correctly.

I think it does. If you make a character on a game you wanna know that you’re not gonna be kicked off in the middle of your stories for no good reason. You wanna know that if someone on staff is shady and unethical and will break the rules that the head staff will hold them accountable so that you haven’t wasted your time and energy building stories that just disappear on a whim.

@Polk proved that you can’t count on either of those things at Liberation. The rules don’t apply to him and Sundance is fine with it cause she needs his help so he can do whatever shady shit he wants to do. That’s what that place is. People should know. All their pretentious running off at the mouth and 5 pillars of ethics bullshit doesn’t mean anything. Cause even before he went and started booting people without reason Sundance was being told about how shady @Polk was being in his sphere and she just blew it off. And even after he tore past the line of sketchiness into outright despotism, when she did step into the situation she had the gall to blame you for speaking up.

Here’s from their website:
We will never ban you, or threaten to ban you for disagreeing with us about most things. Threatening players out of one’s own insecurity has an immensely corrosive effect on a game’s culture. You will not be banned, say, for accusing a Director of cheating. It will be investigated. You will not be banned for speaking up when you witness an injustice. We’re all too committed to this game having a professional reputation to cover for one person’s malfeasance.

And yet that’s exactly what happened. You raised concerns about not being dealt with fairly. You did it calmly and respectfully, without ranting or raving. And he booted you. Pretty much everything they say there on their website, they went the opposite of because it suited them, @Polk first and Sundance by giving him a pass on it.

So hell yeah it takes away form the potential of the game. You can’t trust these people to respect their own rules, how are you going to trust them to respect any of their players? @Polk is all about himself and people shouldn’t expect anything else.

@Warma-Sheen Well that’s still at least one story we haven’t heard yet. That one about that guy the @Polk kicked out of the sphere for no specific reason, with no warning - even though @Polk wasn’t authorized to do so by headstaff. Tell that story. About how that guy and all his contributions to the game were shitkicked out the door along with the stories of all the other people, 5 at my last count, that were making changes icly and oocly (all of which were being made to accommodate @Polk ) who all got their stories derailed by @Polk and his temper tantrum.

Or @Polk you can tell the story about abusing your access to the code to boot players without proper permission from the game runner. Please let us know what someone did that was so egregious that he - and any semblance of staff ethics from both @Polk and Sundance who did nothing about the staff abuse - had to be tossed out a window.

@lordbelh You don’t mind making a character and then having it booted out of a sphere because your staffer was having a bad day, do you? No, then proceed.