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.

@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!!!

My preferred pacing is distracted. I like posing every 20-30 minutes, finishing a scene the same-day if possible, but okay if it carries over and we finish tomorrow.

My lived experience is async, where scenes take as long as they take.

I see a lot of comments about async scenes dragging on forever, and I wonder if that’s a content issue? I never RP social stuff (period at this point but specifically) async. When I set up a scene, it’s always specific.

We’re meeting to discuss the hobgoblin situation.
Let’s RP robbing the 7-11.
Please provide my PC necessary medical attention.
Etc.

If I am going to play something social, it absolutely has to be live/real-time, finished in a couple hours max, or I will have gotten bored and started the “:nods and takes a drink” poses.

@Jumpscare There are two big barriers for me. This is speaking to Silent Heaven specifically.

1 - Client dependency. I play a lot from my iPad with a keyboard attached. Between the sucky options for mobile clients and the inability to keep firmly connected via the web, I’m pretty well locked out.

2 - “Join our Discord!” This is a big turnoff for me. I don’t want to have to join a Discord for a game; it makes me uncomfortable. While I’m not sure that joining Discord is mandatory on this game, it IS one of three prominent buttons on the home page, so it comes across that way. Keep it on the MUSH, thanks.

The syntax and stuff isn’t a deal-breaker, as long as it’s documented. I am admittedly a very independent player and do not like asking for help with commands. I am much more likely to just logout than to page a staffer if I can’t figure out a command - which always left a bad taste in my mouth on the Big Evennia Game That Shut Down That Shall Not Be Named, so that’s probably created a general bias in my head against the platform.

I’m also not into coded crafting, playing with coded NPCs, etc. That feels like video game stuff, not RP stuff to me. So the fact that there’s commands for things like “Food,” “Gaming” and “Gardening” suggests this won’t be up my alley.

All that to say… it’s mostly a vibe thing. Evennia does a lot of things very well, from what I can gather, but it doesn’t support casual, web-based RP very effectively.

@Jumpscare Thanks, the offer is very much appreciated.

The theme/setting/whatever always seemed exactly up my alley, and it’s one of those things I’m sure I’d enjoy if I took the time to get into it. But Evennia and me just don’t jive.

@Cobalt said in MU Peeves Thread:

I love a great deal of people in this hobby but this hobby became a chore for me.

WORD.

For me, it was just realizing that I really don’t want to play what most people want to play. I have zero interest in RPing flirting or slice-of-life; since that’s pretty much the meat-and-potatoes of every game…

…meh.

I don’t feel like I’m missing anything right now. If another game like Horror or LA came along, where every scene felt like it was building toward a comprehensive story, I’d absolutely be down to clown.

Chekhov’s Gun: Don’t put things in the scene that aren’t there for players to react to.

I know it’s a writing hobby, and sometimes we’re trying to establish a mood so we’re including evocative details, but if you mention that this obsidian cave is carved with ancient runes, has a brazier spewing purple flames, smells faintly of candied apples, and I can hear an old woman singing from the mouth of an adjacent tunnel, all of those elements should be open for some sort of follow-up.

The one where I first Impressed a dragon on PernMUSH in 1997.

The ones where @tsar and I were in jail together.

The one where @tsar burned down a bar with our characters still inside it.

The one where people just kept eating all the cannabis gummies, like you’re supposed to eat an entire bag.

The one where the combat code was broken on GH and the enemies just wouldn’t die!!!

The one where @Pyrephox HAD THE DRUGS and tased my character.

The one on the same game where we just kept running in the stairwell FOR EV ER because of how the dice were rolling.

The one where the bomb went off at the fancy party on LA2043.

@Faraday said in AI In Poses:

can’t keep the details of Evelyn’s backstory straight, forgets that she has a fan in her hand from one pose to the next, doesn’t take into account how the scene she had last month would affect her dealings with Edward, etc. And heaven help you with theme consistency if the RP is happening in an original or lesser-known setting.

i have been an ai the entire time, guys

that’s why i do all these things

It reads to me like someone probably tipped Ada off to who Warma was, and they were just looking for an excuse to ban them and found one in this exchange.