Kestrel

Kestrel

AI is ruining this hobby. That’s my gripe. It’s ruining my respect for players, staff, my interest in games, my desire to RP. I see old friends whose original writing I’ve always enjoyed, flaunting AI use in a way that makes me feel like they must have never even appreciated their own talent as much as I did. I see promising games lose all promise the second I step on grid and see a sea of AI slop. And I see younger generation, newer players defending it in a way that makes me feel like the future of this hobby is just dead for me, an old fogey whose love of authentic human creativity, warts and all, makes me old-fashioned.

I hate it. I hate it on a spiritual and existential level.

Kestrel

Had a friend who consistently talked shit about other people in the hobby, and wrote them off over the most minor provocations which were generally misunderstandings.

I feel like over the years of our friendship, I have accumulated hours of lost energy trying to smooth things over between them and mostly benign enemies they’d misinterpreted, but I did it because I knew that at least some of the time their concerns were founded. and so it made sense to be extra guarded even over times where concerns weren’t founded. And I’d consistently defend them to other people as being a genuinely good person and a phenomenal writer/RPer, just someone who’s a bit touchy and needs some patience/understanding.

I guess idk why I’d be surprised after all these years to find myself on the other end of the stick, discarded and written off and shit-talked to our mutual friends, but ouch, does the feeling of betrayal really sting.

Kestrel

“Hi guys, I’m a totally new player, I’m just a clueless sweet lil innocent baby, you have never met me before, I don’t know anything. However by pure happenstance, I am unusually well versed in this game’s community drama history, and I carry a massive axe to grind about it. So much so that it has given me a sense of superiority over players I’ve obviously never met before, and enough specific personal grievances to rant obsessively to a non-reciprocal, disengaged audience about it. Any resemblance in visible neuroses to a formerly banned player is purely coincidental. But whoever that identical personality might be, I’m sure they haven’t lied in this exact same manner before. Please don’t shoot the messenger, I’m new here.”

Kestrel

My muddy chaos demon

splat

Kestrel

My peeve is me. I want to get back into MU*ing, and have not one, but two games lined up that I want to check out. (Maybe even three if for whatever reason the first two don’t work out!) Both are run by friends whom I respect and admire; whose creative projects I want to support; and whose ability to run good, healthy games that I’d enjoy I have complete faith in.

It’s just been so long since I’ve fully invested in a MU* that I feel like I’ve practically forgotten how to. I’ve been in creative lulls like this before, and I know that if I just get my foot in the door, roll up a character and get myself into a scene, it’ll all come back in an instant, like I never left the hobby at all. I’m just finding that initial step weirdly harder to surmount than it should be.

To the multiple friends who might be reading this, and to whom I’ve made empty promises about rolling up to hang out with on a MU* in recent months, I’m sorry. It’s really not you, it’s me. (A phrase I know always feels like bullshit on the receiving end, yet is legit, in this case, true.)

It's me hi

Marginally related peeve that I’m sure other alumni of this game can relate to: I hate the extent to which PHSD (Post-HavenRPG Stress Disorder) lives rent-free in my mind. Experiences on that game have made me intensely skittish at the very first sign of red flags on any other game I’ve checked out since, and permanently damaged my ability to put faith in game staff on the whole. It’s not the main reason I’ve been flakey about checking out the two aforementioned MU* run by friends of mine, but it has made me bail a lot quicker than others deem reasonable, on other projects, recently.

When there are so many good gamerunners out there whose proven track record makes me feel safe to put my complete trust in, it just no longer feels worth it sticking around after the first sign of trouble anywhere else, hoping/expecting things might get better or continuing to make excuses for staffers displaying strong red flags. I did that for years longer than I should’ve on HavenRPG, and I’m not prepared to do that for a day longer anywhere else.

It also makes me feel much stronger appreciation and gratitude to those gamerunners out there who’ve proven their commitment to their players’ safety time and time again. And to these boards as well, which promote healthy communities & staff practices, and which hold the hobby to a higher standard than I’m regrettably used to seeing.

There are a number of posters here on these boards who don’t know me at all, whom I’ve never spoken to one on one, whose positive contributions to this community have meant a lot more to me than they could possibly realise.

Kestrel

I totally feel for people saying they don’t page people because they feel anxious etc.

My quibble is that, while I have no official numbers, I estimate that if I were to take a poll, 90% of this hobby would say they are anxious/autistic/depressed etc.

I hold it against no one for not making the first move. But I do think that past a certain point of familiarity, if you’ve been playing with someone for a long time, and you care about them, you are morally obligated on some level to force yourself to be the one who reaches out and initiates stuff from time to time. It’s the same with relationships. I’d be sad and insecure if my partner was always dtf when prompted but never initiated. I’d wonder if they actually like me or just like that I’m convenient.

Labour isn’t easy for anyone but you should still make the effort for people you value. Otherwise they won’t know you value them. You wouldn’t like feeling that way. That’s why you like it when they do the work, right?

Kestrel

Finding out someone I felt uncomfortable with, but not uncomfortable enough to openly voice my objections to:

Actually has a known history of much more serious permutations of this behaviour on other games
Was already shown the door on my current game without me needing to say anything

Thank u yes I knew I wasn’t just crazy, and I am so happy to know I’m now playing on a game with safe, healthy, vigilant staff.

Kestrel

Every few days I wake up feeling creatively inspired and motivated to start something new. Roll up a new concept, join a new game/community, maybe even start my own game. The ideas and plans really turn into these full-fledged beings and worlds just begging to be written. Sometimes I even reach out to friends on Discord and let them know that I’m warming up to dive back into MU*dom or that I want to embark on an ambitious project.

Unfortunately, then I look at the date and realise I’m already late to meet RL deadlines. In the background, my mysteriously athletic Siberian Husky (seriously, how and when did my pandemic puppy get this buff?) makes her stance clear that if I’m awake enough to be sitting at my laptop, I am definitely awake enough to be giving her the first of 2-3 hours of exercise she’s owed, and no amount of focus will be permitted today until she’s been tired into a coma. And so the muse continuously dies unspent.

I miss escapism and creative writing.

Kestrel

The inevitable paranoia I constantly feel when friends talk shit about our other friends, and then I can’t help but wonder what they’re probably also saying about me.

Part RL peeve I suppose, but we are a gossipy hobby.

Kestrel

eggshells 🫤

Feeling like … I can only scene with you as long as I am very polite and mindful and watch my step and am on my best behaviour. Which is a very reasonable thing to expect of anyone. But also I don’t like feeling tense like that, so if RP always feels like a first date or a job interview, I think I would rather just avoid and hang out with friends who take themselves less seriously and let me fart around.

Kestrel

I don’t know Siren. But if I were in Siren’s shoes, reading this thread, I would likely conclude I was in the right not to engage with @gashlycrumb. Not based on any moral judgement, but just based on this seeming likely to result in more emotional energy than most people want to expend OOC.

I think it’s best to focus on outcomes over intentions. Specifically:

@Pavel said:
The best approach is to leave, not to cause more problems. Either the staffer is intentionally ignoring you, or their backlog is so bad that it’s negatively impacting you. Either way, you leave and hope for better elsewhere.

Ultimately does it really matter if the motive was malicious, abusive, absent-mindedness, laziness, apathy, exhaustion, avoidance, or anything else?

I recently left a game because I didn’t want to keep waiting around for staff to follow up on stuff. Genuinely no idea if they were busy, forgetful, distracted, or actually didn’t like me. I just didn’t want to be in that dynamic of feeling like a dog waiting at the dinner table for scraps, because it makes me feel like crap.

Forget about what staff was thinking, decide what you want/expect, and pick where to spend your energy accordingly.

Kestrel

@nobody said:
I’m not going to keep engaging because I haven’t MUSHed in a long time, and only hop on now and then to chat with a couple friends who don’t use Discord.

This is always an odd thing to say while choosing to engage, on a seemingly anonymous account that only posts about one particular game.

No dog in this race, don’t eat seafood, but I know fish when I smell it.

Kestrel

@MidnightCreature said:
Kraken mentioned on channel that he intended to use ChatGPT to rewrite or rework the website/wiki.

wtf

Kestrel

@MisterBoring said:

@voiceinthevoid Why can’t we have non-creeper vampire players who non consensually force people into diner RP? “My Tremere with the Eat Food merit dominates you into coming into Flo’s Diner and having a slice of pecan pie and casual conversation with me.”

You’re joking but I was actually looking into a kind of “shared interests” RP matchmaking system. You list what you’re interested in like social/bar RP, romance, conflict RP, factional/political RP, maybe even spicier stuff like themes of bigotry and SA etc.

Then if Jack & Jill both select social/politics but have no other interests in common, the matchmaker lists them as having 2 interests in common, which they can pull up a list of. However if Jack is into romance but Jill isn’t, and Jill is into SA but Jack isn’t, then the matchmaker won’t list these themes for either of them. E.g. Jill won’t even know Jack wants romance, and Jack won’t know Jill wants SA.

I like this because it destigmatises things a bit, like as long as someone isn’t forcing X onto you then there’s no reason to judge them for liking something you don’t. And additionally because I kind of think that the big scare topics, like SA, aren’t the only kinds of RP that shouldn’t be forced, or which can lead to awkward incompatibilities. Some people hate bar RP, some people hate big scenes, some people hate conflict, some people hate politics. And when you put SA on the same list as social or conflict RP, it’s less like a kink list and more just general preferneces.

I recall at one point I was playing a noir-themed vampire, and someone who thought I was cool and wanted to be my friend kept asking me to come to their girls nights and get milkshakes etc. They meant no harm but honestly it just made me feel like they were downselling my concept. So in that example I’d have selected no bar/social RP, yes to faction/politics/conflict RP.

Kestrel

@Pavel said:

@Gashlycrumb said:

pausing a set amount of time at each room

I remember more than a few games basically requiring you to do this part, and if there was anyone in those rooms you had to basically stop, engage in brief “passing through” roleplay and then continue. What a quality experience that was.

Still the case on a lot of games. The term for not doing this is “speedwalking” and is considered a faux pas.

Kestrel

@Shygaming said:

Nobody has asked me anything about the game. It feels like people are far more interested in the possibility that there is some scandal to uncover or in repeatedly telling me they disagree with a design decision than they are in Paroxysm itself. Nobody seems particularly curious about the systems, the setting, the direction, or what I am actually trying to build.

You didn’t build anything. A LLM did, on top of someone else’s codebase.

You’ve already been advised, with a lot more tact than I possess, that the attitude on BMD is broadly hostile to LLM usage in this hobby. By now if you had the capacity for original thought, rather than outsourcing it to a clanker, you likely should’ve also pieced together that the attitude towards exposing other players to themes of sexual assault, even more so without their consent and interest, is also a pretty universal anathema. So what you’re doing here is the equivalent of a Millennial fashion designer turning up at a campus Freshers’ Week and weeping, “why won’t anyone buy my skinny jeans?” This is absolutely not your target market, even if you did have anything creative to contribute to a creative hobby, run and populated by creative people whose developers and builders have a long history of putting in real work. I mean, I’m sorry, what do you want us to do here? Clap for Claude? The website is so generic I had to check the nearest bottle of tequila to be sure there wasn’t a lethal reason I feel like I’m seeing double, triple, quadruple the replicability of all that slop.

But even if there were posters or lurkers here who are pro-AI and anti-collaborative-storytelling, the latter of which is your own description, it still wouldn’t matter to seasoned community members half as much as the assurance of community safety in this hobby. This is a small niche, and people join games largely through word-of-mouth and reputation. Under ordinary circumstances, I don’t think this requires you to self-identify; I’ve joined games run by total strangers. But I’ve also bounced just as fast at the first glimpse of a red flag, because they hadn’t yet earned the grace of trust and benefit of the doubt. And here you’re waving a lot of red flags, from the actual theme of the game, to its codebase, to the sea of AI slop, to your own stated ethos of, “It’s actually good if players often don’t have fun, including having their character raped, but only and I mean only if they really, really don’t want that to happen.” Like … what?

It’s giving 5’11 guy thinks people on apps are shallow because he can’t get any matches, and no one even asks about his podcast, but his profile says “Free the Tate Brothers”.

Kestrel

Kestrel

Calling it wish fulfilment is wild. I had my character attacked at sea, drowned, swallowed by a whale, and kept trapped in an underwater dimension for a week at one point, none of which I wish to experience IRL, nor did I require control over the story, or need to know what was going to happen in order to enjoy it.

But I went along with it because a friend of mine was running the story, I happen to trust them, and was feeling fatigued enough with the main grid at the time to say “hey fyi if you wanna see this through don’t feel bad about keeping me off-grid for a bit, I could use a break anyway”.

On a separate occasion, a friend of mine actually killed my character. It turned out neither of us actually intended the outcome, because they’d emoted attacking, I’d mistakenly interpreted their intention as killing the character (which would’ve been a rational consequence for the action I’d taken), so I emoted dying, they OOCly went “wtf I didn’t mean it like that”, I responded “lol oops”, they said, “hang on I can contrive a way to resurrect you” and I said “nah dw I’m good, this is a good ending for the character”.

The wish being fulfilled here is for a good story that everyone involved enjoys. Everyone should wish for that, it’s the point of storytelling! It’s actually super not necessary, even in a story where the outcome isn’t predetermined, and conflict between characters is permitted without prior consent, to have any party involved be OOCly miserable.

Kestrel

@Shygaming said:

@Kestrel said:

@Shygaming said:

And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.

This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.

Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?

Seek help.

A story can only really work when characters are allowed to react to things in believable ways.

I don’t want the player’s experience to be bad. I want characters to sometimes have bad experiences because conflict and adversity are what make stories interesting.

Can you imagine how compelling The Handmaid’s Tale would have been if all the women were actually into what was happening to them? If everyone in Gilead had enthusiastically consented then you have not made the story safer. You have removed the entire point of the story.

It’s called roleplay. If you can’t convincingly portray negative emotions without feeling them in real life, you’re not roleplaying or storytelling, you’re engaging in some sort of glorified chat server where everyone just bullies each other.

Margaret Atwood didn’t need to be physically held down in order to convincingly write characters experiencing the same. Neither do her readers, in order to find the story empathic and emotionally fulfilling.

But I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale because I wanted to read it. Her books are content for people who want that content. That’s how all media/entertainment works. I watch a horror movie because I think I’ll enjoy watching a horror movie, I read a book because I think I’ll enjoy reading a book, I emote my character loitering outside a maximum security facility because the risk of being caught and interrogated sounds fun to me.

I play antagonists all the time. The scenario where everyone is having fun and enjoying the story, even as their characters are screaming, is absolutely the ideal. That’s my dopamine hit, knowing how much fun everyone is having and that I could facilitate that. What enjoyment do you derive out of knowing your fellow players aren’t having fun?

Kestrel

@Shygaming said:

And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.

This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.

Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?

Seek help.