So I really like it when someone can play a compelling sociopath who’s highly manipulative and intelligent. I think this is usually a more interesting kind of foil than just Punchy McPuncherperson.
But when they get caught and then try to lie about it OOC it’s a weird … sticky feeling.
I think I might’ve recently RPed with Jill on a game that has very limited/no OOC? Does she do that? Because I’ve never met her in the classic Guest sense, but I recently had a very weird scene, between two female characters, where that sort of exchange took place IC before I got weirded out and bailed.
I really gotta know if I’m the only person in the world who thinks the new season of HotD is just not good. Legit questioning whether it’s AI-written or something.
I don’t watch many shows these days, so I’m probably super late on the uptake, and I’m sure this has been a thing for a while …
But someone recently recommended I watch a show on Amazon Prime, so I did, and now I’m mad to realise suddenly there are ads and I have to pay extra on top of my membership to remove them??
Don’t I already pay for unencumbered viewing with the Prime membership itself? smdh. fkin bezos.
(Yes I know this is very much a first world problem peeve.)
EDIT: For anyone with the same peeve — swapping from AdBlock to uBlock Origin did the trick.
@Testament said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.
I AM BEGGING PLAYERS TO STOP USING CHATGPT.
I’LL STOP USING IT WHEN GAMES STOP ASKING FOR DESCS
Disclaimer: If it wasn’t obvious; this is a joke, I use it to get ideas for a desc and then actually write one. As much as I absolutely loath to write it.
Although this is a joke: I do think that the advent of AI has done one small favour to the MU* genre, which is expose a lot of the drudgery that people don’t want to do. If people are so unmotivated to write or read prosaic descs that one could literally replace them with AI-generated slop, and in the minds of some people that would be better, then those are aspects of the game that might be superfluous.
I think this is a bigger problem on MUDs than MUSHes, but there are games where instead of walking in and posing, "Kestrel arrives on the scene, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. She looks around curiously and then waves to Testament", I would have a white T-shirt and jeans as codified objects on my person, that can be examined. And because some people think more prose is always better, there can be a cultural expectation that your character isn’t properly presentable unless each of those objects has a paragraph describing them. Even though no one cares, and no one is going to read a paragraph describing a white T-shirt. It’s a white fkn T-shirt, what more is there to say?
That’s the stuff I see people delegating to AI a lot now, and that’s my peeve. We should just rethink outdated cultural norms, instead.
People who are consistently always nice to staff.
… And only to staff.
@GF said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
@Roz “Politics” seems to imply viewpoints that people can disagree about in good faith. Alex Jones is simply an ongoing denial of objective, observable reality who has never spoken in good faith in his life. That it’s “controversial” to say so blows my mind.
Agreed about Alex Jones, however,
@GF said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
I didn’t want to go there because I’ve been trying very hard lately to identify and curb my prejudices, but yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought they meant. Being a minority is political, so you mustn’t discuss your life because it will make “normal” people uncomfortable, but “normal” people can chat shit about you because that’s not political.
I belong to a minority group (that’s a disproportionate target of hate-crimes in the UK & US) where it’s increasingly being castigated as some variation of:
@Apos said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
far right wing extremist and conspiracy theorist
[not by Apos, just borrowing the phrase] to say that I have a right to exist without being killed or raped for my nationality & ethnicity.
I am not right-wing, never have been, and no one who knows me would’ve ever accused me of being right-wing until under a year ago. Not because my values have changed, but because society’s goalposts have.
In an age of rampant disinformation, what’s considered “disagreeable in good faith” is a highly ephemeral standard.
I’m a highly political person, but I would rather have a no politics rule, even knowing how unfairly it’s applied to minority groups including my own, than have to repeatedly bash my head against a wall in a hobby space because someone fell hook-line-and-sinker for some TikTok disinfo and is now convinced that anyone who disagrees with them about it is a right wing conspiracy theorist engaging in bad faith.
This applies especially to historical & geopolitical topics, where education is paramount, and not guaranteed.
Even though this never used to be a thing, in the modern world I’m realising I basically forget that a MU* I was playing still exists if it doesn’t have a discord.
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.
Seeing friends who were mistreated on other games go on to start their own creative projects, and join staff teams where their labour is appreciated & admired, gives me immense contact joy. 
Watching a known jerk continue to do jerk things in the MU* community and feeling unsure about whether it’d be the right call to just let people know that’s a known jerk. Idk, do people deserve second chances if they wanna be anonymous? … atm I’ve settled on the feeling that maybe it doesn’t really matter whether people know who they are or not, since the culprit seems eager to dig their own grave on a brand new identity anyway.
I dropped out of my psychology degree a decade ago for this exact reason.
I’m super guilty of “accidental revenge” with async scenes. I say I don’t mind if the other person needs extra time, but the longer they take, the longer I take. And then it eventually snowballs from them taking 24 hours between replies to me taking 48.
The above discussion is why I will not have logon messages if I make a game.
I think I’ve listened 20 times in the last 24 hours since it was released.
Also, hyped for The Tortured Poets Department to release on April 19th. Midnights turned me into a Born Again Swifty.
I hope no one hates me for this, but sometimes I avoid greeting anyone on channels, because I feel obligated to greet everyone otherwise.
And I’m not ASD, I swear, but this is one of those social norms I could live without. 
I would way prefer a frosty atmosphere where people skip greetings and just talk about whatever’s pertinent. (Maybe this is why most of my friends are ASD??) Idc if you’re weird and have no etiquette, just page me out of nowhere to game. That’s fine.
I saw a tweet today about the historic MUD genre and laughed.
I think people don’t know that we’re still around.
My opinion on this topic is fairly moderate, but I’m going to advocate for side B because I’m not seeing it represented here so far.
There are a few problems with games which discourage or heavily restrict PvP:
I think that the definition of PvP is broader than what most people mean when they use the term, and games which claim to eliminate/discourage PvP merely relegate it to shadier, passive-aggressive and OOC forms which are harder to deal with.
Not having PvP means that any sense of stakes/consequences for character fuckups are relegated to staff responsibility; since they’re often spread too thin to deal with every instance, it leads to a lot of obnoxious and immersion-breaking behaviour where people can talk shit, but not get hit.
It is my opinion that all stories require conflict to be engaging. In the absence of player conflict, staff or the game mechanics must be responsible for delivering conflict instead. Although on the whole staff’s intentions are going to be more trustworthy than those of other players with a stake in said conflict, it’s also more work for them to spoonfeed, which means there’ll usually be less of it, and PvE opponents can be a lot less challenging for players who enjoy the sort of long-term chess-match rivalries. It also incentivises unhealthy social dynamics in pursuit of staff attention.
Games which discourage conflict, and therefore minimise loss, are better at protecting player sensitivities concerning positive OOC self-image through their character’s positive image. This means characters are more likely to be self-inserts, which can feed into unhealthy attachment and blurred IC/OOC boundaries. In my opinion, this also results in less interesting storytelling, because I prefer to interact with flawed characters dreamed up by versatile players. YMMV on this one. It’s why I avoid L&L and Superhero games, and lean more towards gritty settings.
The ideal unicorn game for me would be one which allows for PvP, but where:
My favourite players are ones who love to play-wrassle.
It’s not fun to be stalked/harassed by a mob of racist/queerphobic weirdos online, even if you feel no shame in your identity. Also the kinds of people who would do this needn’t actually say anything about you that’s remotely true in order for it to be potentially damaging, or at the very least upsetting.
