i like this thread mostly because it’s a great reminder that sometimes a story doesn’t have any heroes in it

I haven’t really had a stake in all of this, and mostly I’ve been following along for the hot goss, but this is the thing that’s so wild to me. This specific behavior of “you aren’t allowed to call Ghost a bully, but Ghost can call you a bully” truly boggles the mind.

In any case, if people just stop posting about this on MSB, it’ll probably slowly die off. Ghost and Derp will just quietly seethe and read this forum until someone tries to spark some kind of discussion they think is really, actually quite clever, or until Ghost can’t stand screaming into the void by themselves and rehashes this with some disingenuous post about toxicity or positivity.

@RedRocket said in AI Megathread:

So the next time you are thinking about trying out a new game, ask ChatGPT about it. You might find something interesting.

no

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@Pax

Lame is not a slur when it is used to describe a thing, only when it is used to describe a person.

It’s a synonym for disappointing, weak or unsatisfying that has been used for most of human history dating back to the early Germanic tribes that first used it to describe an animal with a non-functional of overly weak leg. You would put down your horse because it had a lame leg and couldn’t plow a field anymore.

It’s only considered a slur if you say a person is lame because you are advocating for them to be killed.

I’m very clearly not advocating for the murder of the people who run boring games.

Absolutely wild and inappropriate when someone says “please don’t use a slur” to go on a weird tirade.

All the red flags (no surprise, given your “GAMES ARE DYING BC THEY DON’T PLAY THE WAY I WANT THEM TO” attitude tho).

@icanbeyourmuse said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

I’ve already said my thoughts on the others. Except ghost. He just gives me the vibe he likes creating drama while pretending he isn’t out to do just that.

That’s almost certainly what he’s doing. He shows up on r/mud to do the same thing once in a while. He’s a dillweed.

I think that there’s a place for games that have conflict between the PCs, but there’s a few things to be mindful of.

Rephrasing PvP as “CvC” and allowing for CvC - Character vs Character - conflict while not tolerating PvP (player vs player) content is a good first step (which is something that Silent Heaven does, to my understanding). But with that, you also need to make sure that the community is well maintained and managed - games with hard coded conflict/competition (especially in the RPI space) tend to draw a toxic crowd, and making sure to get ahead of that with a cultivated community goes a long way towards making sure CvC doesn’t become PvP.

Something else to be mindful of is a “talk shit, get hit” kind of system of CvC can exacerbate problems, as well. Typically, troublemakers do what they do for attention, whether it’s positive or negative attention, so when someone rolls up to a space that has codified conflict, it’s very easy to generate attention by just acting out. This tends to get solved in the “community cultivation” step of things, but it’s one of the things that can crop up with having open conflict between PCs.

The common thread I see with people who support and use LLMs casually makes a whole lot of sense - they consistently aren’t willing to put in the work.

@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:

@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Narrator this has nothing to do with this thread, please shut up

This is the MU Peeves thread. “You replaced smart people with purple prose and pronouns” is a pretty scathing peeve. But no wonder you want me to shut up. That peeve applies to you, personally.

lmao i can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want you listen to you.

@Yam said in AI PBs:

I’m confused. Is genAI a fun, harmless tool to be more efficient at creating art, or is it the catalyst for the race to the bottom, a “painful and violent” future for humanity? I feel like the original argument deviated a bit.

Because it has. Red rocket is just gish galloping and moving goalposts. Very little reason to engage them seriously, as they don’t seem interested in anything besides bad faith contrarianism (see: their other posts). Walls of weird, miserable nonsense.

If you don’t feel comfortable or safe living in the US and you’re lucky enough to have a parent (or possibly grandparent) that migrated here from another country - look up their country of origin, and see if they have Citizenship By Descent Laws. I was born in the US, but because my mom was born in Germany (and was a German citizen when I was born), I was able to get a German passport.

Obviously this won’t help EVERYONE out - but for the folks that are unaware that it is an option to them, it might be useful.

@Juniper said in Numetal/Retromux:

My unsolicited verdict-

Others should be a little less mean towards people with characters that are too special, unique, edgy, whatever. Because those encompass a lot of people. Most people want to be special in some way, sometimes tactfully and sometimes… not. I think we all get to have more fun when we’re not veering aggressively away from being “cringe”.

Honestly. The “mean girls” attitude that’s creeped into a few different nerd/geek and adjacent spaces is exhausting.

i like this thread mostly because it’s a great reminder that sometimes a story doesn’t have any heroes in it

@tsar said in Anime recs?:

@NotSanni said in Anime recs?:

I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.

I guess I’m a glutton for trauma. To the list!

jokes and bits aside - there’s definitely some sad stuff in Dandadan, but (so far at least, I haven’t read the manga so I can’t speak to the future) it feels overall wholesome to me, and the sad/trauma related and adjacent stuff feels poignant and impactful.

@Tez said in Anime recs?:

@NotSanni You out here reccing dandadan to heal someone’s soul when THAT ONE EP just hits out of nowhere?!

I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.

My rec still stands. Sometimes you gotta get a lil hurt to enjoy the good even more. They do a good job of following the hurt up with the healing.

Dandadan is my current fave!

@Yam said in AI PBs:

I’m confused. Is genAI a fun, harmless tool to be more efficient at creating art, or is it the catalyst for the race to the bottom, a “painful and violent” future for humanity? I feel like the original argument deviated a bit.

Because it has. Red rocket is just gish galloping and moving goalposts. Very little reason to engage them seriously, as they don’t seem interested in anything besides bad faith contrarianism (see: their other posts). Walls of weird, miserable nonsense.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@NotSanni
I’m not throwing a tantrum. I’m just telling you the truth as I see it. I watched these games that I loved go down the toilet because staff chose to coddle a few troublemakers and change the rules so that they would whine less.

The damage may be irreversible but if it’s not, it’s certainly going to take a drastic and revolutionary new approach. That’s all I’m saying. What people are doing now isn’t working. Try something else. Hell, try anything else. Just stop making the same mistakes over and over and over. That’s all I ask. Stop listening to people who are clearly leading you down the wrong path. Do something new. Do something different.

Look at what worked in the past and what didn’t. Be objective. Don’t listen to people who want to make everything about them. Ask yourself, what can we do differently to attract and retain new players?

Surprise me! Please!
I want the hobby I used to love to be worth playing again.

You continue to mount your weird defense in favor of using slurs and being politically incorrect.

Reevaluate your life.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@NotSanni
I’m not saying that games are dying because they aren’t being run the way I want them to be played. I’m saying that they are dying because they are being run the way a small hand full of whiny forever-victims who instigate the problems they then complain about want.

The more generic and baby proofed the games became the more the player base dwindled away. What is happening now isn’t working. What people did then was working. Back in the day there were hundreds of active players on at a time. Now you’re lucky to see five.

Maybe, just maybe, you might want to think about why it worked back then instead of just dismissing the only time the medium was actually successful at retaining a large player base because it hurt the feelings of a few bad actors who just want to stir up shit and make drama.

Every year your player bases shrinks because people don’t find the games engaging and every year you double down on doing the same things that don’t work.

How many times are you going to make the same mistakes? Creating a new game with a different setting that is basically the same thing as the last game that collapsed with a slightly different coat of paint on it is never going to work in the long run.

You need to do something that works and the only thing with a proven track record of working is letting people play what they want to play. It’s probably too late now anyway. Even if you did stop trying to shoehorn everyone into the same bland box I doubt you will be able to entice enough players to try the text only format.

The whiny bitches won. They got what they wanted. The games are exactly the way they wanted them - and that’s why no one is playing them any more.

What a deeply unpleasant way you choose to navigate through life. I can’t imagine going onto a forum, and then having the audacity to throw a tantrum because “The whiny bitches won”.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@Pax

Lame is not a slur when it is used to describe a thing, only when it is used to describe a person.

It’s a synonym for disappointing, weak or unsatisfying that has been used for most of human history dating back to the early Germanic tribes that first used it to describe an animal with a non-functional of overly weak leg. You would put down your horse because it had a lame leg and couldn’t plow a field anymore.

It’s only considered a slur if you say a person is lame because you are advocating for them to be killed.

I’m very clearly not advocating for the murder of the people who run boring games.

Absolutely wild and inappropriate when someone says “please don’t use a slur” to go on a weird tirade.

All the red flags (no surprise, given your “GAMES ARE DYING BC THEY DON’T PLAY THE WAY I WANT THEM TO” attitude tho).

@InkGolem said in AI PBs:

@NotSanni Ten bucks says this is the same guy who did this sad display a few weeks ago. This is totally alpha job-having behavior.

probably, yes. just a loser troll w/ nothing better to do on a friday night. probably got kicked off of one of the RPIs that showed up after Armageddon shut down tbh. best to just report and move on at this point.