@Gashlycrumb said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

I wonder if anyone still cares about The Magicians.

I think about The Magicians as a setting for a TTRPG quite a bit - but I also think that the most people who say they want a setting like the Magicians really just mean they want a slice-of-life urban fantasy game. There’s nothing wrong with this, it just isn’t really what the Magicians is about at the end of the day, and I tend to think that most of the most important themes just don’t translate very well to what most people want out of an RP game.

I also think that there probably needs to be room for (if not a focus on) interpersonal conflicts within the characters of the player-base, which requires both a very mature/responsible p-base and a well curated and moderated community with very little tolerance for people that are taking advantage of the social-conflict heavy nature of the setting. Which is probably why…

@bear_necessities said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

I do but it has made for an awful MUSH every time

The MU attempts have largely been unsuccessful. People, it turns out, don’t tend to want to play in an ironic, “magic actually can’t fix your problems you have to deal with your shit” game that’s high in drama and social conflict. And many of of the people that do end up kind of sucking (or being willing to put up with people who suck, because they have limited options for this particular scope of RP).

@kalakh said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@NotSanni said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@Kestrel said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

One side is accidentally doing Nazi salutes twice

And the other side suddenly cares now that it’s not their side’s cause du jour doing it

I’m stressed. I’m concerned.

lol “accidentally”

Look, sometimes you just caught up in the moment and invade Poland.

sometimes one does a lil nazi salute with one’s whole chest, by accident. many such cases. a lil uh oh whoopsy.

@Kestrel said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

One side is accidentally doing Nazi salutes twice

And the other side suddenly cares now that it’s not their side’s cause du jour doing it

I’m stressed. I’m concerned.

lol “accidentally”

@Meg Very unfortunate I started the process for myself back in Spring, and both my brother and my aunt dragged their feet. Only the recent election results have been sufficient to light a fire under my brother, at least, with regards to getting this done.

if nothing else, maybe it would help to try to sell it to your mom as being able to more freely travel Europe?? that’s the only reason my aunt got kind of interested, when I brought it up to her most recently.

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.

I’m not sure about RL information or not but my understanding is that there’s (at least) one staffer that’s been leaking things to player cliques, and the ARM staff have been trying to figure out who. No one came forward, so they made the decision to shutter the game. The only CONFIRMED leaks I’ve seen myself have been related to their back end storytelling documents, so players getting access to information they wouldn’t otherwise have access to, that was pertinent to the plot. I’ve heard that sensitive player information was shared, but not given any specifics. Lots of hearsay, and lots of REAL angry ARM players that might be muddying the waters with conspiratorial thinking.

I don’t play, myself. But as someone that plays in the MUD space side of RP games traditionally, I like to be apprised of nonsense from certain spaces - one of the reasons I’m here, in case some new predatory nonsense pops back up!

My less good reason (both for watching ARM and being in this space): my absolute guilty pleasure is other people’s drama that doesn’t impact me, it’s like my version of a reality TV/trash TV fix.

So when ARM drama began to really explode onto r/mud last year, I started checking out the arm official boards (the “GDB”) and the “shadow boards” that are run by a group of disgruntled people that range the gamut from “serious problems to levy” and “angry, sweaty grognard”.

Watching both of those spaces, I think the truth is that the ARM community is just poisoned beyond a point where it can be healed, from 20(?) or more years of just… Unhealthy game design and poor community management.

Like, the staff there? Probably pretty crummy overall. But the actual playerbase is also just absolutely a burning garbage pile - very similar to the vibes of Haven RPG, on a much smaller scale.

I am not, at all, surprised that the game runners decided they didn’t wanna deal with it anymore.

WOW super belated at this point maybe, but I remember Cel from Ravencroft I played Charly.

@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:

@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:

dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there

I have seriously been wondering if this was a 4chan guy but he seemed different than the standard 4chan guy? IDK, maybe they contain multitudes.

nah i found the “zine” they’re publishing, including the zine’s social media presence on the fediverse (and one of the two main contributors to the zine’s accounts/handles).

there’s a reason they weren’t loud and proud with the fact that they publish IDDQD Magazine and instead did a soft sell (probably trying to find likeminded people here to DM them to grift for money).

@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Narrator
lol my dude did you just compare yourself to Jesus on a message board? Is that where we are now?

dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there

@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.

@Selira said in TV series, news, recommendations:

A Dropout subscription is about the best per-dollar value I have ever spent. I’ve had one for about a year and a half and they just keep getting wildly better.

I would literally cancel ANY other subscription I have before Dropout.

@Tributary said in City of Glass - Discussion:

@Apos said in City of Glass - Discussion:

I’m feeling a little slighted, tbh.
I’m still pretty put off by this whole thing tonight.

I… had to check again to see what I’d posted because for a moment I thought you were actually quoting him.

You may recall that I put in my original post that an old mu friend of mine (from Ithir) messaged me on Discord saying that her boyfriend had been banned from CoG and that she was puzzled because none of the behavior he attributed to me was part of her experience with me (like 5 years ago!).

Here’s what he told me:

Shamash — Today at 18:10
fucking gross
I actually feel, like, vaguely violated.
This is new.

Shamash — Today at 18:13
I told a player on that game I didn’t want our PCs to continue seeing one another because said PC was also seeing other men. I was not rude. I didn’t slut-shame. I literally just said “I wish you the best, but it’s not my vibe, I’m genuinely sorry if it upsets you.”
I got banned for “bad vibes”.
I was punished, by what I must now assume is a staff alt, for telling them no to a relationship

Shamash — Today at 18:15
I could get a ban for bad behavior. But damn, this is just gross

Shamash — Today at 20:00
It’s just so angering. The idea I was punished for not giving someone what they want.
Like they were entitled to me pursuing them IC.
ugh. Hour later and it’s still rubbing me wrong. Like grease on my skin.

(Timestamps hers. Also, girl, find another man. This one is a lying manipulative sack of shit.)

someone using the name Shamash (shamash4264) got banned from the r/mud discord for being a dick within like a week or less of joining (he was also a raging, callous fascist) - dunno if it’s the same one, but the name struck me as memorable!

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.

@MisterBoring said in Song of Avaria:

I don’t play Arx, but I’ve read enough of the Arx wiki to ask…

How is this scratching the Arx itch? The wiki reads like the entire game is about a bunch of people stuck on a ship hoping to find a new land that may never come.

My understanding is that the ship setting is just for alpha testing, and that the intention is to move things to a city-proper when things are better sorted.

RE: the overarching talk of RPI vs MUSH - I have limited experience with MUSHes, but from what I’ve seen of Avaria (from playing around in the landing zone for new PCs) is that it’s probably closer to an RPI than a MUSH in terms of the game itself, with more concrete and codified systems. But the focus does seem to be more on storytelling, compared to most of my RPI experiences in the past (which largely have been PvP games masquerading as storytelling games).

@Sage said in AI Megathread:

@NotSanni Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I was in favor of it. I was simply noting it as what I believe is a valid concern.

I brought up the counterpoint of how technological growth affects the job market simply because I try my best to view all sides of an issue.

Seen - apologies for misinterpreting! But I do agree that we just need actual, new legislation/regulation around generative AI/LLM usage. Corporations have been cutting labor hours across the board for a few industries going on a decade now, even [b]before[/b] the latest developments in LLM/generative AI stuff - there probably needs to be strict oversight in how it can be used with regards to labor.

@Sage said in AI Megathread:

Now ignoring for the moment what ‘selected or arranged’ and ‘sufficiently creative way’ means, it sounds like a very valid concern for people like screen writers isn’t the complete replacement of their job by AI but the use of AI to reduce the number of writers required to make a show. I think most of us agree that the technology is still miles away from being able to spit out a script by itself, but what about AI carrying enough of the initial load that the production companies are able to reduce their writers room from 15 people to 10?

The reduction of writing staff in the writing room is still a bad thing. AI isn’t easing any burdens there - it’s just taking away jobs in an industry that’s already gutting and trimming down writing rooms to the point that it’s causing real problems for the industry with regards to getting new talent in and trained up. Production companies shouldn’t be seeking to reduce their writing rooms.

@Tez I don’t participate in this community much beyond lurking, but I’d encourage staff to permanently ban vs just a temporary ban. It may very well NOT be the person I’m thinking it is, but she reads a lot like a very problematic troll that’s haunted Haven for like a decade now, or something like that? The way that thread unfolded reads exactly like the pattern of behavior I’ve seen there in the past from RG/Rage Girl as she’s colloquially been dubbed there (seems very reasonable if confused -> minor squabbles over misunderstandings -> sudden anger directed at the first person to feed the troll -> lapsing into accusing people of being staff/cheaters, and/or using slurs and threatening to kill people).

@Rinel said in Silent Heaven: Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss:

@oferated said in Silent Heaven: Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss:

@Pavel said in Silent Heaven: Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss:

I really want to know who she thinks I am… it’s not like the one time I got fired from staff (and not banned, weirdly) is a secret.

She said in her first reply to you, I think. Daed from Haven. IDK anything about him being banned from Haven and I’m not inclined to go find out, but he used to be the one banning her on the regular. Like, when I played from… 2013-2017? She was a weekly occurrence, more or less. Sometimes way more.

They are just a deeply unwell person who goes nuclear at even the mildest hint of perceived negativity.

Oh, so she’s a known quantity? I kind of liked it being a whirlwind out of nowhere.

She sounds like she needs a lot of help.

Yeah. She reads like “RG”, or “rage girl”, who’s haunting Haven for quite some time - since the beginning, as far as I can recall. I’m guessing she’s gotten bored with Haven and is trying to find where older Haven players have migrated to (I haven’t checked in a while, but the last time I was paying attention to Haven Tyr was making some supes unpopular decisions). But the vibe I’ve always gotten has been “either a troll, or very unwell”.

@shit-piss-love said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

This sounds like HellMOO.

Given how much of the content that could be found in HellMOO is just straight up barred from Silent Heaven, this is a pretty egregious and unnecessary exaggeration that doesn’t serve to do anything but stir up bad feelings and hate. Organ harvesting is a thing that can happen I guess, but that’s about it.

That being said, I think that it’d probably be fine if the “30 minute disconnect protection” that exists was just extended to be “if your client disconnects without quitting for any reason, you auto-pause”. If people start to “abuse it” (disconnect instead of using quit to avoid the Bad Stuff in town), I think that’s probably fine. I think there’s some (valid) concerns that people might use that to avoid consequences (going to mouth off at the Big Spooky Bad Guy and then DCing when they get got), but I also think that can come down to a mixture of bringing that to Staff attention when it happens, and then just choosing to avoid RPing with people who do that kind of thing.