It really, really sucks feeling like it might be time to let go of something that’s been with you for a very long time.

Congrats, everyone! We have people joining just to toss around ambiguous JAQs and comments about echo chambers without making any concrete or direct refutes to the actual accusations, which means we’ve officially arrived as a MU* forum.

Meta peeve because it’s more about the forum, but.

Being snarky on ad posts. Just, man. It’s usually the first time people are putting something out there. It really doesn’t do the community any favors – especially with the constant worries about the hobby dying – to put out an immediate response of snark.

@Tez is basically my platonic life partner and is SO cognizant and concerned about being as fair an authority as she can, and protecting people who need protecting

@sao can invent a character out of THIN AIR in the space of a SNEEZE and they will be so vibrant and alive and real in just an instant

have you ever seen @Meg theorize about how a plot is going to go? she has a MAGIC ABILITY to either come up with the accurate answer, or something even more fantastic.

@deadscribe’s RP is ridiculously evocative and he is a chill motherfucker

@Third-Eye is one of the people that i use as a, like. chill barometer. she is more capable than most at healthily disengaging from bad vibes and bad folks. if you rile her up, i will raise my eyebrows

Eit is not here but you will never, EVER mistake her writing style for anyone else in the world.

@farfalla has such a strong sense of internal fairness and justice and does such good work trying to actively keep herself accountable, which is the hardest thing to do

@glitch quietly works in the background to do SO MUCH to support the community. he doesn’t like being perceived. but i see u

@Narson is a ridiculous motherfucker but good lord is he also a delight

@Pyrephox is such a vivid and specific RPer, and so consistently safe in her IC and OOC separation. that is the case for EVERY incarnation of hers, but i will forever treasure the specific delight of one particular RP friendship that was so rich

i hope @Rathenhope never stops making the jokes he makes because holy shit. playing himbos together is A+++

@hellfrog deserves more credit than she ever gets for all that she did to build Arx, its theme, and most especially its culture into what it is today

@Apos deserves so much credit for the amount of work and the depth of world-building he has done for Arx over the years

@ham is another who is consistently interesting and specific in his RP, but who i will always treasure a very particular PC connection we got to explore. it is rare to find people that you can safely RP through something ICly messy, unhealthy, and even a bit toxic, but i always felt safe playing that with you

@tsar is so conscientious about her positions, and such a warm and generous RP partner. whenever i’ve needed a sounding board, she’s always been a voice of reason

@Tat did something honestly remarkable in the design, build, and reinvention of the magic system of Spirit Lake

i cannot even remember the last time @Yam and i got to rp but she is honestly motherfucking hilarious and i love her even though she drinks crunchy milk

Tehom is also not here but, i mean. guys. the arx codebase. and the fact that he put in the time and work to make it accessible to others.

i miss playing faith family of that specific era with @Snackness but i’m so delighted whenever we get to play again

@Tori has built numerous guides and helpers for Arx stuff, specifically all her crafting work, that has helped a TON of people

@IoleRae is so open about mistakes and learning from them in a way that takes so much courage. we have managed to have big scuffles on MSB and come out on the other side

i want @Herja to drop meteors on me every day of the week. i want the richness of her trauma. but also, when one storyline hit too deep and too close to something difficult, she was so kind and generous about working around it

i don’t know if most arx folks have noticed the number of code contributions @dvoraen has made to arx, but i have

@crawfish draws the best fkn cats you guys. i am so excited for my tarot deck. and i’m so excited that she found the perfect audience for her art and seems to be enjoying it so much

@mietze is such a kind and warm RP partner, and i’m really excited to be exploring such an interesting character dynamic with her again!!

@helvetica is just. man. life goals amount of attitude. one of the most remarkable things i’ve seen her do is just – recognize when a situation was no good for her and walked away.

@Mosephine has DEADLY ACCURACY in her detective skills and everyone should fear her

@Dreampipe introduced me to NOBLMAN, SWERV and he will die a hero for that

i once saw @kalakh face an IC situation that could very well have been the end of her character, and she chose to move forward ICly because it was what was true to her character. it was so great, and not everyone has the guts to fully own that

@moth flits in and out of my RP circles just like their username suggests and it is always SO EXCITING when it happens. we got to play one of my favorite character friendships

@MarsGrad and i have gotten to write some pretty delightful character pairings and is always open to talking stuff out

@Faraday just deserves a ridiculous amount of credit for Ares. and not just the huge amount of work, but i have such respect for her having a clear vision and intention from the start and staying true to it.

i legitimately have no idea who @pisscat is, i just know that every couple months i’d have a flood of upvotes as they clearly caught up on MSB posts, and it always warms my heart

@Tchotchke said in Liberation MUSH:

I’m not going to kid myself into expecting change, but I can hope.

Don’t. Like – this thread has pages of shittery, the MSB had way more pages of shittery. After pages and pages of shittery, you’re just fooling yourself. Just stop playing. These things don’t change.

#StopPlayingOnGamesWithShittyStaff2023

@anonymouse jesus that’s all fucking GROSS

I can absolutely see how his attempted OOC overtures with me a few years back would have lead down that road; it must have been me shutting him down so firmly that had him scampering off with his tail between his legs.

Basically my character mentioned something in a scene referencing a prior interaction from a good time prior. The player tried to intimate that I was remembering this detail because I must have been rereading prior logs. I’m not an idiot, so grasped the pretty obvious connotation that he was saying I was rereading his TS logs to get off on. I told him that OOCly sexual comments were absolutely not okay to make to me. He backed off and emphasized his good boundaries!! A few days later, he asked if he could send me a light-hearted “build a sub” meme. I said sure because I didn’t realize what type of sub he meant and I literally didn’t stop to realize this was gonna be about subs in the sexual sense of things. He sent me this meme (sexual joke, but no NSFW imagery or anything, for clarity for anyone who clicks) which, tbh, if one of my actual good friends sent it to me about my character or a TS scene or something, would have been funny. From a guy I barely knew that I had just told days before not to make OOCly sexual comments? Nope. I shut it down, he tried to apologize a bit later, and I said I didn’t want any contact with him.

Anyways here’s the full convo: https://pastebin.com/CwSr99Pj (This was with Michael; I censored the name at the time because I just wanted to show it to a friend to roll my eyes at the behavior, and at the time I didn’t feel like I needed anyone rallying to my defense in regards to an individual.)

I’m gonna say this as a general offer to everyone: if someone is getting iffy like this, starting to fish for OOC intimacy like this, and you want someone to be a sounding board or help you shut shit down? If you want someone to look at something and be like “no, you are RIGHT to find that weird, it is VALID to be uncomfortable, this person is trying to pull shit,” I will be that person. If they’re trying to hold some kinky TS over you or make you feel weird about boundaries because you RPed some weird sex shit? I absolutely don’t care. I TS! I RP weird sex shit! It’s okay to do this. If you feel weird or shamed because you feel like you were dumb for already getting involved or lowering your boundaries some? You’re not dumb!! You’re not dumb for connecting a little with another human being just because they abused the fact.

I am a pro at stating boundaries clearly and effectively, and if anyone EVER needs help doing this, I will help. Creepers deserve to be kicked to the curb. Fuck that shit, life is too short.

Over at City of Glass, we’ve had the great pleasure of getting to use a custom Ares plugin for Chronicles of Darkness made by the community’s one and only Glitch. He’s had to since leave the hobby, but the plugin has remained stable enough for three non-coders to continue using it and staffing with it without too much difficulty, minus a few hiccups. He also let us know that we should do whatever we thought was best with the code, and we figure the best thing is to open it to the wild.

We’ve done our best to pull together the necessary files on this repo: https://github.com/tezafofeza/ares-cod-plugin and https://github.com/tezafofeza/ares-ledger-plugin.

The code includes support for Mortal/Mortal+, Changeling, Mage, and Demon, along with the M++ templates Atariya, Dreamer, Infected, Lost Boy, and Psychic Vampire. (We only use Atariya and Psychic Vampire on CoG, so those are the only two I can fully attest to.)

This also includes the Ledger system, which is technically a separate plugin entirely, but one we’ve used extensively on City of Glass to manage locked notes. Ledger is fully customizable and flexible, so people can freely use the config files for it as just a reference for other stuff they want to do with it.

Here’s the catch: none of us are coders. We are not offering this with any form of support. This should be considered abandonware: nothing in it is going to change or be updated, and the documentation included is all you get. I might answer occasional questions about usage, because I love answering questions, but I make no guarantees.

This is also not packaged like a traditional Ares plugin. You will have to be familiar enough with Ares to know where to put these various folders and files.

ETA: Thanks to @Faraday, these have both been packaged as proper Ares plugins! It’s possible they may still require fiddling, though.

As this is being released into the wild, we fully expect there to be people forking off their own copies, and maybe someone will continue to develop it and package it into a proper Ares plugin. We just ask that anyone who does so to please credit Glitch for the foundation. He did some really amazing work.

@Testament said in Bannings:

Banning someone on a game is kind of a, well, it’s not all that effective. Or I guess, it’s effective, to a point. Unless you want to get into IP banning, and even that can be mitigated if you’re really determined and/or feel like paying the money for a NordVPN.

Thinking about it, and how I view it, if someone was banned for really shitty behavior and then they eventually sneak back on unnoticed by any and all who they might’ve wronged. It tells me one of two things.

Either A, they’re sociopath who lacks social skills to realize they aren’t wanted and simply doesn’t care. In this case, their behavior will eventually show up and they’ll be caught, banned, rinse/repeat. See; Cullen, DWOPP, etc etc.

Or B, they realize the error of what they were doing wrong, did some kind of self-evaluation and changed their behavior. In light of B, that doesn’t make them coming back to the game right, but unless you get really draconian about tracking people, it’s just something that most games have to deal with.

Bans – especially public bans – do have an additional value to a game or community beyond the immediate “get rid of the person doing the bad thing.”

They also make a public show of what a community will or won’t tolerate. They provide evidence to regular players of what behaviors won’t fly, which helps make it easier and safer for players to report bad behavior – which, as we all know, is always an ongoing struggle.

Bans aren’t technologically foolproof, and we all know that. But their value to a community, I’d say, goes far beyond that.

Man, so. My serious of thoughts rattling around in no particular order.

MSB staff can share whatever they want of their justification for my continued ban. I don’t care.

–

BMD is not a protest of MSB. Nor was it made in response to the Hogpit on MSB being renamed and having a new Code of Conduct issued for the site. BMD was made before that happened. It was made because a bunch of folks were banned and a bunch of other folks lost confidence in MSB moderation, so they made a new community. At most you could call it a vote of no confidence in MSB. But the repeated idea that a bunch of people were just mad at MSB saying everyone has to be nicer, that all these people just wanted the ability to be cruel and so they left, is bullshit. The timeline doesn’t hold up. People left because…

–

The social contract between administration and a large portion of the active userbase was broken. Pretty much every other time I can recall an MSB staffer asking folks to chill out, move threads, take a breath, etc., it’s been respected. Or if it hasn’t been, people haven’t been affronted at seeing others get warnings. So why was this instance different? The popular answer I see trotted out on MSB is that it was all about Derp’s appointment, that people couldn’t stop arguing about Derp. Except, if you go back and reread the actual thread, that’s not what happened. Sure, some people were making quiet exits, because they didn’t trust Derp in an administrative capacity. But the reason people started getting vocally angry was one single ban that appeared to be entirely without merit. Two users had what could at most be called a tiff over DMs, they yelled some Last Words at each other over their shoulders, and then one side – the one who opened and continually extended the conversation – decided to report this under the guise that it was some sort of harassment. So you had someone who, at most, got a bit snarky in their exit, now being presented as someone guilty of actual harassment, and the community takes harassment pretty seriously. A number of people, myself included, had access to the log of the conversation, and found it a wildly out of touch response on the part of staff. And, when frustrations were voiced, staff doubled down.

There’s a social contract in every community, and when one side is seen to break it, it has a destructive effect on the community at large. That is why you saw such a strong reaction from a lot of posters who have never caused issues before and who only engage in debate rarely on the board. (I’m not talking about me here, as I know I’m argumentative, but people like tsar, Third Eye, etc.) If you lose the confidence of your userbase as a staffer, if you are no longer trusted to treat people fairly, then it is no surprise when your requests for silence aren’t respected. When people are angry about staff misconduct, then requests to not speak about the staff misconduct will be taken as silencing tactics.

That is what happened.

Had that first ban not occurred, I do think you would have seen some people leaving MSB due to not trusting Derp in an administrative position, but I don’t think it would have shaken out the same way.

–

People who don’t even know Mietze, who aren’t even friends with her, should stop using her name as some sort of tool or proof or justification. Her name isn’t a weapon for you to wield, and it makes it very clear you have no idea what’s going on there.

–

It is very, very clear that the decisions of who to unban were not based in any reasonable justification. The reasoning for not sharing anything about why some people were unbanned while others weren’t – and no, a general “we made reasons based on things” is not a reason – is thin enough to be transparent. If Derp had shit on me, he’d share it. There’s been talk at other times about keeping out the “line-pushers” now that MSB has a new Code of Conduct, except you can’t possibly make that argument for the vast majority of those who remain banned.

–

The fact that MSB staff openly asked people what they could do better and then disparaged the responses before eventually splitting the thread (fine, makes sense) and locking it (not fine) just makes a public declaration that offering criticism of MSB staff is unwelcome and will be treated with hostility. If you actually want to engender trust, you are doing the opposite.

–

You have not managed to cultivate some safe, polite atmosphere. There’s open snark over there, most particularly from the mods. Some of the people talking about how safe they feel now do so because the people who will call out others when they do shitty, creepy things are now gone. VulgarKitten changed her username to Hella and slipped right back on the board. She had previously disappeared after it came to light how she had been lying about her identity on Arx for months, manipulating others, and engaging in romantic and sexual RP with players who had NCOs against her. The safety she praises you all for now is the safety of a predator who knows that a lot of the people who would publicly point out their egregious behavior are now gone, so she can pretend everything’s fine and slip back in (to eventually do it again).

–

Refusing to talk about any of the offending DMs of the banned parties, but then sharing a random anonymous DM talking about not liking three people speaking up, and then acting like it’s not about the three people who had been talking critically about MSB that night is – wow. Hugely manipulative.

Moreover, as indicated in the above point, the people who might feel safer are those who would prefer an environment where they are not held accountable for their actions. This isn’t actually a healthy environment. It is a pretense at civility. It’s surface deep.

–

Also, if you’re going to hold the position that you “can’t speak to” the idea that Derp is bad at “women’s issues” because you yourself are a man, maybe you should listen to the numerous women who have said it? Maybe?

–

Finally, good lord, if you are going to repeatedly harp on the necessity of irrefutable evidence and the ability of people to doctor logs, you cannot also then be confused as to why ANYONE would EVER hesitate to report ANYTHING to staff, Jesus Christ, please use a modicum of logic.

–

Okay. That’s it. I am done. I have just had all these thoughts writhing around in my brain since last night.

Even if I want to yell at someone about how they’re being a total shitty asshole, I want to yell at them with the right pronouns.

@Tez BRING BACK DOWNVOTES

@Ashkuri stop silencing me!!!

ETA: omfg just learned that the forum will give you a maximum of three exclamation marks. this is getting in the way of my comedy!!!

@Ashkuri i’ve been in the hobby a very long time and i’ve never run out of opinions in my life

@Coin said in Scenes within Scenes:

If you don’t LIKE the big scenes, don’t GO to the big scenes. If you do, GO.

for real. the comments in the thread about hating big scenes in general are just kind of irrelevant here. if you hate big scenes, then don’t go to them. if you’re on a game that requires you to go to huge scenes, find a new game.

the thread is about what people like and don’t like out of tabletalk systems, not whether or not you want to go to the scenes where tabletalk is commonly used.

@KDraygo said in Scenes within Scenes:

On table and place posing, I know that it would probably make it harder on Ares in terms of posting the log. Maybe a table doesn’t want their part of the log posted, but I believe in Ares, everything is posted. Which is why it has a pseudo place code where it’s just normal posing, with a header of where that person is situated in the code.

i mean, in a hypothetical world where there was a tabletalk system on a game that kept it quiet during the scene for spam reasons, but then posted everything into the final log — which is actually an idea i was muddling over with friends earlier today — then it doesn’t matter if a table does or doesn’t want to have their tabletalk posted; if that’s how the system worked, that’s how it would work, and people would be forewarned and they’d adjust to the code or bail.

i tried to figure out when the last time i played was and i’m honestly still not sure, but it’s at least been over a year, so i put that. kind of shocking for me to think about, because it’s longer than i’ve been away from the hobby for a very, very long time. but i’ve just been doing other things! doing a lot more writing and reading and the like. i’ll be back when my whims change.

making giant scenes OOCly mandatory — and saying that your character is shirking on their IC duty if you’re not at the scene — is indeed bad game policy. i understand that this was more common back in the day in certain areas of the hobby.

but i do think that it’s not strictly relevant to the more fundamental question of how tabletalk is and can be used. it’s a bad policy that games shouldn’t have, not something that’s inherent to all large scenes as a rule.

@Faraday said in Scenes within Scenes:

@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:

Because one can interact with people outside of their little group, should they choose.

Theoretically I guess, but in my experience this almost never happens. (see the comments above regarding interruptions, being yelled at for spam, etc.)

The only poses I ever saw going to the main room were the static announcements or the “oops I forgot to use tt command” nonsense.

But to each their own.

raises hand i saw it happen a lot on places like arx. depending on the event, it would be a mix of posing to the room and posing to tabletalk, people would pose indicators of reactions that would be notable enough for others in the scene to see, move between different tabletalk areas, react to something happening outside of tabletalk, etc. these weren’t rarities, they were things i’d see at nearly every event scene of any size.

@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:

@howyadoin said in Scenes within Scenes:

But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.

And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.

Again, this seems like a code solution trying to fix a social problem.

If there’s “important shit” going on that the peanut gallery can’t interrupt? Don’t have the peanut gallery at the scene. Have them in their own side-scene, either happening at the same time as the “important shit” scene that they can watch freely, or RPed after the "important shit* scene but ICly taking place at the same time.

If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.

what if some players like it, though? like, we all have different experiences here, and i very much recognize that plenty of the experiences being talked about here are indeed very unpleasant. but also there have been people talking about how this scenario has been enjoyable to them. i have been in big scenes about Official Stuff where maybe my character present wasn’t a part of the Official Stuff, but i was able to discuss it while it was happening, and sometimes there would be in fact be reason to respond to things publicly in the scene.

a wholesale hatred of all large scenes of all types isn’t actually universal. if you’re coming from the assumption of “everyone hates this,” then yes, it will look like just trying to solve a social problem with code. but instead, you have to accept that you have a population of people who are actively interested in these scenes and just want it to be more easily parseable.

i am a FAN of the traditional places/tabletalk system; i have been at countless big event scenes that would have felt entirely unmanageable without them.

@Juniper said in Scenes within Scenes:

But if a scene is so busy that you need to split it up, just do that? Move to a different room. Take your friends onto the balcony. Actually commit to moving far enough away to experience some quiet. Don’t just move to a table and listen to everything anyway.

the situations where i have most often used tabletalk/places code, that’s just not viable due to the nature of the scene. it would generally be at a large event of some kind where there’s specific need or reason to stay in the main room for the events going on.

@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:

I think that -in general- places code is trying to police a social problem (players having their characters react to things their characters shouldn’t be able to hear) with a code solution (making it so players can’t hear some of what’s said). And I’m generally not in favor of that.

that reasoning has honestly never occurred to me. for me, places/tt has always been about making large scenes more manageable by reducing the overall spam levels.