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.

@Snackness Honey, I am so, so sorry.

The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson :C

@dvoraen if you pay save up 50 share points, you can get a cool new player skin

@MisterBoring It was very cool and all you have to do is grind your staff into dust for years trying to keep up with players

ETA: Also relevant that one of Arx’s big struggles was in how to structure and allow for PRPs to exist in an impactful way, because of how dense the lore was, and how much of it was locked behind mystery. So my examples were all very staff-handled in response to actions players undertook and submitted to staff in various ways. It was a huge amount of work all centered on staff and absolutely unsustainable.

@KarmaBum said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Roz said in World Tone / Feeling:

But we did make some pretty big changes over the years, both in regards to regaining magic in the setting and in pretty notable cultural shifts, such as restoring the Lost Gods to the Faith and all the plots surrounding thralldom in the Mourning Isles.

I’m curious if you can share any specific examples of player actions driving this. (NB: I don’t know if you were staff on Arx. I think no? But I am looking for player perspectives if people have them.) Was this something players started and staff facilitated? Was it part of the metaplot plan all along and waiting for players to engage with it? Genuinely curious.

I wasn’t staff on Arx, nope! So all of my perspective is as a player. Various members of the Arx staff have spoken many times about planned vs unplanned content, and my impression is that the vast majority of all of it was entirely unplanned, and that the things that players ended up pursuing were almost always unexpected.

The lore of Arx was incredibly dense, so there was a ton of secret history, and I’m sure there was a lot that wasn’t exactly planned for specific metaplot reasons, but just details that never got unearthed. There was a lot of strictness when it came to the history of the world and the rules of how the world worked, but how the world developed was very player-driven.

My experience is that the plot on Arx was hugely reactive to what players pursued. Some examples:

1. At the very start of the game, evil forces were manipulating humans to try and trick them into thinking a certain race of dark elves were their enemies. Staff expected it’d be likely that the players would end up killing these dark elves. Instead, with many bumps along the way, the players eventually managed to eventually make a new alliance and treaty with these elves, and as a result, they featured in the game in various ways for all the years to come.
2. The “Big Bad” of the first major metaplot arc was originally just a throwaway NPC. He was meant to be one of many people corrupted by the evil force of that arc. But players kept pursuing researching him, and eventually staff decided to give him more power and importance until he was the main big bad to defeat.
3. The King was originally an NPC and the very start of the metaplot kicked off with him being put into a magical coma. Staff did not expect him to survive, but players were very determined and pursued it and were able to figure out how to first get his soul back, and then how to heal it.
4. There were three gods of the setting’s pantheon whose names and identities had been forgotten over the years. Characters discovered their identities early on and pursued not just learning about them, but reintegrating them into the setting’s dominant/primary religion (which they hadn’t been a part of even historically when their identities were known).
5. This one comes to the closest to a fundamental shift of setting: out of the five primary houses making up the setting, one of them had a form of slavery/indentured servitude. It was illegal everywhere else in the kingdom. Thematically, the other regions didn’t like it, but it was important to the ruling nobles to not open doors of “people from entirely different lands can criticize how you run your own house.” The criticism and pursuit of abolition of the practice was entirely player-based, and also connected back to #3 – because one of the gods newly-integrated into the dominant religion was the god of freedom. (This also had very big impacts in terms of resulting in a civil war in the region.)

Arx had the benefit of having a really expansive setting with a lot of areas you could impact without fundamentally altering the setting itself. I would say that the most core metaplot story that was planned was: dark magical beings stole humanity’s knowledge of magic and its own history, and the characters slowly learn about this and learn how to magic again. That’s the thread that I do think was planned, it was there from the start until the very end, and the finale of the game involved finally defeating the evil being responsible. Otherwise, I think a lot of plot threads were planned, but in the sense of “there are a LOT of powers out there in the world, and we know what their status is and what they’re up to at the start of the story, but how things actually play out depends on what people do.”

So there were fundamental shifts, but there also weren’t: no one solved feudalism. No one solved class divide. No one solved poverty. The basic foundations of the setting’s structure remained largely intact.

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

@Roz Yeah, but the actual numbers for that ratio will vary depending on what pace you want to keep and how much time individual GMs want to put in.

Yeah, the ratio number will be different depending on the specifics of the game. My point was more that I don’t think that makes the ratio unimportant; it will always be important for every game. It’s just that it’s dependent on the situation.

@Tez said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:

Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.

This bit caught my eye. You are absolutely right. Not every game or gamerunner has or even WANTS this scope. Even if they do, you may have players with very different ideas of what fixing feudalism means. Being clear about scope can help shape expectation.

It’s definitely an interesting tension. Some aspects of a setting I tend to be fundamentally uninterested in changing, because they’re too foundational. I never wanted to just – somehow overthrow feudalism or cure class divide on Arx, for instance; it was too core to the structure of everything. But we did make some pretty big changes over the years, both in regards to regaining magic in the setting and in pretty notable cultural shifts, such as restoring the Lost Gods to the Faith and all the plots surrounding thralldom in the Mourning Isles.

So I’ve definitely experienced both sides of this: I like seeing the impact of my actions, but I’ve absolutely also get annoyed at players who seem to be attempting to just – change the entire setting.

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

The actual ratio probably isn’t the important bit.

People don’t mind a long queue if they can see that it’s moving.

Can I take an action on a reasonable timeline compared to the other PCs?

The ratio is still important with the timeline being able to generally keep a steady pace, even if that pace is slow, and not constantly and consistently fall behind, though.

@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:

The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I feel like Nobledark and Grimbright are my favorite sandboxes to play in.

guys stop feeding the fucking troll, you are literally giving him what he wants