she/they
KB is right. There is nothing to be gained. There is no understanding to reach. There is no communication to be had. The other night I was so profoundly disappointed in what has become of a good place that I was honestly pretty bummed out.
It is what it is. They are what they are. Let them be. And leave them there.
Hi, guys:
Any posts elsewhere will be moved to this thread.
This is not a thread for arguments or nasty debates. We will be closely monitoring and moderating this thread in a way that we usually do not.
This is a thread for grieving, sharing resources and help for people who are impacted by all of this (which is all of us, but some more than others).
I’m just glad Ghost is there to lead the way to a brighter, more positive future.
Let’s not be reductive genitalia-essentialists about gender no matter where we are in the forum.
I think it’s pretty obvious why HannahBanana has been banned, but just in case it’s not obvious, I don’t care where you are: ablelist language isn’t okay, gatekeeping sexuality isn’t okay, none of this is okay.
https://forum.aresmush.com/t/v1-0-0-released/923
I don’t know if you guys have heard about this new fangled MUSH server called Ares–
Ares has brought a lot of new life into the hobby. I’ve watched people who hadn’t even logged into a MU* in their life launch and run games. Congratulations to @Faraday, and THANK YOU!!
While users can create new threads, they cannot create new categories. I believe that’s what you mean when you say new boards, yeah? We made a conscious choice not to include a politics category when we created this forum and right now that is not changing.
Politics isn’t a team sport. It’s life or death for many of us.
It’s not that we don’t think it’s important, so we won’t make space for it; in many ways, it is TOO IMPORTANT. This is especially true given the hands-off moderation stance I’d rather see on this board. We just don’t have the time, bandwidth, expertise, capacity, etc. to be able to moderate those discussions.
I’m sorry.
@Dreampipe said in Bannings:
There are actually a fuckton of literal fascists in this hobby;
There are fascists in a lot of places, alas. Fascists in gaming is an interesting area people are working on, but the far right were early adopters of online spaces (including back in the BBS days). Their methods will only ever get a small percentage of the population, but if you have so many people you can access, you can get to a much greater proportion of that small number and…well.
As someone who is super into history, Norse mythology, Crusader Kings, punk rock, and RPGs, the amount of time I have to spend squinting at people with common interests and going “Okay, but are you a fucking Nazi?” is both alarming and exhausting.
Seconded. I’m a white dude and it’s sometimes really anxiety inducing to talk about those kinds of interests without feeling like, “guys I swear I just like the stories, I’m not a white supremacist”. Double whammy because I also like power metal.
At least a lot of them usually don’t take long to go mask-off. I remember people using SS designs in medieval games like Mordhau or Chivalry. No it’s not a pair of lightning bolts, I know what you are.
Look, I can’t lie. I would use a pair of lightning bolts because I think lightning bolts look cool.
AND THEN I WOULD BE FUCKING MORTIFIED WHEN SOMEONE TOLD ME.
Pour one out for everyone born in 1988 who is innocently making very poor choices about their usernames.
I am glad that we have largely left behind all-white games in the L&L space. I think the expectation that most people have is that you will see a diverse cast of characters. I appreciate that about Concordia, particularly where they have course-corrected with their pantheon. I think they are doing some other interesting things in that space, too.
There is maybe no perfect way to handle the issue of cultural diversity and real-world inspirations, but I still think that what they are doing is worth an upnod. You got your Targaryens, sure, and your red-heads, and your Romans–
But there is also a house that has clear East Asian influences and one with South Asian influences. I grabbed one of those from the roster because I am always dying to see something – anything, please, god – that isn’t just your standard Western French-British-Something take on fantasy. Then I ran into players who maybe had been expecting something more Western in the house, so I popped in a request to get more clarity. I wanted to know what staff’s intent actually was, and I like the answer I got.
Rather than directly copy and paste real-world cultures into the game, they’ve made a choice to draw on multiple places for inspiration to avoid generalizing, tokenizing, or fetishizing any real-world culture. In this case, yes, the house has elements of North India, but also Moorish Spain. I’m kind of curious if there’s a connecting thread of thought in that they were both extension of Islamic power at times, what with the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire in North India, but I haven’t sat them down for details – and I actually enjoy classical India better so DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO DRAW THAT LINE ON MY ACCOUNT.
Right now, at this moment, all I really care about is that they are doing something different, something interesting, and something coming from a place of curiosity and thoughtfulness. I wouldn’t say that they are a perfect game, and there’s choices I wouldn’t have made, but holy fuck please I hope more fantasy L&L games in the future draw from a wider well than the tiny Western European fantasy well.
@labsunlimited said in Historical Games Round 75:
See this is what makes pre modern games attractive in terms of ism handling. The world was so different that many of the categories of bigotry today just didn’t exist yet. The beef between ancient Assyrians and Greeks might as well be a beef between vampires and werewolves for how relevant it is today.
It’s unavoidable in all human history that people have used bigotry to justify harming perceived political and social enemies. It’s not the only way to go after your enemies, either, and those other ways are a lot less retraumatizing for people who have experienced it. Few people have been traumatized by weaponized lightning bolts, disintegration rays, or medieval weaponry applied to them. Nor have they been hurt by people orchestrating a palace coup against them and running them off their throne. But the modern ism stuff? Why drive off players like that? If the beef is between like, Hittites and Myceneans, who cares? Go ham.
Another agree and disagree. I personally prefer to explore pre-modern stories, but there’s still plenty of isms in those cultures which resonate on down the line: sexism, classism, etc. History is not freedom from isms, just distance. Hopefully.
@DrQuinn said in Historical Games Round 75:
I think when doing something like this you also need to be very aware that “historical prejudices” are still very real today and that mushes are still overwhelmingly white. So while it might be fun for one person to play being racially discriminated against in the old south, there are a whole lot of people who deal with that every day and might be going online to escape from that and not want to see that in their fun-pretendy-time game. Especially since there are definitely players out there drooling to put that white hood on and let the things they don’t dare say in real life to a person out online.
Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.
I agree and disagree with you:
Especially since there are definitely players out there drooling to put that white hood on and let the things they don’t dare say in real life to a person out online.
Throw them out. Throw them the fuck out. I don’t think they are as subtle as they think they are. If you see it, if you sniff it, throw the poop out. You’re right that you will get people pushing boundaries, but you get people pushing boundaries regardless. Flush 'em.
Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.
Maybe.
I think we also have a tendency (duh, obviously) to take a very modern (duh, obviously) western idea on what isms are and what we would expect to see in play. I’m more interested in themes of cultural xenophobia than colonial racism: the isms of different times and in different places. I’m interested in stories that don’t draw quite so direct a line to the here and now, but there are of course still echoes of any marginalized stories.
@Trashcan said in Historical Games Round 75:
Since I was namedropped earlier in the thread (thanks @Tez) I felt compelled to post something here.
@Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan
Thanks for being willing* to be dragged in to the conversation.
For me it comes down to two things:
a) Players need to know what to expect. The social contract that @Roadspike cited is a great place to set expectations.
b) Staff needs to do the work to maintain their vision.
* not willing
@Roadspike said in Historical Games Round 75:
I think this is a great take, but I also think that some of this can be covered with the use of a Social Contract as described by James Mendez Hodes in one of his several very good blog posts on historical (tabletop) roleplaying:
https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2018/11/10/best-practices-for-historical-gaming
If Staff lays out from the start what is acceptable to see on-screen and what is not, what will be argued about on-screen and what will be accepted, then anyone who violates that Social Contract can pre-emptively be shown the door, allowing those who remain to explore the setting to the extent that they feel comfortable within the protections of that Contract.
Literally right this second in another chat talking about social contracts as a good tool for this. 1000% agree.
I’m gonna say something wild:
I think maybe more isms should be included again and we’ve gone too far to remove them. It is possible to tell stories – good stories, fun stories – inside of that structure as long as people have full awareness of what they are engaging it and the chance to opt in or out. Let players play bad guys if they want, so that other players have something to play against.
But.
The list of people I trust with this is pretty small, and staff would have to VIGOROUSLY ENFORCE THIS. I’ve talked about this with @Trashcan a bit lately. I can’t blame people for choosing to eliminate the isms rather than police them. It’s staff time that could go elsewhere, and by including them, staff have a responsibility to make sure that they are used well and players are behaving.
But!!!
I don’t think including isms is necessarily bad.
Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, but mostly that’s a surprise to me because @Tat and I looked at doing it but never really got it rolling.
I’m tagging you everywhere today, Tat. Sorry.
@Snackness said in Your first game?:
An RL friend got me into Harper’s Tale (Pern MOO) when we were in high school. I have long since lost touch with that friend, but I’m still MUing!
It was my sister who got me into it when we were in jr. high or high school. I didn’t tend to play very many games at a time, so HT was my mainstay for a long time although I dabbled in others.
Years later when @Tat and I met on our X-Men game and staffed together we discovered that we had actually played together on HT which was fun.
I think the difficulty of all of these basic pieces likely holds it back from wider adoption. There’s a reason there’s 10 new ares games for every new evennia game. ANYWAY GOOD LUCK WITH THIS.
