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MU Peeves Thread
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
So, the only real grey area is quite rare cases, such as an unmarried couple, a female character who wants to be single mum, or a same-sex couple who wants to have a child by surrogacy, as examples. From playing other Lords and Ladies-style games, all of these seem to be vanishingly rare in the genre.
I’m not sure if you mean that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare or not, but when we stood up our L&L game we made it very explicit and purposeful that there is no discrimination or social mores against same-sex relationships, and children either adopted or born from one partner biologically but not the other are treated the same as children born biologically, etc. It was extremely important to us to create a safe space where people of all genders and inclinations could play the way that they wanted.
For the record, we handle IC pregnancy (which as a game that does generation fast forwards is actually rather important as the game BY DESIGN would allow for those children to potentially be played within a relatively short OOC time span) as simply as possible - the player(s) involved indicate consent in a job, boom. No one is going to care either way. (And yes, while we have not had that request, if a player wanted to be a single parent OR become pregnant with a character not played by a PC, we would allow for that too.)
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@Jennkryst said in MU Peeves Thread:
I am already totally breaking Rokugani culture with poorly though out setting changes for the L5R game that I surely won’t flake out on this time, what’s a few MORE changes to FauxSamurai gender roles and marriage customs?
Please make an L5R game. I know that some of the lore is problematic, but a lot of games are, and I really enjoyed it as a theme. I would LOVE to play on one.
I remember playing on one that was trying to get off the ground during the height of the CCG and right after they released the first edition of the mini game, but I don’t think it lasted.
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@mietze not just any mention, sure. But how often do you hear women say ‘well, at least I’m not pregnant’ when talking about their menstruation? There are just a lot of little things inherent in our experience that would be way different if we knew without a doubt we were infertile until ready.
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@Meg i really don’t think that sort of RP is common on any mush, sadly. I have seen people pose laughing so hard in a scene that their pc had to run towards the bathroom. To be clear presumably because of their bladder not uterus but as they didn’t go into detail I guess I’ll never know.
Alas never have I ever been sitting in the bar or in a private area and had a female pc remark “damn it I’m on the rag again but at least I am not pregnant!” Which is too bad really. I’d be down to try it but I don’t need people to think im any weirder than they already know I am.
I can see a lot of worry for this lore but I admit the fact it might have selfishly messed up some people’s rp about their menstrual cycles did not even occur to me. Though what was that place that had coded menstrual attractiveness? Haven? Now those people would need to riot if there was suddenly fuckfruit.
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@mietze I’m pretty sure I have used that as a throw away line in rp before. Like, sure not common. I also don’t think any one little thing is a big deal, but collectively, it’s hard to really conceptualize the difference in experience.
It would be like if they didn’t mention the fact that the rifts got worse with the wave of births. It’s a pretty big detail that would inform rp.
But it’s beta. Fair enough switching theme, but maybe they shouldn’t have advertised if they didn’t have big things of theme nailed down? Idk.
ETA: next time I rp, I’m gonna pee my pants from sneezing. That is also a universal female experience that never gets roleplayed.
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It just seems pretty standard to me of late that even L&L fantasy games now tend to have a very strong “nobody gets knocked up or knocks anyone up unless they purposefully do something to not prevent it” component. Its most often in the form of free access to all people birth control and if one person takes it then that’s enough to ensure you don’t (giving people freedom to know that they are not going to conceive) , rather than you have to take something to make it so and both have to take it in order to conceive (so you know that if you don’t do that its not going to happen).
I do understand how either of those ways is going to hit different from different folks. But I don’t see what we are talking about as more mind-blowing than allowing true free and uninhibited access to prevention at least in my experience as a woman.
Maybe it’s just because of my personal background, but to me giving a woman equal agency over opening up the possibility each time with the default being its not going to happen unless both people wholeheartedly agree seems just as liberating in a way that I wasn’t allowed to think of as a kid.
But most of the time I don’t really have to think about it much on games because I prefer not to make that a focus in my RP anyway (and why I don’t choose to be part of time skip or high speed games where that becomes an important focus of the game, because that “you must be fruitful and multiple and carry the blood forward” as a hyper or primary focus is one of those things that make me uncomfortable probably as much as infertility does other folks.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’m not sure if you mean that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare or not, but when we stood up our L&L game we made it very explicit and purposeful that there is no discrimination or social mores against same-sex relationships, and children either adopted or born from one partner biologically but not the other are treated the same as children born biologically, etc. It was extremely important to us to create a safe space where people of all genders and inclinations could play the way that they wanted.
This is what I meant, yeah. On the one hand, Samurai do not care about who you sleep with as long as it doesn’t interfere with your duty to or dishonor your Lord. Romance is not inherantly dishonorable. But this is also a game where ‘my spouse and I get along and enjoy eachother’s company, actually’ is a stat you traditionally had to spend XP on, in a world where holding hands is scandalous, let alone other forms of PDA.
With Iweko I being a female Emperor, and the nobility of Samurai transcending gender, there is nothing aside from tradition stopping Rokugan from going full trans and letting people live the lives they want. Plenty of majikz in the world to let people do what they want.
… except a big theme of L5R is the internal struggle between what you want, and what your Lord/Clan/the Emperor demands. So… it be tricksy.
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Respectfully, of course I do not mean to say that support for same-sex families is vanishingly rare. That would be a ridiculous thing to say.
What I was saying is that in my (personal, subjective) experience of the genre, I see/have seen very few examples of it actually happening, whether the support is there or not.
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
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@Alveraxus I’ve been seeing some videos on YouTube suggesting a new edition is coming out which will rewrite a lot of the lore to make it less yucky, but I can’t tell if this fabled new edition is actually coming out (I can’t find news about it) or if the video creator is presenting their own ideas as if it’s happening.
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Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years? Why can’t we just admit that things change? ARX I BLAME YOU.
I admit, major theme changes do tweak me more. Minor clarifications, fine. You need that all the time. Major changes? Unless it’s a developing thing, it’s a little weird to insist major theme has always been like this, for real.
But systems always change in live games. Policies and theme always need clarification in live games. That’s not beta. That’s LIFE.
she/they
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@Tez maybe you are just so used to life as a beta you don’t even recognize it anymore did you think of that
fr fr
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
What I was saying is that in my (personal, subjective) experience of the genre, I see/have seen very few examples of it actually happening, whether the support is there or not.
AH, that makes sense. I’m not sure how the trends are going. Based around “active” characters, we’ve got 3 NB characters (and one about to come out of chargen) versus about 80 binary. I obviously am not tracking orientation. But that does seem low, even though we offer it and encourage players to play as they would like.
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
I agree, and to be fair, I think a lot of games are. We’re not alone in making a specific and emphatic statement about inclusivity, but I also know other games may not have it written as a policy but do encourage a community of that. I think generally MUSHers (and of course we have outliers) are a more accepting group in general as a population. I’d like to think so, anyway.
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@hellfrog D:<!!!
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@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years? Why can’t we just admit that things change? ARX I BLAME YOU.
I think some major video games started that trend as a way to avoid accountability to their fans, and it just caught on everywhere. (I got curious when it started because I have a distinct memory of logging into a game regularly and it always saying it was “in beta” (like Orna or something), and quick google fu showed me a post on Steam in 2013 complaining “When will this trend of forever beta going to end”?)
I agree, though. At least for us, we have a very specific planned cadence - Alpha (now) to test out the specific systems we want to test out where things are going to explode or not (one recent test totally exploded, for example) and we change things on the fly, and then hopefully one Beta generation where we stick with what we learned in Alpha. And then that’s it.
It doesn’t mean we can’t change something that doesn’t work, but we won’t be actively looking to change things after Alpha/proof of concept stage.
That being said. There is some comfort in saying you’re always in beta because it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have. “It says Beta on the box, so you know what you are signing up for.”
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
Out of curiosity – do you mean OOCly inclusive, or that themes on all games should be ICly inclusive?
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have
That has to be one of my least favourite parts of all this nonsense Beta-maxing. Obviously, it’s not my game, not my vision, and YMMV, but if you’re going to radically change the IC world to match your “vision,” you should do that before you open, not when people are actively playing your game for months.
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@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
it does give flexibility for things like radical IC world changes to support the vision that you have
That has to be one of my least favourite parts of all this nonsense Beta-maxing. Obviously, it’s not my game, not my vision, and YMMV, but if you’re going to radically change the IC world to match your “vision,” you should do that before you open, not when people are actively playing your game for months.
Having the flexibility to do something and the wisdom sometimes not to are two different things.
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
Thank you for running an inclusive game. I think all games should be.
Out of curiosity – do you mean OOCly inclusive, or that themes on all games should be ICly inclusive?
I know you’re asking Pacha, but since it came up with regards to our game I figured I’d share my philosophy.
OOCly goes without saying, IMO.
I think it’s an interesting question regarding ICly inclusive. I know that we made a choice to support the idea of “any gender can perform any role” and the various other precepts, and we acknowledge that it stands in contrast to the historical periods we are somewhat trying to emulate. And yes, I can see some people saying that it “breaks their immersion”. Even thought we are an “original” theme, we’re still drawing heavily from a tropey tradition.
Our attitude is that we realize that may limit our audience, and we are ok with that. We would rather have a safer space to allow anyone to play what they want, even if it defies traditional roles (not saying we agree or disagree with those roles, but in many cases, they are traditions) than make anyone feel othered or not, or not free to express who they are.
Yeah, I’m sure there are some folks who find that a turnoff and won’t play. That’s ok.
This isn’t necessarily to criticize any game who does things differently, it’s just a statement of what I (and the rest of the team) feel about our game.
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Let me say my old catchphrase, ahem:
I promise that the Reach will remain in an alpha state for only a few additional months before our grand opening!
