I also come from a WoD background and know that non-consent doesn’t invalidate fade to black, and especially doesn’t allow forcing someone to play through potentially traumatic stuff. So, with regards to “I come from WoD where you’re lucky to have staff even acknowledge you before doing what they want,” I feel like this was a pretty old perspective even 15 years ago. IMO, one thing most successful/decent staff took from places where staff acted with impunity about your character’s consent was to at least check in on certain things. Even just a heads up of, “hey this is likely a combat scene, are you cool with that?” was pretty standard on several games which were non-consent MU*s. Player side, most games had a +warn system. All you’re doing is taking the worst elements of past WoD staffing habits and bringing them into a new generation and setting.

Edit: Also this wasn’t intended to be a reply to helvetica, but the log output from inuki lol.

@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:

I always find it a bit creepy when it is clear someone has someone else on watch and they start gushing over them on the channel when they log in, but haven’t even ; waved or said ‘hi’ yet.

It also kind of bums me out if I end up logging in day after day and get tumbleweeds, but there is very clearly a group that are friends and treat each other logging on like the second coming of Jesus or something.

Obviously there is nothing objectively wrong with these behaviours and people can say hi to who they want. But, it is a peeves thread and I am allowed to find the behaviour personally irritating, also!

Seconding this. Sometimes I just need a minute to get my bearings, especially if I’m coming from work, dealing with the kids, trying to settle down myself. We’re no longer in the glomps era. The age of glomp is over, the time of “hey” has come.

I hate my first week of trying to engage people on a new character. It brings me straight back to that feeling like when you switch schools, and on top of that I’ve learned that it takes me more than a handful of poses to find my character’s voice, with the end result that my ancient reptile brain tells me how awful I am while I’m trying to roleplay a social scene.

Edit: Also, I am deeply anxious about asking for RP on a channel. Intellectually I know that if no one responds it’s not a big deal, but ancient reptile brain says that all of them secretly despise me and wish I would go away.

So truly they become HannahBANanna.

I just fully finished a really tough clinical rotation today. I’m not exactly sure why I expected I wouldn’t, but I had a pretty rough time of this whole exit process. For context I worked as a clinical psychology extern at a VA residential facility for homeless veterans who often had substance abuse issues loaded on top of PTSD, depression, anxiety (typically) and serious mental illness (more rarely). Since my emphasis is in trauma, I worked with people who were highly traumatized using primarily cognitive processing therapy, but occasionally prolonged exposure in addition to substance abuse treatment. During my final staff meeting, they did this thing called Thanks & Goodbyes (T’s & G’s) which is usually done with residents graduating from the program.

The thing that got me the most was that I kind of assumed I was a background player, largely unnoticed and just nose-to-the-grindstone working with my patients. I had a large-ish case load and only taught a couple classes (dialectical behavior therapy, and CBT for Substance Use Disorder). It hit me that I kind of internalized this idea that I was separate from the team, so when people started expressing gratitude or talking about how they appreciated this or that about me I had no idea how to hold it and felt extremely awkward in the moment. I also have a history of substance use, and was very grateful to be able to help people who were currently in a material position that was similar to how I’ve lived in the past. A couple of my patients this year relapsed upon release from the program, and at least one of them died as a result of overdose following relapse, so I won’t say I did a perfect A+++ job, but I always did the best I could and advocated hard for everyone. Having been in that world, I know what it’s like to go through the sobriety/relapse cycle, and fall into an old habit that might be beyond your old tolerance.

Anyway, due to a lot of other things in my life (child, spouse, research, work), I generally feel like I don’t have space to hold the kinds of emotions that I need to have about this experience, and I need to get it out somewhere else I fall into bad negative patterns (see above). So, here I am writing about it, I guess.

People who actually act like a welcome wagon when you’re new and don’t know anybody and ask “do you want to meet so-and-so? They match your concept in such-and-such way.” It makes me feel like I joined a more natural community.

@Aria said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Wizz said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

Very few people who did not grow up as girls are fully aware of this problem.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail as I find it honestly upsetting to remember, but I did want to say that both my own experiences with older players who knew sexually explicit discussion/roleplaying with me was not appropriate given my age – which I openly admitted to anyone I regularly RPed with – were with women, or at least players that presented as women.

I am not trying to dispute ratios or anything like that, but I did feel like I should represent the fact that men typically vastly underreport sexual abuse in RL and it’s likely the case in the hobby as well.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but…

Yes, I can vouch that this is 100% true. On more than one occassion, teenage me offered to play the role of “weirdly territorial girlfriend” for guys I knew. It wasn’t a good way to handle it, but teenagers. We didn’t exactly have much in the way of appropriate skillsets for addressing the real problem.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and I imagine that a lot of why my own experience was able to advance so dramatically (flying across state lines, and part of the ocean besides) was due to my being male. My dad did a decent job in protecting my sisters from abuse but there was that gender-enforced blind spot, I think. It makes sense, given that for a long time the prevailing attitude – which is thankfully on the decline – is that men/male-bodied people can’t be sexually assaulted, or it was often played for laughs in media. Gets a litle rough behind the tag.

Spoiler

I wanted to say: I’ve talked about these things in therapy before but for some reason I feel a stronger sense of catharsis from this group discussion/topic. I guess I always felt alone in my experience, even though I knew I wasn’t, so thanks to everyone for being as vulnerable as you’re comfortable with here.

Our cat has been limping for a few days (we recently had to move some furniture around and I think he might have knocked something over onto himself) so we finally took him to the ER. He’s a big indoor/outdoor boy and usually if he limps for a bit he gets better in a day or so if we move his stuff into a place where he doesn’t have to leap around. They had to have us do a drop-off and he was not having it.

Oh, come on. Even if the story of Robin Hood could be boiled down to “nobles fighting,” there is clearly a depiction of class conflict within the narrative. It’s not “medieval Elon Musk vs. Jeff Bezos” because of the structural differences between the Loxley family and the stratification of medieval English society in terms of the ruling class’s power in serfdom.

I’m certainly not going to say that Robin Hood wasn’t a member of the bourgeoisie – he held many privileges that his outlaw companions never had and could likely send himself back into upholding western imperialism in the crusades if he wanted, but he achieved an understanding of class consciousness within the context of the story.

Even if he hadn’t stolen from the rich and given to the poor – and indeed, he does not in some versions – a guerrilla force standing against the monopoly on power that the state (in this case, the sheriff of Nottingham) held over the proletariat would serve as an appropriate propaganda of the deed which, in many ways, can be its own reward. Robin Hood even wholly being a selfish hero (e.g., get back my stuff so I can do a feudalism on the locals, save my girlfriend), does not detract from the material symbolism involved which is why it became an enduring myth in the West.

@Pavel said in Re: Dies Irae:

@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:

Thanks for reading this long-ass bullshit lmao

Who let you out of the code mines?

I get 45 minutes leisure time per day

This is wild, I never check this place anymore so I didn’t know we had this long-ish thread.

@Jynxbox said in Re: Dies Irae:

It seems like this place kind of suffers from a lack of experience. I haven’t dealt with all the staff, but it seems like some are just having their growing pains with being a staffer and making decisions. Marid clearly knows what they are doing both mechanically and thematically. If that was the experience everyone was getting when dealing with staff, the place would be hopping. But since Marid seems to be deep into messing with the code, the players are left with… everyone else. But there’s a sharp, steep drop off from interacting with Marid to dealing with some other staffers.

Hi, I’m Marid! And I absolutely, 100% agree. Also, thank you for saying I know what I’m doing, as I’m not sure of that myself most of the time. I’m largely sucked into the code world, so I can’t do as much as I would like to in order to get plot kicked off or to focus on things in the game proper.

My main concern is, and continues to be, the knee-jerk house rule thing. In early days we decided on a rule-by-committee/democratic structure for the game to prevent there from being the kind of godhead or “my way or the highway” sort of figure. This hasn’t turned out very well, IMO, but it’s difficult to redirect a moving train regardless of how slow it is.

I would love to get out of code, but there’s always something. For example, recently I noticed that for whatever reason our places code reverted to a previous build. No idea why, it’s correctly updated in github, but it’s giving an error that I cleared back in early April. So, it continues.

It feels like they kinda just forgot what fun was about. It seems like they built this place and then certain staffers never wanted to give up control. You app a PC and immediately they go about trying to turn your PC into their NPC, talking to you about your character like they know it better than you, telling you who your character is and what it needs.

This is also something that I’ve noticed happening! It goes directly against my personal ethics with regards to how staff should interact with players, which is to be fans of the character. Even if you don’t like the player very much, or you don’t know the player at all (or even if you gasp like the player??) it’s important to remember that we’re all trying to tell a story together. That means we accept the things that you bring and, rather than change the character that is presented, adapt to the best that you can. If you can’t find a middle ground, the character is still viable, but maybe not for what you have on offer immediately. Doesn’t mean you can’t make something else happen in the future.

And all that might be worth the grief if something happened with your character once your in play, but like most place, you’re just kind of abandoned to the grid…

Yes, I really wanted there to be plots set up, but given the revolving door in sphere staff, it’s hard to keep that going. It really kind of started during the initial days of the project, if I’m being honest. We had some very kick-ass Vampire staff who got pissed off at some overreach by another staffer into what they wanted to do, and they left. Rather than just scrap what was there, there was some insistence that we keep going with what was originally created even if the previous staffers weren’t going to be around to consult and keep the vision going.

One of them is making a very cool looking superhero MUSH using Evennia. I’m really stoked for her, and I hate superhero games. It looks fun, though!

And only after the fact do you find out the staffer admits that they aren’t the best with (game) mechanics.

I do want to say that I don’t think that any of the above is done with maliciousness. I don’t think they are bad people, just not very experienced with staffing and very out of touch with the player experience they are providing.

It is absolutely not intended to be malicious. Brass tacks, we needed like… maybe another 4-6 months of germination time before releasing. Some staffers were SUPER excited about spreading the word and brought players onto the Discord early (as much vitriol as there is about the Discord). This was A Bad Move. I know a thing or two about advertising way too early on account of being the OG creator of the Reach, which had a meme about how many times I’d promised the release date for a while there.

I know they side loaded a staff coordinator who has been helpful, but it looks like most of the horses (maybe just some) have already gotten out of the barn.

A lot of folks have burnt out, I think.

Here’s my personal opinion that no one asked for: I don’t think big fuck-all multi-line WoD games work anymore. I think we’re all much older now, we all have many more responsibilities, and we all have specific types of games we want to play. Single or maybe double-sphere games would work better, because of a few things:
a) it focuses the action on a specific theme and creates a strong and clear intent on what sort of game you’re playing;
b) staffers who know those spheres will be able to run those spheres, rather than applying the warm-body problem (get anyone who has a passable understanding or has heard of the game into the hot seat);
c) you might have a smaller population and that might actually not be that bad in the long run, especially if there were multiple single-sphere games that people could bounce between
d) you can be more flexible with your setting;
e) staff will probably be less likely to burn out;
f) I would be less likely to burn out trying to write a bunch of validation code because chimerical items work this way whereas other equipment works this way, but then we have to keep in mind that there are talens, fetishes, and “artifacts” which are from the Ghost Hunters book that we’re referencing for some reason; also that fucking. OOC room. visibility. bug.

I also think that new games would benefit from having a development bible. I still have the one I wrote for The Reach. It gave clear guidelines on the history of each sphere, the focus in each sphere, how they applied to the metaplot, how they function within the context of Aleswich and Dunlin’s Point, and what the EOTW scenario looks like to that sphere.

Actually, I’m briefly turning this into Soma’s game design class. Here’s what you want to know about your game:

• Where do you see the game in three years?
• What sort of gameplay do you intend for the game to have?
• How does autonomy work for the individual spheres? To what extent is there a centralized leadership?
• What sort of plots/themes can we run/use in our storytelling?
• What sort of plots/themes can’t we run/use in our storytelling?
• What sphere is absolutely mission critical for the game to keep going?

Here’s my TR answer:

• Game would end in 3 years with a big explosive metaplot thing in which case we’d reopen something depending on the events of the plot.
• Largely story-based with a focus on staff-based stories and some PrP, preventing the game from falling into a sandbox (ultimately kind of failed there)
• Sphere focused with interactions between the groups based around the metaplot and family structure. Individual spheres would be left to their own devices in terms of house rules, with larger structural house rules in place for the rest of the game as they come up. Ex. Changeling staff can HR goblin fruit and contracts all they want, but there are no individual HRs on attributes or skills specific to Changeling that makes them significantly different from the rest of the game.
• Themes are focused on the following genres/themes: Lovecraftian cosmic horror, kitchen-sink horror, mystery
• The core story-based Mage the Awakening elements were not present, high tech stuff is not available as it doesn’t fit in-theme.
• Changeling. Changeling was linked strongly with the Wailing Worm, which was an outer god that tunneled past the Hedge into Arcadia and became a weird amalgam of Keeper and Outer God.

Having something like this can be very useful in determining how to proceed if you suddenly lose staff in one arena (or multiple arenas, or can’t find staff for one group, or you’re facing terminal levels of burnout).

As it stands, Dies Irae has a great shot at being a GarouMUX-but-for-Fera given the way the population is set up, but that would require somehow convincing folks to shutter spheres. The problem being: we don’t know what spheres are required to keep the lights on. We also don’t really know what themes the game has as a whole.

Admittedly I also didn’t suggest this during development, so it’s kind of my own fault for not bringing it up.

P.S. To DI: The fact that you’ve got Tijuana relegated to one grid square with no builds is… not… great. I don’t want to assume the reason, but it would appear to me that either your cultural or political biases are showing - or you’re just not that familiar with San Diego. Maybe a mix of all of them. But just on the population numbers alone, you should be able to tell that you’re ignoring a huge resource and influence. Tijuana is the most populace city in the area. It is bigger than the largest three (or four) cities in San Diego county combined. Excluding LA, there’s not another city bigger than it for 1500 miles. Just saying. From a gameplay/thematic standpoint, that’s a huge missed opportunity. Culturally, a bit cringe.

Yeah, I agree. Tijuana was originally written in back when we had the aforementioned two vampire staffers. Tijuana in classic WoD is a Sabbat stronghold and where the original crusade for San Diego came from. I think there was more intended from there, but it would have been better to just remove it once we realized there weren’t going to be any real builds or anything of the sort. Tijuana is a massive, sprawling city. It’d be similar to having a game set in Illinois and then Chicago is just one room while the rest of it is set in Naperville, or having your Bordeaux game with one room being Paris.

Edit to add:
@Warma-Sheen said in Re: Dies Irae:

But I do agree that the proximity and size and political status does make for a big missed opportunity for a more interesting and dynamic game theme, especially in terms of sources of conflict and antagonists. It is tailor made for a MU. Not a BAD thing. Just a disappointing one.

BUT it isn’t one that’s completely wasted yet. I’d encourage them to really take a look at the opportunities there and in the future open it up like a DLC expansion pack with a full complement of themes and integration, not just some grid spaces. Dies Irae: TJ!

Absolutely this. It’s a great opportunity. We would need more staff to pull it off.

I can state with 100% certainty that it wasn’t intended to be a culturally insensitive thing. The original vamp staffers were both Latin American (not Mexican, but South American) and wanted to include some more specific cultural elements, but left the game before it could be implemented. C’est la vie, but it would probably be for the best if we at least removed the link to Tijuana and sent it over to the OOC builder’s paradise room.

I did want to note, btw: I’m not headstaff there, really. I’m the code lead, and ostensibly the Mage lead though I don’t really have too much time for it, and the Storytelling Coordinator, which I’m not too sure what that means. I was originally brought on to write the metaplot story line and do Mage.

Also: Would be super cool if someone made a Tijuana game, just sayin’.

Thanks for reading this long-ass bullshit lmao

Hello, I’d like to announce the beta opening of Dies Irae, a 20th Anniversary World of Darkness MUSH using the Evennia platform.

Dies Irae is a World of Darkness MUX set in modern-day San Diego. It uses the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension and Changeling: the Dreaming as its core rulesets, and further provides support for Mortal and Mortal+ characters, Fera, and also Wyrm-aligned characters.

Dies Irae is a game of collaborative storytelling. We focus on the struggle of characters against - or to accelerate - the encroaching doom of the world and entities portrayed by storytellers rather than against other player characters. This even applies to Wyrm-aligned characters, who are all employed by Pentex, which has an agenda not concerned with other player characters.

Player character vampires in Dies Irae are all Sabbat. Werewolves are primarily focused on the Sept of the Rising Tide, rebuilding a formerly calcified Caern. All tribes are offered save for Red Talons. The Traditions, Technocracy and Nephandi are options for Mage characters. Changeling offers Kithain including certain Gallain, Merfolk, and Nunnehi; with conflicts focused more on borders, culture, and land claims than Seelie versus Unseelie courts. Fera are working within two court structures: one that is influenced by the Ahadi and includes all of the western Fera (Rokea, Gurahl, Ananasi, Ratkin, Ajaba, Mokole, and Bastet) with the occasional Kitsune, as well as a small, but functional Emerald Court that has been in the area since the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed.

The power levels of characters in Dies Irae are at a low to medium level. Characters might very well have aspirations of great power, but our focus is on more modest power levels.

Join us on the game in any MU* client at diesiraemu.com:4201

The wiki and web-based client for the game can be found at https://diesiraemu.com/wiki/

You can also join our Discord at: https://discord.gg/E82vkhKJ

The game is built in Evennia. Its code can be found at https://github.com/Dies-Irae-mu and is open for anyone to use for their own games.

We are currently running a beta phase. The game is open for play. Its code is substantially complete, and its story is commencing, with the caveat that systems are subject to change.

I’m the character Tiziri there, come by and say hi!

@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:

But that was discarded in favor of World of Darkness MUSHes where most of the game is in the character application process and in making sure you never offend the right clique in the OOC foyer, and not in the scenes your character is in.

Methinks Narrator was an asshole in the OOC room one too many times and, as such, has decided to complain about it obliquely on here. Thankfully they’re banned, so …

I am so weirdly excited to hear that Jill the Guest is back! If there are any new MUSHers on CoG, this is like a total eclipse event for them!

I love Frieren so much

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

so you may have to ask would you prefer the vampire alt or the werelobster?

Werelobster for me every time.

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

This may be something that only annoys me,

nope! Seeing messages on channels about how there’s nothing to do is like the non-constructive feedback version of saying you want to RP, in my opinion. “I’m at blah blah area for whoever wants to join,” then hanging out there is way more constructive and could even result in something. Even if no one does and you grumble to yourself about nothing to do, you’re still being proactive. Besides, you might meet someone you didn’t know before.

@Roadspike

@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:

But definitely an invididual thing, too – GoB’s popularity was firmly linked to that of Game of Thrones and most other MUs don’t see a burst of new apps every season premier and finale of a television show, or have people lose enthusiasm when the show’s quality falls.

This is a side note, and I do have thoughts about the main topic, but I wanted to point out that this was a fairly common occurrence in the past. In fact, I’ve been surprised that there hasn’t been a resurgence of Dune or Cyberpunk 2020/77 games in the last few years. At the turn of the 21st century, for instance, DuneMUSH got a big surge of players due to the sci-fi channel miniseries that had come out around that time. Final Fantasy MUSH always saw player surges when new games were released, and so on.

Game creation is far more accessible these days with regards to genre emulation thanks to Ares and Evennia (i.e., without specialized systems like the modiphius engine for Dune or CyberpunkRED but able to provide the aesthetic and setting with theme/story customization), so just a bit surprised they haven’t popped up. Like, no D&D-style fantasy adventure games after BG3? That would have seen a huge surge, I would guess.

Musing complete. Please return to the normal thread. @Coin makes some very good points and I appreciate your perspective here @Gashlycrumb.