@Roz said in People Doing Things:

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

@Ashen-Shugar So let’s see if I can explain why I disagree with a metaphor. This is how your point comes across, to me:

I own a building. A crime happens in my building. I’m culpable for the crime because I own the building.

So I suddenly am expected to a) track what goes on in the building; b) had any control whatsoever about what happens inside the building.

That’s ridiculous, and most certainly not how it works in today’s society, otherwise companies and schools would be liable for the mass shootings that happen inside their areas. It’s an absolutely absurd take.

I reject the idea that I need to tacitly monitor everything that happens on a MU* I run because someone might do something illegal. That’s like saying I should wiretap my neighbors because they talked about where to hide a corpse, because I live in the same apartment complex. Oh no, they did something bad, clearly I need to have been more responsible to make sure it didn’t happen so I could tell the cops, to the point of being unethical and invasive in my methods!

No.

Preface: This is not a request for sympathy, forgiveness, or even understanding, because I have no right to ask for any of that.

To start off, I’m posting this because my brain will not shut the fuck up about it even over a week later. I’ve tried to distract myself from it, but the issue will not stop harassing me. It keeps resurfacing. I do wonder if it’s a byproduct of being on the autism spectrum and/or ADHD (and the fact I really take rejection hard), but I don’t know. All I know is that I have to get this off my chest.

I’m not going to answer questions about the details. I’m deliberately leaving out the who and where and focusing solely on the what. Some of you already know about this, because you were involved and/or can guess from my username, which I use in multiple locations (Discord and more), but I don’t want to sweep what happened under the rug and assume everything will be fine. Because it’s not, in the abstract.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had my first experience with being disinvited from a game. I still can’t really identify what it was I said or did that led to me being approached and told I should go because of my conduct that made other people uncomfortable. There were no sexual propositions or anything of the sort, but the discussion was that my conduct on channels as a guest and during chargen had been noted, and the sum of it led to me being effectively asked to leave.

I was absolutely shocked and anxious over it, sitting in my chair reading that, because no one had voiced any explicit concerns to me saying there’s an issue until that moment, but at the end of the day what mattered was that I did something that bothered other people to the point that staff had to get involved and say this isn’t the place for you. My response was “Alright.” and that I’d take my leave, and I logged off right after.

I can only remember talking on public channels and paging three people, two of which I’ve spoken to multiple times on other games and/or Discord. One of those two explicitly asked me when I was getting my butt approved. I’ve come to the conclusion that matters have silently changed with the second of the two, and as such I needed to keep my distance from them, including Discord. So I chose to silently break contact, left DM groups, and have tried to not interact with them.

Anyway, I peeked at the game site, got the message my site was blocked from the portal, and wondered why I went there in the first place, even if it was just to hit the logout button. It was a stupid thing to do, but I still did it.

So yeah. I did something, the aftermath is bothering me still, and the worst part is I still can’t identify to myself what behavior of mine is the problem.

That’s all.

@HannahBananna said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Pavel Thankfully if you had any of the four you’d be smart enough not to start shit with someone who’s obviously always been above you. This ain’t my way of asking. My way of asking was going onto the discord server and politely asking, like an ADULT, something you are STILL proving you’re incapable of being. This is my way of continuing to be an adult and taking away the toys of people who want to be spoiled brats. Like you. Daed.

If this is your way of being an adult, you have a very misguided definition in your mental database.

@crawfish I think I speak for a lot of people when I say this:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I LOVE THEM

I don’t feel like copy-pasting from MSB, so I’m just going to go into recent history as I can remember it, with a few special mentions.

Current

• ConcordiaMU - Alistair
• Luminiferous Aether - Anthony
• Arx - Bhandn (semi-retired)

Past

• Various Wheel of Time MU*s - Svoran*
• The Fifth World - Jor
• Crossroads - Svoran*, Jaeden
• Flight of the Golden Crane - Jaram
• Kushiel’s Debut - Piers

* Everywhere I transplanted Svoran (most of them WoT games), it was for character research. “How does he think and react to X situation?” In my personal writing, Svoran is the one character where I could not get into his headspace without character research. Plus, I could not figure out how grumpy he was on average, and to whom, why the fuss, etc. I think I’ve finally figured him out, but this was a 20+ year endeavor to iron him out into his current form in my writing.

MU*ing has been a godsend with figuring out character mindsets, to the point I stopped doing character research because my writing felt more mature as far as figuring out how to write people as people, if that makes sense? But for a while, I was playing some characters from my personal fiction of Aldera to try and figure them out. The irony of this is: THEY ALL CHANGED DRASTICALLY DESPITE THE RESEARCH. (Now, they’re nothing like the “researched” versions were.) Go figure.

I just want a tl;dr of what dragon colors and styles mean, since I haven’t read any Pern books.

@Pyrephox I would advise you not to force it, as someone who’s been in this position for a number things (although my depression tends to help a bit here). Point being, I was trying to force my enjoyment of games (not just MU*s, any games), and I ended up becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Months passed of this and I eventually got tired of that feeling and took the plunge to step away.

About two weeks ago I suddenly had the urge to restart one and it’s enjoyable again. Because I’m not forcing myself to sit down and do it; that’s for schoolwork.

On a MU* note, I’d all but quit from lack of drive. I wasn’t planning to start any new characters or anything, but one day virtually out of nowhere a character concept dropped into my head, latched on like a barnacle, and I find myself excited to take him for a spin when the time comes.

But again, it wasn’t because “Oh I HAVE to do this”; it’s because I let it come to me. Did I want to play games and other MU*'s while feeling in a slump? Yes. But forcing myself into something to try and enjoy it felt like work, and that’s completely counter to the idea that it’s for fun.

So yeah. Give yourself permission to take those steps away and if it comes back to you and excites you again, yay!

I was supposed to spend most of today working on schoolwork, like getting caught up on my reading. Instead, I spent most of the day in bed and a little bit playing games.

I’m so tired of feeling tired.

@Polk said in Game-side Logging and Player Protection:

@dvoraen I think the only real player protection that can exist is active game runners who do something to protect players.

Players should feel free to let you know about anything off, uncomfortable, or dangerous.

By the way, IP-based protections are not nearly as useful as you may think they are. They’re a tool in the bag, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to hard-ban suspected VPNs and such. You’re going to have a bunch of false positives AND false negatives.

There’s no automating handling bad actors.

Yes, I agree strongly that the game runners play a major role here, but even they could use as much help as they can get to deal with bad actors. While I also agree that you can’t automate all of it, that doesn’t mean you can’t implement automated solutions that analyze, rather than act. For example, is player X connecting via a lot of different IPs? That’s kind of interesting on its own, but it could also mean “multiple coffee shops” and so on. It’s something to be aware of, but not necessarily act upon, and it can be logged so that if player X does get banned, the game has a basis for potentially bad source IPs to disallow further connection from.

I’m not saying that the code needs to do all the work; I don’t think that’s possible without some serious advances in AI (and unethical and intrusive methods), and even then it should be staff taking action and not the game unless there’s something serious like DDOS attacks and external attempts to access admin accounts going on.

This is in R&R because I imagine the subject matter could potentially turn dark, in that I half foresaw anecdotes of “people do things like X” that didn’t really make it appropriate for non-R&R areas.

At what point is server-side logging invasive to players in a MU*?

I’ve been thinking on the question of how to combat predators and other asshats in MU*s, so I’m crowdsourcing opinions here on the above query. I’ve been contemplating creating systems for Evennia that relate to the question posed (and other Ares-like systems like a cron API and RP/scene-managing API). But I also wanted to see if I could find an acceptable* solution regarding how to build player-protecting tools into Evennia as a personal programming project. My initial thought was to pattern off of how Faraday implemented Ares’ handling of communications, but I wonder if that can be extrapolated further. However, one solution I identified was easily abusable by staff (it was basically ‘suspect’ flagging).

One thing that’s been made clear from reading MSB, BMD, and hearing about it after the fact, is that problem children love to leave trails that, if logged, make it really clear what their behavior is like. BUT, one can’t simply log every communication between every player ever for retrieval, because that’s simply an invasion of privacy and absolutely NOT OKAY. However, in order for a player to report another player, there needs to be a paper trail of some sort that the game generated, notarizes, and sends to staff saying, “Yep this is legit,” as Ares does.

So what do people think is the line to walk here? It can’t be everything, but it can’t be nothing either, as I see it.

The second major query is: what tools should players have to deal with problem players? The usual communication blocks are a bit of a given, but what should players be able to report as questionable? Should it be something like a form where they say, “X is being really creepy” with possible game-generated logs auto-included? Or should it be more simple like a (slightly verbose) command so that it’s not accidentally submitted? If a player reports another, should there be automatic protections enabled such as immediate communication suppression? Notice to the offender that they can no longer communicate with the victim? Shadowbanning? Things like that.

There are other defenses that might need to be enabled on a MU*, such as prohibiting VPN connections (with a per-character whitelist?), connection logging and host cross-referencing, and so on.

I would very much like to hear thoughts.

* Acceptable is a bit subjective, I realize. Not everyone will agree with a given solution.

@SpaceKhomeini said in AI Megathread:

We will have reached the top of Mount ChatGPT when it’s used to write TS scenes.

Maybe it already has. I bet it has.

Robots in your area are getting it on right now.

Obligatory Sex Robot video here

So I kind of want to ask about the unspoken elephant in the room. There were a lot of people at Alpha launch. Where is everyone and what drove people away? I know a couple things, but by my mental math at least 20 players aren’t accounted for and so I’m like WHAR PPL GO?

I am loving Sea of Stars so much. I cannot wait to get home to log more time.

@Jennkryst said in Celebrities We Lost 2023:

Bob Barker

I just saw that. I was but he had a long career as that show host. Rest in peace, Bob.

I have an ignorant question: What is the “definition” of horse in this canine context?

@HannahBananna said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Pavel Thankfully if you had any of the four you’d be smart enough not to start shit with someone who’s obviously always been above you. This ain’t my way of asking. My way of asking was going onto the discord server and politely asking, like an ADULT, something you are STILL proving you’re incapable of being. This is my way of continuing to be an adult and taking away the toys of people who want to be spoiled brats. Like you. Daed.

If this is your way of being an adult, you have a very misguided definition in your mental database.

@Duke-Whisky eeeeeeeeee

I particularly love the first one. Kitty lump! Just begging for snuggles.

@Rinel said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

@Testament

Firstly, huge hugs/good vibes/prayers/whatever you like best sent your way. I’ve been in the ER for anxiety… a lot. Probably over ten times at this point.

Secondly, it sounds like this isn’t your first rodeo with anxiety, but if it is, here’s what you do. First, do everything in your power to curb avoidance of what is making you anxious. Avoidant behavior makes anxiety really, really bad (source: in recovery for severe agoraphobia). Second, see a psychatrist asap. If you can’t see a psychiatrist, see your primary care doctor. Be open to them about what’s happening and ask for medicine. If you have an addictive personality or a history of substance abuse, make sure they’re aware of that before they prescribe you any benzodiazepenes. Having anti-anxiety meds will help you stabilize so you can move on to the third and most important step–therapy.

You’re probably gonna have to do therapy. It sounds like you may need to do some intensive therapy. Find a specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, along with exposure therapy, is an extremely effective method of treating anxiety and depression, which it sounds like you also have.

None of this is easy. If it were, I wouldn’t be a half-employed lawyer who struggles to bill 15 hours a week and who needs her parents to drive her places at 33 years of age. It frequently REALLY SUCKS. But it’s doable. I’m making huge strides in my recovery.

You’ve got this. If you need to DM someone who has been through this shit, whether to ask for advice, chat about it, or just scream directly into a sympathetic ear, I’m here.

I’m rooting for you.

As someone who has had a bit of a mental health fun myself (anxiety, depression), I want to fully endorse what @Rinel has said here, particularly the parts about stability, the likely need for substance support (this doesn’t have to be permanent), and therapy.

I myself need medication because my mind will not stay stable without it. I’m not saying this will be the case for you as well, @Testament, but I tried without and it just would not work for me. But I wouldn’t be where I am now if action hadn’t been taken.

One important thing I want to add: this will take time. It will not be overnight, though you may experience relief. Don’t let that relief lull you into a false sense of security. You need to go see a psychiatrist or your primary care about triage while working toward a lasting solution (the therapy treatment).