@GF said in New Concept:

if you can’t suspend your disbelief for less prejudice but can for God being a space squid who hates you, then maybe sit with that and really think about it.

If it’s a fictional setting? I absolutely can suspend my disbelief for that. But history is established. Someone (sorry can’t find the quote) mentioned “it’s just the 1920s but without discrimination.”

I don’t know what that means.

I’m not being snarky. I hate discrimination with a burning passion in RL, and I fully respect someone not wanting to deal with that in their pretendy funtimes.

The problem is that discrimination is so deeply baked into societal systems that it’s just not as simple to me as snapping your fingers and saying it doesn’t exist.

Everyone always points to Wild West settings and says: “If you can imagine a world where the PCs don’t die of dysentery, why can’t you imagine a world without discrimination?”

Easy. You’re not pretending dysentery doesn’t exist, you’re just saying the PCs are lucky enough to not contract it, or to contract it and survive – both of which actually happened.

“A world without discrimination” is just not the same thing. How did it get that way? Let’s start from that Wild West setting…if racism isn’t a thing, then logically slavery wouldn’t have been. There wouldn’t have been a Civil War (or it would have gone very differently). Heck, the entire economic basis of the south would probably be dramatically different. Oh and would America even exist at all if not for the genocide against the native peoples? How far back do we go with this?

If you want to do alt-history, that’s cool. That’s what Savage Skies did. They picked a divergence point (something about “when dragons appeared” IIRC) and then wrote the history from that point forward to explain why their imaginary world is different from our real world. It’s a bunch more work, but it addresses the issue cleanly.

Less clean is “racism exists but we don’t want stories about it here” because of systemic discrimination. What about the laws of the land? What about PCs who have discrimination in their backstories? It gets thorny.

I’m not telling people how they should RP. I just wish people would stop ascribing evil motivations to those of us who just have a hard time imagining a historical setting as an egalitarian utopia.

@helvetica said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

@Serafine Logs are publicly available, their placement on the site just isn’t in a very obvious location.

I think their custom portal has a bug actually, because the “Recent” view on scene logs was initially blank for me. Once I switched it to “all” and back to “recent” it behaved itself. That might lead one to honestly believe there were no public logs.

But it’s oh-so-pretty. Seriously. Kudos for the aesthetics.

@Roz said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

@Serafine said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

True to its name, I’ve seen nothing but war and strife from ARES.

I mean, Ares is just a codebase, it doesn’t really have any influence on whether or not there’s drama on a MU*.

Whatever do you mean? I’m quite certain it’s the first and only MU codebase to ever see drama. I designed it special that way.

@tsar said in Los Angeles 2043: A Blade Runner MUSH - Discussion:

Man, thank you. Because this vague insinuation that Director bailed and crushed all these people’s hopes and dreams of stories really started to get my blood pressure up. He’s a really cool dude, who is engaging, funny, and a great time.

I don’t know Director from Adam, but even if they did completely bail, so what?

Staff are volunteers, and players are not entitled to anything from them that they are unwilling to give.

If they open a game and close it the very next day because some horrible experience caused them to reconsider the whole thing? That’s their prerogative. If they open a game and close it the very next week because RL got too hard? That’s their business.

Yes, it’s disappointing when games close. But guess what - even running YOUR OWN GAME doesn’t mean you’ll get a chance to finish the stories you imagined telling. Enjoy it while it lasts.

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

There have been Star Wars MUs where people play members/supporters of the literal fascist Empire; Wild West games where people play racists, outlaws, and robber barons; supernatural games where people play vampires and werewolves; and modern-day games where, indeed, people play super-rich elites.

This fixation that fantasy settings are bad and other genres are good seems weirdly out of step with what people actually do in those other settings.

People point to the staff tools and FS3 design in Ares as like: “This enables folks to run games with fewer staff,” and while that’s true, it’s backwards. Ares and FS3 were designed the way they are because games, including my own, were having trouble finding and keeping staff.

I personally experienced too many cases of staff blowups or abandonment through the years, some of which harmed relationships with friends. So for the last decade or so, I run games myself. That means not only do I need tools to support that (see: Ares and FS3), I need game design to support that. So generally I stick to single-sphere, PVE, narrowly-focused games. ETA: Also with de-centralized storytelling like @L-B-Heuschkel described.

@doodletilidie Be aware that if you allow players under 18 you’re subjecting yourself to the COPAA laws. Additionally, you may be opening yourself up to liability if you allow R-rated content on a wiki that is geared towards 13-year-olds (per your NSFW policy) or by allowing mature RP at all without the players involved having any means to verify the age of the people they’re playing with. Big can of worms. Don’t recommend.

ETA: COPAA is specifically for under-13 but other regional laws may still apply for under-18s, especially European players. Still don’t recommend.

@Kestrel That’s very interesting. I only skimmed the thread, so maybe I missed something, but I wouldn’t consider their attitude “disdain” so much as a different emphasis.

We want people to be able to emote with each other while focusing on one thing at a time, not doing that awkward thing that plagues MUSHes where you end up addressing five people in a single emote and having five conversations at the same time.
…
What we’re trying to do here is provide an immersive atmosphere for a playstyle that resembles improv acting more than collaborative writing. It’s difficult and jarring to immersion when these two styles clash.

Much as I enjoy MU RP, they’ve got a valid point, don’t they? I’ve literally had 1-on-1 MU scenes where there are three different conversation threads going simultaneously between the same two characters. Traditional MU paragraph style resembles neither organic character interaction nor normal creative writing.

TGG, for instance, had shorter poses during action scenes by the necessity of the code. Storytelling still occurred within those constraints.

Like they said, these are styles. Neither intrinsically better or worse than the other, but each having pros and cons. At least they’re up front about it and setting expectations about what they’re going for.

@RedRocket said in AI PBs:

Everything the a.i. makes is entirely original.

GenAI makes nothing original. Every single thing it does is algorithmically based on the work it’s been trained on. Without that trained work, they’ve got no product.

That trained work was used without the permission of the creators. That is the crux of the lawsuits, and while the results have been mixed so far, I believe ultimately the creators will prevail in some form or another (probably a watered-down global licensing pool, but it’s at least something). I believe this because one of the cornerstones of the fair use doctrine is that the transformative work does not replace or compete with the original. That is demonstrably not the case here. This has been theft and plagiarism on a scale that would make Napster blush.

ETA: The Getty and Disney lawsuits are probably the strongest, as they show pretty compelling evidence that their artwork/photos are baked into these GenAI tools to such a degree that it can faithfully reproduce them when prompted. It’s not just stylistic inspiration.

@RedRocket said in AI PBs:

The training process teaches it to draw in the same way humans learn to do art…

GenAI does not learn in the same way a human does. It’s a false equivalence. People keep wanting to anthropomorphize these things like they’re actually intelligent, but they’re not. They’re fancy word- and image-predicting algorithms. Autocomplete on steroids. They do not fundamentally understand the world the way a human does. They have no actual creativity, insight, or originality. They match patterns and generate similar ones. They do it really well, which is why the tools work, but that is not the way humans think or learn.

@Pyrephox said in D&D Licensing Agreement:

I don’t begrudge Hasbro making money off of D&D. There’s a lot of the merchandising and expansion of the IP that I love. I know it’s only there because it’s profitable, but as long as it’s fun, it’s good. However, I don’t like the way this thing has been played…

That’s where I land. D&D is their product and they’re entitled to stop letting other people make money off it without getting a cut. But their terms are utterly ridiculous.

It would be like me saying that not only was AresMUSH no longer free, but if you use it you have to send me all your game’s wiki/css/etc. that I can use for whatever I want without paying you a cent. That’s just absurd.

Some players will roll with things - I love that. But I’ve had some players quit over what I considered natural (non character-ending) consequences of their PCs’ actions, and others throw gigantic fits over the smallest of setbacks.

PC death is my personal hot-button because it ends the story and makes you start over from scratch. That’s not fun for me, so I don’t play (or run) games like that.

@SpaceKhomeini said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

I usually operate under the assumption that the character I’m helming is largely an idiot and does idiot things that will result in idiotic self-owns.

Sometimes I forget that I haven’t communicated this loudly enough with everyone around me and they get kind of cagey when I do stupid shit IC.

The fact that this needs to be communicated at all is kind of emblematic of the core issue. Most players in my experience don’t want their character to come off looking bad (in their opinion) because they think it makes them look bad. There’s such an over-investment in IC success, glory, and coolness that if someone is actively trying to embrace natural consequences or have their character do something stupid, it’s looked upon with suspicion or disdain.

@Tez said in AI Megathread:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Just as a note, many (if not most) of these “signs of AI writing” are in fact signs of professional writing as well.

The so-called “ChatGPT Dash” is just the em dash, widely used by pro authors and well-known in Emily Dickinson poetry. Rule of three, “has been described”, parallelism… most of these are common writing tools that many people just weren’t aware of before. ChatGPT is able to imitate those tools because it stole the published work of actual writers.

Now if your coworker who couldn’t string a coherent paragraph together suddenly starts using elegant triplets and juxtaposition, it’s probably a sign that they’re using AI writing. Otherwise, it doesn’t mean much. And that’s why, to @dvoraen’s point, there is no reliable tool for AI writing detection that doesn’t have a zillion false-positives with real writing.

@Yam said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

You earnestly think it’s okay for people to address others this way?

What on earth did I say that makes you believe I think it’s okay for people to treat others rudely? I have said repeatedly that it is important for staff to set boundaries. All we disagree on is what form those boundaries take as a default action.

Do you think these people can be coached into acting like a model MUSHer with a gentle warning? A second chance? A strike system? Do you think they won’t cause problems down the line?

I don’t know what you mean by “these people”, because I don’t think it takes a certain kind of person to lose their temper, say something they regret, word something more confrontationally than they should have, etc. Humans are going to human.

But yes, I know with 100% certainty that some people who screw up can mend things and behave properly, because I have literally seen it happen. On many occasions.

I have also banned people! Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. Sometimes there are less drastic alternatives. I’m genuinely baffled why this is such a controversial take.

@Pavel said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

You won a game of connect four in three moves.

I’m not even sure I’ve ever won a game of connect four. Especially against my kids, lol.

@Yam said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

This was basically enough to get OnceWas banned. This person was freshly new. This is the most hair trigger case I can think of. He was immediately shown the door, although he was sure to kinda’ buckle down on his stance. Mild, probably, but no one wanted to deal with it.

I didn’t recall them by name, but I searched and all I could find was this post where I basically said that their attitude over a minor documentation issue was “bafflingly aggressive”. I can’t find anywhere where I said they should be banned for it? Or supported them being banned for such a thing? That doesn’t seem like something I would do, but maybe I’m forgetting some important detail.

I’m unclear of what your threshold is, as I recall you were not very approving of this behavior.

Disapproving of someone’s behavior doesn’t equate to thinking they should be banned for it. As staff, you have the authority to set boundaries. Sometimes that can be done with a coaching approach, other times you need something firmer, like:

“If you would like to try again and rework that page into something even remotely approaching a reasonable discussion of issues rather than a full-on attack, feel free. Otherwise leave. It’s that simple.” - actual Fara quote

In that specific case, the player backtracked and we had a constructive conversation. There have been other times where other players full-on apologized and we’ve gone on to have a good relationship.

There have certainly been times where I’ve given someone too many chances, but on the whole this approach has worked out well. YMMV.

@Trashcan said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

and let us leave room for grace and assume this is more than an isolated incident)

That is the whole crux of the debate from my perspective. Various folks in the thread have made statements that indicate they don’t leave grace to ensure it’s more than an isolated incident. That even a single remark they deemed “rude” was enough to warrant a ban. I’m too tired to go and find the exact quotes, but it was pretty clear to me.

I just think that’s excessive. I also think it’s their right to do so on their games if they see fit.

@Tez said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

that we might all be coming into this from different perspectives based on our own experiences with the people involved and the situation at large. I don’t think it’s really a pure abstract thought exercise here. This is coming from a very specific example.

Can’t speak for anyone else obviously, but I have been approaching it as a purely abstract thought exercise. I don’t know the game in question or anyone involved in the original situation, and the log we saw alluded to some degree of prior history that we have no context for. Maybe there was just a bad vibe. I have no idea.

@Tez said in Empire Discussion Thread:

I think it’s a mistake to treat this as a generic case rather than a specific one.

Why? The convo has long since spun off from WS/Ada into a more generic discussion about whether it’s best to tow a hard line on banning people for “being rude” (which is an incredibly vague line that I’d be willing to bet WE HAVE ALL CROSSED, intentionally or not, at one point or another).

@Yam said in Empire Discussion Thread:

I know this is gonna’ be hard to believe for some folk, but you can actually have a game of relatively decent people that, even on their off days, won’t be particularly rude or pushy directly to the game runners. It might not be a BIG game, but from what I gather, it doesn’t look like most staffers want to staff big games anyway.

That’d be nice, but I have never in my life been on such a game.

Look, I’m not excusing rudeness here, but let’s be realistic. These are open public internet games with people who don’t always know each other well, and text-only chat. Text lacks tone. People don’t always word things right. Even the best players can have moments where they get frustrated or impatient.

I’ve never been intentionally rude to a staff member, but I can guarantee I’ve said things in such a way that could be taken as rude, snarky, pushy, etc. at some point. (Actually probably with @Roadspike, lol, since we’ve had some good-natured but spirited debates about FS3 implementations. ) Many players who I consider good peeps and friends have slipped up on occasion. People make mistakes.

Nobody’s saying you should tolerate a player who acts egregiously, or one who’s a constant pain in the butt. It is important to have boundaries. All I’m saying is that it’s probably in your best interests as a game-runner to give people a little grace (and hopefully they’ll give it back to you on YOUR off days).

@Wizz said in Empire Discussion Thread:

if someone decides to ban lots of very rude strangers, I mean. so what? this is honestly the only medium I have ever played where bans are considered this shocking “nuclear option.” they are actually pretty common on tons of other platforms, and it doesn’t prevent them from being diverse and active spaces, because it’s about creating and maintaining the game culture and they understand that people come and go regardless.

I don’t disagree with you on principle. Obviously people should act like mature adults, and staff should set whatever limits they see fit.

My point is more practical. I’ve run a LOT of games through the years, for the most part with a reputation of them being pretty chill, friendly places. Yet even on games like that - if I had banned everyone who was the least bit rude, pushy, entitled, disrespectful, snarky, or in any other way “out of line” on a single occasion, I wouldn’t have had any players. Many would be banned, others would have left because of their friends being banned, and still others would have left because I developed a reputation where one misstep (even just a misunderstanding) leads to a ban.

But again I want to stress that I’m not criticizing Ada in this specific instance because I don’t have all the facts, and even if I did - it’s still entirely their call.

@Wizz said in Empire Discussion Thread:

I do not at all think that behavior is typical of the “average” crowd. … I honestly would prefer more staff to have a very clear and hard line like that

Even good players can have a bad day, lose their temper, get frustrated or impatient, or even just word something poorly that comes across harsher than they meant. Nobody’s perfect.

If staff wants to take a hard line, that’s their prerogative. It’s not for me to tell other people how to run their game. But in my experience, it’s not necessary. You can set boundaries for acceptable behavior without banning everyone who steps out of line. For example:

@Pacha said in Empire Discussion Thread:

Had I been the staff member in that situation, I would definitely have asked them to go away, come back, and try again after an attitude adjustment.

@Wizz We don’t have all the details, but I read that more as they chose not to submit more jobs when there were already a couple open. The job systems I’m familiar with don’t really have a player-driven “cancel” feature. If this one does and they +job/cancel-ed a bunch in a fit of pique, that’d be different. But even then, cancelling a job because you’re impatient is hardly something I’d consider a bannable offense. (Though staff is obviously free to ban anyone they like for any reason, or no reason.)