Happy Pride Month, everyone!

I woke up this morning a wee bit sad as I had to close a tab open to MSB on my phone, and reminded myself:

The forum was never the community. It was just where the community agreed to hang out. It could have been Reddit or Discord or a MUSH but - for a few years - it was the MSB forum.

If WORA was ever a thing, it is here now. The spirit of open, lively debate is here.

What we left behind are admin who admit candidly that they wanted us off their forum, so we are gone.

The people left behind on Derp’s forum are a separate community.

People can decide where they would like to belong. (Except for those of us who were banned but I also think that just reinforces what most of us had already chosen.)

I am happy to be part of this community. 🥰

@GF said in Bannings:

At some point, it has to become a vibes-based decision.

Honestly? At every point. Even looking down the barrel of logs and screenshots, you’re still gonna have to make a decision based on your instincts.

I’m not sure people grasp how much even the most flippant of us wind up agonizing over these decisions sometimes. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this” is probably the most common phrase people say to me when they want to put someone on my radar, and that’s sort of a sad state of affairs. Even on GH, which was a hot mess, we only ever got a handful of actual complaints about behavior from people; most people who are getting harassed just leave rather than go through the whole process of reporting someone.

The only false report I’ve ever gotten on any game, to my knowledge, was from Ruiz. Who went right for the throat with a job to complain about the person it turned out she was harassing. Neither player got banned over it, though the other player eventually quit.

^ See above re: wrong way on a decision before. I should’ve banned Ruiz right then (or at least shortly afterward when her creepiness started to twig @bear_necessities), but no one had receipts and it felt somehow wrong to ban someone just because my co-admin thought they were creepy.

Which is just the dumbest rationale I’ve ever used, and it embarrasses me to this day.

tl;dr - be a good admin and swing the ban-hammer freely till you achieve the desired PEACE & QUIET

I forgot this thread was here. I stand by my “let Derp’s forum lie” mentality, but also…

Derp has been completely honest about why certain bans were lifted and others weren’t: He doesn’t like us.

Which is completely fair. I don’t like him, either.
When he was made admin, I had every intention of just bouncing. But I realize now that I fucking care about this community, and he doesn’t, so I’m glad I came back.

I don’t expect to ever be unbanned there. Derp can’t handle people speaking truth to him, especially women.

The community that was WORA - that Arkandel handed over to Ganymede - isn’t fractured. It’s right fucking here.

WORA has never been an immutable line in the sand. It’s always a party that’s popped up at someone’s house 'cause their parents were out of town.

When Nymeria threatened copyright infringement and we had to flee off Proboards (or whatever that was), the community moved to a new location. This is the same thing: Ganymede torched our old neighborhood and gave the keys to Derp, so we just moved on.

It’s really hard to explain how much of this is because… honestly… Derp is such a mansplainy little turd, that it is hard to swallow that he “wins.” He and Ganymede essentially have the keys to our shared history. And it hurts to think of losing that (for the 4th time?) because of this narrow-minded little man who doesn’t have the common decency to yield to the will of the community he was supposed to be entrusted to oversee.

Derp should have done the right thing and stepped aside when it became obvious how upset so many of us were.

Ganymede should have done the right thing and asked him to step aside when it became obvious how upset so many of us were.

The misplaced trust in Ganymede over the years compiled by the smug crowing imagined in the background by that tiresome manchild…

It still stings.

So that’s why I’m still reading, even though I know I shouldn’t. I’ll grow out of it soon.

They won’t.

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

Yep.

Sometimes people lie.

Please show me the receipts where people have lied about being harassed. If this is such a prevalent problem, you should have no trouble producing them.

We lost our CKCS recently. So now we have 1 & 1/4 Boston Terriers.

@Cobalt lordy, just when it feels like it can’t go any lower

Just from my own past experience? Don’t give away your DB. Don’t let someone take it over. We did that with GH, and I regret that decision big-time. Stuff only got worse, and - even though I publicly walked away - there’s still a sense of responsibility. And people who still think I was responsible for shit that I had no control over.

If they love it so much, let them make an homage.

LOLOL and Gany banned us all to protect this nasty weirdo

this hobby, man

@Cobalt just jumping on the bandwagon.

Derp’s knee-jerk assumption was that YOU are the bad actor in this scenario, and everyone agreed - right up until you walked into the room, when suddenly they realized they weren’t just talking about someone who couldn’t defend themselves. Then Ghost and Macha did their frantic back-pedaling, and Derp of course ignored the fire he just started.

They’re not there for discussion. They have BANNED everyone who actually wants to discuss things.

@Testament totally unrelated to this nonsense, but I was just thinking about you the other day and am glad to know you’re still kicking around.

TY for poking your head out.

@Faraday said in AI PBs:

But there’s a big difference between “I understand the harm that Amazon does but I still choose to use it because (reasons, which may even be wholly justified given your personal situation)” and “I don’t get why everyone keeps saying Amazon is a big deal; it really does no harm when I order from them; people are just overreacting.”

There’s also a big difference between “I don’t purchase things from Amazon” and “I feel that people who purchase things from Amazon are enabling corruption and exploitation.”

And I think that’s why you have people responding the way they are. The upstream problem is Midjourney, but there’s a sense in this thread that players who use it are somehow to blame for that corruption.

people with AI PBs : steal from artists :: people who shop on Amazon : run a sweatshop

Midjourney : steals from artists :: Amazon : runs a sweatshop

It may not be intentional, but that’s how it comes across, and why I personally felt the need to defend my use of image generators.

I’m not a bad person! I just can’t do art and get bored!

Edit to add - @sao enmeshed is a great way to put it. They’re so everywhere that even actively trying to avoid them doesn’t always work.

@Tez ooooh! Thank you for the tip! Added to the knowledge bank.

It’s a jungle out here. (get it??? cuz the Amazon is like a jungle and the company is called…)

@Faraday said in AI PBs:

If you want to boycott Amazon…

I do this. It was a huge inconvenience at first, as it’s really hard to find anything for sale online not through Amazon. Like, I’ve even bought things off Etsy that turned out to just be repackaged Amazon stuff.

I don’t judge MUSHers who still use AWS or bought their keyboard off Amazon just because I choose not to engage with that company. Not everyone can or should make the same choices I do.

@Faraday said in AI PBs:

We can each choose what causes are important to us.

And how we engage with people who align differently.

@lordbelh said in AI PBs:

I’m more comfortable using an AI generated image than the image of a real person who didn’t in any way agree to be used in that way.

I’m not sure I’m more comfortable, but you touch on why I really waffle on the whole “we’re still using someone else’s copyrighted work.”

Something like 15 years ago, I took two copyrighted images of Ben Affleck and Ray Stevenson and clipped them together (very badly) so it looks like they’re kissing. I don’t think either of them would have consented to the existence of this image, and now one of them is dead, so he definitely can’t.

Today, I’d ask Midjourney to create the same image and it’d probably take about the same amount of time and probably create close to the same image I did.

I know that people are going to insist that using MJ is more exploitative of artists because it was trained on artists’ work without consent, etc., but Ben Affleck and Ray Stevenson are also artists, and I never paid them for their likenesses; the photographer who took the pictures I snipped and clipped is an artist, and I never paid them for their work; nor the websites I right-clicked to take the hosted art from to begin with…

I dunno. It feels like a weird hill for MUSHers to want to die on. It’s a writing hobby.

@Third-Eye said in AI PBs:

I can’t make myself care.

+1

I like this site for idle scrolling: https://eternal-lust.tumblr.com/fcdirectory

• Address: pern.gaslightswitch.com port 4201
• Portal: https://pern.gaslightswitch.com/

We have a few people looking to play Impression on-camera, so we’ll be running a hatching in August, with events kicking off in earnest on the 29th of June.

It’s a good time to join if you’ve ever wanted to play Candidacy, Impression and weyrlinghood as a character arc. Our “process” is low-key, so you won’t need to write an app or jump through any hoops. Just create a character, sign up to Impress, and go about your regular RP.

We also have a few big story moments coming up in July, so it’s a good time to join if you’ve ever wanted to play Pern regardless of Candidacy.

@Roz said in World Tone / Feeling:

But we did make some pretty big changes over the years, both in regards to regaining magic in the setting and in pretty notable cultural shifts, such as restoring the Lost Gods to the Faith and all the plots surrounding thralldom in the Mourning Isles.

I’m curious if you can share any specific examples of player actions driving this. (NB: I don’t know if you were staff on Arx. I think no? But I am looking for player perspectives if people have them.) Was this something players started and staff facilitated? Was it part of the metaplot plan all along and waiting for players to engage with it? Genuinely curious.

@Tez Thanks for the examples. I love the idea of the visual look of the game matching the story and the temporary room descs.

@Roadspike Those are good conceptual examples. Can you share any specific examples from the perspective of you, as a player?

@Jumpscare Also thanks! I appreciate the examples. I’d be really curious to hear about it from the player side - not “they” but “us.”

Admittedly, as a player, this isn’t something that drives my RP (I don’t want my character to be the star of a plot; it makes me feel uncomfortable), but I do have an example to share of how I think it was done well.

On Horror 2, everything we did affected the apartment complex. We were really in charge of the scenery (other than Brett doing his Kool-Aid Man charge through the wall, but that just set the stage imo). Doors remained locked or unlocked, monsters directly responded to PC actions, and the tension of the story was at least partially predicated on the worry that the fellow PCs would do something dumb and get us all killed.

To bring this long post full circle: this is the world tone/feeling that I also prefer. I thrive in D A R K settings where the world seems bleak and the last glimmer of hope is dying right before our eyes… but it’s ultimately about a setting that creates a good backdrop for character interactions.

I want a world where I can have my Bar RP without actually having to set foot in a bar. We can talk about what happened in the last scene (“Me and @Pyrephox’s PC got into a fight 'cause that’s how we ROLL.”) while moving into the next one (…KB explains while painting a smiley on the ICBM she plans to use to retaliate.) without ever having to stop for exposition.

tl;dr thank you for the examples! Please keep them coming!

@Roadspike said in World Tone / Feeling:

if the world is dark, I want to be able to make positive change (even if it’s small); if the world is bright, I want there to be a little grittiness to it as well.

People seem to be saying this a lot, so I’m kinda curious what “touch the world” mean in terms of MUSH gameplay.

Can you share some concrete examples from a player perspective of what this looks like on a MUSH?

I know a lot of us have run games over the years and probably think we’ve done this from an admin perspective, but I’d love to hear some player-side examples of this in effect on a MUSH.

I’m much more of a storyTELLER than storyPLAYER, and I’d love to be better at making stories responsive.

@dvoraen said in General Video Game Thread:

I need to know what everyone who has finished Clair Obscur — Expedition 33 felt about the story right meow.

(No spoilers. FEELINGS ONLY.)

I had a lot.

33/10 story.

I loved it. I had to walk away and compose myself before I could finish it, because it’s really hard to hit that perfect parry when the tears stream.

Again, thanks for the recommendation, @dvoraen