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.

This thread is here in all fun, because getting banned from MSB is still ridiculous to so many of us.

But it has ultimately turned out to be a positive. Clearly, we’re lurking there to see how this all shakes out - and hi to those lurking here in return. It’s sad to lose a piece of our collective history, but it’s not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last.

We aired many grievances in Discord over the past two-ish weeks, but we also started putting our heads together constructively. Several new games are in development, people took (happy and sometimes snarky) walks down memory lane, and this forum came together very quickly as a testament to the willingness of the community to band together.

It’s unfortunate that it took a common enemy to shake us from our complacency, but I just wanted to say that I’m glad that our response was to pick up the pieces and start again.

That’s the community I have enjoyed and am glad to continue enjoying.

Now I am going to block all you people and all the Arx threads and get back to business.

@tsar skim skim skim missing the point skim skim gaslighting skim skim gd this is long lol bet he never heard that before skim skim

I vote we stop feeding this troll and send them back to MSB. They don’t post receipts either, but they like to insist people should.

@tsar Most people I don’t like RPing with probably think I’m boring. If I’m not having a good time, no one is gdi, I’ll take this whole scene out with me.

@Cobalt said in Why is Pack closing?:

my theme files outright point out

Welcome to Gray Harbor, a game set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, where you will be playing a human with low-key psychic powers!

“Can I play a pokemon? let me explain to you why this fits in with your theme and then stomp off and call YOU the bad guy when you disagree”

People just decide what a game is.

I’d rather want than get. I like to pine. But it’s hard to make that happen on M*s 'cause people will usually IMMEDIATELY 100% BE INTO YOUR PC TOO!!! if you show so much as the faintest inkling of interest.

I should probably talk more OOC with people about my intentions, but then I feel like that lessens the tension and whatever let’s just bang and get it over with.

I really don’t have a horse in this race except to say…

Keep making games.

Open them in alpha. In beta. In gold purple yellow upsidedown whatever makes you feel better, but keep doing it.

Some with amazing fully-fleshed wikis and grids will flop. Some with four rooms and an ugly-ass splash-page will soar.

Make it till you think it’s playable and go from there.

I love that I have great memories of things that never actually really happened.

I was in jail with @tsar.

@Pyrephox tazed me a few months ago.

So long ago that I barely remember it, @farfalla wrote me love from love letters.

@bear_necessities and I lived in a haunted B&B.

@Floof brought me my Bible.

I rode my dragon alongside @Tat.

I shucked clams with @Snackness (which sounds dirty :D).

This list goes on and on and on.

@icanbeyourmuse remember who you’re talking about, though. Macha lies and twists things.

She’s at the top of her post talking about “a good dozen” people telling her all about how awful we’re being, then insisting she has no friends (minions) involved in this.

This is a person who has long-since abdicated accepting any responsibility for her actions. She is never the problem.

Cobalt is just the latest person she’s blaming for her own gross behavior.

That Ghost, Devrex, Derp and the remaining members of the Vocal Majority (lo fucking l) are propping her up? Is the only thing they can do short of admitting they backed the wrong horse.

@inuki was a nightmare of a player who didn’t seem to actually read anything, made up entire narratives that didn’t exist, and sex-pested multiple people. To the point that I found out more people had been harassed by her.

@jenn was immediately cooperative and proactive, asked questions so she could understand things, and has no complaints to date against her.

The problem Inuki has isn’t that Jenn is a big, time-stealing problem-player.

The problem is that Jenn was playing a female PC.

I don’t have room for a garden, so instead I grow bonsai trees on a wee shady balcony.