@MisterBoring This sounds dangerously close to caring for and protecting the player base. Is that even allowed?

Gene Shalit. One of those people I’d just subconsciously presumed would never leave us.

@howyadoin When it works it’s so good. I am acutely sensitive to the question, “Are you sure?” XD

I have had someone try to weaponize this the opposite of this concept against me, an online game’s GM telling me, “I don’t think that’s what’s what your character would do,” and it’s one of the most infuriating memories I have from tabletopping. Turned out they were very corrupt and regularly gaslighted many of their players.

Now that I vented lol, nice article, thanks for sharing. The “Same Page” tool they reference is a great concept to apply, this is a huge part of what session zero is about for me. I think you can articulate this well enough to translate it to online games and even online games with strangers, you just gotta make sure your leadership reports on and enforces it broadly which means they need to be personally aware of what players are up to.

Speaking from personal experience here, as a helper to staff and a player in a place where I dealt with Wikibara for about a year, Numetal/Retromux staff made the right call. Wiki made the wrong call, and keeps calling back. Having seen the ban post in whole, all I thought was “lol, lmao.” As my grams would put it, “He’s a pill.” But anyone who’s read this far already knows it.

For the record I have never made contact with Numetal/Retromux, so the below is no apologism for a certain game or policy, just my general views.

Community curation is often as vibes-based as it is formal. This means that statistically sometimes a person will be excluded from a game when they could have made it better, but it also means that a good leadership team will be erring on the side of caution so that players who could have brought cultural dissonance to a whole game are less likely to make it through approval.

Imagine or recall if you’ve already seen it, how long it can take to eject a bad-for-the-community-but-not-technically-rule-breaking player from a game after approval and then let out a sigh of relief along with me that in at least this case, nobody had to go through that.

What’s the real takeaway, here, though? Always keep receipts. 🧾

@Juniper You’d hate Luffy.

@Jennkryst Skanking? Squicking? Skullfucking? The people need to know!

@Gashlycrumb I showed my husband the series The Human Animal last year and it took me back to when I watched it during the original US broadcast. I had to sneak watching it because my religious household forbade secular television, and looking back I’m pretty sure it is part of what helped me eventually break the spell of religion and find peace with a scientific world view. Thanks for everything, Desmond.

Here’s a link to the mini series. https://archive.org/details/vid-20230113-091100

@Ashkuri
Schadenfreude.
It’s easier than keeping up with telenovelas.
Camaraderie in that I’m not the only one in the world recovering from the worst of such places/people.
Nostalgia that I’m not the only one who also had some incredibly lovely experiences with some places/people.
Confirmation I did the right thing by moving on to other hobbies.

Human complexity, in short.

Full T1 para no autos!!1!

I only ever played a clear cut bad guy once. It one day fell to her, as Tremere Deputy, boil a sleeping Ghoul in his own juices for banging a werewolf who was using his freaky kinks to gain info on the city’s Kindred. It was gorily rendered with staff at hand, and I felt kinda bad about it for a while. Eventually the player reached out to me and said there were no hard feelings, their character deserved it. I still think about it when I think of the Tremere or Vampiric law and order, and it was close to 20 years ago.

That poor couch.

@Yam Well, there you have it, folks; this website’s least controversial post!

@RightMeow It’s a big step to take, but the most important part is making a choice to steward yourself, whatever shape that takes. And no shame if you dip back in later, just enjoy the power of the moment you’re in, whenever that moment is happening.

@DapperPenguin Christ, that’s grim.

@hellfrog Someone’s gonna read that as an irresistible challenge.

@MisterBoring
“I know it’s crooked but it’s the only game in town.”

Some folks are legit institutionalized. Speaking of my personal journey, internalizing the reality that I don’t have to MUSH or RP changed my life for the better. I don’t have to pick the least painful version of always-painful options, I can just do other things for a while, maybe for good; things that bring joy without compromise.

@MisterBoring I was thinking the same thing, because all this rotten shit from AoA reminds me so much of what Lib truly is, but far more disturbingly, I’m reminded of the ways players gaslight themselves into staying there and trying to learn how to tolerate abuse and neglect, thus enabling more of both. One by one folks I warned and even gave a roadmap to how they’ll be eaten up if they stayed on Lib, would months or now years later come to me and say, “You were right.”

But it’s not that I’m right, it’s that successful abusers have a process and patterns. Once you learn to identify that, you can more confidently stand up for yourself and stop enabling the abuse, which usually includes the step of severing yourself from the place(s) where they abuse you.

Sometimes people choose to create their community and self-identify in abuse because it’s familiar and they feel in their element, to the point of becoming abusers themselves in the absence of outside abuse. Peace and love to those stuck in the cycle, but I truly hope they can summon the grit to face terror they feel towards having to change who they are, because who they let themselves remain until that happens is truly heartbreaking (and also possibly dangerous).

@Tez So you call yourself a role player? [smirk.jpg] Name all poses.

@Pyrephox The joyous despot…would make a good pub name.

Play Cozy Keep! Play Mycopunk with friends! Enjoy your life! ️