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

he was the same cat 20 years ago that he is now

Unrelated to the topic at hand, but can we bring this kind of phrasing back, please?

@Yam said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

I do kinda’ think we’ve blurred the lines between positive bleed and negative bleed at this point.

Bleed is a complex topic, with a wide range of definitions depending on how deep into the research rabbit hole one goes. We should, probably, use a different term to ensure consistency but we’ve never really been about consistency…

As far as this discussion is concerned, I don’t view “having an emotional reaction” as being bleed. That’s the intended purpose. You’re supposed to have an emotional reaction to RP, that’s the whole point.

Bleed, for me, is always an extreme reaction—extreme as in sitting at the extreme ends of a spectrum, not necessarily extreme in terms of outlandishness. Too far in either direction is a problem, as extremes almost always are.

ETA: To emphasise: Bleed is the feeling and the reaction. Therefore it includes the “being a butt about things.”

@MisterBoring said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

It took me a long time to realize that the positive emotional stuff I get from RP I enjoy is also bleed

I might not use the same wording, but you’re absolutely right to associate even positive emotional stuff as potentially dangerous just as much as the negative. We so often hear of, or even feel, connections that are assumed to be stronger than they actually are simply due to the positive impact someone’s RP/storytelling has had on us.

@Ominous said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

I am still of the opinion that players identify too closely with their characters in MU*s for most people to be divorced from feeling bad when bad things happen to them.

I probably agree with this, but I also don’t see it as a bad thing. It’s not a problem that needs solving, the intense OOC overreactions are, and certain kinds of people are going to have those reactions regardless of system.

@Juniper I disagree that death should be entirely off the table, but I do think it should be intentional on the part of the player. An OOC check-in of “Hey now, if we keep going down this road, then death is very much a potential outcome” would be something I’d suggest, even if you’ve previously established that certain acts, areas, character types are more likely to provoke lethality.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily suit all game genres and types. To me, it probably suits a WoD game, or similarly mechanically driven game, than something like your high politicking Lords and Ladies game. Though I also disagree with the idea that character deaths should be solely dedicated to wrapping up a character in a respectful way. Awesome would be the ideal, sure, and it should serve the game’s story, but a death that’s inadvertent and unexpected IC is prime story fodder.

I can’t help but raise the death of Mollymauk in Critical Role’s Mighty Nein campaign as an excellent example of unexpected death impacting the story in a way that might have been unsatisfying and distressing to the player in that moment, but became foundational to the story as a whole.

ETA: But as with all high risk stories, you’d need a strong level of trust, rapport, etc, etc, etc.

@sao said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

I’m not a magical unicorn

@Wizz said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

how many players really do just suffer like insanely uncomfortable amounts of bleed.

I’d argue that maybe, at least in some cases, it’s not just bleed. Bleed, to my mind, is usually accidental — you need emotional distance between you and your character, sometimes that distance is unexpectedly thin, that’s when bleed happens, and can happen in either direction. But when people wholesale put their whole soul into the character they’re playing, that’s just like wandering into an emotional war zone without armour and doing so intentionally.

Calling it bleed at that point obscures the responsibility that player has to protect themselves. I don’t mean for it to sound like victim blaming, but if you’re wandering around with your entire ass out while we’re playing with lawn darts… you’re responsible if you get a dart in your butt.

Apparently, my requirements for Bad Stuff are the same as my requirements for Saucy Stuff.

If I trust you, if it’s more than just an excuse to roll combat dice with your big ol combatty combat combatter, and if it contributes to the game/character’s story rather than detracts or distracts from it.

Real talk, though, my characters are often designed to fail. They aspire to power, authority, etc, etc, but I’m lazy and very busy RL so I don’t want power, authority, or anything more than a cup of tea. If you can help me tell that story in a satisfying way? I’m yours forever.

@somasatori Or even if you do recognise those as “problems,” it reads more like the typical wannabe Wordsworth or Hemingway crap that I attempt whenever I get too big for my britches.

One of my therapy clients, a survivor of intense domestic violence, specifically wants to keep seeing me because I’m a good man.

Fuck, man. Just… fuck.

@Third-Eye said in AI In Poses:

I also really cringe at ‘vibes man’ becoming the way to figure this out, though, because I see some people spot ‘AI’ and I think they’re wrong, have terrible instincts, and are fixating on stuff I don’t think is relevant.

The number of times I’ve seen people on social media assert that something is “clearly AI” simply because it is a thing they themselves have never said or seen is astonishing. I can’t imagine it being any better when it’s something important, like the RP they’re presently having.

@Faraday All COBOL knowledge is held exclusively by two men, both called Steve. They’re not allowed to travel at the same time, to avoid the risk of all worldly knowledge of COBOL being lost in the same incident.

@dvoraen And somehow someone still needs to know COBOL.

@Hobbie said in AI Megathread:

tl;dr if you let dumb AI learn from dumb AI, AI gets dumber.

So now I should put my poses through all the LLMs, and eventually they’ll break!

@Yam Something like “Using LLMs/AI for any contributions to the game, including but not limited to backgrounds, descriptions, wiki images, poses, etc, is a bannable offence. Being a dick if you suspect someone of using LLMs/AI is also a bannable offence.”

Regardless of whether I agree (morally, ethically, whatever) with the use of AI, out in the real world I can understand it: You want to make a buck, get a grade, or otherwise achieve something that’s difficult with as little effort as possible. I get that.

But… creativity and writing are the entire goddamn point(s) of the kind of RP we do. If you want to use Grammarly or something like that to catch typos and comma placement, that’s totally fine, but to use an LLM to do the creative bit is so alien an idea to me that I’d probably never even suspect a person of doing it. I’d probably just think they’re boring, or ESL, or ESL and boring.

IIRC @Tez did have some issue with player(s) using AI for stuff over on that there Demon (and others) game they ran. Their input might be warranted here too, if we’re having a sensible conversation about it.

@Trashcan said in AI Megathread:

No one is advocating for completely disconnecting your brain while making any judgment

I know that. You know that. But people are idiots and will entirely defer to an authority. Education is always ten years behind technology, and laws are fifteen years behind that.

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

IMHO we need structural change.

Agreed. It’s fundamentally not even really an “AI” problem at its core, but a sort of “humans relying on authorities instead of thinking” problem.

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

Until some article points out that semicolons also occur more often in AI-generated work than in the average (non-professional) writing, and you’re right back where you’ve started.

I don’t like this game anymore.