One of the better things I’ve seen to counteract this is what Arx did with leaders and their “voices.” A second-in-command-type person who carried all the same weight as the leader for when said leader was inactive, unattentive, unwilling or unable to deal with you, etc.

Generally, I prefer IC leadership to be a mix of staff and players (players can be the deputy personal private secretary, but the prime minster will always be staff), but if there’s a built-in fuckery-avoidance mechanism like Arx had, I’d be more amenable to player-oriented leadership.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Strike Systems:

It’s fine to discuss politics.

Frankly, I’m sick of the idea that politics discussion needs or should be allowed a space to happen wherever we go. The internet is fucking infinite (I’m being facetious, but you know what I mean) if you can’t stop talking about political events for five fucking minutes while you’re tabbed over onto the game window you need to pull the hose-o-news out of your ear.

Is political discussion, especially political discussion outside of one’s narrow bubble, important? Absolutely yes, and it should happen frequently and diligently. Should it happen on GarouFuckers By Night or Men in Tights the MU? For all that is sacred, no.

If we expand out from the MUniverse I can recall solo RPing a lot on play by forum games. But that, much like the vignette most recently demonstrated and expanded upon in the Ares system, was… it was sort of like RPing for an audience, rather than RPing solo. Does that make sense, or make it different?

Aside from the above-mentioned writing of vignettes the only time I’ve ever done “solo RP” was… I can’t even remember what game it was, maybe Serenity? It had a space and cargo system, cargo hauling made money, but you only got XP if you were actively posing? I don’t remember the details.

But there I was, elbow deep in a solo flight from one place to another, hauling my mystical space crystals or whatever trying to make an extra spacebuck, posing “Pavel continued to stare blankly out of the main window. Occasionally, he was tempted by a thought, but he was never one to let himself be distracted from his duty.” Etc, etc, etc. I made it a challenge to myself to become as weirdly Douglas Adamsian as I could in my writing style.

@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):

I don’t think that players should be penalized just for playing with their friends.

Agreed, indeed I’d much rather see some nature of reward or encouragement for the opposite. But at the same time I’d want to mitigate people doing the thing just to get the reward and then leaving the newcomers floundering.

@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):

Wouldn’t that by nature include avoiding interaction with staff, because it’s part of their job as staff to act as a welcome wagon for the game?

Not in my specific instance, since I’m talking specifically about player-led initiatives similar to those I’ve seen in the past – I’m keeping my remarks, generally, about players rather than staff. Though I do believe that staff need to take an active hand in ensuring people are included and, potentially, investigating why they’re being excluded.

@Third-Eye said in RPing with Everybody (or not):

kills a person’s desire to RP broadly and inclusively than turning it into a clock-punch gig

Hey if you could get your quarterly RP KPI report done by the end of the day that’d be greeeeeeat.

@Ashkuri

Well first I want to ensure that it’s clear precisely what I mean when I remark upon a distinction between dislike and not liking, just so as to ensure I’m understood. To me, liking and disliking aren’t two sides to a coin but two ends of a spectrum, with very few people assigned to either end and the vast majority of people in the middle. It’s the middle of that middle that I generally describe as “not liking.” So it’s not people that I dislike, but people for whom I have few (if any) feelings whatsoever, be they old acquaintances or total unknowns. It’s also not a judgement call on the kind of person they are, saints and sinners both sit there in perpetual unexamination.

As to the topic at hand, I go back and forth with my views on it, particularly as my energy levels or general ability to participate waver. I will never say that one owes the entire game’s population anything; however, most games are split in such a way that one is primarily associated with a particular group – vampire or garou, noble families, boarding school houses, people who like using colour codes in their descriptions and those who don’t – and I will argue that one owes a modicum of attention to that group outside of the niche one carves for one’s self. It doesn’t have to be anything arduous, but simply ensuring that newcomers to the group are made welcome, included in a scene or two to introduce them to the game, and so forth. Obviously, it’s not a mandate that everyone must immediately draw in every new fish they see, but if you’ve been in a community for a bit and you see a newcomer or two who haven’t yet found their niche then one might feel behoven to invite them to a scene or two.

That said I would personally avoid any formalised ‘welcome wagon’ team. Purely due to experiences in the past where bad actors have used such a “thankless” and “honoured” position to act badly and draw people in to unhealthy cliques or harems. Formalising the role can also lead to burn out and frustration, especially as we remember that most of us are in our early-to-mid soon-to-be-deads and we don’t have time to sit and work out the roster for who’s sitting at the park gate to welcome the newbies this week.

@MisterBoring I’d think it depends on where the emphasis is in that sentence. If one refuses to RP with people they dislike, that’s fine, but avoiding RP with people they don’t specifically like can make a game feel very unwelcome indeed if it’s the norm.

That said, no individual player should be expected to carry the weight of being the welcome wagon and intake machine.

To sort of follow on from my previous post I’d like to raise a question for the group: Is there a line at which you draw a distinction between “this seems like X” and “oh this outright is X in a new dress”, or is it generally more a vague evolution?

@Cygnus said in Numetal/Retromux:

I think the MU youngins are calling what she does ‘harem-building’ these days, we just called it a clique.

Harem-building often comes with connotations of sexual exploitation or manipulation.

During my teaching days, I read a student’s essay that stuck with me. It asserted that The Godfather trilogy is essentially a retelling of the Oresteia in Mob outfits. I’m not sure I agree but it’s definitely a reading I can enjoy.

Haru Urara, losing racehorse who was a phenomenon in Japan and an ‘Uma Musume’ game favorite, dies at 29

@dvoraen said in MUing Snacks:

OH NO THEY’RE BACK AGAIN

@Tez is who they warned us about in math class.

@MisterBoring said in MUing Snacks:

I keep a bag of almonds

Okay, Brennan.

As for myself, if I know I’m going to be in for a long session (be it tabletop, MUing, therapy, whatever) I’ll cook up some asparagus and broccolini in some herb butter – even when cooled down they’re delish if cooked properly.

Else I’ll eat cabanossi by the mile.

@MisterBoring said in AI In Poses:

makes sense to me

Okay, just for clarity here is why such a case doesn’t make sense to me for our particular hobby: The disability you’re describing, at least as it seems to me, is a disconnect between one’s creative brain and physical ability to output that creativity onto the page with any degree of accuracy or timeliness. Problem exists between brain and output.

Given how LLMs have been presently, commercially implemented they don’t solve any solely brain-output problems. They solve the brain bit, really, really, really badly. To interface with an LLM with any degree of what could arguably be called success typically requires typing, or speech, so this hypothetical disabled person would have to have already solved the problem that you’re asserting LLMs will solve in order to interact with out hobby.

Can LLMs be of benefit to people with disabilities? Fuckin’ probably, I dunno, I’m not an accessibility expert. But given that turning brain creativity into text words is the hobby as far as I see it then, I’m sorry, but if outsourcing the creativity part is somehow how you need to overcome your disability, then perhaps this hobby isn’t for you.

If a person is so disabled that they cannot climb a mountain without the aid of a helicopter, then I would assert the same in their case: The process is as much a part of the hobby as the end result, you may be better served putting your energy into a different pastime.

@bear_necessities said in AI In Poses:

@Tez I mean, please don’t take this in any way other than a legitimate question, but why should someone who utilizes a tool to work around a disability need to explain how they use that tool?

“I’d want” and “they need” aren’t the same thing, especially in this instance of talking about a thought experiment. I’d much rather a real person actually using the technology as an assistive one explain how and why than try to think up fictional scenarios that lead to apropos of nothing statements.

ETA:

So that I’m not misunderstood: A person absolutely doesn’t need to explain their disability to me or how they overcome/deal with it. When we are talking about using something as a disability treatment, assistant, or whatever I do want to hear from disabled people not half-baked conjecture from people who aren’t using the technology in such a way.

@Tez said in AI In Poses:

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.

Can we consolidate all our AI conversation into one big, or at least split off, AI thread? Not every discussion needs to turn into “Here’s my opinion on AI” again, and again, and again.

I can understand people using it as a translator. From what little I’ve seen, it seems to localise better than your bog-standard Google Translate might. I’ve not seen it being used as such in a MUing context, but I might actually be open to it in that instance.