KB is right. There is nothing to be gained. There is no understanding to reach. There is no communication to be had. The other night I was so profoundly disappointed in what has become of a good place that I was honestly pretty bummed out.
It is what it is. They are what they are. Let them be. And leave them there.
I’m just glad Ghost is there to lead the way to a brighter, more positive future.
Let’s not be reductive genitalia-essentialists about gender no matter where we are in the forum.
I think it’s pretty obvious why HannahBanana has been banned, but just in case it’s not obvious, I don’t care where you are: ablelist language isn’t okay, gatekeeping sexuality isn’t okay, none of this is okay.
https://forum.aresmush.com/t/v1-0-0-released/923
I don’t know if you guys have heard about this new fangled MUSH server called Ares–
Ares has brought a lot of new life into the hobby. I’ve watched people who hadn’t even logged into a MU* in their life launch and run games. Congratulations to @Faraday, and THANK YOU!!
While users can create new threads, they cannot create new categories. I believe that’s what you mean when you say new boards, yeah? We made a conscious choice not to include a politics category when we created this forum and right now that is not changing.
Politics isn’t a team sport. It’s life or death for many of us.
It’s not that we don’t think it’s important, so we won’t make space for it; in many ways, it is TOO IMPORTANT. This is especially true given the hands-off moderation stance I’d rather see on this board. We just don’t have the time, bandwidth, expertise, capacity, etc. to be able to moderate those discussions.
I’m sorry.
@Dreampipe said in Bannings:
There are actually a fuckton of literal fascists in this hobby;
There are fascists in a lot of places, alas. Fascists in gaming is an interesting area people are working on, but the far right were early adopters of online spaces (including back in the BBS days). Their methods will only ever get a small percentage of the population, but if you have so many people you can access, you can get to a much greater proportion of that small number and…well.
As someone who is super into history, Norse mythology, Crusader Kings, punk rock, and RPGs, the amount of time I have to spend squinting at people with common interests and going “Okay, but are you a fucking Nazi?” is both alarming and exhausting.
Seconded. I’m a white dude and it’s sometimes really anxiety inducing to talk about those kinds of interests without feeling like, “guys I swear I just like the stories, I’m not a white supremacist”. Double whammy because I also like power metal.
At least a lot of them usually don’t take long to go mask-off. I remember people using SS designs in medieval games like Mordhau or Chivalry. No it’s not a pair of lightning bolts, I know what you are.
Look, I can’t lie. I would use a pair of lightning bolts because I think lightning bolts look cool.
AND THEN I WOULD BE FUCKING MORTIFIED WHEN SOMEONE TOLD ME.
Pour one out for everyone born in 1988 who is innocently making very poor choices about their usernames.
I am glad that we have largely left behind all-white games in the L&L space. I think the expectation that most people have is that you will see a diverse cast of characters. I appreciate that about Concordia, particularly where they have course-corrected with their pantheon. I think they are doing some other interesting things in that space, too.
There is maybe no perfect way to handle the issue of cultural diversity and real-world inspirations, but I still think that what they are doing is worth an upnod. You got your Targaryens, sure, and your red-heads, and your Romans–
But there is also a house that has clear East Asian influences and one with South Asian influences. I grabbed one of those from the roster because I am always dying to see something – anything, please, god – that isn’t just your standard Western French-British-Something take on fantasy. Then I ran into players who maybe had been expecting something more Western in the house, so I popped in a request to get more clarity. I wanted to know what staff’s intent actually was, and I like the answer I got.
Rather than directly copy and paste real-world cultures into the game, they’ve made a choice to draw on multiple places for inspiration to avoid generalizing, tokenizing, or fetishizing any real-world culture. In this case, yes, the house has elements of North India, but also Moorish Spain. I’m kind of curious if there’s a connecting thread of thought in that they were both extension of Islamic power at times, what with the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire in North India, but I haven’t sat them down for details – and I actually enjoy classical India better so DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO DRAW THAT LINE ON MY ACCOUNT.
Right now, at this moment, all I really care about is that they are doing something different, something interesting, and something coming from a place of curiosity and thoughtfulness. I wouldn’t say that they are a perfect game, and there’s choices I wouldn’t have made, but holy fuck please I hope more fantasy L&L games in the future draw from a wider well than the tiny Western European fantasy well.
He can’t. It would prove everything that is said about him.
Also, he probably doesn’t even go here. He’s never read anything here ever in his life.
ALSO, he left the hobby YEARS AGO, he’s SO BUSY, he’s TOO BUSY TO READ THIS.
@bored said in Concordia Thread:
‘Sorry, bud, you weren’t really involved in the scholar world like those plucky 18 year old pillars of wisdom who founded our community!’ It’s just weird.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from L&L games, it’s that plucky 18 year olds can do anything.
@Testament My boss got fucking clobbered by it and had a similar experience. I’m hearing a lot that this strand is worse. I went and bullied the whole house into hurrying our boosters as a result.
@SpaceKhomeini ChatGPT is actually really bad at smut.
@Buttercup said in Baldur’s Gate 3:
Does anyone else have party changing anxiety, lol?
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/327
BRING THEM ALL. I’ve been enjoying it. I’m hearing banter I missed on my first.
@Vulgar-Boy said in Concordia Thread:
Some players did some really impressive worldbuilding there, especially with work on their houses and home worlds…
This was a thing that is gonna be a hit for some players and a turn off for others. I can see why people would be down for the chance to feel as though they co-created the world. The feeling of player investment is real and valid! Detailing their lands, their houses, even their own gods and religions: I have no doubt that there are a lot of people who would be thrilled by that.
But it’s not for me.
I prefer a clarity of vision that comes from staff so that players can continually drag it off course and make it really reductive and insist that those guys are pirates, these guys are slutty, and those guys all worship spirits and not gods.
Obviously there are challenges with either approach.
For me, however, it contributed to the empty ChatGPT hollow I felt.
@Buttercup It’s a pretty complex situation and people have complex feelings about the use of ChatGPT and similar software. People are going to draw the line around that in different places and for different reasons. What is true for me is not going to be true for anyone else.
Personally, I think that there is absolutely room in our hobby to make use of ChatGPT. That isn’t what bothered me, per se. I think what got to me more was the lack of transparency in their approach.
It’s kind of funny, actually, because they were explicit, crystal clear about the use Midjourney to create PBs for their many characters. In fact, they were so good around their communication there that they even provided guidance around how to use Midjourney to create PBs for the game and in general use.
However, when it came to their use of ChatGPT, they did not call out their use of that as an assitive tool. They have not been clear about where and how they used it.
Beyond that, there is something to be said about the quality of the material produced using ChatGPT even beyond the ethics of it. Bluntly, ChatGPT produces shallow, reductive, artificial and artificially glossy content. It doesn’t have the texture or nuance of human-created content. It’s often also coming from an extremely narrow worldview which can lead to some pretty bland presentations with a serious lack of diversity.
Those are not things I enjoy in theme, setting, characters, or RP.
@Pavel My other AI detector is my brain which is even more unreliable.
That said, there was what you can call a preponderance of evidence taken from a look at many areas of the game. It was all over. Weighed against the fact that they did admit to using it to some degree–! It wasn’t a question of if they used it, but rather how much and how transparently.
@Rowan After my time! IN MY DAY, you were a little child object. Who did what you were told.*
@dvoraen It just wasn’t what I was looking for.
I never quite shook the residual discomfort I had with the use of ChatGPT. It also never quite felt like they were entirely honest about where they used it and to what degree. Everything I ran through an AI detector pinged as more than a light edit.
There were some good people that I had fun with, though, and it felt like they were trying to do their best. I don’t know. It’s a hard world out there. I think there is room to use ChatGPT, so I’m not totally against it. It just never felt super great.
Also, Baldur’s Gate came out, sooooooooooo.