Moved a few posts about how to get an account here. lol i love my bubble.

@Artemis Just DM an email to me and I will make an account w an invite link that goes to that email. It could be your email. Your cousins email. A temp email. I don’t care. You do need to be able to access it for the invite link and password resets.

We had a run of bad actors so account creation is limited atm.

@Artemis If they want an account, I just need an email. If they don’t, they are wise beyond measure.

@somasatori You know, that’s fair. The tone of the question wasn’t great though, and that’s what I think I’m responding to.

I find the setting and conflict of empire a bit nebulous and hard to grasp myself but I don’t need to be shitty about a new game and a widely played older game to say so. My friends seem to be grabbing it fine!

@Artemis

Do you know how much if any AI was used in the game? Rosters, theme, code, etc? I noticed there wasn’t an AI policy at all.

Forked discussion: https://brandmu.day/topic/614/empire

https://brandmu.day/topic/612/berem-an-ares-fantasy-game

Preemptive thread.

@labsunlimited said in Historical Games Round 75:

See this is what makes pre modern games attractive in terms of ism handling. The world was so different that many of the categories of bigotry today just didn’t exist yet. The beef between ancient Assyrians and Greeks might as well be a beef between vampires and werewolves for how relevant it is today.

It’s unavoidable in all human history that people have used bigotry to justify harming perceived political and social enemies. It’s not the only way to go after your enemies, either, and those other ways are a lot less retraumatizing for people who have experienced it. Few people have been traumatized by weaponized lightning bolts, disintegration rays, or medieval weaponry applied to them. Nor have they been hurt by people orchestrating a palace coup against them and running them off their throne. But the modern ism stuff? Why drive off players like that? If the beef is between like, Hittites and Myceneans, who cares? Go ham.

Another agree and disagree. I personally prefer to explore pre-modern stories, but there’s still plenty of isms in those cultures which resonate on down the line: sexism, classism, etc. History is not freedom from isms, just distance. Hopefully.

@DrQuinn said in Historical Games Round 75:

I think when doing something like this you also need to be very aware that “historical prejudices” are still very real today and that mushes are still overwhelmingly white. So while it might be fun for one person to play being racially discriminated against in the old south, there are a whole lot of people who deal with that every day and might be going online to escape from that and not want to see that in their fun-pretendy-time game. Especially since there are definitely players out there drooling to put that white hood on and let the things they don’t dare say in real life to a person out online.

Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.

I agree and disagree with you:

Especially since there are definitely players out there drooling to put that white hood on and let the things they don’t dare say in real life to a person out online.

Throw them out. Throw them the fuck out. I don’t think they are as subtle as they think they are. If you see it, if you sniff it, throw the poop out. You’re right that you will get people pushing boundaries, but you get people pushing boundaries regardless. Flush 'em.

Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.

Maybe.

I think we also have a tendency (duh, obviously) to take a very modern (duh, obviously) western idea on what isms are and what we would expect to see in play. I’m more interested in themes of cultural xenophobia than colonial racism: the isms of different times and in different places. I’m interested in stories that don’t draw quite so direct a line to the here and now, but there are of course still echoes of any marginalized stories.

@Trashcan said in Historical Games Round 75:

Since I was namedropped earlier in the thread (thanks @Tez) I felt compelled to post something here.

@Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan @Trashcan

Thanks for being willing* to be dragged in to the conversation.

For me it comes down to two things:

a) Players need to know what to expect. The social contract that @Roadspike cited is a great place to set expectations.
b) Staff needs to do the work to maintain their vision.

* not willing

@Roadspike said in Historical Games Round 75:

I think this is a great take, but I also think that some of this can be covered with the use of a Social Contract as described by James Mendez Hodes in one of his several very good blog posts on historical (tabletop) roleplaying:

https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2018/11/10/best-practices-for-historical-gaming

If Staff lays out from the start what is acceptable to see on-screen and what is not, what will be argued about on-screen and what will be accepted, then anyone who violates that Social Contract can pre-emptively be shown the door, allowing those who remain to explore the setting to the extent that they feel comfortable within the protections of that Contract.

Literally right this second in another chat talking about social contracts as a good tool for this. 1000% agree.

Moved here from https://brandmu.day/topic/606/missed-settings/41

Moved some posts before Ashkuri kills me

I’m gonna say something wild:

I think maybe more isms should be included again and we’ve gone too far to remove them. It is possible to tell stories – good stories, fun stories – inside of that structure as long as people have full awareness of what they are engaging it and the chance to opt in or out. Let players play bad guys if they want, so that other players have something to play against.

But.

The list of people I trust with this is pretty small, and staff would have to VIGOROUSLY ENFORCE THIS. I’ve talked about this with @Trashcan a bit lately. I can’t blame people for choosing to eliminate the isms rather than police them. It’s staff time that could go elsewhere, and by including them, staff have a responsibility to make sure that they are used well and players are behaving.

But!!!

I don’t think including isms is necessarily bad.

Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, but mostly that’s a surprise to me because @Tat and I looked at doing it but never really got it rolling.

I’m tagging you everywhere today, Tat. Sorry.

@Snackness said in Your first game?:

An RL friend got me into Harper’s Tale (Pern MOO) when we were in high school. I have long since lost touch with that friend, but I’m still MUing!

It was my sister who got me into it when we were in jr. high or high school. I didn’t tend to play very many games at a time, so HT was my mainstay for a long time although I dabbled in others.

Years later when @Tat and I met on our X-Men game and staffed together we discovered that we had actually played together on HT which was fun.

I think the difficulty of all of these basic pieces likely holds it back from wider adoption. There’s a reason there’s 10 new ares games for every new evennia game. ANYWAY GOOD LUCK WITH THIS.

@dvoraen Evennia is missing a lot of shockingly basic stuff. TOO BAD YOU CAN’T.

Unexpected (to me) but chunk is winning in his bracket. If 602 goes down to Chunk, it’s a noble loss. What an underdog story.

I think it’s forked right. IF anything looks forkfucked, let me know.