Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Topic started by: Doc Nebula on August 04, 2013, 03:29:24 AM

Title: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 04, 2013, 03:29:24 AM

Many years ago, I joined an online community called LouisvilleRPG.com.  I was looking for a few new players for my long running homebrew RPG.  I'd been assured by someone who was already a member that the board had been founded by refugees from a different gaming board who had left that board because they were sick of being moderated all the time.  That this board had no rules and no moderation; there, you really could say anything you want.  Of course, so could anyone else, that was the beauty of it. 

So, beware flame wars.

So I did join and it was nearly as advertised.  There was a little moderation -- if a thread degenerated into a flame war, it got moved into a special forum reserved just for flame wars.  But other than that, there was no moderation, it was open season and people could say anything they wanted. And it had been like that for years.

And, as you might expect if you know predominantly male geeks, fantasy gamers especially, there were some absolute flapping d0u<hebags on that site.  So, I thought, hey, this is it... the one site I will not get tossed out of within a month of joining and starting to post my opinions.

Well, I was wrong.

Within a week of starting to post there, I had earned the ire of three quarters of the members, and had the guy who owned the board himself come into threads I'd started and lament that some people had to be so abusive.  This was on a board where people routinely called each other ever obscenity imaginable over which version of D&D was better. 

Within another week, that same person -- who owned and ran the board -- was darkly hinting that maybe he would need to implement some guidelines after all.  Didn't want to.  But maybe he would have to.

A few weeks after that, he was straight up saying, he didn't want to do it, but he might just have to ban someone, for the first time ever.

Years of insults and vituperation escalating into unbelievable flamewars, people holding real world grudges over this stupid [poop], and he never questioned his commitment to freedom of speech.  I show up and within two months he's threatening to boot me, although he doesn't want to and it's against his principals and everything the board is supposed to stand for.

I did this.  This is my power.  This is what I do.

I have been thrown off easily a dozen sites, or more.  Sites about comic books, sites about HeroClix, sites about Magic the Gathering, sites about science fiction.  Hell, I went into Cracked.com's submissions forum one time and lasted a week before the mods there all universally banned me. 

The general pattern is this:  I post a few things that are funny and charming, and people like them.  Mostly.  Then I say something controversial, which pisses someone off.  They say something insulting to me.  Whatever mods there are don't say a word to them about the insult, generally because either they are a mod themselves or a friend of the mod, or simply because, in every human society since time began, the only real rule is, Seniority Has It's Privileges, and If You're A Noob, You Better Suck It Up. 

I don't suck it up well.

So, somebody senior to me on the site says something insulting to me.  I release the hounds on them.  Because they STARTED it, but I will FINISH it.  That's what I do.

Then the mods who ignored the opening insult, which I did not post, start jumping up and down on me.  First a warning:  "There are rules around here.  We don't act like that.  Grow up."  I say something back... 'What about Fill In The Blank?  He started it.'  This escalates it.  Now I get an official warning, because if there is one thing that is against the rules at every site I have ever been to, even when there are no rules, it is talking back to the mods.  Also, questioning the rules and policies of the site.  Often times, even discussing the rules and policies of the site in an open thread is taboo. 

Having been given a warning, I will generally tell the mod who gave it to me to shove it up their ass, advise them what I think of tiny minded little twits, etc, etc.

Bingo, I'm off the site.

That did not happen at LouisvilleRPG.com.  I simply alienated every single other member, until eventually the original site owner sold the site to one of the people who loathed me the most, and he promptly created rules, which boiled down to, Anything Me or My Mods Think Is Bad Will Get You Warned.  And If You Get Warned Enough, Off You Go. 

'Warned Enough' was not defined.  "Anything Me Or My Mods Think Is Bad" was not defined.  And the three people he chose to be mods... all  hated me.

I was not long for that site after that.

However, LouisvilleRPG.com now no longer exists.  After the new guy took over and implemented his rules, everybody fled, except for the half dozen people in the new guy's gaming group. I think they basically use it as a more or less private hang out now.

But, the thing is... I piss people off.  I know that.  And I cynically expect it will happen here before too long.

Anyway.  To illustrate some of what went on at LouisvilleRPG.com, I'm going to post a few things I recently found on my hard drive that I originally wrote to post there. 

Probably not in this window, though, because I have to be pushing the word limit.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 04, 2013, 03:29:46 AM

Posts in this sub forum are now locked.  Future posts in this sub forum will also be locked.  If anyone has any comments on anything I post here, feel free to PM me with them.   

Just so people know:  my original purpose in coming to this site was to find one or two new players for my ongoing home brew RPG. 

I'm deeply grateful to Sysop for creating and maintaining this site, and giving me the opportunity to find  no less than four new players for my game, each of whom has brought an enormous amount of style and energy to the WORLD OF EMPIRE.  I've even made a few new friends through this site, which I never expected.  I've tried to show that very real appreciation I feel for Sysop, and the site in general, by modifying my normally controversial behavior over the past couple of months, and, once I got a paycheck or two in the bank from my recent job, by making a monetary contribution to the site. 

So thanks for that.  And since it seems I simply cannot avoid controversy even when all I'm doing is asking people to help a friend of mine who is on the verge of starvation, well, I'm taking this latest step, and locking all my threads.

It's something I originally started doing long ago, after the first couple of flame wars I provoked here.  Then things seemed to get better... but lately, I'm seeing that was an illusion.  So, I'm locking them again.  I apologize to those who were enjoying the interactions in my "And just so people know" thread, but this seems like it's something that should be done at this point.

I've considered leaving this site many times.  And I'm sure if I did simply delete my account, few members here would be disappointed by that decision.  However, obviously, despite the acrimonious and unappreciative response my contributions here have provoked from many if not most other members, still, I have found the site to be a valuable resource for my RPG's participants.  So, much though it would doubtless please my detractors, I'm not going to leave. 

I am, however, going to stop providing those detractors with space in this sub forum with which to treat me with disrespect. 





















Okay.  If anyone actually cares as to why I've decided to lock all my threads, well, let me set out my thoughts.  Be warned:  this will be long.  It will ramble.  And chances are, unless you are one of the half dozen or so people on this board besides me who is remotely reasonable and/or grown up, it will almost certainly offend you at some point.

Got that?  Still here?  Okay, let's lay some things out:

Back in my first days on this board, one of the many, many mistakes and blunders I made was assuming the nominal adults here were actually also emotionally adult as well.... uh, no.  That was doubtless my BIGGEST mistake, but that's not what I'm talking about here. 

No, the specific mistake I'm speaking of here was, I saw a post in the RECENT FORUM POSTS section of the main page here talking about detailed backgrounds for player characters, and asking for feedback, so I read the post, and offered feedback, in the form of a question.  It was an innocently intended question, but apparently the post was from a sub forum devoted to an ongoing RPG campaign I didn't play in, and by intruding into this sub forum (albeit unawares) I had committed what was universally considered to be a faux pas.  So I got some [poop]for it.   And I learned a valuable lesson, namely, posts in sub forums devoted to specific games, even posts that specifically ask for feedback, are really only addressed to the attention of other participants in those games. 

Fine. 

Over the eight months or so that I've been here, I've learned many more lessons, and if I had to boil those lessons down to one overarching theme, it would be this:   There Are Things That People Simply Are Not Ever Allowed To Do... If Those People Are Me. 

If you're not me, though, well, knock yourself out.

No, really. 

See, when I go into a dedicated sub forum without realizing I'm doing it and ask an innocent question in a thread specifically requesting feedback, people go insane, call me names, and smite me repeatedly for doing so.  And even the most reasonable members of the board shake their heads at me sadly and say "Well, you know, that was a dedicated sub forum, they really weren't talking to YOU, so you get what you get".

On the other hand, when someone else comes into my dedicated sub forum deliberately, knowing full well it's a dedicated sub forum but honestly just not giving a [poop], and they deliberately post something unbelievably offensive and obnoxious, that's fine.  Nobody says anything to them about it.  It's apparently entirely cool with the entire site. 

It's an interesting double standard.

Give you another example.   Let's say I post something in my own sub forum and advise everyone in advance that any responses that are insulting and/or off topic will be deleted.  The first response my post gets is both insulting and off topic, so I delete it.  I am immediately informed by many, MANY site members that deleting other member's posts is terrible, it's unacceptable, it's not to be done under any imaginable circumstances, I'm a horrible horrible person for doing it, I should be killed or at the very least repeatedly run over by some sort of sports utility vehicle, and, once again, I rack up another dozen smites.    Because deleting somebody else's posts?  No matter what the content of that post was, no matter what I told people I'd do prior to deleting it? 

Just.  Not.  Done.

And yet, not so very long ago, Cruel Despot reached the 1000 post milestone, and was pleased about it, and posted to that effect.  Unfortunately, the posts in which he did this were in a thread moderated by DefJeff, and DefJeff, simply because he likes doing things like that, deleted a bunch of CD's posts, and then gloated about doing so. 

And nobody said a word to him about it.

Apparently, this was just fine.

So what have we learned?  We have learned the following:  going into a dedicated sub forum where one is not a member of the gaming group and offering well intentioned feedback is bad, extremely bad, you should never ever do it... if you're Doc Nebula.  On the other hand, going into a dedicated sub forum where one is not a member of the gaming group and being a complete [intercourse gerund]asswipe, simply because you feel like it, is fine... if you're not Doc Nebula, and the sub forum is moderated by Doc Nebula.

Also, deleting another member's posts is wrong, terrible, an egregious abuse of a moderator's powers, and only a complete [jerk, sphincter]would ever do such a thing... when Doc Nebula does it.  However, it's perfectly cool, totally acceptable, and jesus christ, is he STILL whining about that wake me up when he stops crying yawwwwwnnn gawd I'm so BORED...   if you're DefJeff. 

Or, presumably, anyone who isn't Doc Nebula.

Recently, this has come home to me yet again, as, over the past couple of weeks, somebody who doesn't participate in the World of Empire RPG came into this, the World of Empire sub forum, and posted something so unbelievably despicable, contemptible, and vile that, well, I was almost shocked when I read it.  (I say almost because, well, the person who posted this despicable, contemptible thing was Miniature Geek, and Miniature Geek has long ago and repeatedly proven himself to be so indescribably odious and loathsome that there's little he could do to shock me.  Still, this was a new low even for him, and if it didn't shock me, well, it surprised me with not only the sheer petty childish viciousness of what he said, but with how utterly pointless it was, too.)

I ignored it, as Miniature Geek is pretty much entirely worthless and I try to pay as little attention to [poop]heads like him as possible.   But several days later, one of the few friends I have on this site came in and took him to task for it, and as I didn't want my friend to feel like he was all alone in fighting the good fight (a feeling I frequently get on this site, or used to, back when I actively gave a [poop]) I chimed in with a supportive comment, too.

And it promptly escalated.  Because Miniature Geek is allowed to be as vile, contemptible, and despicable as he wants to be, and none of the site elders, and certainly none of the people he games with, will say a word. 

And my friend can say anything he wants, because really, nobody here really cares what he says about anything, other than me.

But when I get into it, then, all of a sudden, it's a Big Thing.

And to keep this Big Thing from turning into anything bigger or worse, I just deleted the entire thread.  There was no point in keeping it around; Miniature Geek's original response had been the first response the post got, it was completely off topic (in addition to being stupid, witless, mean spirited, mindlessly malicious, and cruel) and every response since then had also been completely off topic.  And it was pretty clearly about to get totally out of hand.  So, I deleted it.

And once again, I discovered the Basic Law of LouisvilleRPG.com -- When Anyone Else Does It, It's Just Fine, But When Doc Nebula Does It, It's Unspeakably Offensive, Unacceptable, and Simply Not Done.

So the smites have rolled in.  And the whining, and the complaining, and the bitching, and the insults.

I'm tired of this. 

I'm tired of never being able to post anything even remotely controversial without having the same old faithful screaming cybernetic lynch mob drop into my threads shrieking and howling and humping their smite buttons like priapic gorillas.   

And I'm tired of the double standard.   

I'm tired of seeing nasty, vicious, bullying, childish, mean spirited, corrosive behavior by other site members go unremarked on by, or rewarded with applause and approving commentary from, the site at large, while pretty much anything I post that goes beyond the time and place of my next RPG session draws insults and abuse. 

I'm tired of it.  So, from now on, all my threads are locked.  If I post something and someone wants to comment on it, they can send me a PM.

You never know.  If it's not from Miniature Geek or Cosmic J, I might even read it.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 04, 2013, 03:35:10 AM

And here's another really long essay from the same site: (but I'll have to break it in two because of word limits)

It's in the way that you move it.

Speaking only for myself, as I nearly always am, let me say this: The reason I read for pleasure, and the reason I go to movies and watch TV shows, is to escape. To enter another world for a while, to vicariously experience adventures that could never happen to me in real life... to identify as much as possible with fictional characters I would like to be, imaginary people who can do the things I only wish I could do, who possess the traits and characteristics I admire, who have the skills and abilities I yearn for.

The limitation of books, of TV shows, of movies, of radio dramas, of theatrical plays, of all these manners and methods that the human race has devised for one group of humans to depict a story for the edification and amusement of another group of humans, is that, of course, they are not participatory. I can only watch. I can't be James T. Kirk or Conan the Barbarian, or really even hang out with them. I cannot interact, I am not really part of the story; I am an observer... an entirely detached observer. The most exciting, well plotted, wonderfully written, fantastically staged, beautifully produced, astonishingly illustrated, astoundingly well described, perfectly directed or otherwise magnificently created story is, for all it may move and touch and astound and gratify and please me, still... in the end... it's just something I'm watching.

The writers I love can take me to those places and show me those people, but they can't really let me live there. They can't really let me be that guy, or even go to lunch with him. They can bring the world to vivid, palpable, living, breathing, slashing, snarling life around me, they can make those characters speak and fight and smile and laugh and strut and snarl, but the fact remains, I myself, the guy reading or watching the adventure unfold, will never really lead a squad of Dendarii Mercenaries into battle, I can never hope to learn swordplay from Sun Wolf or Starhawk, I can never actually board a fat, wallowing merchant galleon with Conan and Belit, cutlass in one hand and buckler in another, I can never explore an ancient ruin with Aragorn and Gandalf, my ears carefully attuned for the distant whisper of goblin war drums.

I can read about that stuff. I can watch that stuff. But I'm a ghost at the feast. I can't touch it, I can't taste it, I can't affect it. I just watch it go by.

Nonetheless, when I read, or watch, or otherwise audit, some rousing fictional adventure, I want that imaginary world and the characters inhabiting it to seem real to me. If they don't, it just doesn't work; if the world seems contrived and unbelievable, if the characters seem two dimensional and unconvincing, I consider the story to be poorly written, or the TV show to be badly plotted, or the movie to be poorly executed. And it doesn't work for me. I want the fantasy setting, but I want that setting to convince me, when I'm engaged with it, that it's real. I want it to seem like, while I'm visiting it, it actually exists... even if I can't actually interact with it, I want to feel, as much as possible, like I'm really there.

Now, roleplaying games can, ideally, get me a couple of big steps closer to actually living the adventure that I crave to truly experience. No, I'm still not there. The ancient ruins, the timelost treasures, the enchanted weapons, the beautiful captive princess, the scheming enemies and the slavering monsters, all these things still only exist in my mind's eye. But I can affect the unfolding storyline, I can play a character that is part of the narrative flow, and I can interact with my fellow characters.

And I want that experience to seem as real as it can. I want a vicarious adventuring experience, and I want to get as close to holding that sword, to hearing the sound and feeling the impact of my blade swinging through the air and biting deep into some monster's flesh, to feeling the thundering hooves of the warhorse I'm riding into combat, to smelling its sweat and the rich copper reek of the enemy's shed blood and to actually hearing the shrieks of pain and the grunt of effort as I run the [progeny of unmarried parents] through. I want to feel my muscles working, my lungs laboring, the breath roaring in and out of my throat, I want to kick myself free of the iron stirrups and hit the ground in a roll and come back up, breathless, the soles of my feet smarting through my leather boots, and catch the descending arc of another enemy's battle axe on my expertly parrying blade.

Dungeons and Dragons is the seminal roleplaying system, and to its creators I owe a great debt. They took that first step; they were the first ones that created a concept whereby people like me could actually vicariously experience, at least to some extent, the adventures that, prior to that point, we could only read about, listen to, or watch from a distance.

Yet when I first played Dungeons and Dragons, I was dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of the experience. It simply wasn't real enough for me. The rules worked contrary to how I (and nearly everyone else playing, once you got them to admit it) understood reality to function. The hitpoint system did not simulate combat with any real level of accuracy or realism. Character class and alignment were both cumbersome and untrue to how real people learned and behaved and responded. Armor class did not reflect how it seemed protective armor should actually work in the real world.

And nearly everyone else I played with would admit that, yeah, those rules were just abstractions for the sake of game convenience, and if you wanted a more believable and realistic experience, you weren't going to get it playing with them... and for many, that's where the discussion stopped, because the experience they were getting from playing D&D was good by them. Yes, they'd admit that the rules weren't 'realistic', but they were fine with that; the rules were simple, they required little effort, you could look everything up on a table somewhere, and that worked for them. They weren't really there to roleplay, as such; they were there to game. They enjoyed D&D as a gaming experience; it was something they could do with a bunch of other people. They liked to roll dice, they liked to talk to each other, 'in character' and out, they liked the vicarious violence and the sense of achievement they got from accruing imaginary wealth and experience points, and they enjoyed sitting around and socializing.

But it was a gaming experience, not a true vicarious adventuring experience, because, again, none of the rules really reflected actual human experience in any way. When a real living being takes a wound, they don't just cross out one number and write in another. They feel pain, they get bruised, the specific part of their body that has been wounded no longer functions as well, they feel woozy from blood loss, their minds have to deal with the sudden shock of there now being a hole in their precious physical being where there wasn't one before. Abstracting all of that to a simple numerical interaction - "You get hit, you take 8 hit points, are you still positive, okay, what do you do?" - robs the experience of all its actual experience. It's just numbers. It's an equation. Your character isn't so much wounded as he 'took a hit', and is now somewhat closer to -- whatever it is he's closer to, unconsciousness or death or whatever -- but that's all the effect it has. You don't feel it.

I want to feel it.

No, I don't want to actually feel the impact of a sharpened piece of iron thrusting through my body, but I do at least want to have a system that evokes some of the details and nuances of a realistically detailed wound. I don't want my characters to 'take a hit'; if they get wounded, I want to feel something at least vaguely representing what it would be like for them to really be wounded. I want to know where the wound is, what kind of weapon did it, am I bruised or gashed or impaled or shot or burned, am I bleeding, do I have internal injuries, am I going into shock, does the area that got damaged still function. I want my characters to have a chance to get weak from blood loss, like Jandar of Callisto when he's dueling that rotter Zarkon, and Zarkon has managed to put a long shallow cut across his chest. I want my characters to have a chance to get tired, like Kirk, after he gets done beating the daylights out of that [jerk, sphincter] Finnegan (actually, an android duplicate of Finnegan) in "Shore Leave". I want my characters to be able to enter into alliances with those who behave differently from them if they have a pragmatic reason to do so, and I want to live in a world where 'good' and 'evil' are as subjective as they are in the reality I understand.

I want my characters to have a chance to learn and grow the way it seems to me that real people in the real world learn and grow... not within some constraining structure of skills and feats and abilities provided to me by some 'character class' nobody in the real world actually has, that my characters add mysterious 'experience points' to at arbitrary intervals having nothing to do with anything in the actual world they live in, but by learning individual skills through hours of study and training taken out of my character's actual living time.

D&D, no matter what version, will not get me as far into the vicarious adventuring experience as I want to go. The various unrealities and untruths implicit in its fundamental rules structure keep knocking me out of the adventure. I am constantly reminded that this is just a game, just as I would be constantly reminded that the FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING movie is just a movie if I kept noticing boom mikes at the top of every third or fourth shot.

To me, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, no matter what the version, is just a series of overly convenient abstractions. It's a gaming experience, it's not a vicarious adventuring experience.

Gaming experiences can be fun, but roleplaying, to my mind, should be more than that. When I want to game I have a choice of many games to play. D&D can be a fun, challenging game... but if I'm sitting at a table to roleplay, I want more than that. I want a real world with real characters, I want to escape into a real fantasy adventure for a while. And to do that, I need rules systems that make a priority out of evoking detail and nuance to a more realistic degree.

I understand that it's not reality. I understand that in these worlds, there are things that do not and cannot exist in our own. But in Tolkien's Middle Earth, characters behave largely as they would if they were real living beings in a real living world. The hobbits and elves and dwarves and humans and even treefolk each have richly detailed cultures and societies, there is an elaborately intricate historical back story, there is politics and intrigue. (Tolkien's concepts of good and evil are vastly oversimplified to my tastes, but, still, the world is beautifully nuanced and the characters, while generally two dimensional, are, nonetheless, depicted as being 'real' people within their limited parameters.)

I'll give two very specific examples, here, to show the kind of world I want to play in and/or create, and the kind of rules systems I want to play under and/or create to evoke such worlds.

In my own home brew system, we have a skill called "Quickdraw". It's a skill that a character takes if they want to be able to get a weapon out of its sheathe and into a ready position quickly. If you don't have it, you can still roll to attempt the actual physical action, but your chances of accomplishing it are nowhere near as good as if you've practiced assiduously at it.

I've had it pointed out to me over the years that "Quickdraw" is really, in terms of game function, an unnecessary skill. It would be simpler and easier to just assume that the ability to get your weapon out quickly is part of a more general 'weapons' skill. Why not eliminate the extra skill roll (and that extra annoying sinkhole for precious skill points) and simply presume that, whenever characters need their weapons, they have them out?

My answer is always, that isn't how it works in real life, or in the adventure fiction I am trying to simulate in the games I create and referee.

In real life, I believe the ability to use a weapon well in combat, and the ability to get that weapon out of wherever you are storing it when not in combat and ready for combat quickly, are two entirely different skills. I believe it is quite possible that somebody could be a master duellist with a sword or a pistol, and yet not be at all skilled at swiftly yanking that sword or pistol out of its sheathe or holster should such become necessary. (Or vice versa, I think it's very possible for someone to be extremely skilled at quickdrawing a weapon, and then have little relative skill at actually using that weapon.)

This is important, because I want characters in a game I'm refereeing to experience something like what would really happen when they try to do certain things. And also, because in adventure fiction, characters are often taken by surprise, and their lives often depend on how quickly, accurately, and correctly they respond.

So in the games I referee, there is a skill called "Quickdraw", and it is not a generic skill; it is taken per weapon, per location - by which I mean, if your character carries two broadswords, and he wears one on his waist and the other on his back, he needs not just "Quickdraw sword", but "Quickdraw sword - waist" and "Quickdraw sword - back". And if a character has more than one very different weapon type then they need to learn separate quickdraw skills for those weapon types, too, as the motion of quickly readying and throwing three shuriken is very different from the motion one would use to yank out your scimitar in a flash.

It would be much simpler and easier to just wave it all away, or, to say "There is no separate quickdraw skill, when you want to quickdraw, make a check on your weapon level". But that's not how I think it would actually work. So that isn't how it works in my game rules.

Again, I think this is important. I think it is, in fact, vital, to the kind of vicarious adventuring experience, the kind of simulation of something I can credibly believe in, that I'm looking for in a roleplaying game. You need rules that evoke the details, that stimulate the imagination, that bring you deeper into the experience, that let you feel it. Convenient abstractions don't do that.

Very recently, a guy who plays in my RPG, and who has recently started playing in a PATHFINDER game as well, complained bitterly to me that my magic system contains no "Detect Magic" spell. I think he was pretty tired, or otherwise out of sorts, because normally he's an excellent roleplayer who feels very much the same way I do about realism and nuance in a roleplaying experience. Still, I explained it to him, and now, I'll explain it to whoever may be reading this:

I want everything in my RPG to seem credible, to feel as if somewhere, in some far dimension, it might actually exist. I've never liked the D&D magic system; I simply cannot believe such a structure of spells and rules governing how they function could ever really come into being anywhere. D&D's spell structure, like every other aspect of D&D, seems largely designed for game convenience. You have magic missiles and fireballs, so mages can do something in combat, you have knock spells, so mages can pick locks if the thief gets hurt, you have spells that turn flesh to stone, you have spells that spray distracting colors, you have spells that heal, and, of course, you have spells that detect magic items.

Yet there seems to be little or no underlying structure or internally consistent rationale to it. Mages don't have to study particle physics to cast a Color Spray, they don't need to know anything about thermodynamics to throw a fireball, or about how the human body actually works to cure a light or heavy wound. Turning flesh into stone is, when you think about it, a pretty impressive feat - how does that work, exactly? Where does the extra mass come from? Where does the energy for this kind of truly impressive transformation come from? And, most important of all, how can a living creature who has been turned into stone possibly be turned back into a living creature again?

What, exactly, is a magic missile?

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 04, 2013, 03:35:48 AM

It's in the way that you move it, part II

* * * *

There are many different kinds of gamers in the world, and, for that matter, many different kinds of roleplayers. One large dichotomy, however, is between those, like me, who actually care about the questions and concerns I raise above, and those who not only couldn't care less, but who almost invariably sneer patronizingly at those of us who do.

In the magic system I have devised for my game, would be wizards have to understand how reality works before they can try to use magic to alter it in any way. Mages must study skills related to the spells they want to cast, if they want to cast them effectively. Healing mages must be skilled doctors; nature mages have to know all about the behaviors of beasts and insects, how plants grow, how the weather works. Necromancers have to be up on their demon lore and understand why a five pointed pentacle with a circle drawn around it works one way, and a six pointed pentacle with a star in its center works another. Those who wish to throw big exploding balls of fire first have to learn what fire actually is, and how to create it, or channel it when it is created, from one spot to another. And mages who want to vanish from one spot and reappear in another, or to slow down or speed up the passage of entropy, have to learn the secrets of time and space before they can hope to do it.

And there is no 'detect magic' spell, at least, not that is part of the basic spells that mages learn to master the fundamental principles of the reality they are trying to effect. There are, certainly, master mages who have researched spells that can detect certain kinds of enchantments, but they do so when they have a need for it. Most mages don't need to do it, because there are not, proportionally, very many magic items in my world, and in their day to day routines, they don't have any occasion to try and figure out if a particular object they are using is enchanted or not.

The thing is, few mages in my RPG are adventurers. Adventuring is not, in and of itself, conducive to the sorcerous lifestyle. Wizards generally want to stay in one place, study, experiment, practice, and research new spells. Ideally, they want a secure base with plenty of storage space for books and at least one well equipped thaumaturgical research lab. They don't want to wander the earth fighting bandits and looking for treasure, although they may well do so for a while if they think they might get hold of some ancient spellbook with some interesting cantrips written down in it. But once they do, they're going to head back home and research the hell out of that spellbook; they aren't going to keep adventuring.

This being the case, few wizards have any use for a spell that would 'detect magic'. If they have magic items, they either made them themselves and know what they are and what they do, or they got them from some other mage, and he or she told them what they are and what they do.

Assuming a mage feels a burning need to be able to 'detect magic', maybe because parties of adventurers constantly troop up to his tower with great big piles of loot, some of which is always enchanted, that they want to sell to him, or, at least, pay him to analyze, well, first that mage would have to figure out exactly what 'magic' is. In my game, there are many things that the untutored will lump under the generic name 'magic': items with a spirit bound to them necromantically, items with a particular magic spell imprinted on it temporally, items created by a godlike creature of some sort that function through that godlike creature's 'blessing', items imbued with a crystal that has some psionic effect recorded into it, and in some places, there are even advanced technological items left over from some long forgotten, gone to dust high tech culture of a distant era.

Before a wizard could 'detect magic', he'd have to figure out what kind of 'magic' he was trying to 'detect'. And realistically (as reality is defined within the everyday existence of my game setting, anyway) most mages just wouldn't bother. Necromantically enchanted items are easy to detect; the necromantic energy in them makes most living creatures who touch them feel faintly nauseous. Blessed items can't be detected except by priests; psionic items can usually be spotted by a skilled jeweler, who can discern that the gem in them is actually crystallium rather than the natural jewel it is mimicking. Temporally enchanted items are tough; in order to detect those, one would have to research a spell to detect subtly warped probabilities around an object... which, like all temporal spells, would be very hard to cast.

And, again, this all comes down to what kind of gamer you are. If you honestly don't care about any of the above, if you just want to roll a die and make the DM tell you if a particular piece of swag is 'magic', whatever that may actually mean, and if so, what it does, and it makes absolutely no difference to you at all how that particular game mechanic actually works within the game structure itself... if, in short, you just don't give a flying crap what a magic missile is, or where the energy for a fireball comes from, or how a living person can be turned into a statue, much less back into a living person again... then that's fine. There are many game systems out there for you, and you have a great deal of company to select fellow gamers and GMs from.

But, to my mind... and this is where I get in trouble... you are choosing a gaming experience with some basic elements of roleplaying in it. You are not choosing to truly roleplay a vicarious adventuring experience of the sort that I want to participate in, because to truly roleplay, to really have that kind of experience, you need a rules system that tries to faithfully and sensibly and consistently evoke and recreate a believable, credible, sensible, three dimensional fantasy setting, with believable, credible, sensible, three dimensional characters inhabiting it.

Or so it seems to me, anyway.

Now, I frequently hear gamers who simply don't want the kind of well evoked, truly believable roleplaying experience I prefer say, sarcastically, something like "Okay, well, I guess I'll just come over and roll up a shift manager at McDonald's and my buddy can roll up the guy that runs the fryer at that McDonald's and we can sit around and roleplay how we deal with annoying customers and occasionally go on weekend paintball adventures and yeah, realistic roleplaying is SOOOO cool". And, you know, I understand that they're being sarcastic. Yet they're trying to make a point, and their point is, too much reality, too much detail, too much nuance, is the enemy of enjoyment and fun. They don't want to be dragged down by all the numbers, they don't want to make that many dice rolls, they don't want their characters to have a chance of dying of tetanus or getting the clap from the beautiful elven princess they've just rescued from orcs.

I get that. I think there are limits, too. And, obviously, I want the vicarious experience of fantasy adventures like those depicted in the fiction I enjoy; I'm not interested in reproducing the mundanity of everyday life. But I do think that a player's enjoyment of a vicarious fantasy adventure can be greatly enhanced by an effort to reproduce some of the mundanity, not of everyday life as we know it, but of the realistic day to day living experiences of someone who exists in a fantasy world and who goes on fantasy adventures.

But, yes, you have to draw a line. I have a system I create a long time ago for making characters check to see if wounds get infected after combat is over. I created it because, realistically, infected wounds have killed more people in history than wounds taken during actual battle. But I rarely use it. I don't think that level of reality is necessary most of the time; I will only require these kind of rolls if the party is traveling through some location like a fever swamp, or a tomb full of still rotting corpses, or something. Otherwise, I don't bother with it, my system has enough dice rolls already, and combat is already dangerous enough, and provides enough of a realistic feel for my players. They don't need pus and gangrenous sores added on top of it.

But when I roleplay, I want to feel like I'm really there, at least, to some extent. And when I referee, I want to give my players that experience; I want them to feel as if my game setting is real, I want to evoke, not just the sights of the world their characters live in, but the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the emotional responses, the physical sensations of that world. I want to involve them, to inspire their imaginations, to make them really feel it in their guts. And that's what my rules are designed to do -- to create a vicarious adventuring experience with real, in depth roleplaying, not a gaming experience with characterization entirely optional.

Do I make value judgments as regards the worth of the different types of gaming experience, and even, often, the maturity level of the players who enjoy these different types of experience? Yes. I do. And judging from what I've seen elsewhere in the gaming community, nearly everyone else does, too... 3.5 fans think 4.0 fans are idiots, and vice versa; fanatical devotees of one roleplaying system regard the zealous partisans of different systems with undisguised contempt, and quite often say so in no uncertain terms.

Certainly, I've been repeatedly advised in overwhelmingly contemptuous terms that my game rules are narcissistic, too controlling, overly complex, poorly designed, no more 'realistic' than any other system, stupidly conceived and mindnumbingly boring, and I myself must have enormous intrinsic character defects for even wanting to play in such a system, much less creating it.

Nonetheless, in the end, it comes down to, people simply enjoy different kinds of gaming experiences. However, having said that, I'm not simply being mean or nasty when I make barbed comments regarding D&D and those who play it. I genuinely believe that in every group of avid D&Ders out there, there is at least one person who wants something more, and doesn't know where to find it. I really do think that many people who are getting, at most, a gaming experience when they sit down to roleplay, would like an actual roleplaying experience. I think there are a lot of gamers trapped in crappy game systems who would love to experience a vicarious three dimensional adventure, who would enjoy a GM who tries to evoke the game setting in a more realistic way, and who uses rules that allow that to a much greater extent than the untrue and unrealistic abstractions they are accustomed to gaming with.

These are the people I am trying to reach out to; the people who want to feel the wind in their hair as they ride across the plains with Aragorn and Boromir, who want to hear the great horn sounding from the distant towers welcoming them back to the gleaming silver city, who want to battle a hideous fiend by flickering torchlight and feel the cold dusty stones of the ancient moss encrusted tomb beneath their leathershod feet and the musty, clammy air on their sweaty skin. The players who want to really use their imaginations and their minds, who want a more vivid and palpable roleplaying experience, who want to, as much as is possible, really experience the experience.

The ones who just want to roll dice, drink beer and [nonsense], I got no time for. And the ones who want to insult me for that, well, those I have nothing but contempt for. Which contempt, frequently, I express freely. As do so many others, on so many other topics.

I'm no longer even remotely regretful about my attitude. I am a certain type of gamer... a roleplayer. A real one. That's the kind of gamer I'm looking for. Other kinds of gamers... honestly, I have no problem with them, except when (a) they erroneously call themselves 'roleplayers' and lead the rest of the world to believe that what they do is actually 'roleplaying', and (b) they insult me for trying to correct them in that error.

That, really, is the final mystery to me. Why do so many people care what I say, when they all profess to have nothing but contempt for my opinions on the subjects where they disagree with me?

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 04, 2013, 03:49:52 AM

Man, have I ever got some forum war stories, too.  And my partner has persuaded me not to tell them, which didn't take much.  I don't like talking about that stuff.

I will say this:  my policy as a regular member was that I'd take ten times the crap from a regular member than any nerd with a badge.  Forums with any moderation are a hopelessly unequal power situation, and that offends my worldview, the hard work I put into controlling myself, and my issues with abusive authority.  Also, the moderators are inevitably nerds, a sort of people who should rarely ever be given any power over anyone, ever.  Those creeps better be polite, or I'm gone.  Period.

I wouldn't do the work/responsibility of running this place for anything if I knew of a better way of feeling like I could have my little online chats without being abused from above.  I don't want that to happen to anyone, which informs my moderation philosophy.

Life's too short.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: JarlWolf on August 04, 2013, 03:57:41 AM

And we deal enough with substantiated hierarchies in real life. Let an online community be a forms of escape from that, not a means of being locked in one.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 04, 2013, 04:00:39 AM

Well, we've been lucky in the membership we've drawn, here.  You guys are adults, and act like adults.

That's a better system for maintaining a good tone for the conversation than something imposed.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 04, 2013, 04:07:50 AM

I am embarrassed that some terminology got past the swear filter in the first post, and I had to edit it.  Weirdly appropriate for this thread to have and mod edit notice on the OP, but in a bad way.  Sorry, D.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 05, 2013, 04:43:06 PM

This thread, much as it makes me wince, begs for a few words on the local moderation policy.  Fortunately, I wrote some good stuff up a long time ago:

Quote from: BUncle on September 25, 2012, 04:16:19 PM

One thing we're going to do here is treat each other decently.  That applies to the Admins as well as the membership.

Quote from: BUncle on October 19, 2012, 08:42:01 PM

Two members have mentioned recently that they'd avoided getting involved in the community in the past over concerns about moderator tendency to go all nerdbadge on people.  The very fact that most of you can figure out what I mean with the term 'go all nerdbadge' just supports the proposition that there really is a problem out there in the overall 4x community; something about 4x drawing very detail-oriented people, I think, so a lot of aspies with no sense of perspective end up moderating.  We are very glad to hear that our style has passed the smell test with some discriminating consumers.  So a few words about our managment philosophy are in order.

You're all adults, and my partner and I are adults, and we all act like adults, and we're going to keep acting like adults, and treat each other like adults.  If you're not an adult, you're going to act like one anyway at AC2.

It's really as simple as that.  That is the rules here, in a nutshell.  Be a Man.  (Or Woman, as the case may be.)

Now, adults get to joke and clown and woop it up - that's a lot of the purpose of this forum.  We're here to have a good time, and we're not crowding the saturation point for silliness yet.  Party on with your own bad self.  Just - be considerate, and always tease only those you respect.  The other members are my friends, and I have my friends' backs.  You, too, 'cause I'm your friend, too, and have your back.

Be man (or woman) enough to never hide behind your keyboard, and comport yourself like we can see you and know your real name and could punch you, if it came to that.  This has always been my credo online, because I am proud and I am not a coward.  Be proud.



I know a forum where acting like a yard-ape punk boy is virtually manditory.  I know a forum where you are guaranteed to be treated like a kid.  I know a forum with a very malicious person in charge, and it's dead.  I know one that was born trying to find a happy balance, but the owners are virtual absentee landlords and their favorites can troll without let or hinderance.  Allowing everything is no good, allowing nothing is only good for kids, which is what they get.  Running a forum as a private kingdom and to settle scores has kept one from living, and never acting except hypocritically will be the death of another soon enough.

sisko and I have seen it done wrong, and we learned.  Aside from moving posts occasionally, and sisko liking to put the right icon on a thread, we haven't had to moderate a human being at all yet - a trend we hope continues.  We know we're not better than you (or at least not because we have nerdbadges  :P), and we hope that shows.  I want all of you to ignore that it says Adminstrator in my postbit when I'm talking to you, unless I make it clear I'm speaking officially.  This includes when I'm commenting on your posting behavior and/or manners.  I don't NEED such minute control of this enviroment that my every whim is law; I'd rather pursuade than give orders.  I expect you to be smart and mature and wise.  I expect those things of myself.

You can sass us to your heart's content under the same limitations you're under about anyone else; don't piss us off.  :)

We're here, we're active and on top of things, and we're pledged to try to make everyone happy and treat them with respect (including ourselves, as is only fair).  You can take that to the bank.

Quote from: BUncle on October 20, 2012, 01:14:01 PM

One night while sisko was afk asleep, I was thinking about the state of our multiplayer section -it could have been running better-  and realized we had a second CMN, who had recently expressed/demonstrated interest in doing what he could to help build our community.  Now, MP is sisko's territory/responsiblity, but the nature of forum business is that everything tends to need to have happened yesterday, so I took executive action.  The PM below (what I sent - don't go divulging what people sent you without their consent) is quoted verbatim, save a censored vulgarity and one comma added for clarity.  There is much about leadership therein.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To:  t_ras

Subject: Building MP: Your mission, should you accept it

Quote from: t_ras on September 23, 2012, 08:48:14 AM

I'm willing to help.
I don't have much time, but I try to help bsing CMN where needed.

You are a good man, sir.  I don't think anyone has told you how grateful the players, sisko and I are for you stepping up like you did on We'll meet soon, but everyone is.

So you went and said the quoted stuff in Building a Community, and as I said at various places in the thread, what's needed isn't everyone doing everything; each needs to do what he can, where he can.  For you, that's as the only other CMN we have besides my overworked partner.

MP needs Leadership - it not only needs games set-up in a timely fashion, it needs on-going encouragement and judicious prodding.  I don't mind working with new guys a little to make them feel welcome and get them started, but I'm not an MPer, and I'm a little embarrassed to try to tell anyone established what to do.  But somebody needs to be agressive about addressing anytime something stalls and generally work on keeping morale up and things running smoothly. 

sisko has been in an awful bind juggling RL demands on his time; since he came back, he's been spending more time here than he can afford to.  Running a forum has horribly complex behind-the-scenes technical demands that are beyond me, and a great deal of what he does for AC2 is invisible even to me, because he doesn't have time to tell me what he's doing, or even that he's doing it or did it.  He thinks I don't know that.  He's so busy lately that he doesn't have time to read half of the forum business stuff I post at him in the staff room, which I imagine pisses him off as much as it does me.

SO, I feel [like a tool] for stomping into his baliwick, MP, and doing this, but I figure it's my duty to AC2 and him to take action.  I'm 'hiring' you as sisko's deputy for MP.

I don't remember if you were around in the earliest days of WPC when vyeh was running MP, but he did a fantastic job - things happened on time and promptly, morale seemed to be great, and the games kept moving along.  There was leadership.  I don't think it's necessary for CMNs to take themselves and everything MP -especially thread discipline- nearly so seriously as he did, but agressive leadership about addressing problems like stalled games and a lot of cheerleading to keep up morale works.  Period.  MP was really humming along in those days.

In one sense, the job description is very simple:  Make Everyone Happy, Keep Everyone Happy.  The rest is details about how you do it. 

You and sisko are going to want to put your heads together about this, but what I envision is: you do what you can to make sure everything that needs doing gets done, and see that nothing falls between the cracks.  You're sisko's guy, and you encourage him, and you post a lot to encourage the other MPers (that's the leadership, in a nutshell).  I'm making a private CMN subfolder as soon as I send this, so you two can skip the PMs - he doesn't really like them - and efficiently discuss who does what and why and whatever.



None of this makes you better than anyone else or gives you much real power, but if you act like a leader, encouraging instead of ordering, and leading your people where they want to go, they WILL follow.  You will be overworked and underappreciated, but this is like that line in The Postman about leadership: "If I don't do it, who will?" 


I am personally rather astonished to find myself now a leader in the SMAC(X) community - I'm a misanthrope who's terrible at getting along with people, and was a general in the NerdWars^tm.  I just thought healing was needed, started a thread, made a speech or two trying to talk anyone else into taking point, found out I got listened to and taken a lot more seriously as a moderator, no one else was willing to take over, but several were willing to pitch in, including you, and I've kept stepping in and doing what I thought needed doing that I could and persuading others to do what I couldn't - and I guess, like the reluctant protagonist of The Postman, I find myself a leader, even though I feel like a fraud.  I just wanted more people to talk to.


I encourage you to look at it the same way - you want MP to run better - this is how.



Thank you in advance for doing whatever you can do to help.  This PM wil not destruct in five seconds.

There's more in the Council Room thread, Building a Community, but that's the heart of it; everyone gets treated with respect, the management pledges no power trips and no neglect, and Universal Happiness is our (unreachable) goal.  I totally know how teddybear picnic that all sounds, but it's worked beyond our wildest dreams so far.

Since the stuff quoted above, there has been a real attempt to work out a ruleset for AC2: you are welcome to contribute, your ideas will be taken seriously, and please be gentle with Yitzi and the rest. :D
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2653.0 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2653.0)

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 11, 2013, 06:02:47 PM

Still not sure I'm going to fit in well here.  I INTENSELY dislike filters and censors, and while I've said early on that I'd try to see the lighter side of it (making up my own nonsensical swear words, etc) and I certainly can understand the stated reasons for not allowing members to f-bomb at will (apparently, Google will rate boards that allow such as 'adult', which greatly lowers chances of this board coming up on searches), I...

...I just don't LIKE it.  It pisses me off.

Also, having just read BUncle's admirable speech about how we all need to act like adults here, well, I find an implicit irony there.  I mean, we must all behave as adults, but we must do whatever we can to keep Google from labeling us as such.

I want to be able to freely express myself, and that means, I want to be able to use words that apparently the filter here will turn into other words, and that's going to aggravate me no end.

I guess I should just get over it.

Or something.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 11, 2013, 06:21:03 PM

The swear policy is not up for negotiation, I'm afraid.  You know that I'm capable of using ultraviolet language for simple emphasis in private, depending on who I talking to, but this ain't private.

The world is full of crap I don't like, but must bear - I choose to try to not burden people who don't want to hear/see wirty dords with crap they don't like.  It's the decent thing to do.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Yitzi on August 12, 2013, 12:28:31 AM

Quote from: BUncle on August 04, 2013, 03:49:52 AM

Also, the moderators are inevitably nerds, a sort of people who should rarely ever be given any power over anyone, ever.

I'd disagree.  While there are definitely problems with giving power to nerds, I think they are less than the problems with giving power to certain other types of people that are almost never nerds (generally various forms of bully), so if you've got a choice between the two and have to assign power, better to give it to the nerd.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 12, 2013, 12:46:01 AM

Well, my personal definition of what makes a nerd a nerd is little or no sense of perspective.  By the nature of the thing, poor social skills usually come as part of the package.  Look, I'm a nerd myself or I wouldn't be here, so I'm not an outsider tossing insults.  But what social skills and sense of perspective I have were hard-won over a lot of years. 

I've SEEN nerds take up bullying with an appalling passion, given the chance, so I don't buy that.

Do you really want someone prone to lose the forest for the trees and bad with people having any power over you?  I had to watch nerds use their shiny badges wrong for years before I was ready for this job...

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: JarlWolf on August 12, 2013, 12:56:46 AM

I think it comes down to the definition of what you call a nerd, like BUncle said. There is a difference between a nerd and a geek: while both can be similar, relatively intelligent, somewhat socially awkward (at times) and generally their interests may not be in the "norm" of society, the difference between a nerd and a geek in my eyes is that a nerd will have an obsession over something or have extremely anti-social tendencies which alienates other people. And anyone with an obsessive personality, when given power is bound to end badly. Mind I don't exclude myself from such perimeters: I've handled power and authority before and while I know I can do the job, but I also know that given a circumstance and enough stress I can become a very violent, ruthless man. And the thing is I was trained and had the experience to back up the job. Give someone who does not have the mental preparation for leadership and add in other issues.. you get the point methinks.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Yitzi on August 12, 2013, 01:20:51 AM

Quote from: BUncle on August 12, 2013, 12:46:01 AM

I've SEEN nerds take up bullying with an appalling passion, given the chance, so I don't buy that.

Real bullying?  Where they exercise power over other people to their detriment for no purpose other than to demonstrate "I'm in charge"?  I would think that most nerds would be too idea-focused for that sort of thing.

Quote

Do you really want someone prone to lose the forest for the trees and bad with people having any power over you?

No, but they're better than someone like this guy, who is pretty much as un-nerd-like as possible:

(http://curiouscat.com/images/pointy-haired-boss.jpg)

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 12, 2013, 01:28:56 AM

Quote from: Yitzi on August 12, 2013, 01:20:51 AM

Real bullying?  Where they exercise power over other people to their detriment for no purpose other than to demonstrate "I'm in charge"?  I would think that most nerds would be too idea-focused for that sort of thing.

Real bullying.  I have a story I won't tell, because I don't like talking about times I've been abused and humiliated online, and sisko doesn't want me badmouthing other sites.  But I could point you at a forum where, if you're not going to be TOO strict about the definition, that kind of nerdbadge is SOP, without even leaving the English-speaking civ games community.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 12, 2013, 01:58:50 AM

Mods have been bullies at nearly every forum I've participated in.  All of them inevitably get sucked into the oldest human social myth of all -- Seniority Is Everything.  Which means, whatever the rules of a particular forum may be, mods enforce them far more harshly on noobs than on those who have been forum members for a long time.   

And, always always always, mods cut far more slack for their friends (online or in real life) than they do for people they don't know.  Which makes things rough on the people they don't know.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 12, 2013, 02:00:28 AM

I take more liberties with members I know and like, actually, depending on how even-tempered I think they are...

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: JarlWolf on August 12, 2013, 02:03:58 AM

And part of the reason mods, even good ones, are harsher on new folks is that they need to imprint an image of authority. Though I do hate it when a moderator neglects their duty by letting their chronies have free reign of breaking rules and doing nothing about it: That's just nepotistic and corrupt.

This forum lacks the huge demand for excessive moderation to begin with, because of the community it attracts. So I don't think we'll have too many issues like that, this forum won't ever grow to massive proportions to the point people become completely unfamiliar with one another, were rather tight knit.

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Doc Nebula on August 12, 2013, 11:18:56 AM

I strongly disagree with the notion that noobz, more than any others, require a mod to demonstrate an 'imprint of authority'.  However, assuming such is ever necessary, the mod can show that 'imprint of authority' just as easily by enforcing whatever rules a forum may have on any member that may violate them, regardless of that member's seniority in the forum, or their RW personal relationship with the mod.

But mods DON'T.  They never do.  The actual people they actually hang out with always get a pass, because there could very well be real world consequences to them should they try to throw their weight around with folks they're going to be throwing dice around with this weekend.

And seniority... man, seniority drives me crazy.  The concept that "I've been here longer than you and therefore I have more privileges and status than you" is the rot at the heart of every social organization I've ever been impressed into.  And it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Inertia = You Must Kiss My Ass! 

Of course, maybe I'd like that better if I could ever manage to accrue any seniority of my own. 

Title: Re: Roleplaying and Attitude
Post by: Yitzi on August 12, 2013, 01:06:18 PM

Quote from: darren.madigan.7 on August 12, 2013, 11:18:56 AM

But mods DON'T.  They never do.  The actual people they actually hang out with always get a pass, because there could very well be real world consequences to them should they try to throw their weight around with folks they're going to be throwing dice around with this weekend.

Not always.  I know of one case where a mod temporarily banned himself over a complaint.  (Afterward, the ban-ee complained to the higher-ups and the ban was overturned and the mod temporarily banned for abuse of power.)