Stupid Rules

[Death Kitten 200]

8 minutes ago, Rune said:

I hate the For Every X you must roll a Y rules. But I also don't get the strict need to have gender ratios even.

My XO tries to watch our gender ratios in our npcs, and though I know he doesn't mean to, he only notices when things skew 'too female'. I make too many females, he suggests I flip a gender, but he doubles the number of henchmen that all happen to be male, and oops. I really don't care, so I pick my battles, but he doesn't realize he's been normalized to expect men in all these positions, so that's probably why he only notices when things skew female.

 

Maybe next time he points out we're too female, I'll suggest we go non binary without it being an Andorian.

[Rune 1,099]

@Death Kitten - Could just bluntly ask why it matters? I mean, what are the chances of someone looking at a list and going "Man, that spaceship has a lot of ladies!" And if they do you just go "Yup, our players have a lot of female characters so it happens." And just assume that there are NPC dudes around. Just seems like it overly complicates things that don't need to be complicated.

 

/shrug

[Death Kitten 200]

@Rune Been there, tried that. He doesn't get it. I mean, he and I have gotten bogged down in conversations about comic book movies, and he was trying to explain to me that DC is "winning" the feminism thing because they're giving us a Wonder Woman movie the fourth title into their unified cinematic universe, compared to Marvel that won't even consider a Black Widow title until 2020... and I'm just like, that's not winning, that's *starting* to dig themselves out of the hole all of Hollywood is in. I mean, for noodle's sake, we've seen how many Batman and Superman movies over the years, why did we need to start their unified universe with more of that *and* BvS other than to remind us that women are clearly second class citizens as far as cinematic dollars stand.

[Elena 546]

Well, I agree with @Death Kitten. I don't allow many female pirates either, because they are supposed to be RARE in the 18-th century. And if I accepted all who wanted to make a pirate lady, I would have had all the ships filled with women, and only 1-2 male characters. WHich isn't realistic for that time... I wrote once this blog to express my frustration about it.

[Rune 1,099]

@Elena - Yeah, huge difference between it being a lore thing but if its on a real world site it's generally only done to ensure there's an even amount of genders for romantic pairings - Which doesn't make much sense if you take into account the fact that homosexuals exists.

[Honorem 219]

19 hours ago, Rune said:

@Elena - Yeah, huge difference between it being a lore thing but if its on a real world site it's generally only done to ensure there's an even amount of genders for romantic pairings - Which doesn't make much sense if you take into account the fact that homosexuals exists.

Agreed. If it's for legitimate reasons such as setting integrity I can understand. But not if it's just for the sake of having even numbers. Screw 'in the name of balance', it's roleplay not stat based D20 (well there are some stat based but you know what I mean). xD!

[Rune 1,099]

Oh, just thought of this one.

 

Saw a couple sites that bluntly said if they thought your ad was "ugly" or contrasted with their skin, they'd delete it. Who cares that much?

Likewise, I've seen sites ban faces the admin didn't think were attractive/admin claim 20+ faces at the start solely because they were "theirs."

[Sara-Zorah 18]

On 5/21/2016 at 10:56 AM, Rune said:

I do temp bans on it. For whatever reason we have yearly baby booms so I let the boom happen, then ban it for a while so that we don't wind up with a million babies for no reason. It's weirdly effective.

 

I hate the For Every X you must roll a Y rules. But I also don't get the strict need to have gender ratios even.

The site I run has arranged marriage as a game mechanic, so if the gender ratios get too out of control, then characters sit in the pool for a long time and newbies get tired of waiting and leave. Our rule isn't as strict as "one male character for every female", but that's why we have it. 

 

Having rules like that on a site where dating or marriage isn't even the focus is dumb as hell though.

[Rune 1,099]

14 minutes ago, Madame Superfly said:

The site I run has arranged marriage as a game mechanic, so if the gender ratios get too out of control, then characters sit in the pool for a long time and newbies get tired of waiting and leave. Our rule isn't as strict as "one male character for every female", but that's why we have it. 

 

Having rules like that on a site where dating or marriage isn't even the focus is dumb as hell though.

 

Yeah, like most things if its scenario specific, that makes perfect sense. But if you're running a RW site (which is where I see these ratios most) it's pretty pointless.

[Sara-Zorah 18]

A rule that always got me was the "No duplicate names rule". I'm not talking about the common sense "You can't have two characters named Johnny Test" rule. I'm talking about that "If one player has a character named Johnny, no one else can, not even if you spell it differently. Also no one is allowed to have a John, because that's just too close to Johnny." 

 

Like...what's the point of this? We had three Gwendolyn/Gwens on my site at one point and everyone knew that Gwendolyn D and Gwendolyn H and Gwendolyn R weren't the same character?? 

[Death Kitten 200]

14 minutes ago, Madame Superfly said:

A rule that always got me was the "No duplicate names rule". I'm not talking about the common sense "You can't have two characters named Johnny Test" rule. I'm talking about that "If one player has a character named Johnny, no one else can, not even if you spell it differently. Also no one is allowed to have a John, because that's just too close to Johnny." 

 

Like...what's the point of this? We had three Gwendolyn/Gwens on my site at one point and everyone knew that Gwendolyn D and Gwendolyn H and Gwendolyn R weren't the same character?? 

Dude, in school I kinda wished this was a rule, because at one point I was in a class with two other Amys. It sucks to feel like you're one of a lot. However, the fact of the matter is that's life... so seriously, an RP telling me we can't have multiples is just plain silly.

 

I wonder how much of a fit one of these RPs would throw if I put in an App with one name, then as I started to play, just had my character tell everyone they can call them a name that someone was already using for their character? Like I app'ed with Charles, but I really wanted to play a Tom... so his name's Charles T. Johnson Jr, but everyone calls him Tom because his father goes by Charles. Is that against the rules? His name isn't Tom, he just answers to Tom.

[sid 5]

The "no duplicate names" rule always kills me because there were 5 Vanessa's in my class when I was in 3rd grade. 5! Vanessa A, Vanessa B, Vanessa E, Vanessa G, and Vanessa M. So the chances of there being two people with the same or similar names on a board where it's like a city or whatever makes sense. 

 

Actually, the way I met my BFF was on a board a while back. Our characters just happened to have the same last names (Winters) and they bonded over that and had a chuckle. Two and a half years later they're getting married and are joking about how they both get to keep their names!

[Morrigan 1,826]

6 hours ago, hades said:

Actually, the way I met my BFF was on a board a while back. Our characters just happened to have the same last names (Winters) and they bonded over that and had a chuckle. Two and a half years later they're getting married and are joking about how they both get to keep their names!

This reminds me of Tiny Toons.

*Buster Bunny"

"Babs Bunny"

"No relation"

[Rune 1,099]

I hadn't seen the no dupes rule in a while and stumbled across it the other day and it blew my mind. Again: Who cares that much? I could understand if you have a grand 5 members total, but c'mon. 

 

CW has a list of "discouraged" names when we get 2+ that are similar, but we aren't going to stop anyone from making someone with that name. (Except maybe Eve - We had a spree with an OOC Eve and like 6 variations of it Evelynn, Evelette, Evelyn, etc)

[Honorem 219]

A few more.

 

- RP trials. When every new member has to enter a trial thread with staff before they can branch out into the community. What a laugh! I don't see these nowadays, but back in the day I joined a forum with this system in place. Of course you were guaranteed to pass the test with flying colors if you wrote smut with staff's characters.

 

- Mandatory post templates with multiple gifs, etc. I thought roleplaying was about writing?