i'll use this as representational of the discussion.
first, food for thought: why do you feel a need to make other players doubt their own reality? there are other ways to betray confidence. be more creativeIn post 4415, AniX wrote: Gaslighting is particular among forms of abuse in that some of the behavior inherent to it can be considered part of a mafia game.
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A person who attempts to make someone doubt their observations are true and real is not only playing a game, but are often required to do by their win condition. If a Mafia player's scumslip is noted, they should be expected to say something to the effect of "No, you misinterpreted, that's not what actually happened, you are confused, in fact I think you are only saying that because YOU are the guilty one" even when they, of course, know the person was correct in identifying them as scum.
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This {the moderator action, which I (Cook) am not talking about in this thread} isn't "You should not allege people are gaslighting you ever under any circumstance, even if you truly believe it" so much as it is "Please be aware this is a term of abuse. Please do not use it to describe normal Mafia play."
second off: i'd like to talk about the concept of
within roleplay, a person is playing a character. that character has emotions, ambitions, desires, perks, quirks, all sorts of things that make them a character that's distinct from other characters or distinct from the player playing that character.
within a roleplay (that is, interaction behind the masks of characters between two roleplaying people, acting as the characters they are roleplaying as), there will almost certainly be conflict as the interaction continues. cross words are exchanged, an argument had. if the players walk away from the roleplay feeling bad or upset or genuinely hurt by anything that went on in the roleplay (which is
basically, when players fight with each other, people get hurt. when
so here's what i'm proposing.
mafia is a
this doesn't excuse gaslighting, real or perceived. but there needs to be a layer of separation between the player and the character as far as who is the target of any deceptive action. attack the play, not the player. if you're
i think also part of the reason that we have a toxicity problem within the forum and that this problem doesn't seem to translate outside of the game comes from the fact that there's not enough
one way you may be able to solve this is to do what some folks do like Bingle/Jingle, where the same person has separate accounts and avatars for playing and moderating/socializing. i wonder if people would have entirely different opinions and perhaps interact better with people onsite if the playing persona was boxed to playing the game only and social interaction were kept outside of that.
frankly the LSG/ORG community onsite serves as the best example for this. those games are all under pseudonyms and you have to play a character in however way you see fit to win the game.
i think that philosophy may serve the mafia side well