Conflicts in PbP

Players who disagree with one another are actually pretty commonplace, but the worst was the day that two players almost got into a fist-fight in my living room!

One was a druid, and the other a ranger. The party came across a displacer beast and her kits. The ranger wanted to kill them all, skin them, and make a cloak of displacement. The druid felt that they should be left alone. The players (not the characters) almost came to blows in my living room. I had to ask both of them to leave and not return. They tried to get me to take sides (as the DM), and I refused.

who won?
(I prefer Rangers, but my money is on the Druid)

No one ever wants to fistfight me over D&D.

*Sad Jomsviking noises*

Joms, I suspect plenty of people want to fight you over D&D. We're just all remote. ;)

They tend to hold that opinion until they meet me.

lol and then... they take pity? What kind of toxic masculinity statement is this intended to be?

So it is so extremely unlikely to happen, but now that I mention it you think it is a good idea?

If only I were a chill, cool, GM who didn't hate fun so much. Oh well!

There's no such thing as toxic masculinity, there is only masculinity.

lol. OK pal. Toxic masculinity is real, friend.

You know I lived as a man longer than you've been alive, before I transitioned to live as a woman? I am also raising two teenage boys. I know something about "being a man," and you're just dead wrong. Rape culture, the expectation that men be strong and not show weakness, the stigma against men going to therapy or talking about mental health, using violence as a first resort, and so on. Toxic masculinity hurts women, because we end up being victims of violence, and it hurts men too! It is the major reason why men have higher rates of suicide than women. You don't think that form of masculinity is toxic? Gimme a break.

Also, toxic (and fragile, apparently!) masculinity is totally irrelevant to this thread!

That's fine and well. But it ignores some crucial facts.

Here's the reality of the data. I can easily slam a massive human being into the ground and produce 11.7k newtons of force. My bones and organs will soak this. It only takes ~10k newtons of force to cause all of the internal organs in a human body to rupture. Most humans are not massive. I am.

You can find a video on the site discord of me bent over rowing 405lbs for a set of 25 with just slightly over 1 second per rep. I was fatter and weaker back then. The data is available you merely need to look.

All of this nonsense over me joking about no one wanting to fistfight me over D&D.

Isn't one of the site rules be excellent to one another?

I don't see how you talking about how you are capable of doing extreme acts of violence to other humans is "being excellent to others." It is either bragging or, worse, threatening. And it is also gross. I am also totally unclear on what you post has to do with toxic masculinity other than provide a vibrant display of it.

So how about that conflict in PbP?

Serious people only.

That is extremely unlikely and certainly not an idea I would come up with. Perhaps your strawmen would. Ask them.

I do find the idea of having a cat-eared anime witch in a maid outfit as a teammate cute, though. I'm sure there are plenty of chill and open-minded GMs who'd run a game with a character like that and everyone in the group would have fun.

I'm trying to understand, is there a campaign setting swap implied somewhere? Because I don't get what chillness and open-mindedness has to do with allowing an anime neko-witch concept in a historical war drama about two evil empires fighting each other?

Well, let's try reading.
What idea do I find cute?
"The idea of having a cat-eared anime witch in a maid outfit as a teammate."

Where does it happen?
"A game with a character like that."

Who runs that game?
"Chill and open-minded GMs."

Now kindly point out where "historical war drama about two evil empires" is mentioned in that quote that you are trying to understand. It won't be possible to point out, because it's not mentioned, but you assumed that it is, and that is what's causing your confusion.

Of course it isn't spelled out explicitly with those seven words. I suppose you could imagine a story about Night Witches to be redone as a comedy (like how M*A*S*H was a comedy), but surely it's still obvious that a story about Night Witches would involve the rest of the descriptor?

Where are "Night Witches" mentioned in that quote then? Also never mentioned. See, the entire "Night Witches" example was a straw man pulled by Drgwen. It had nothing to do with my openness to cat-eared anime witches in maid outfits among teammates.

But let's say a chill and open-minded GM wants to run a pseudo-historical war drama with magic. One of the players says "hey, can I play a cat-girl in a maid outfit? I promise to make her fit the story and the vibe as much as possible" and all the players in the group agree that it's okay. Maybe they find it cute as I do. At this point since everyone is okay with it and there's nothing inherently incompatible between "war drama with magic" and "strangely dressed cat-girls" the GM just gives okay and the game starts. And indeed the role-playing of that cat-maid player is perfect, miraculously within the setting, and everyone is having fun.

But what if the system's core rulebook suddenly says "no cat-girls allowed ever" or has strict rules to that effect? What if there's a whitelist of characters that are allowed and everything else isn't? If everyone was okay with the concept, but the system said no, then that would be a bad system, right?

Compare to systems that explicitly state that rules shouldn't always be followed (basically any d20 system says that in one way or another starting with D&D 1e), that the game experience can be modified with system modules (FATE, Cortex Prime, etc.), and that any ability can be re-flavored to fit the story and characters. All those things are done specifically to allow weird things to fly. That is because game systems are intended to appeal to all concepts and all player-groups. But if a system can't handle it and doesn't allow workarounds, then there is a fatal flaw in it that was never addressed by developers. And therefore they shipped an imperfect product.

Previously you mentioned Lancer and its limitations. I never had an opportunity to play Lancer yet, but I see no reason not to trust you on that. What if I wanted to play a pilot who specifically drives a sniper mecha, has barely no close-combat capabilities, and prefers to provide vital support to teammates from a distance? With you as a GM, let's say everyone at the table agrees that it would be good and fun. How would Lancer handle that? Would there really be no way of finding suitable rules for that? Would re-flavoring of abilities be prohibited?

The sentence that brought on the branch of discussion relating to catmaids among night witches was this one:
It seems pretty evident that a Japanese serving among the Night Witches would be highly ahistorical (had a Japanese pilot been among their ranks, it'd be all over TILs and historical curious facts youtubes, because Japan was aligned with the Third Reich at the time), the maid outfit would not match the period uniform, and the cat ears would imply injecting a fantastic character into a historical game. Especially if it were a literal witch as a later post implies.

Your immediate response was
In the context of the response to the Night Witches example, the second creates a contrast between the cited example and a hypothetical chill and open-minded GM who would accept such a character. (I'm not sure if 'anime witch' means 'pilot drawn anime-style' or 'magic-user that follows some genre conventions found in one or more of the many different genres of anime', but your later post implies the former, which is even more jarring.)

(I do agree that Drgwen's example has more to do with the setting than the system though.)
Switching from a historical story about Night Witches to a pseudo-historicall one with literal magic does seem like a case of swapping out one setting for another. I did wonder if that's what's going on in this branch of discussion, and this seems to be a confirmation.
Depends on game context. Cat-girls are usually mostly only distinct by flavour and not mechanics, so as I stated earlier, the example serves better for setting/campaign-based incompatibilities rather than mechanical ones. I do have in mind at least one other example of a system not supporting certain concepts mechanically and yet this being okay because the system still serves its purpose even with the restrictions.

(E.g. Mage the Ascension supports flexible improvised magic, but if you try to make a character who casts such magic quickly, the system will fight you and you will have a hard time succeeding at magic, because the system is optimised towards supporting mages engaging in elaborate rituals. I can see how a newbie player might misinterpret the common soundbite 'magic in MtA can do anything' to mean not just all sorts of effects but also different pacing of casting.)
Even those systems have their peculiarities that make some concepts less viable. Most FATE editions are very opposed to any concepts amounting to 'magical combat healer' even if they support magic in general. Cortex is averse to reliable concepts (i.e. in Cortex, being more skilled means you achieve awesome results more often, but you become only slightly less likely to produce unskilled results due to the way the dice engine is written, producing a more 'pulpy' feel of all concepts).
I would say that if you want the mechanics of a deeply specialised sniper like that (as opposed to 'the Jack-of-All-Stats Everest mecha with Cyclone Pulse Rifle'), you'd need to start at License Level 2. And it seems most groups I played with and all published adventures I know start at LL0. Personally I'm a fan of starting at LL2 or more.

I have to disagree with that. Systems are very much not intended to appeal to all concepts and all player-groups. If anything, if a system tries to do everything for everyone, I believe it would end up doing many things very badly. And also be a nightmare to use, because you would have to spick out all the bits relevant to your game every time.

While I agree that not all systems are meant for everything, I think you're going too far in postulating that generic-universal systems are necessarily bad at what they do.

Sure, there is a curve of maximum fitness to a goal depending on the breadth of the goal, and it can be harder to score high on fitness for broader goals. But there are still cases where a universal system is okay or good but not perfect for a broad range of goals. And conversely, nothing prevents a specialised system from being bad (we just tend to not remember those systems, we remember the successful ones). And there is the factor that sometimes it's better to take a universal system, on which a lot of polishing work has been done, and which fits your peculiar concept at 80%, than to seek out a hypothetical system that fits it 90-99% which (a) may or may not exist and (b) may or may not be actually as good as the 'possible maximum fitness' that would be expected based on the aforementioned curve.