A theme-less, CGen-less game
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Hey folks,
For starters please keep in mind this is the constructive section of the site.
During a recent private discussion a user suggested that we run a neutral, themeless game on MSB. There would be no CGen or rules, only a way for people to log on, pick a room and just play whatever they have in mind.
In the interest of clarity and from my end the following restrictions should be assumed to be true:
- No privacy violations by dark staff spying into what you're doing or logs saved of your conversations
- Very little active administration other than to keep the game running.
- Very few 'extra' features that don't come out of the box with whatever codebase, plus a diceroller.
I had some questions for you all.
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Is this something you'd be interested in? Would it be useful?
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Can people more or less behave/handle themselves?
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What codebase would be preferred?
The objective is to provide a service that's not too hard to maintain, so this thread is made to discuss the value of the former against the cost of the latter.
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I don't think this is something that I would use at all, but if other people want a blank slate to sandbox on, it's no skin off my nose.
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I feel pretty much like @saosmash . This probably wouldn't be my thing, but I can see how other users might want a place to organize random RP that's not tied to a specific game. I'm more personally apt to just use something like Discord or Googledocs for that, but when I do freeform RP it tends to be with people I know for a specific reason.
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Thirded.
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I also don't care.
Though I do love poking at things so... my first question would be "why?"
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I wouldn't use it. But I have no objections! More simple venues are better than less, IMO.
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I would use it before I used something like Discord. I've sometimes used Gateway this way for test-play for characters and such in the past. I probably wouldn't log in a lot, though, so it would probably need a good link somewhere so I didn't forget it existed.
I expect people can more or less behave, but it'd probably be best to make it easy for people to block others out from their existence. Being able to very easily lock rooms and ignore a given player would help when/if you got the 'less' version.
I like TinyMUX and TinyMUSH, personally.
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I’ll break silence as one of the few voices that would support something similar to this.
As its presented:
- a) (interested) yes, b) (useful) no (there are a few social MU*s out there that offer something similar already)
- No, people will not more or less handle themselves especially with little active administration. Most will, yes, but administration is needed for the rare bad apples. It might only be a very miniscule percentage, but without administration there will be creepers.
- Sans few extra features, does codebase really matter other than preference of whoever it is that is elected to do codewiz stuff?
As presented, it will just look like MUSH or PUGGY or other regular social mu*s. Which generally has the same 8-16 people across the spectrum, thus making it humorous when one of them mavs the wrong window but half the people know what’s being said cause they’re in the other window too. Gateway(ORG) is set up this way (free sandbox rp, light admin, not heavily code reliant) and without the right leadership (admin or any for that matter) its up to players. And from the responses so for, that would be status quo; most folks that sandbox/freeform do so already with people they know and trust even at these places (or in other mediums).
I do support the idea, place to easily sandbox. But it needs a friendly community and to ensure community it needs some active administration to make it a community and some purpose beyond a place to sandbox would help give it direction.
Something like:
- like some place to help new players to MU*ing in general
- to help folks who enjoy the story telling side over the gaming side
- to help some folks make friends who don’t yet have such a ready database of friends to draw on if they do want to freeform
- for folks who like the gaming side it could be a place to help learn systems in a friendly environment without worry of some eventually ooc comments/snicker/whatever about being a noob
- a place to advertise/track live games (in conjunction with the wiki you’re proposing)
A friendly place that could allow open sandbox RP could be good and beneficial, I’d be interested in contributing even. But it would take more thought on direction and purpose. But a loosely administered free-for-all could end up a train wreck, or it will just be as sparsely populated/active as all the similar attempts before it have ended up.
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I'd be interested, for mostly two reasons:
a) there's always something I wanna play and I don't usually have the time to keep up with MUs and I like the idea of being able to just log on with someone and sandbox, I dunno;
b) you can call it The MU Sandbox.
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@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
like some place to help new players to MU*ing in general
Are you sure you want the likes of us doing that? I don't want us doing that, and I'm one of the us.
Another question is... why us? About this whole subject, not just the referenced part. Why MSB, and not some dude that happens to hang out at MSB?
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@tinuviel said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
like some place to help new players to MU*ing in general
Are you sure you want the likes of us doing that? I don't want us doing that, and I'm one of the us.
Fair question. Though to be fair, there are a few voices here on MSB of late that have striven (grammar folks can figure out the right form of strive I'm looking for) to be friendly towards players that are new to MUing. I won't @name them, they can wander in on their own, but I'm sure we know the few that have made the effort to strengthen the MU community and have gone through great efforts go make MUing more newbie friendly, including development of new code entirely.
Another question is... why us? About this whole subject, not just the referenced part. Why MSB, and not some dude that happens to hang out at MSB?
Not being the one in that private conversation, I can only fathom why MSB. Though ... maybe its the most active social location relevant to MU* outside of MUD forums and as has been noted of late, the associated community of MSB has become more friendly than it has ever been in past iterations and certainly shines more than those other forums where mud slinging continues unabated. The activity persists here despite many social attempts that have failed to make MU*ing more popular?
Conversely, maybe it goes against the nature of MSB, as being the place to soapbox about various MU*s outside of them. Like, if admin were doing bad on MU the Sand Box, would some folks feel like they cannot voice criticism here (I know the regulars would, but what of the less vocal individuals)?
I think that's why it would come down to worthy of more discussion and not just random, very lightly administered, free-for-all sandbox. I'll second @Coin too, sometimes folks just have a craving to play something without building an entire MU*.
I just think the association with MSB would tie a sandbox style place to the most active community space relevant to MU*ing in general?
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@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
I just think the association with MSB would tie a sandbox style place to the most active community space relevant to MU*ing in general?
It feels a little like if Roger Ebert made a movie, in a weird way.
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
I think that's why it would come down to worthy of more discussion
You mean... like a forum?
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@tinuviel said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
I just think the association with MSB would tie a sandbox style place to the most active community space relevant to MU*ing in general?
It feels a little like if Roger Ebert made a movie, in a weird way.
Lets say, I made a musical number. I'd much rather it be associated with a main venue on Broadway (assuming I presented this for the first time in America) rather than my mom's basement. I'm sure my friends and family would all say I'm great, but a Broadway venue would have more curb appeal to strangers. I'm only fathoming too, I'm not the person that spoke to @Arkandel about this idea; I just think an active social MU that included tools to sandbox could be helpful.
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
I think that's why it would come down to worthy of more discussion
You mean... like a forum?
Indeed, such a forum as this. I'm only offering my constructive criticism because I do think an active social place to sandbox could be helpful on many levels. The idea is good, but not as free-form-admin-lite sandbox (these already exist).
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@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
main venue on Broadway
Except this place isn't that venue. This is the office of the New York Times theatre section. We criticise games and discuss improvements and the community. Some of us might be producers or actors, but this building we're in isn't for that.
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@tinuviel said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
main venue on Broadway
Except this place isn't that venue. This is the office of the New York Times theatre section. We criticise games and discuss improvements and the community. Some of us might be producers or actors, but this building we're in isn't for that.
Exactly, and with a lot of readers (viewers/lurkers) MSB is ideal advertisement space, being associated with the New York Times is better than my crayon attempt at an editorial piece that I'm handing out in the neighborhood.
Despite its purpose and utilizations, MSB has more real estate than you give it credit for.
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@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
Indeed, such a forum as this. I'm only offering my constructive criticism because I do think an active social place to sandbox could be helpful on many levels. The idea is good, but not as free-form-admin-lite sandbox (these already exist).
I do appreciate the input - and while I'd
love torather pull my own eyeballs out with a rusty spoon than run a MUSH I'd have to actively administrate, if this would work at all it would need to be rudderless or ran by trustworthy inmates.One of the ideas to reduce the maintenance needed for example is to create lockable, silent (not pageable) rooms. So if I wanted to run my own scene I can bring my buddies over, and if someone wanted in they would have to ask me on MSB for a +meetme... or something along those lines.
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@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
MSB is ideal advertisement space
It's an ideal place to advertise a thing, sure. That much is evident already.
@lotherio said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
Despite its purpose and utilizations, MSB has more real estate than you give it credit for.
If it's simply a matter of hosting this sandbox-whatever on the same box as the forum, that's one thing. To make it an "MSB Production" is something I can't see a reason for. If a segment of this little community wants to make a thing, and Ark wants to supply space, that's great. Otherwise, I don't see any reason to put the MSB label on it.
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@arkandel I think out-of-the-box AresMUSH would have everything you needed to do this. The
scene
system creates a temp room + teleports you there, which would effectively allow players to play whatever scene/game/story they wanted to. Just log in, start a scene, join a scene. Flag things public/private for if other randoms are allowed to hop in. Scenes can be "paused" and restarted at people's conveniences. Really is easy.Plus, as far as administration goes, the
jobs
suite is available through the web. So whoever is admin for the game could effectively handle a lot of stuff without even needing to enter the game itself.Edit: There's a fully integrated wiki. It's not quite got all the bells and whistles as WikiMedia, but it is part of the same server, it's within the same web-portal, and logins for it are the same as the game.
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Side thought: Is it really conducive to a new person's education to plonk them in a 'game' that's nothing at all like the vast majority of games?
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@tinuviel said in A theme-less, CGen-less game:
Otherwise, I don't see any reason to put the MSB label on it.
Just two reasons really.
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It doesn't already exist in that exact form so... there's a host whose resources MSB is barely scratching.
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If it becomes a shithole I can pull the plug. No matter how 'light on administration' it's supposed to be there are things (which are in MSB's own rules) that would be dealbreakers.
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