To be honest, I cannot think of many hobbies that don't require some work to... well, make work. It's one thing if having to schedule things in a day planner makes things feel too much like a second job -- that's a way some people feel that is perfectly valid. But I can't picture any pursuit involving collaboration with other people that doesn't require at least some effort to get some return.

I tried a new game recently. I wound up too busy to put in the work to make inroads. I wasn't too surprised when no one played with me. I hadn't given them any reason to want to, or even know that I was there.

If ever there's a situation where we're enjoying something without having to do any work for it, it's usually because the burden of doing the work is being carried by someone else.

I am the new Ignacio alongside the new Cadenza, and I also have no idea what I'm doing! Arx is a new world full of mystery to me.

edit: oh no, we're not anymore! But the onigiri and I are still around on other alts.

@juke Yes to all of this. I cannot count the number of times I have suddenly heard that XYZ hates me for being an elitist cliqueing bastard, while XYZ will have literally never spoken to me once.

Usually they place the blame on me for "being unapproachable and too scary to page" (????), or for "making them feel blown off" because I told them I literally cannot RP until next week at XYZ time, due to other obligations both at and away from the computer screen. Both of these things baffle me.

It is tiring when people read 500 malicious intentions that aren't there into even the most innocuous things I can say or do.

So I suppose my advice is to dispense with this mode of thinking that so-and-so "seems to be frowned on," or that XYZ kind of RP is "boring and unwanted.' You are sabotaging yourself over something that may not even be there. Just ask people for RP. Let people tell you what they actually want from there.

@surreality said in A new platform?:

the kinds of things people are talking about needing and that are somehow and for some reason required so we don't all die oh no are equivalent to things that entire full time paid teams develop over a period of years.
That is not even a little bit realistic.

I agree, and I even caught myself thinking in this way just this morning while trying to leave @faraday some AresMUSH feedback. Thinking about it more thoroughly, though, one realizes: there are a lot of things that we have gotten used to having in MUing only as a result of playing on games which were stood up by people who are actually server admins in their day jobs.

The first example I can think of is the currently-typical setup of a MU server running alongside a MediaWiki installation. A lot of the more advanced functionalities I find myself personally taking for granted, or wanting to have access to, were actually only possible because someone involved in the game setup process was able to install and configure MediaWiki, which is a fully-featured tool developed by actual developers out there somewhere. Same deal with a lot of the code packages we use for MUs, which come to us from the work of professional coders who just happened to have this as a hobby.

The process of making MUSHing more accessible to the layperson likely means compromising on some of those more advanced features, in order to realistically develop something that is as broadly usable as possible. We can't simultaneously make a platform that is basic and approachable, yet also has all the bells and whistles. Not because it's not possible, but because the amount of work necessary for one or two people to create and configure all that is a barrier against the actual end goal: a system that lowers the bar to entry, that is easy to produce, that is also easy for an end user to deploy.

Interesting topic.

Bad:

• Passive aggression. Huge no. Guaranteed way to get me to do the opposite of what you're trying to manipulate me to do. Example:

I'm sooo bored. Maybe I should RP.
A few minutes of silence
I MIGHT AS WELL QUIT RP, IT'S NOT FATED TO BE FOR ME ANYMORE!
Ragequit, after five minutes of waiting for sympathy.

• Repeated instances of standing me up for scenes, especially without bothering to 1) let me know in advance 2) apologize after the fact, if circumstances prevent #1. What will take this from 'irritation' to 'actual anger' is if I have scheduled a scene with someone at a certain time, and they walk off to scene with someone else who happens to offer them RP prior to the scheduled start time of our scene.

• Rudeness in metaposing. If you got shit to talk, say it out loud in your dialogue. No matter how much characters might dislike each other IC, it's still perfectly possible to write the meta in a respectful way. I tend to think that people are playing a character because they love them, and so they would accordingly feel good if their character is treated with respect. Isn't the point of this for everyone to feel good/have fun?

• Related to above: people who are rude, dismissive, or powergamey even in OOC chatter. 100% guaranteed that behavior extends into RP.

• Inability to share attention/spotlight. Making everything about yourself most or all of the time.

• Pure social RP. If I find the scenes are just hangout social without anything really happening as a result of them, I will spend my time in another way.

Good:

• Probably the biggest thing here is initiative. I usually find myself doing the setting/coming up with ideas/pushing everything forward, because I am a Type A nitpicker and it bugs me when stuff sits undone without anyone dealing with it. Not being an especially creative person, this is real tiring. Someone who thinks for themselves, collaborates with me to help think of stuff, and even sometimes comes up with ideas for me, is therefore a huge relief.

• People focused more on character development as the purpose of their RP. It shows when someone is in RP to write their character's responses and personal changes, as a result of the things that happen around them, in a coherent and believable way.

• Shares attention, plot hooks, and approaches RP collaboratively with an eye towards how to ensure everyone has some fun.

• Interest in my character, related to the point above on how "people presumably play a character because they love them." I like mine. I therefore like it when people are obviously keeping my interests and the specifics of my character in mind. Being treated like an infodump NPC in someone else's RP video game turns me off very quickly.

I get this in the opposite direction, being "a man getting hit on/flirted at/leered by a woman." Usually I'm in the scene with someone else I know who I can signal to come talk to me and intercept the interaction, which I find gives me a pretty good out to go "lol, goodbye, I need to talk to this other person now."

So I guess the best thing to do (just in case the people are actually playing out something they want to play out) is to go over and talk to the person being hit on. Their RP response should probably make it a little clearer whether the situation is "go away, I'm trying to get some," or "please help."

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

are you saying a game owner/staff is fine with being "the backup" game and missing out on attendance on events to another game because they're just happy people are having fun?

I agree with @krmbm because "being a backup game" is not how I view this scenario.

I want a game I run to be someone's "main game" if it is where they have fun, and it is what suits their needs and expectations as a player in terms of theme, frequency of RP, culture, so on and so forth. What I find more demoralizing as an admin is seeing people sticking around, forcing it, even though the game is obviously not working for them. People in this situation tend to complain, and it's not fun for anyone.

I don't want people to humor me or force themselves to stay on my game if it isn't what they need or want. I want a playerbase who is on board for what I'm doing and the way in which I want to do it. If in this scenario, people are off on Arx and not populating my events, then I do not want to "do something so I can get them to stop being over there and drag them back to my game." Which is functionally what would have to happen. I would sooner keep running the game I want to run and then, if I missed playing with the absent people, go roll a character on Arx with them and enjoy some RP where I'm not an admin.

It's very obvious when a player is not meshing with a game, and their unhappiness and frustration can become much more disruptive and tiring for me to witness than if they simply amicably packed up and found another game on which they were happier.

Also concur on the game opening zergrush not being healthy or indicative of a game's success at all in the long run. Stability and happy players who mesh with the game are, I think, better indicators of health than login numbers or 10-person events every day.

I don't really dispute that there can be a sense of competition between games, especially within the same genre. Yes, people have finite time and they will select certain games over others in order to spend their time upon. Yes, you need to be competitive in order to secure that attention, in the sense of competitive which means "offering a quality experience that makes people want to come play." I just don't know that being the most competitive game out there matters to the same degree to everyone out there making a game, which is probably where the disconnect in this thread is.

There are things I could do in order to make a game I run "the best game available," compared to other games, so that people will leave that game and come to mine. I don't think there is a staff corp out there that doesn't wonder "what can we do to be attractive and get people to come play here?"

But there is a balancing point there, at least for me. At some point it starts to run into compromising what I want the game to be about, thematically, and how I want it to run, in order to secure more players. And I know there have been multiple conversations on MSB about how more staff should hold firm to their personal visions and themes, and how trying to change your game around in order to make everyone happy is ultimately a losing proposition.

Ultimately we are all here to get to RP and play some games and I don't feel "more choices out there as to where and how to do that" is a negative. People should be able to move around naturally to games that jive with their particular interests at any given time, and on a personal level I just don't want to break my brain trying to capture and hold the attentions of people whose interests will naturally fluctuate over time.

I used to be more purply. Then I read Chuck Palahniuk, and realized that shorter sentences punched me in the face a lot harder. There were a lot fewer words to muddle through before I got to the point.

Count my vote for "Yes, the nature of the hobby has changed, as the people involved have changed."

People generally have much less time to devote to RPing for several hours. I think the culture has shifted towards people scheduling in advance more often, or at least expecting a little bit more out of the RP that proposes to take up some of their scarce free time.

Maybe it's not universally true of every game, but it is true of most of the people I play with, and the games which I have played on.

I do feel bad about the optics that my need to schedule my scenes sometimes creates. It doesn't feel great to go ic away from a person asking for RP right that minute, because I had a prior appointment which was scheduled weeks ago. But it's just how I have to do things. I tend to need to be mentally prepared to do my scenes, anyway, so it's a rare time I can just pick up and go right when asked.

There is nothing personal about me telling you I can't RP until the end of the week, or into next week: what it means is no more than that I literally cannot. I can only give a promise to RP on the first day which I do come free.

I don't really dispute that there can be a sense of competition between games, especially within the same genre. Yes, people have finite time and they will select certain games over others in order to spend their time upon. Yes, you need to be competitive in order to secure that attention, in the sense of competitive which means "offering a quality experience that makes people want to come play." I just don't know that being the most competitive game out there matters to the same degree to everyone out there making a game, which is probably where the disconnect in this thread is.

There are things I could do in order to make a game I run "the best game available," compared to other games, so that people will leave that game and come to mine. I don't think there is a staff corp out there that doesn't wonder "what can we do to be attractive and get people to come play here?"

But there is a balancing point there, at least for me. At some point it starts to run into compromising what I want the game to be about, thematically, and how I want it to run, in order to secure more players. And I know there have been multiple conversations on MSB about how more staff should hold firm to their personal visions and themes, and how trying to change your game around in order to make everyone happy is ultimately a losing proposition.

Ultimately we are all here to get to RP and play some games and I don't feel "more choices out there as to where and how to do that" is a negative. People should be able to move around naturally to games that jive with their particular interests at any given time, and on a personal level I just don't want to break my brain trying to capture and hold the attentions of people whose interests will naturally fluctuate over time.

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

are you saying a game owner/staff is fine with being "the backup" game and missing out on attendance on events to another game because they're just happy people are having fun?

I agree with @krmbm because "being a backup game" is not how I view this scenario.

I want a game I run to be someone's "main game" if it is where they have fun, and it is what suits their needs and expectations as a player in terms of theme, frequency of RP, culture, so on and so forth. What I find more demoralizing as an admin is seeing people sticking around, forcing it, even though the game is obviously not working for them. People in this situation tend to complain, and it's not fun for anyone.

I don't want people to humor me or force themselves to stay on my game if it isn't what they need or want. I want a playerbase who is on board for what I'm doing and the way in which I want to do it. If in this scenario, people are off on Arx and not populating my events, then I do not want to "do something so I can get them to stop being over there and drag them back to my game." Which is functionally what would have to happen. I would sooner keep running the game I want to run and then, if I missed playing with the absent people, go roll a character on Arx with them and enjoy some RP where I'm not an admin.

It's very obvious when a player is not meshing with a game, and their unhappiness and frustration can become much more disruptive and tiring for me to witness than if they simply amicably packed up and found another game on which they were happier.

Also concur on the game opening zergrush not being healthy or indicative of a game's success at all in the long run. Stability and happy players who mesh with the game are, I think, better indicators of health than login numbers or 10-person events every day.

@Sunny Aww thank you! Everyone has been very kind to us once they realize we're extremely new, which has been much needed because my current level of proficiency with Arx is "how do i even."

I am the new Ignacio alongside the new Cadenza, and I also have no idea what I'm doing! Arx is a new world full of mystery to me.

edit: oh no, we're not anymore! But the onigiri and I are still around on other alts.

@faraday said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@surreality said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

That said, I get why it's hard to be that person when it's a stranger. It is REALLY EASY to come across as 'wrongfunning someone' if they are perfectly OK with what's happening by asking if they're uncomfortable when they're not, which could in turn make both parties uncomfortable.

This, exactly. If somebody wants to reach out? That's their business. But this is why I personally would not be comfortable doing so, especially on games where I also staff. It just sets up this weird dynamic where you're kind of implying the other person might be doing something wrong. Like I can just imagine the person on the other end being all... "Um.... no, I'm good. Why? Should I not be? Do you know something about this person I don't know?" and so forth.

But mostly I just get uncomfortable at the idea that somebody behaving in an IC way that we personally find distasteful should automatically be cause for OOC protective action. That just seems like a slippery slope.

This summarizes my feelings on it.

@onigiri said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

However, I've seen that tactic been wielded, conversely, for manipulative reasons, which sucks. I've had polite, story-focused, kind friends (as well as myself!) been the targets of "concerned pages" directed at their/my IC Romance Partners (usually by the thirsty players of IC romantic rivals) trying to play protective and thoughtful 'I'm just so concerned they keep chatting with you and seem all over you', which is just a dressed-up version of unsubstantiated shit-talking. For that reason, I get leery at immediately taking something OOC, or I may question the motives of someone (especially someone I don't know well) doing that at me. Which is sad, in its way, but reflects my own reality in this hobby.

This has also unfortunately been my experience. It is the "stranger" aspect of this that makes it different for me. It is not that I would necessarily mind being asked. I would just find it somewhat awkward and intrusive from someone I did not know. I tend to be pretty guarded nowadays, however, because unfortunately I have also been creeped on a number of times, and it has often begun from "friendly" strangers taking a sudden interest in me.

@faraday said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Ghost said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

If you're going to vote with your feet you have to accept that this means you may not end up with a MU to play on. Voting with your feet in MU can literally mean limiting your play options to having multiple nights with no roleplay at all. Is voring with your feet enough to risk not participating in the hobby to stand your ground on your ethics? I was able to answer that question, for myself, of course.

As was I, which is exactly my point. We're all adults here. We choose what we're willing to tolerate. No one else bears that responsibility for us.

I had a conversation on this topic recently. The gist of it was, "either you can have boundaries for what you will or won't do, or you can have a lot of RP, not really both."

There seem to be a lot of players out there who offer a lot of RP and attention, but then gradually start to use that in order to push past the boundaries of others. They can do this because most people will think, "I'm not really comfortable with this, but if I don't suck it up the RP goes away."

It can be fairly difficult to set those boundaries when, well, we're all here to get RP and all. Which is why I'm not really opposed to helping out someone who might potentially be finding themselves in an uncomfortable situation, per the original scenario. I just maintain that the first approach should be an IC one, in the event that the interaction was in fact mutually desired.

I get this in the opposite direction, being "a man getting hit on/flirted at/leered by a woman." Usually I'm in the scene with someone else I know who I can signal to come talk to me and intercept the interaction, which I find gives me a pretty good out to go "lol, goodbye, I need to talk to this other person now."

So I guess the best thing to do (just in case the people are actually playing out something they want to play out) is to go over and talk to the person being hit on. Their RP response should probably make it a little clearer whether the situation is "go away, I'm trying to get some," or "please help."

To be honest, I cannot think of many hobbies that don't require some work to... well, make work. It's one thing if having to schedule things in a day planner makes things feel too much like a second job -- that's a way some people feel that is perfectly valid. But I can't picture any pursuit involving collaboration with other people that doesn't require at least some effort to get some return.

I tried a new game recently. I wound up too busy to put in the work to make inroads. I wasn't too surprised when no one played with me. I hadn't given them any reason to want to, or even know that I was there.

If ever there's a situation where we're enjoying something without having to do any work for it, it's usually because the burden of doing the work is being carried by someone else.

Count my vote for "Yes, the nature of the hobby has changed, as the people involved have changed."

People generally have much less time to devote to RPing for several hours. I think the culture has shifted towards people scheduling in advance more often, or at least expecting a little bit more out of the RP that proposes to take up some of their scarce free time.

Maybe it's not universally true of every game, but it is true of most of the people I play with, and the games which I have played on.

I do feel bad about the optics that my need to schedule my scenes sometimes creates. It doesn't feel great to go ic away from a person asking for RP right that minute, because I had a prior appointment which was scheduled weeks ago. But it's just how I have to do things. I tend to need to be mentally prepared to do my scenes, anyway, so it's a rare time I can just pick up and go right when asked.

There is nothing personal about me telling you I can't RP until the end of the week, or into next week: what it means is no more than that I literally cannot. I can only give a promise to RP on the first day which I do come free.

I have used BeipMU for very many years and would definitely recommend it, especially for SimpleMU users looking for an upgrade that is not too dissimilar.