@Kestrel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

[...] A friend of mine is currently working on an MU* project where he's looking to really amp up the 'explorer' factor in what I think is a rather novel way — rather than having a traditional grid designed by builders, he wants to create a self-creating, dynamic player-driven grid wherein anything you can imagine wanting would be automatically generated (and then be explorable) the moment you enter a command like, 'goto bar'. If no bar exists, the system would then simply create a bar with a randomised name/description, and other players would have a chance of finding it next time someone uses 'goto bar' as opposed to looking for that bar specifically by its new name/ID. And similarly this could be used for generating and linking generic backstory town-where-I-grew-up, where you may discover that you actually grew up in the same town as another player, allowing for the opportunity to coordinate.

The idea for this came from his hatred of traditional MU* grid-style walking around and the hassle involved in building. He also said he simply didn't want to build a MUD, but something new.

Hi, I'm that friend. I'm not here to do a sale's pitch, 'the game' is cloud of nothing as it stands - an idea, the most inflated currency on Earth. But I love design talk, so this conversation is right up my alley.

@acceleration said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

This sounds interesting. I'd like to hear more details. It sounds mostly like a convenience thing not too far from existing MUSH/MUX +travel systems that allow player builds. It would definitely offer flexibility, but I'm not all that sure it would appeal to explorer types.

I totally agree, and as Loth points out...

@Lotherio said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

[...] In the early 90s, lots of places enabled @quota on players and they were expected to contribute to the shared environment. Build a bar, make a ship, make cars that moved, make puppets that interacted with players and otherwise build the shared world together. At some point, people decided this created too much clutter or used up too much space, and the quota was slowly reduced until, like most places today, its either turned off or set to like 1 which is reserved for one private room, which must be @dug by staff.

All that 'flexibility' can become a nightmare. My goal with tweaking movement and travel was to reduce the legwork between getting to-and-from RP, without the world feeling small and lifeless.

So the system is, essentially, as @Kestrel puts it. It isn't fleshy, and what additions I've been contemplating aren't fundamental, but I'll put them down for the sake of discussion:

• Restrictions. The locations are generated from templates, of which each area has an allowance for X amount of templates. There are only three meaningful bars in any given district of a city, for example. If a bar stops being visited, it disappears, and a new one might take its place.
• Customization. It's important for RP scenes to have an impact on the world, and for players to fill their spaces with life. So these templates have 'holes' in them for both concrete changes (the name of a bar, its patron, the atmosphere) and transient changes (the tables are broken, the floor is covered in blood).
• Locations = Currency. The idea is that having been somewhere enables you to go back there, without trouble. And this information is transferable.

The final idea is that stories should be told between locations, and so every area has the equivalent of 'walking the streets' of a city. In a forest, you might be walking a path, or through the trees. These transient locations give you a sense of time as you move from one location to the other, and through background algorithms, allow you to encounter other players.

And that's it. That's my wheel that is slightly more round.

Hi guys,

Man. I bet some of you are thinking, "This old chestnut?" But let's lay down the conversation:

• Which do you prefer, short, collaborative 'posing' (or emoting), or long, back and forths?

At least that's the boilerplate. And I want to definitely discuss it. But I'd also like to do something a little different to get the conversation moving in a new direction, or at least to see it from a new light.

We should start by defining the metrics by which one could characterize a particular style of posing:

• Continuity: What's the relationship between the flow of fictional time, versus real time?
• Size: How long or detailed is the writing?
• Frequency: How often is writing performed?
• Duration: How long should the scene last, in real-world time?

Using these metrics we could describe PbP as involving posing where real time has zero impact, the size of posts is quite large to account for the low frequency of posts, and scenes can last anywhere from an hour to a few weeks.

MUDs on the other hand try to enforce continuity (to no success), but otherwise have no explicit standards. The implicit costs of roleplaying in a MUD is effort and time commitment when dealing with mechanical systems such as combat, thirst, hunger, movement, what have you.

So what's your preferred cocktail? Does your MU* allow for variation for all, or only some of these? And can you imagine a MU* that caters to everybody?

It's interesting to hear about all the different shades of being too invested in your character, to these tulpamancers that believe deeply in their 'characters' as something manifest. I've always lumped living vicariously and unhealthy investment together without much thought. Not anymore!

@Wizz said in Tulpas or Roleplaying?:

I started reading about "tulpamancy" after this thread and stumbled across this blog, where a dude goes from skeptical but excited about them to...trying to let his imaginary magical pony replace him completely as the dominant personality in his body, in the space of like two months.

Buckle the fuck up, it just gets weirder.

Oguigi is a terrible name. It's baby talk. Oguiwooguiwoo!

Hi all,

Just a quick background, I knew nothing of what a 'tulpa' or 'tulpamancy' was until an hour ago. If you don't either, this podcast by Gimlet Media has a very personal and informative story on a girl with severe anxiety and depression who went through the process of befriending and creating tulpas. Also, Google.

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/74-making-friends/

I'm interested in what separates tulpas from the hoard of characters we all roleplay over the years. Do you hear the voices of your characters commenting on your lives, like tulpas? Is the line between your characters being real and fictional occasionally blurry? Do your characters talk to each other inside your head? Do you ever front and pretend to be your character?

Personally, I draw the line just short of being convinced my characters are real people, in that they still take up accommodation in my brainspace, but I label that space firmly as 'imagination'. Where do you draw the line?

@ThatGuyThere

I wasn't aware! Is it just combat that MUSHes go turn-by-turn for? Burning Wheel comes to mind as a system that treats duels-of-wit with the same narrative gravitas as duels-of-sword.

@faraday

Cheers for the insight. That's a great framework. And of course narrative paradoxes would occur, but it's apparent that they would stand separate. I suppose if a game were to try to cater for all diets, the question would become how this system handles scenes that extend longer than a day - or insert timebox here - ala PbPers.

@thebird

Haha wordyness is exactly why I think it would be cool for one game to make everybody feel comfortable in their posing choices! Because who wants to be word-shamed?

To me, I'm hearing a lot of 'OOC communication is key', and I love hearing that. It gels with a belief of mine that stepping out of character and treating players as people is beneficial to RP. It's a thing I learnt from the table, and I just sort of assume it translates online. But, I also know a lot of people who are all-aboard the train of thought, "OOC breaks my immersion and I don't want it forced upon me."

What I'd like to know is, can MUSHes only achieve this level of flexibility with time because they're... mechanics-lite? Because the mechanics explicitly already require discussion, and time becomes part of that discussion. Or could you mechanize time, put it in the player's hands, and see the same level of coherent interweaving of personal narratives.

HUH.

@Ide said in Does size matter? What about duration?:

When I'm in a scene I'm there to play, and personally I can't stand poses that take 15+ minutes to write. I know a lot of people don't play that way because of RL things going on, but it is what it is.

I could see a mu* integrating PbP more formally (it's already kind of there with +jobs/+bboards/@mail) which maybe would satisfy slower RPers. But I suspect those people would protest they're not actually that slow.

That's a really interesting point. Do you think the PbPers, or anybody in general, feel that the speed of their partner would be somehow... intimidating? You know, this does remind me of the other side of this - another question, "How detailed should my writing be?" - and I find myself occasionally prompted to step outside of my comfort in the presence of almost poetic prose.

So does that imply that, when dictating the conditions of a scene, minimum times between posts might be important than maximum for some people?

I'm also curious about what the Twitterfication of poses might result in. You could certainly dictate character limits.

@thebird said in Does size matter? What about duration?:

Generally speaking, I don't at all assume that a scene correlates to real time at all.
[...]
Eta: duration of a scene - really depends on what kind of scene, for me. I can easily drag a scene out for hours and (generally) be happy as a clam. I know that I'm kind of the exception there, though. I try to kind of read the opposing player - If their poses keep getting shorter and more sporadic, or if they start talking ooc a lot, I try to help wrap things up as best and as quickly as I can.

I'm curious about this. I don't play Mushes, or MOOs. I'm a tabletop and MUDer by circumstance rather than choice. But in MUDs, there are environmental messages that try to enforce consistency and linearity of time. How does 'syncing' work when everybody plays at their own speed? You're in public, two people are posing faster, going through more time, fading to black and posing 'morning afters' while other players are still posing the night before...

What happens if they bump into each other? What about global communication?

How do MU*s try to handle this disconnect between individual character narratives and the more global.... time-fabric?

This thread is great. I love the idea of vignettes as character background, and it's exactly how I've seen my favorite GMs encourage character generation at the table. To codify it, put it in a system and use it to encourage MU* players to get involved in their own story? It's great.

@Thenomain said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:

Another thought:

If you don't have all your Defining Moments set, don't give full chargen points. As you define those moments, allow chargen points to be spent concerning that defining moment.
[...]

And this. 100%. I think the tragedy is, this might not be enough freedom. It's possible players will salivate and crave those chargen points to the point of making poor decisions and rushing their 'Defining Moments'. So if I had to refine it, if that did prove to be the case, I'd only reward Defining Moments with chargen points after certain chunks of time.

So player A who knows their character intimately writes all their DMs, then receives chargen points periodically. But player B who didn't write any is notified periodically that they can receive chargen points by writing a DM.

Hi guys,

Man. I bet some of you are thinking, "This old chestnut?" But let's lay down the conversation:

• Which do you prefer, short, collaborative 'posing' (or emoting), or long, back and forths?

At least that's the boilerplate. And I want to definitely discuss it. But I'd also like to do something a little different to get the conversation moving in a new direction, or at least to see it from a new light.

We should start by defining the metrics by which one could characterize a particular style of posing:

• Continuity: What's the relationship between the flow of fictional time, versus real time?
• Size: How long or detailed is the writing?
• Frequency: How often is writing performed?
• Duration: How long should the scene last, in real-world time?

Using these metrics we could describe PbP as involving posing where real time has zero impact, the size of posts is quite large to account for the low frequency of posts, and scenes can last anywhere from an hour to a few weeks.

MUDs on the other hand try to enforce continuity (to no success), but otherwise have no explicit standards. The implicit costs of roleplaying in a MUD is effort and time commitment when dealing with mechanical systems such as combat, thirst, hunger, movement, what have you.

So what's your preferred cocktail? Does your MU* allow for variation for all, or only some of these? And can you imagine a MU* that caters to everybody?

@Kestrel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

[...] A friend of mine is currently working on an MU* project where he's looking to really amp up the 'explorer' factor in what I think is a rather novel way — rather than having a traditional grid designed by builders, he wants to create a self-creating, dynamic player-driven grid wherein anything you can imagine wanting would be automatically generated (and then be explorable) the moment you enter a command like, 'goto bar'. If no bar exists, the system would then simply create a bar with a randomised name/description, and other players would have a chance of finding it next time someone uses 'goto bar' as opposed to looking for that bar specifically by its new name/ID. And similarly this could be used for generating and linking generic backstory town-where-I-grew-up, where you may discover that you actually grew up in the same town as another player, allowing for the opportunity to coordinate.

The idea for this came from his hatred of traditional MU* grid-style walking around and the hassle involved in building. He also said he simply didn't want to build a MUD, but something new.

Hi, I'm that friend. I'm not here to do a sale's pitch, 'the game' is cloud of nothing as it stands - an idea, the most inflated currency on Earth. But I love design talk, so this conversation is right up my alley.

@acceleration said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

This sounds interesting. I'd like to hear more details. It sounds mostly like a convenience thing not too far from existing MUSH/MUX +travel systems that allow player builds. It would definitely offer flexibility, but I'm not all that sure it would appeal to explorer types.

I totally agree, and as Loth points out...

@Lotherio said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

[...] In the early 90s, lots of places enabled @quota on players and they were expected to contribute to the shared environment. Build a bar, make a ship, make cars that moved, make puppets that interacted with players and otherwise build the shared world together. At some point, people decided this created too much clutter or used up too much space, and the quota was slowly reduced until, like most places today, its either turned off or set to like 1 which is reserved for one private room, which must be @dug by staff.

All that 'flexibility' can become a nightmare. My goal with tweaking movement and travel was to reduce the legwork between getting to-and-from RP, without the world feeling small and lifeless.

So the system is, essentially, as @Kestrel puts it. It isn't fleshy, and what additions I've been contemplating aren't fundamental, but I'll put them down for the sake of discussion:

• Restrictions. The locations are generated from templates, of which each area has an allowance for X amount of templates. There are only three meaningful bars in any given district of a city, for example. If a bar stops being visited, it disappears, and a new one might take its place.
• Customization. It's important for RP scenes to have an impact on the world, and for players to fill their spaces with life. So these templates have 'holes' in them for both concrete changes (the name of a bar, its patron, the atmosphere) and transient changes (the tables are broken, the floor is covered in blood).
• Locations = Currency. The idea is that having been somewhere enables you to go back there, without trouble. And this information is transferable.

The final idea is that stories should be told between locations, and so every area has the equivalent of 'walking the streets' of a city. In a forest, you might be walking a path, or through the trees. These transient locations give you a sense of time as you move from one location to the other, and through background algorithms, allow you to encounter other players.

And that's it. That's my wheel that is slightly more round.