@wildbaboons
OGL has to post the rules, but noting else I believe. No idea how Starfinder, as a Pathfinder + SciFi functions there.

@Lithium
Didn't say it was working. Just said that it's what I had heard as to why it's not on DTRPG.

http://musoapbox.net/topic/146/basic-anomaly-jobs-functions Has some of it?

@thatonedude Only if there is fire involved.

Late add: to be a bit more topical, I'll note that I am not a late night player (EST and I tend to crash around midnight or so), but was up last night and bouncing off the walls a bit IRL due to too much caffeine during the day. I hadn't RPed since midnight though.

Granny Favors: Protagonists happen upon a nice old lady while she was “gardening”. She was actually doing something nefarious and needs to get rid of the protagonists in a way that doesn’t lead back to her. So she sends them on a series of increasingly tasks, hoping they’ll die by misadventure.

Originally mage-y these could be edited for other splats:

Jennassa's Worm: This strange parasite is named for the first victim. An Arrow mage by the name of Jennassa. She was an Obrimos and a sentinel of the Consilium of Zurich. She was sent on assignment to investigate an anomaly in Bern. There were reports of people acting strangely and seeing strange creatures when they went into the Aare. There she found a strange create that had floated down the Aare. She found in the crate a bunch of robin's egg sized green rocks. She took them back to the Arrow's headquarters in Bern to try and run some tests on them. While she was experimenting one of them hatched into a medium-sized snake like creature. The creature then bite her and crawled inside of her body. From there it drove her paranoid and insane. She eventually killed herself, but not before killing a sleepwalker that was assisting her. The entire compound was sanitized by the Guardians after an outbreak of the worms caused three more deaths. You can't find anymore recorded incidents of Jennassa's Worms.

Black Motes: You also find a report of an incident where some spirits called the "black motes" were encountered. These motes had the ability to attach themselves to the Amygdala of a person, and force them into a constant state of panic and fear. Once attached to the victims the only way to cure it was said to be death. However, a Master of Mind found that she could alleviate the fear response. The motes were eventually killed via subjecting them to bright lights, and the affects faded with their death.

Azkhahics: Abyssal creatures that live in the dark places. These creatures are said to have dominion over fear. With one touch they can cause someone to die of fear alone. Their powers range from causing hallucinations, mass paranoia, and lifelong mental scaring. They can be banished by facing them with by exemplifying everything they are not. Courage, healthy mind, light, etc.

The Lurking Terrors: Lastly. There is a creature referred to as 'The Lurking Terror'. You can't find if it is Abyssal or Spiritual, but it seems likely to be Abyssal. The creature seems bound to the laws of terror (whatever those are). It has the ability to spread fear like a disease and cause people to hallucinate.

The Laws of Terror: As previously mentioned. The laws of terror are a modern-day notion- according to the Libertines. And a primordial things according to the Mystagoguges. However, you come across a bit of research that is tangentially connected to them. About how the Abyss is spawning new monsters off of what Humanity is bringing into the world. And that the Laws of Terror are connected to several new creatures.

Fear As A Disease: As I mentioned previously. You come across notes and studies. A libertine has published a small essay on fear as a disease. Detailing his experience with a group of sleepers. How one of them gets afraid of something, tells about that fear, and then the fear spreads among them. Becoming stronger and harder to combat. something that could cure Durandal's child in Deus Solum.

Anguish's Tear: This is a legendary artifact said to be able to breathe life into even dust, so long as the dust once held the spark of a soul. It dates back to bcc. It was said to have been kept in an area of the world that is now somewhere part of Africa. It was said to have been formed from the anguished cries of a Life Archmaster whose child was killed by an abyssal intruder. Unfortunately this legend has never been confirmed, and the only images you can find of Anguish's Tears are sketches that are at least a hundred years old. The last mysterium expedition that went looking for it never returned. The one before that about two hundred years ago only one party member came back- a Mastigos master of space, who teleported back to his home base -and he came back wrong. He had signs of abyssal taint and was raving about living shadows.

Dunvegan's Jewel: This legend appears starting about six hundred years ago. Rumors are that deep in the bowels of Castle Dunvegan in Scotland there is a necklace made of perfected gold and perfected diamonds, that while it is worn the wearer cannot die and is afflicted by no disease. You do manage to find what is supposedly a photograph of it, but it is blurry and the glare obnoxious. The quality is so poor you're not certain you would even be able to properly describe it for sympathetic connections.

Janessa's Herb: The last lead you find is an herb created by life/matter Archmage that is said to cure any disease, even those that cannot normally be cured by life magic. The herb only grows in the ruins of her workshop, deep underground in the antarctic. There is a map of the antarctic listed and a couple of places where the mysterium /thinks/ her lab is... but they are not certain. No one has ever gone and come back from Janessa's lab. People tend to disappear when they go to the suspected areas in the antarctic.

@botulism said in Diceless/Stats Optional:

@thenomain Because most people before you had issues.

People have issues with games they play on a daily basis. People will tell you what's wrong with something, but won't tell you why they like it anyway unless you ask them.

I just want the game to have the best chance it can.

Then let me give you the best advice I can think of: Be excited about what you're doing, and let that excitement be infectious.

Even if it doesn't become a national phenomenon, you will still have fun doing it.

@sunny

Damn. I guess I should maybe figure out what Eclipse Phase is even about? Lulz.

Spelling and grammar. Typos are fine and easily overlooked, but I grew up in the days when diagramming sentences was actually required, and language has a science all its own. I don't care so much about proper breaking of paragraphs, or if you used a colon instead of a semicolon - but punctuation, capitalization and making the tense and voice of your statements agree with themselves isn't too much to ask in my book.

Detail, detail, detail. I have been accused of posing in George R.R. Martin levels of detail as far back as the opening days of Haunted Memories (In fact, it was Sullivan's comment to me to that effect that got me interested in GRRM to begin with. Yes, I do care about how well done the carrots were and if the capon was killed too old or roasted too long, thank you very much). We're playing in an environment where the only canvas we have is words, and as such the words need to paint a picture. This can be done with sufficient application of adjectives or adverbs, or it could be done as simply as a short meta-statement adjoining a pose. Vis a vis:
Sam looks at Max with the same sort of expression that he might have were she currently in the process of growing a second head.
It doesn't require much excess verbage, but still gets the point across that someone is looking at someone else strangely. A lot of context gets conveyed in expression and body language, and lacking that there needs to be something to indicate if the person's reaction/demeanor is positive, negative, perplexed or what have you. Something needs to indicate if an object in question is new, old, well used or well cared for. At the same time, a pose should be long enough to say what it needs to say; but it need not be longer. If all someone is doing is lurking in the background, wrapped in a burlap sack and making occasional sniffing noises that can easily and fairly be conveyed in a sentence or two.

@arkandel Thank you! I just didn't want it under the wrong category >.<

@lithium said in CoD/W:tF 2E?:

I want to have to deal with protecting territory, expanding territory, making sure your Locus is safe, facing off against the Pure and everything else, and not really knowing if I can trust the neighboring packs or not without a greater threat to us all in play.

Fair enough. I'll ask, but the project will back-burner.

I just don't think a lot of people want to run a W:tF 2E game right now, partly because some of the interests you've raised haven't been handled well in the past or there's no code to assist in it.

@admiral said in Changeling the Lost 2e: The Huntsman Chronicles:

Win the lottery? Lose your job? Clarity loss. Getting married? Getting commended for ten years on the job? Gain clarity.

The system doesn't look or sound any different than any other 2E Integrity system.

My favorite character, hands down, would have to have been Isabelle on Tenebrae. I had never played a game with dice before, knew nothing about D&D, so I set up a rogue with high social skills figuring I could be a gather information character. Everyone made fun of me for setting up a useless rogue.

I even took Run as a Feat, guys. I took Run. I admit it.

She ended up being one of the most powerful characters on the game thanks to sneak attack specialities at higher levels that took away...I don't even remember. Strength? Con? And then a sword of wounding and a luck blade. She could talk her way into and out of anything. She was completely and totally out for herself and had very little loyalty to anyone. She wouldn't help if there wasn't gold attached to something. She had an insanely high gather information and even though she was a complete bitch, she'd give out information to people (in a mean way!) to get them into plots. She started up an investigation company with her friends (which was really just a way for me to run PrPs for newbies and get them involved in the game before I was staff) that hired contractors, took over the thieves guild at one point, and got roped into saving the city way too many times because she considered everyone else utterly incompetent. She was a leader who didn't take shit from anyone and would call people out on their stupidity instantly. She eventually actually took Leadership and got a baby dragon companion named Havelock who was super polite and called her Auntie, but was otherwise utterly useless cause he was a baby.

There are three stand-out scenes that come to mind:

The Saluven plot, which was one of the better meta-game plots I've ever seen run on a game anywhere (props to Maelstrom!), which was the culmination of like, years of plot pieces moving around before I was even on the game. Isabelle thought she'd figured it all out (she had like 9 of 10 pieces put together!) and went to confront a big NPC with what she had and WHOOPS that 10th piece? Was that that NPC was the bad guy who turned her into a statue and then went about amending his plans based on what the heroes knew. It was so awesome! One, because I was totally blindsided and thought I'd done such a good job of putting it all together (I figured out the secret plan, just not the secret person at the head of it!), and two because Isabelle was insufferable and it was totally humiliating. EVERYONE knew. Everyone! It was great.

During another big City-Is-Under-Siege-Why-Does-Anyone-Live-There plot, I was trying to keep Isabelle out of the Big Plot so that other characters could do things and had her follow up on a different plot where a rival thieves guild that was trying to take over instead. She got "caught" by the leader of that group and they demanded she take them to her Guild, since they had been unable to find it, so that they could raid and slaughter everyone.

She agreed and then led them to the main headquarters of the NPC bad guy for the Big Plot and they all got murdered. I was so proud. The staffer running the scene was like "...this wasn't even something I had considered could happen." So the alternate-guild was wiped out and it helped spawn a scene for lower PCs in the Big Plot (big plots being "solved" by only high level PCs was ALWAYS a big peeve of mine) with a weakened NPC villain.

There was a point where the game could've had a kinder, gentler Isabelle. She was totally and completely in love with her business partner and best friend, who was a Good Guy and completely mitigated her bitchiness. I mean, she was still mean to him, but she was less cruel than usual when he was around! But she never said anything, they never really acknowledged it or talked about it, and he fell for someone else. So she was like OKAY FUCK THAT and went all in on greed and any "love interests" she had (sorry guys!) were purely to advance her social standing and treasury.

But she was probably one of my best realized characters, super fun to play (though admittedly hard to take), and if you could stand her for five minutes she'd send you off into All The Plots. Her investigation agency would hire new players, which gave them access to PrPs we'd run for the company (just your average go kill some kobolds/guard a caravan) and also any plot information for things that she'd get from the many, many, MANY legworks I'd do.

She was great and I totally miss playing her.

@faraday, on SurfaceTension (a BluePlanet MOO that got delayed when various friends pulled me away to work on The Reach):

#7:2 ":MSSP-REQUEST"; ":"; ":Provides in-band access to Mud Server Status Protocol (MSSP) data."; try set_connection_option(player, "binary", 1); notify(player, "~0D~0AMSSP-REPLY-START~0D~0A"); for var in ($mssp_data()) notify(player, $list:join("~09", @var) + "~0D~0A"); endfor notify(player, "MSSP-REPLY-END~0D~0A"); finally set_connection_option(player, "binary", 0); endtry return $nothing; .

and then $mssp_data() was

#0:7 dbsize = 0; helpfiles = 0; rooms = 0; exits = 0; descs = 0; progs = 0; triggers = 0; for o in [#0..max_object()] if (valid(o)) dbsize = dbsize + 1; if ("description" in properties(o)) descs = descs + 1; endif if (parent(o) in {#17, #18}) rooms = rooms + 1; endif vind = 1; for v in (verbs(o)) progs = progs + 1; if (verb_args(o, vind) != $tnt) triggers = triggers + 1; while (tpos = index(v, " ")) v = v[tpos + 1..$]; triggers = triggers + 1; endwhile endif vind = vind + 1; endfor endif endfor return {{"NAME", "SurfaceTension"}, {"PLAYERS", tostr(length(connected_players()))}, {"UPTIME", tostr($boot_time)}, {"CRAWL DELAY", "1"}, {"HOSTNAME", "surfacetension.accela.net"}, {"PORT", "7777"}, {"CODEBASE", "LambdaMOO 1.8.2-cvs20050209-5"}, {"CONTACT", "surfacetension-mssp-1@accela.net"}, {"CREATED", "2009"}, {"IP", "66.220.1.33"}, {"LANGUAGE", "English"}, {"LOCATION", "United States"}, {"MINIMUM AGE", "18"}, {"WEBSITE", "http://surfacetension.accela.net/"}, {"FAMILY", "MOO"}, {"GENRE", "Science Fiction"}, {"GAMEPLAY", "Roleplaying"}, {"STATUS", "Alpha"}, {"GAMESYSTEM", "Synergy"}, {"SUBGENRE", "Blue Planet"}, {"HELPFILES", tostr(helpfiles)}, {"ROOMS", tostr(rooms)}, {"ANSI", "1"}, {"VT100", "1"}, {"DBSIZE", tostr(dbsize)}, {"EXITS", tostr(exits)}, {"EXTRA DESCRIPTIONS", tostr(descs)}, {"MUDPROGS", tostr(progs)}, {"MUDTRIGS", tostr(triggers)}, {"ADULT MATERIAL", "0"}, {"MULTIPLAYING", "Restricted"}, {"PLAYERKILLING", "Restricted"}, {"QUEST SYSTEM", "None"}, {"Roleplaying", "Enforced"}, {"WORLD ORIGINALITY", "Mostly Stock"}, {"SSL", "0"}, {"ZMP", "0"}}; .

In summary:

MSSP-REPLY-START (lines of tab-separated key-value pairs) MSSP-REPLY-END

With CRLF line terminators.

The above code is wonky garbage and e.g. always returns zero exits as I never got around to making exits for that moocore. Yes, really. ._.

We should probably type this up into a revised spec, if the odd case anyone still cares about mssp...

I need to refresh myself on Python, and then nudge my friend who a few years ago was hardcoding a Python-based MU* core.

I am REALLY bad at keeping up with resolutions, though.

@saosmash said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

People can get very invested in their wrong ideas, which makes sense since they came up with them themselves.

We call them "textualists."

@tanyuu said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

I honestly think that MU* s could offer something new to RPers who are looking for something lightweight, especially on tablets and phones. It doesn't need constant attention, it doesn't need a specific console or computer, and/or your internet access is limited or spotty, MU* s are great. Telnet seems to connect okay, but I've never tried to stretch it beyond 'connecting in to chat while cooking'.

This is another reason I think web access—specifically, web access designed natively for the web, not just a SimpleMU-esque client running in a browser—has a significant benefit. On an Ares game or an Evennia game with web-enabled bboards, I can read boards and emits and such from my phone or tablet easily, without having to log in. If I'm somewhere with spotty connectivity, engaging in a scene is all but impossible, but I can at least catch up on bboards and all.

If I could actually engage in scenes readily from a pure-web interface like that, I might actually try RP'ing (from a tablet with a keyboard, at least) the next time I'm on an airplane headed somewhere. In-flight WiFi is terrible and I've often been disconnected from a stateful link like telnet, but something like Faraday's pure-web prototype with scenes played from on the web? That would work great while I'm on airline wifi. If the link hiccups, I still see the poses the next time I reload the page, etc.

All addictions are forms of escapism. To me, all escapism runs a very high potential to be an addiction, at some level of severity.

This one came along in the last two generations, and thus is just "coming to light" to researchers, who always seem to be several decades behind the advent of things.

I think, in less years for them to have declared gaming an addiciton, social media addiction will be "discovered".

@skew said in The Mush Hackathon:

So you just want me to start a new code project and see how badly I can break everything?

I would buy you a week's worth of coffee (er, one coffee a day for a week) to watch this beautiful trainwreck unfold.

@rook said in How do you construct your characters?:

@thenomain
I am coming to you, sir, to critique and make recommendations if/when I get ready to open.

You called this down on yourself.

I don’t mind helping, but this is the kind of thing that should be done by multiple people trying to make a character without help from you or anyone else. They do have to treat the testing honestly at first; you can test against people deliberately trying to break or misinterpret the systems some other time, like from game open to game close.

Every published board game goes through this; the developer gets people who have never seen the game before in a room, gives them the rules and components, and sits back to watch and take notes. We don’t normally have the time or ability to cold test like this, especially after the game has opened, but if we’re fortunate we will get enough players so we can read the temperature in the room.

But yes, I can criticize. Boy howdy can I criticize. The hard part is using my power for good, not whining.