I gotta send out 5 more Pokemon go gifts. If we're friends can you check if you have one pending and open it? If we're not friends let's be friends!

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@Vorpal said in Comics Stuff:

It's a very rare moment right now. A lot of what DC is doing right now is good. I haven't said those words since, maybe, 2009... maybe even longer. I'd say enjoy it while it lasts- Marvel is currently doing not-so-hot with their Civil War II fiasco, which is bogging down the entire line with its gloom, doom and haven't-we-done-this-already?

Jesus Christ I wish Civil War II would just END. THIS WASN'T GOOD THE FIRST TIME, MARVEL.

@apos said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Could probably change how people enter a scene to accompany a set, to formalize the culture for whether someone is 'in' or not, compared to the whole, 'I'm here but I'm not here because I haven't made a set' thing that I find vaguely ridiculous and awkward.

That's again one of those things that I think becomes much easier in a web-only game. The scene is a web page. You can access it if it's public, or if you've been invited to. You join a scene when you pose into it, and you can do so from any of your alts. The lurking state is still there - it's what you do when you're reading the existing poses on the page to see what's going on. But it's invisible to the other participants.

But alas, telnet.

@tnp That would have the potential to be a hell of a lot of fun.

@Scissors said:

Speaking of Trolling, we were just having coffee RP the other day when we were trolled by a faceless man, who came through the door but was only detectable by some of us. That caused a bit of IC freakout!

Shakes fist at @tragedyjones

(P.S. In case that wasn't clear, this refers to a a GOOD kind of trolling).

Kill it with fire?

@testament It might be easier to pop onto the game and see about paging someone there. They don't really hang around these parts often. Or maybe checking out the Ares forums?

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

@Thenomain said in Eliminating social stats:

Hey, at least you'd be doing it in an FS3 way. @faraday can't fault you for that, can she?

Can she?!

Yes.

Well probably, but as long as you do it the way the game is intended.

e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxo3Jy3p8zo

@Pandora said in Armageddon MUD:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Armageddon MUD:

Oh good lord, no. If it says 'contains sex and violence' on the label, expect it to contain sex and violence.

I wish. But no, if it contains sex anyone doesn't like, violence that isn't OOCly prearranged and agreed upon by all parties, and heaven forbid it mixes sex & violence together - you are bound to have a shitstorm or two because there really is no line of demarcation between IC action and OOC motive anymore, if MSB is to be taken as any indication of public sentiment.

This is where I want to argue that the human race has not had a collective lobotomy that I'm aware of, but I know how much effort certain people go to on some MMOs, to obtain screenshots and logs that might in any fashion appear suggestive, and the drama and uproar that follows in the wake of them posting these screenshots in public fora. Won't somebody think of the children, indeed.

I think I will maintain my previous stance. An OOC community and atmosphere intolerant of grooming, stalking, and abuse is a good start. Make it clear that rape jokes, threats of violence, verbal abuse and what have you is not acceptable -- unless it is indeed an IC reference, in which case anything within the game's rating goes.

But that's also all it is, a good start. There's always going to be somebody who thinks that the rules don't apply to them, someone who yells 'free speeeeech!' and thinks it means everyone else is obligated to listen to him, someone who posts a picture of a child posing in a supposedly sexy fashion on a police car.

Game mechanics are not the single answer to this, and neither is community atmosphere. But between them, they're probably the best answer we're going to get, because there is no way to solve this problem permanently and decisively.

@auspice said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I played a heroin addict on a game once. I made sure to be careful of who I played it around (since I know it can be triggering), but what surprised me more than people who it bothered (which I get)...

... was how lightly other people took it? Like to some it was this cutesy 'oh your character has the addict flaw? Mine does, too! To caffeine!'

If you're going to play an addict, I'm going to take it lightly not because I would make light of it, but because I happen to live near the county with the highest per capita death-from-overdose rate in the country. (We made the news.)

Addiction isn't funny, but I handle the grim reality with absurd laughter. To do otherwise would make me either severely depressed or violently enraged. (I've had a couple of friends long ago who died of overdoses to other drugs.)

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

It dosen't matter if someone walks in wearing a giant, neon purple, strap-on it isn't "forcing a kink" on someone unless that viewer finds it arousing and is made uncomfortable by that arousal.

In some cases, sure. But I wouldn't call this one a universal. (It's often easy enough to spot in the 'methinks thou dost protest too much' sense when this is true, but that's also not any sort of certainty.)

Some people are hot for gore and mutilation for sexual gratification; someone being made uncomfortable by that isn't necessarily going to be ashamed of their own secret sexual woo from gore and mutilation, they may simply find it horrifying and gross if they don't like gore or mutilation period. There are people into racist or sexist themes in fetish play; someone being put off by that isn't necessarily put off because they are ashamed they find it also hot, but because they're not fans of racism or sexism.

Even some of this is a RL vs. VR thing. If I walked into a fetish club and people were engaging in scat play, and that's allowed there, I may just be plain and simple put off by the smell and leave. Until we have smellovision in VR (OH PLEASE GODS NEVER NO PLEASE NO), that's not going to be an issue in the same way.

There are fetishes for damned near everything, so the reasons for an objection are going to vary a lot.

Uh oh need a new thread

Hey I'm pretty new to this community, I'm one of the Mudlet developers (windows/macos/linux native client).

The conversation touched the topic of UIs and I thought I'd pitch in with my thoughts on this - the power of MU*'s is, obviously, in their text - but text is a steep learning curve to get into. You have to admit that few people in the world like a wall of text, reading instructions, or not getting instant gratification these days.

This is where having a cool UI for your game can help you out. It gives instant gratification to the newbie to see colourful pictures and a cool interface, and it makes them stick around longer to read the reams of text they're gonna have to learn to love. We encourage games and players to create UIs for this very reason, see some sample UIs here. Many other game admins have arrived at the same conclusion - see custom clients for BatMUD, IREs, and so on.

On the topic of server <-> client interaction - I agree that an out of band protocol is necessary for a modern server as it just cuts a lot of the boilerplate out, so to speak, that players will be otherwise forced to create. My preference is GMCP since it is JSON-based and JSON is a lot easier to work with, but we support a few in Mudlet and even have the ability for scripts to add support for more.

@Kanye-Qwest yeah, that's why it isn't advertised. They're in process

@Waller said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

Jack Sheldon passed away 12/27/19. He was a jazz musician who would probably be best known to most here as the lead singer for the Schoolhouse Rock songs "I'm Just A Bill" and "Conjunction Junction".

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/01/entertainment/jack-sheldon-dead/index.html

Oh noes. 😞

@Roz Thanks! Merging into the one in MC is fine, too.

@faraday said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

A vibrant community of folks who RP with emotes on MMOs.

Can confirm, came back to MU*s from that. Don't miss the ultra toxic, alt-right take-over of at least European WoW servers one bit.

@misadventure she doesn't want to be. She gets cuddles when she wants.

@ixokai I do believe the attitude and expectations of staff sets the tone for the whole game. It's one of the reasons why I push Dystopia Rising's codes of conduct so hard -- the behavior of the people running that event was the most empathetic I have ever seen from people running a LARP and everything about the event reflected it, from the behavior of the players to the number of women and minorities who legged it out to the sticks to participate in the LARP, which was set right in the heart of lily-white Western New York (Dansville).

No shit.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

@ganymede said in GMs and Players:

If you are perceived as having bias then you should no longer staff.

So I'm going to disagree with that point, because I'm 110% positive that every staff on every game is at some point perceived as having a bias.

It's true. Run a MU long enough (and in this case, long enough is not long) and somebody will be bound to accuse you of bias.

But I figure Gany really meant 'if it's reasonable for reasonable people to perceive you as biased.' Somewhat like how cops can search your house if they perceive it as a likely crime scene, but said perception has to be something like a trail of blood leading to your door. The way your eyeliner gives Officer Fuckley the creeps won't cut it.

It's certainly a bad idea to dismiss any/all perception of bias. Fuckley being weird about eyeliner and a liar does not mean that Andy and Barney Fife don't really see blood.

Among my year's bumper crop of stupid shit said to me about MUs was that problems on MUs are "almost always just player perception." It wasn't a thanks captain obvious, yes, everything about games is pretty much about player perception, perceiving oneself to be having fun is the point kinda stupid, they meant that player perceptions are wrong and the problems not real.