Big city grids - likes and dislikes
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@runescryer Oh! Is that why they're used! No no, definitely no activity requirement. I mean maybe if someone's a team leader or something if they idle for a week plus they get replaced or the like, but. No need to play x times week or whatever to keep your character. I'd just have the regular that if you've not logged in for a month you go in the freezer or such.
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@kay Autologgers are used in general, not specifically for logging activity requirements. They're just extra useful on games with activity requirements
Really, it all depends on how much/many logs you want to have for the game. Manual entry of RP logs can lead to some delays and backups; if that's no big deal, then it's no big deal. Logs for an OC game do help establish the kinds of characters that are being played beyond the basic sheet or wiki page info, though. It's a system that can be useful or ignored, really. All that's guaranteed is that there will be a log of any scene that uses an autologger up on a wiki page or other database for other players to look at. -
@runescryer Probably better to take this back to the game thread I had - don't want to divert the discussion. I'll reply to you on there!
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@seraphim73 said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
I love the idea of the scenes code.
I think it should be implemented alongside a real grid, not instead of.
Yup! I love it too. And that's actually exactly what we tried to do on The Eighth Sea. We had about 30ish rooms (by the end) on the grid, but about 1/2 of them had pre-desced scene rooms that were ICly in that location that were listed below the room desc. Players were (of course) free to create their own scene rooms as well.
@faraday Yuuuuup. Totally agree. It's definitely a culture/people problem. Emblazoning "Open Scene" on open scenes is about as much as you can do from a tools perspective to help out.
For what it's worth, the lack of a grid has made it very difficult for me to get into 8th Sea, as much as I really want to! Even though what I do on Arx is check "where" and zoom over to where it looks like RP is happening, which is functionally the same as joining a scene in progress, there's the mental roadblock of it feeling more mentioned above. It's a hard one to hurdle over.
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@kay said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
I thought I should split this into its own thread, since the big city is a popular setting for many games.
I plan on having my superhero game set in a bustling metropolis. I am looking for input on what kind of grid set up you guys like and dislike. What makes it easy for you to get around? What makes it easy for you to get immersed into the game? Pet peeves? Pet favorites?
Two cases.
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If geography really matters in your game. Maybe it's about resources, or an ongoing turf war, or power pylons granting different powers to those who live near them... whatever it is, if it matters, then you need to plan out a real grid and keep track of who's where doing what. Then each square is a RP hook for someone to take over, monitor for their enemies' presence, etc, and it represents opportunities for scenes.
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If geography is just a generic thing (people live in this huge city, and while there are X hospitals and Y police stations but overall it doesn't matter terribly much what else does) then a small grid with temp RP rooms works best. Let people create Momma's Diner if they need a place to have pancakes that's also about to get destroyed by Meteor Chick on the fly since no one cared about that place before and no one will after the plot runs its course.
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@arkandel said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
. Let people create Momma's Diner if they need a place to have pancakes that's also about to get destroyed by Meteor Chick on the fly since no one cared about that place before and no one will after the plot runs its course.
See this is my issue with the lack of a grid, if no one cares about Momma's Diner before or after the plot then what is the point of saving it? The plot becomes just as much a random scene as any BarRP.
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@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
@arkandel said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
. Let people create Momma's Diner if they need a place to have pancakes that's also about to get destroyed by Meteor Chick on the fly since no one cared about that place before and no one will after the plot runs its course.
See this is my issue with the lack of a grid, if no one cares about Momma's Diner before or after the plot then what is the point of saving it? The plot becomes just as much a random scene as any BarRP.
I'm not sure why that's your issue with lacking a grid.
You don't care about Momma's Diner. You make it through a temproom, let Meteor Girl blast it to bits, arrest her, and move on.
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@arkandel said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
@arkandel said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
. Let people create Momma's Diner if they need a place to have pancakes that's also about to get destroyed by Meteor Chick on the fly since no one cared about that place before and no one will after the plot runs its course.
See this is my issue with the lack of a grid, if no one cares about Momma's Diner before or after the plot then what is the point of saving it? The plot becomes just as much a random scene as any BarRP.
I'm not sure why that's your issue with lacking a grid.
You don't care about Momma's Diner. You make it through a temproom, let Meteor Girl blast it to bits, arrest her, and move on.
Maybe we just look for different things in a game but if I am on a mush I want to feel some connection to the game. Unless Meteor Girl and my PC have some preexisting issue, why would I bother even arresting her after the fact? I mean if I am playing a superhero I have tons of IC reasons of course but what would be the OOC motivation to do the scene?
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@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
See this is my issue with the lack of a grid, if no one cares about Momma's Diner before or after the plot then what is the point of saving it?
It works both ways though. Maybe nobody cared about Momma's Diner before you used it in a scene, but once the big confrontation with Meteor Chick happens there it becomes a recurring thing for awhile. Maybe it becomes so much of a thing that staff decides to add it to the 'hangouts' list as a pre-set location.
This actually happened on BSGU with one of the temp bars that somebody (I think @Ganymede?) used in a one-off scene that then got re-used a couple of times because folks thought it was cool.
I think that a more flexible grid actually encourages players to be more creative. Players don't always have to hang out at Molly's Bar. Staff doesn't have to try to make Molly's Bar the be-all-end-all hangout place that has everything under one roof. Somebody can just wing a karaoke night in Joe's Bar or pancakes at Mama's Diner, and maybe that becomes a recurring thing. In this way I think it harkens back to the 'old days' of MUSHing where players were encouraged to contribute to the grid.
@deadempire said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
Even though what I do on Arx is check "where" and zoom over to where it looks like RP is happening
T8S is still stuck on an old version of Ares because their coder had a family thing, but one of the changes I made in the newer version is that on +where a scene in "Joe's Bar" doesn't really look any different if it's in a temproom versus in a grid room. So if all you're doing is looking at +where and joining a scene in progress, it's hard to tell the difference.
Of course that still doesn't address the immersion aspect. If you get a kick out of wandering the grid, then no - you won't see Joe's Bar because it's just something somebody made up on the fly. You can't walk straight there as if your character were walking on the streets. I get that's a roadblock for some folks.
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@kay said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
What do you guys think about grid descs that are non-static?
I.e changes depending on the time of day and/or season and/or weather, assuming that is part of the game code?
So much that I made a very extensive ictime() function that would report from weather to moon phase and visibility. It started as "IC Time" and ended up being "IC Conditions". This way, it's trivial for anyone to code whatever description changes they want.
Or has the occasional automatic @emit like 'A cold breeze whispers through the alleyway.' or 'Something splashes in the water amidst the reeds.' or the like.
It may have changed, but people started loving flavor emits, but came to hate them. Do it for the flavor, but realize that you may be reversing it.
A switch whether or not someone see it would be interesting, but then you'd end up with people reacting to things you don't see. Make it all or nothing.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
I like the idea of changing descs but I'm waaaaaay too lazy to write different versions of the same room desc. (Heck you're lucky to get one half-decent version out of me. :P) I've also found that a lot of folks either skim or don't read room descs, so I'm not sure how useful a changing one would be.
@thenomain said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
It may have changed, but people started loving flavor emits, but came to hate them.
I hate them, along with weather emits. They either don't really add anything (do folks really care that a cool breeze whispered through the alley or a bird fluttered by overhead? maybe that's one of those immersion things I don't grok again...) or they're just incompatible with the RP already going on.
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@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
I like the idea of changing descs but I'm waaaaaay too lazy to write different versions of the same room desc.
I can't remember which game, but they had an RP room where you could store frequently used room descs and re-use them. So, if you wanted to use a 'Pop's Dinner' as a gathering spot for social RP, instead of building it as a room or +view on the grid, you go to the RP Room and load up the desc. Descs could also be PC generated for use by everyone.
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@runescryer Yeah that's been a standard part of my RP room code for a decade. I'm sure others have their versions too. I haven't seen people use it that much though.
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@faraday Yeah, like you said, everything comes and goes in cycles. At somepoint, there'll be a game with the nested +view structure resurrected for private spaces in a public room.
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@runescryer said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
@faraday Yeah, like you said, everything comes and goes in cycles. At somepoint, there'll be a game with the nested +view structure resurrected for private spaces in a public room.
Do you mean places code? That sounds like places code.
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@kay Possibly. I'm not a coder, so I'm not solid on the technical names. I just remember it was a big thing around the turn of the millennium for MU's to have public rooms, like a restaurant, where you'd +join a specific table and it would act like a sub-room. You'd still be listed in the room on a +where, but characters not at your table wouldn't be able to hear the conversation.
This is going on almost 20 years ago, so my memory may not be exact. But, it seemed like every game I encountered back then used that design for public meeting rooms. Then, the RP Room design phase hit and it disappeared.
All this mean is: damn, I'm old....
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@runescryer yep, that's good old places code! I love using it so that when you join and then type look the room desc changes.
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@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
Players don't always have to hang out at Molly's Bar. Staff doesn't have to try to make Molly's Bar the be-all-end-all hangout place that has everything under one roof. Somebody can just wing a karaoke night in Joe's Bar or pancakes at Mama's Diner,
Ok maybe I am missing something, but if anyone can just set the karaoke scene in Frank's bar if Joe's bar gets taken over by zombie rats or whatever then all that does to me is make all the bar meaning less set dressing. Essentially every scene now takes place on Holodeck 1 and we just slap a different image on the blue screen. I mean that doesn't hurt any individual scene but also gives me no reason to care about anything that doesn't directly effect my character, oh you saved Joe's bar cool your effort enabled me to avoid typing Frank's instead.
It just seems to destroy any notion of stakes involved which for me a least turns any conflict meaningless. -
Some day I will code or find the code from...LA?...where people could bunch together in small groups in any room, making their own gathering-type 'places'.
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@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:
I mean that doesn't hurt any individual scene but also gives me no reason to care about anything that doesn't directly effect my character, oh you saved Joe's bar cool your effort enabled me to avoid typing Frank's instead.
Maybe I'm missing something here too. I mean, let's say Joe's Bar was the one coded in the grid. Unless you're Joe, or otherwise have some sort of special IC attachment to Joe's Bar, why would you care if it got blown up anyway? More specifically, why does the fact that someone do @dig for it have any impact on whether you care about it? It's just a bar.
