The best I've ever...
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There's like this TV show on Food Network called 'The Best Thing I've Ever Eaten' and it makes me feel glorious and fat watching it. But I thought about it from a gaming landscape so I wanted to pose the following to everyone.
The best ______ I've ever experienced was:
For the ________ let's do 4 topics.
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Policy
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Game System
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Setting
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Code
If you could, perhaps list game and description for whichever topic you talk about. But I'd be very interested (and I'd venture some of the developers out there would be too) about some of the best stuff people have experienced over the years.
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@bobgoblin said in The best I've ever...:
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The best policy I've ever experienced was: Requiem for Kingsmouth's policy of only allowing 1 alt.
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The best game system I've ever experienced was: BSG: Unification's use of FS3; it blew my fucking mind how well-tailored it was to the game's needs and code (which is a bit of quid pro quo).
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The best setting I've ever experienced was: Requiem for Kingsmouth's vampire-based setting, with elements of Lovecraftian horror lingering.
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The best code I've ever experienced was: Faraday's, but I'm slowly discovering how deep the code is at Fate's Harvest, so props to their team over there (there are a number of coders who've touched that game, so I give love to all of them. Any game that has every stat described and referenced in detail and available through the game's code is a good one, and this is especially true for the WoD (props also to Ashen-Shugar's (I think?) code for Star Wars SAGA games).
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@bobgoblin said in The best I've ever...:
- Policy
I don't think any in particular stands out. It's usually a case of policies being properly enforced than what they are.
- Game System
Arx. There are many systems they introduced I felt worked really well; giving XP bonuses to people who played with newbies giving them an instant introduction to the game, to encouraging players to interact with new people they hadn't before at random every week, to their @clues system, and I liked the gearing ladder which gave something for crafters to do.
- Setting
Eldritch. For all that he's a dickbutt, @Coin did an outstanding job with it. The wiki was well written and the NPCs felt like they had personalities and lives instead of just being names on a list with positions next to them. It was the small touches that did it, like nicknaming local sports teams which came complete with thematic branding.
- Code
Hard to say. Probably The Reach, not because it still stands out any more but because it gave birth to an entire generation of derivatives who reused @Thenomain's code to run all kinds of different MU*. It was a game-changer which birthed a ton of nWoD games to the point they over-saturated the 'market'.
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@bobgoblin said in The best I've ever...:
The Best: Policy
Brus' Five Pillars of Good Staffing.
Nearly every upvote I've seen from a staffer saying they do things "x" way has been reflected here.
The Best: Game System
Too wide of a topic. The best game system I've never seen implemented is without a doubt Apocalypse World.
The best game system I've seen implemented is any I enjoyed playing, because if I enjoy it then it's the best.
The Best: Setting
I still have love for the original Haunted Memories setting, because it was designed by someone with an understanding of and love for Vienna. It was not a generic city that was homogenized by the players.
(Paris:FdM also felt like a real location, but I think HM did it better.)
The Best: Code
For the Great Holy Octopod's sake, @Chime.
With a deep CS degree and experience, she thought about doing things with Mux that I didn't think were possible. I learned more from breaking her code than I had in years. @Chime is part of unending evidence that you don't need to know programming languages to code, you need to know how to code.
If anyone has used
@whenceor has run a WoD game with 10,000 traits (looking at you, The Reach), it's because of @Chime.I've just made some complex softcode, and taught @Cobaltasaurus enough to make the game-changing Events system. I'm just Myrddin level.
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A massive runner-up to @faraday and @Griatch for pushing us into the twenty-first century with new servers, and @Sparks for Atlantis which has aged so well that it still runs on High Sierra. Sorry you three, I have a bit of eight-armed love in my heart for working with The Mechanipus.
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@thenomain said in The best I've ever...:
With a deep CS degree and experience, she thought about doing things with Mux that I didn't think were possible. I learned more from breaking her code than I had in years. @Chime is part of unending evidence that you don't need to know programming languages to code, you need to know how to code.
This. I don't know who Chime is because I was in MUD world for years but when I started coding it was under the watchful eye of the game head that happened to be a professional software engineer who specialized in debugging other peoples crappy, buggy code for living. He demanded any additions to his code be up to his standards and I still try to live up to that.
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@wildbaboons said in The best I've ever...:
He demanded any additions to his code be up to his standards and I still try to live up to that.
The common saw is, "If I die tomorrow, will someone else be able to manage this code?"
For me it is, "My attention span is so short that I have to assume that I'll have no idea what was going on when I get back to this code." Enlightened Self-Interest is the best Self-Interest.
But yes, if you're going to code, code like you mean it.
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@thenomain The best line I've heard in that vein (I'm a professional software engineer, so I hear a lot of this at work) is: "You're not writing code for yourself. You're writing for the murderous psychopath that will own your code in six months." Apparently consequences that include death are what are required for good code these days. Who knew?
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@darc said in The best I've ever...:
Apparently consequences that include death are what are required for good code these days. Who knew?
Dead Man's Forks.
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Policy: I'm with @Arkandel on this one; this is less about any given policy than policy enforcement. If I had to point to one, however, it's one I can't credit to a specific source, but it would be the introduction of Conflict of Interest policies. This went down during my 8 years or so off-forum, so I have no idea what game started using them under that umbrella term.
Game System: None yet. No, really. None yet hit all the points for 'works effectively more often than it drives me crazy', which is the bar I set on this one. The closest would be 'None whatsoever, with a limited pool of creative players who make stuff up on the fly and respect one another's fun.'
Setting: While I never played on it, I was around the folks developing it. Truelands. Old. Not current. Most broad and in depth and detailed original theme written to date, and I have yet to see anything come close to surpassing it.
Code: ??? There are bits and pieces from a lot of things I like. They are very specific and scattershot.
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Policy: Having Faction Head/leadership PCs (particularly FCs, but...) be 'mini staff' of a sort. This was done on 2k5, where they were a portion of TPstaff and had some responsibilities to the MUSH and to help enable the game.
Game System: I've always been a fan of custom systems, and I really liked Videoland's combat code that was essentially a Smash Bros. system as a MUSH system.
Setting: This is the harder thing, because I have mostly played on themed games. But I liked the setup for some of the unified comic games I played on, especially ones that had some extra variety.
Code: Uh... see above, re: Smash Code?
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@ganymede said in The best I've ever...:
(props also to Ashen-Shugar's (I think?) code for Star Wars SAGA games).
Dahan. Dahan is the mad genius behind most of the Saga Edition game code.
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Policy: I don't really have a best one. If anything I think the 2 person policy cause sometimes I have another idea or want to have a dick and twat.
Game System: Randsomscene that incentivizes rp with others. So yeah you want xp? play with me fool!
Setting: For the short while it was there a Victorian Dark Ages Hunter setting. I forget the name but it needs to be revived. (Hmmm... I'm tempted)
Code: I gotta give it up to @faraday . A plug and play code system that allows you to quickly set up a game and setting for anything under the sun. It has all the basic stuff common place in all games. That's just awesome.
