Dreamwalk MUSH

Demiurge

@golgoth said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

I was under the impression that the IC shared connection channel could be used as this central hub. What more would be needed?

From the game wiki, it sounds like in order for two characters to RP with each other, one of them has to: a) create a sympathetic connection, b) build a bridge, and c) pay lucidity to go through that bridge. That means that three characters can't just randomly decide to do a scene together. They all have to be connected first to someplace they can all get to (or spend the points/tokens to do so now).

That's not a criticism; just an observation. The dreamscape mechanic is what makes the game unique. It also may be off-putting to some players.

If there's another way to RP then @Wizz is right - that probably should be clarified in the wiki.

There is one, but it's fairly limited. It's a Collective Unconscious channel, which is anonymized. You don't say anything, someone says it. You can declare who you are, but other dreamers can also declare they are you, for the purposes of tarnishing your reputation in character, mocking you, deceiving others, whatever. I'm hoping, if the game takes off, for it to have a certain cacophony effect that's both fun to read and spew into.
Here's an example of a simple exchange that was had over this:

<Collective Unconscious> Someone says, "I take anything for fare. I take Federation credits. I take Spacecoin. I take BITcoin. I even take obscure currencies like United States dollars. I take fucking gasoline."
<Collective Unconscious> Someone says, "Do you take deuterium fuel cells?"
<Collective Unconscious> Someone says, "Maybe. What do they do?"

So there is a central place to RP, but it is limited, and that is deliberate.

@ixokai said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

But we gotta have some sorta talk. The Communal Unconscious almost brings it but it gets a little overwhelming if more then three people are in it at once, and there's no way to narrow its focus to just one or two people who have captured your interest.

On Bar RP: I think it would be really cool if there were characters that routinely act as hubs or links between many players, and I have nothing against BaRP per se, but I think making it trivial is bad. I'd really like even new players to be behooved to think things through and have to find a way to navigate to the bar.

Arkandel

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Demiurge

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

But what if RP were just a means to the end? What if the game had other goals (like exploring the connections between dreamscapes)? Then spending your limited resource to buy connections to strangers is not only desirable, it's necessary to play the game the way it's meant to be played.

Well, the point of Dreamwalk MUSH is threefold:

Build up your dreamscape,
Meet other dreamers (RP, essentially),
Traversing the dreamverse

Scening is heavily rewarded, but you're discouraged from being too picky about who you RP with because if you fail to level with the people who are actually available to you, you can sort of box yourself out of the game. @Wizz objected to this in part because it might mean you end up dealing with a creepy, annoying, or otherwise frustrating player, and I definitely get his point. However, I think having mechanics that both allow for enclaves to emerge naturally while also directly rewarding you for humoring people is ultimately a good thing. It creates an incentive to be a good player.

Demiurge

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Yes. It's supposed to be confusing. It's supposed to be a cacophony. You're not really supposed to have a coherent exchange. It's supposed to be stream of consciousness, emotive, etc, but definitely not coherent.

Coin

This has a lot of things in common with The Strange, which I like.

The decentralization of social RP is kind of a turn off, though, yeah, for reasons already explained.

faraday

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

So there is a central place to RP, but it is limited, and that is deliberate.

That's very different from what most people think of when they say "RP".

Which is fine! It's just good to set expectations in the wiki about what the game is about and what limitations there are so everyone's on the same page coming in.

Demiurge

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

That's very different from what most people think of when they say "RP".
Which is fine! It's just good to set expectations in the wiki about what the game is about and what limitations there are so everyone's on the same page coming in.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting that. When people say "RP," they seem to refer specifically to scenes. This is entirely fair. However, there are a lot of ways one can project their character into things without having a scene, and I think stressing them is appropriate in the context of this MUSH.

Arkandel

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Yes. It's supposed to be confusing. It's supposed to be a cacophony. You're not really supposed to have a coherent exchange. It's supposed to be stream of consciousness, emotive, etc, but definitely not coherent.

I'd just advise keeping full (non-anonymous) records somewhere even if staff aren't around at the time in case you have to deal with creeps.

You still need to know who called people names, and set limits in your policies about what the cacophony can, and cannot, be about.

faraday

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

When people say "RP," they seem to refer specifically to scenes. This is entirely fair. However, there are a lot of ways one can project their character into things without having a scene, and I think stressing them is appropriate in the context of this MUSH.

Well, I wasn't limiting it solely to scenes. I've had lovely exchanges of IC mail with both @silentsophia and @GirlCalledBlu on different games that contributed to the characters' stories and relationships. And many people like to write vignettes or flashbacks or diaries. The main thing unifying those is not the "scene" but more of... an attributable narrative, I guess? Versus an anonymous channel of randomness.

My point is not to criticize what you've got, though - not at all. Merely to suggest that you may want to expand the wiki a little bit to talk more about the game philosophy and the ways it's different from traditional MUs.

Demiurge

This post is deleted!

Demiurge

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Yes. It's supposed to be confusing. It's supposed to be a cacophony. You're not really supposed to have a coherent exchange. It's supposed to be stream of consciousness, emotive, etc, but definitely not coherent.

I'd just advise keeping full (non-anonymous) records somewhere even if staff aren't around at the time in case you have to deal with creeps.

You still need to know who called people names, and set limits in your policies about what the cacophony can, and cannot, be about.

I do keep logs of who posted what, but it's mostly for the purposes of helping law enforcement should someone think they can post something illegal under United States law, like a credible death threat against a real person or links to pornography that nobody should be allowed to see. As cool as anonymity is conceptually, I don't want my game to be a vector for any of that kind of shit.

That said, I'm actually really conflicted about this. Should I go for authenticity, which can be extremely fucked up in more ways to list here, or should I try to maintain a certain amount of decorum? Authentically speaking, people's internal monologues are filled with slur-laden rants, with socially unacceptable sexual thoughts, with word salad non-sequitur conspiracy theories, and other mental detritus. Most people have a few of these kinds of things going on in their heads. Why would a dreamverse with people from all different universes be any different? Why wouldn't a 40k Space Marine have a few uncouth or insane thoughts from the perspective of his own culture, for example?

But on the other hand, being exposed to it is decidedly uncomfortable for most people. It really is, and I get that. So I'm conflicted, because I am wholly unperturbed by this kind of thing, and I think exposure to it adds to the authenticity of the channel, yet at the same time I know for a fact that a lot of people will be totally unsettled the first time someone blames dajooz for something on it, or whatever else.

Ideally, I'd prefer reconciliation of authenticity and taste, but I'm not sure how. I don't want to turn people off, but I don't want to turn my game into a hugbox, either.

You know?

Sunny

Kudos for trying something new! I'm happy to see Ares getting the use, too. I wish this project all the best.

Arkandel

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

I do keep logs of who posted what, but it's mostly for the purposes of helping law enforcement should someone think they can post something illegal under United States law, like a credible death threat against a real person or links to pornography that nobody should be allowed to see. As cool as anonymity is conceptually, I don't want my game to be a vector for any of that kind of shit.

That's a good policy.

That said, I'm actually really conflicted about this. Should I go for authenticity, which can be extremely fucked up in more ways to list here, or should I try to maintain a certain amount of decorum? Authentically speaking, people's internal monologues are filled with slur-laden rants, with socially unacceptable sexual thoughts, with word salad non-sequitur conspiracy theories, and other mental detritus. Most people have a few of these kinds of things going on in their heads. Why would a dreamverse with people from all different universes be any different? Why wouldn't a 40k Space Marine have a few uncouth or insane thoughts from the perspective of his own culture, for example?

OOC gameplay should - IMHO - always take precedence. You need to have policies even if they are generic else you will get asshats who ruin everyone else's fun just because they can, and in that case what good will authenticity do for your game if your players are being chased away by a small minority (often as small as a single person)?

But really, I wouldn't worry about it very much. It won't happen often. For all we publicize it here for popcorn purposes assholes of a certain magnitude don't pop up every day, especially after staff sets the tone to show what they will and won't tolerate.

Pyrephox

@demiurge Um...it's not "disturbing content" that I think is going to be the problem, but possibly people using the anonymous nature of it to actively harass others. Like, if someone starts posting to the collective unconscious a lot of sexually explicit fantasies about what they want to do to Character X, knowing that the player of Character X can't identify who's talking about the gross stuff, or encouraging more people to start talking about sexually explicit fantasies about that character. And for 'sexually explicit', you can also sub in violent fantasies, or whatever - having a free for all to be able to talk about how you fantasize about skinning Character Y alive, or whatever, knowing that the player of Character Y can't do anything about it...that's a bit offputting.

I would hope that would never actually happen, but I think you have to have a policy in place for when it does. Likewise, for being able to bar someone from a dreamscape if they are just...utterly gross towards the character who 'owns' the dreamscape to the point that it makes the game unfun for the player.

Sunny

Characters do not have to feel safe. Characters can have risks, bad things happening to them, danger, all of that.

You still want your players to feel safe. Players, not characters. If the players can't feel safe to have fun / play, they won't.

If your intended audience is just people who can go balls to the wall all the time, who have an iron will and a strong stomach (so to speak), there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Please just make it very clear so that people who might be sensitive (to whatever thing, for whatever reason) know that they aren't welcome in the first place.

ETA: I am a "snowflake" and I am "triggered" by content involving both sexual assault and suicide. If this is something I have no recourse for avoiding on this game, I would want to know about it, so I don't get involved in the first place. I am using myself as an example because it's an easy one, and I know I'm not the only one, not because it's something I'm suggesting be addressed for me personally.

Demiurge

@pyrephox said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Um...it's not "disturbing content" that I think is going to be the problem, but possibly people using the anonymous nature of it to actively harass others. Like, if someone starts posting to the collective unconscious a lot of sexually explicit fantasies about what they want to do to Character X, knowing that the player of Character X can't identify who's talking about the gross stuff, or encouraging more people to start talking about sexually explicit fantasies about that character. And for 'sexually explicit', you can also sub in violent fantasies, or whatever - having a free for all to be able to talk about how you fantasize about skinning Character Y alive, or whatever, knowing that the player of Character Y can't do anything about it...that's a bit offputting.
I would hope that would never actually happen, but I think you have to have a policy in place for when it does. Likewise, for being able to bar someone from a dreamscape if they are just...utterly gross towards the character who 'owns' the dreamscape to the point that it makes the game unfun for the player.

Well, I definitely understand the point of imposing content limits. However, are inappropriate sexual fantasies the proper limit for a stream of consciousness Jungian cacophony? People are into some bizarre shit, man. I legitimately and actually think that if you impose content limits like "inappropriate sexual fantasies," where your concept of "inappropriate" includes "things you probably shouldn't say out loud in real life," then I think we're kind of at an impasse. Part of the point of the anonymity is to reveal an uncensored view of what the characters actually think, where your recourse is limited primarily to guessing at who said what, or turning off the channel completely and in doing so isolating yourself.

A collective unconscious, minus potentially upsetting content, isn't really an unconscious. To me, it cheapens it, quite a bit. I don't want to go to your game, and break your rules, but I'm not inclined to impose these rules right now myself.

@sunny said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

ETA: I am a "snowflake" and I am "triggered" by content involving both sexual assault and suicide. If this is something I have no recourse for avoiding on this game, I would want to know about it, so I don't get involved in the first place. I am using myself as an example because it's an easy one, and I know I'm not the only one, not because it's something I'm suggesting be addressed for me personally.

And that's totally understandable. I'm not here to shout "triggered snowflake libshit CUCK" at you. I definitely sympathize with simply not wanting to see certain things. For me, content of actual animal or actual child abuse (fuck you Daddyofive) just plain pisses me off. So I get that. But I'm not sure how much censorship of works of fiction I want to do.

You should bear in mind that I can be reasoned with, and I might be persuaded to impose some real content limits, like if a bunch of pedophiles raid my game and dominate the game with their pederastic fursonas, I will totally quash that. But as it stands, I just don't see a point for content limits if there's an antagonistic male user who catcalls you in his internal monologue which you have access to.

As for your personal recourse, you can CHANNEL/MUTE COL to make it go away. Is that helpful?

Pyrephox

@demiurge So, your proposed solution to if someone is using your system to harass another player is for the harassed player to simply remove themselves from a part of the game? The part, it sounds like that is the closest to a general social hub the game has, which will likely also have knock-on effects to their access to other parts of the game, and which by its anonymous nature means that they'll have no idea which of the character who want to join their dreamscape are being played by their harasser?

That may be a policy you want to rethink.

Sunny

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

As for your personal recourse, you can CHANNEL/MUTE COL to make it go away. Is that helpful?

No. It is not. I think it's VERY IMPORTANT that you make this stance VERY CLEAR on the game itself and your wiki if it already isn't. It is not a BAD thing to say "I value the integrity of the IC world over the safety of my players", it's a design choice. It's a design choice that will exclude a lot of people that you may or may not intend to exclude, but every design choice is likely to do that somewhere.

Demiurge

@pyrephox said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

So, your proposed solution to if someone is using your system to harass another player is for the harassed player to simply remove themselves from a part of the game? The part, it sounds like that is the closest to a general social hub the game has, which will likely also have knock-on effects to their access to other parts of the game, and which by its anonymous nature means that they'll have no idea which of the character who want to join their dreamscape are being played by their harasser?
That may be a policy you want to rethink.

Harassment of player != harassment of character. If a player harasses my other players, they're banned. If someone's character harasses some other character, that's a shadier zone. A much shadier one. The expectation that your character needs administrative protection from uncomfortable speech/actions against them, to me, seems excessive. Like I said, I can be persuaded otherwise, but as it stands I have not been persuaded of this.

Sunny

@demiurge

I'm not interested in persuading you or changing your mind about a design choice in making your game. It's clear you feel the way you do about it. I might find it personally terrible, but my recourse is very easy for me: don't play. I am just asking on behalf of other people (please do feel free to ignore my request) that you make your priorities VERY CLEAR so that nobody spends the time to engage and invest only to have to walk away because of your design choices.