So the following came from a discussion with Lights Out RP's coder, who seems like a really nice guy in spite of the game he's coding for:
Crow (Vol) pages: yeah I just kind of amble from one game I'm helping to another, delivering patches and fixes. really try to stay out of politics except for the one game I actually OWN.
Crow (Vol) pages: and I'm not technically 'running' it, someone else has the reins at the moment and they just ask me for advice sometimes.
You paged Crow with 'What game is that?'
Crow (Vol) pages: Exalted MUSH: Shifting Sands.
Crow (Vol) pages: over at phantasmgames.org 2525
If you like Exalted, maybe check it out? No promises, but he's passionate about coding, and could probably use people who want to play Exalted. I can't say anything about activity, or code. It's on Penn, but no negative points for that.
Anyone who doesn't go to online communities to avoid the politics, is nice and not negative (to a complete stranger, at least) earns some respect.
I know that coder pretty well. They're genuinely really nice and stay the fuck out of drama whenever possible. Sometimes I wish they didn't help -everyone- in the universe and take on way more work than someone should be doing for free, but hell, as far as MU* coders go, they border on goddamned saintly.
This looks to be the Nth initeration of the Exalted MUSH and from what I recall the code is really nice, no idea what the game is currently like though I have spotted a few of the usual suspect's obvious characters from a glance at the wiki.
The coder was working on making a game with the new edition of Exalted. I know fuck-all about Exalted, but I know that was the basic plan. I'm not sure if this is the game or not, because, again, I know fuck-all about Exalted.
From the looks of character generation the game is set up to work with 3rd edition when it goes live if they want to make a new game or reboot this one - most likely the former given the new version will not allow most of the different splat types I guess.
Exalted is fun, so long as you can accept the issues inherent in the system and setting. The coder is amazing, and I often want to throw money at them to get New Code for stuff, because... as mentioned, amazing.
I'd gladly play on an Exalted game if I had a better handle on the rules. They seem overly complex to me.
@Ganymede said:
I'd gladly play on an Exalted game if I had a better handle on the rules. They seem overly complex to me.
So, the thing about Exalted, atleast 2e. Is that the rules themselves are really simple, it's just your basic storyteller D10 Attribute+Skill stuff. Playing an Exalted mortal is no more complicated then playing a GMC mortal.
Where it gets complicated is the same place where nWoD Mage gets complicated, in that there are literally thousands of printed powers with all sorts of unique interactions and only the most insane of players and GM's actually keep track of them all. However as a player, you don't actually need to learn all the powers, just get one of the resident crazies to help you find the ones you want and you just need to know those.
Personally I'm just entirely burned out on Exalted 2e and might take a look if 3e turns out to be playable.
Exalted is also one of those games where the powers (Charms) can be unique or formulaic. For example, you can have Charms that are very weird and specific (e.g. a Performance Charm that allows you to disguise yourself as the the person that your target would confide in but only if you are giving them a lapdance), straight-forward and useful (e.g. a Charm that lets you ignore motion penalties while on a ship in a storm, and breathe under water), or formulaic (any of the dice- or success-adder Charms, like the Excellencies).
Once you understand the third set and how those formulas work (which are the bedrock upon which most Charm trees are built on) the others are just a matter of keeping the text near by and checking if you forget.
Exalted gets really complicated when you're trying to get the most bang for your buck by combining Charms (literally called "Combos") or stacking effects (persistent, passive, active, etc.) for the highest modifiers or most perfect effects.
And then it gets interesting (or frustrating, depending) when you realize that Defense > Offense and it doesn't matter how amazing your attack is, if the defender has an applicable Perfect Defense, you're going to get rebuffed.
You can play Exalted without twinking and it can be immense fun, but the game really does have a niche in there for people who love game math and all that crap.
I liken Exalted to Street Fighter.
I was always good at Street Fighter. Maybe it's because I'm Asian. I can get past most of the games against the CPUs.
But against other players, I get hosed because they've mastered the intricacies to a level that's beyond my skill and time-investment.
I can play Exalted. I can read the rules. I will never be able to get so immersed so as to actually enjoy it deeply. So, I don't play it.
It looks nice, though.
I spent a couple of years deeply immersed in the first edition, to the point where I have pages and pages and pages of fluff and mechanics. In my lack-of-caution I even had around 33k words of an Exalted in SPAAAACE setting, with new Charms, new Skills, new Merits, transposed setting... and then the server it was on crashed and burned and I lost all of it. Sigh.
I decided to give this place a shot because I had some spare time and was bored. I was going for a warrior-poet kind of vibe, so I did the background as a series of stanzas - writing histories is one of the most boring aspects of chargen IMO, so I figured I'd spice things up a little.
After waiting 5 days for someone to look at the app, the response I got was 'Writing your background this way does not help. In fact it makes me angry and want to dock you XP. I can't do that, but don't do this again. I will have more comments for you later.'
The coder/owner is a nice guy - really great! But every other member of staff working for him seems like a colossal tool.
I was vaguely looking forward to running some Exalted scenes on the odd weekend I have some time free - I'll probably find a Play by Post game somewhere to occupy me instead.
Just thought I'd share my experience.
@NotaNumber said:
I decided to give this place a shot because I had some spare time and was bored. I was going for a warrior-poet kind of vibe, so I did the background as a series of stanzas - writing histories is one of the most boring aspects of chargen IMO, so I figured I'd spice things up a little.
After waiting 5 days for someone to look at the app, the response I got was 'Writing your background this way does not help. In fact it makes me angry and want to dock you XP. I can't do that, but don't do this again. I will have more comments for you later.'
The coder/owner is a nice guy - really great! But every other member of staff working for him seems like a colossal tool.
I was vaguely looking forward to running some Exalted scenes on the odd weekend I have some time free - I'll probably find a Play by Post game somewhere to occupy me instead.
Just thought I'd share my experience.
While I understand your frustration at being replied to that way, and while I agree that, if your paraphrasing is accurate, they should have been a lot more polite, I can also understand the sentiment of being annoyed or frustrated by someone who writes a background this way.
As someone who has handled countless apps in the past--and a lot of people know this of me--I fucking hate long backgrounds. And writing them as poetry would probably make it worse since I don't like most poetry, and why do I have to read your background in this format when it just makes it more effort for me? It's a game. It's not your weekly writing group. Give me the basics and that's it. You find it boring to write them, but it's equally if not more boring to read them. I would much rather just page with a player and talk about their character history; at least that way I'm engaged.
In before "then why have backgrounds at all": The game I run has a 500 word limit to backgrounds and backgrounds are optional. It'll get you an extra 3 experiences, but that's it, really.
@Thenomain said:
Anyone who doesn't go to online communities to avoid the politics,
Looks like I dropped by, largely due to @Griatch and the Evennia thread. Still hoping to avoid politics. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 
@NotaNumber said:
After waiting 5 days for someone to look at the app, the response I got was 'Writing your background this way does not help. In fact it makes me angry and want to dock you XP. I can't do that, but don't do this again. I will have more comments for you later.'
Would like to know who said that and for what character. 5 days is too long to wait to get a response like that. On the 5 day part I can only clench my teeth and sigh because nothing I have done in the past has ever lead to a well-oiled staff team (largely why I stay out of policies), but that kinda response is not so cool.
We have been attempting to clean up chargen. Mardukth just put up some extra guidelines of this sort.
@Coin said:
While I understand your frustration at being replied to that way, and while I agree that, if your paraphrasing is accurate, they should have been a lot more polite, I can also understand the sentiment of being annoyed or frustrated by someone who writes a background this way.
As someone who has handled countless apps in the past--and a lot of people know this of me--I fucking hate long backgrounds. And writing them as poetry would probably make it worse since I don't like most poetry, and why do I have to read your background in this format when it just makes it more effort for me? It's a game. It's not your weekly writing group. Give me the basics and that's it. You find it boring to write them, but it's equally if not more boring to read them. I would much rather just page with a player and talk about their character history; at least that way I'm engaged.
Honestly, if he'd said 'This is not the kind of app I'd like to see, please rewrite it' I would have done so without complaint. I'd have been a little disappointed maybe, but I was actually prepared for that; it wouldn't have taken much effort to turn what I'd written into two-three paragraphs of explicit 'this is who I am and where I came from'.
It was specifically the 'This makes me want to dock you XP' comment AND the fact that (when I picked up the message) it had sat there for ~4 hours with nothing for me to respond to other than 'This is bad and you should feel bad' as essentially the only response. that's what made me decide that it wasn't worth bothering to continue. My leisure time is a fairly precious resource these days; I've got no desire to spend it interacting with people who are angry/antagonistic... or even who are just bad at communicating, frankly.
@Volund said:
Would like to know who said that and for what character. 5 days is too long to wait to get a response like that. On the 5 day part I can only clench my teeth and sigh because nothing I have done in the past has ever lead to a well-oiled staff team (largely why I stay out of policies), but that kinda response is not so cool.
It was Qaf (I think that was the correct spelling) - my character's name was Mahn'di. I'm unsure if they'll still be around mind.
@NotaNumber said:
@Coin said:
While I understand your frustration at being replied to that way, and while I agree that, if your paraphrasing is accurate, they should have been a lot more polite, I can also understand the sentiment of being annoyed or frustrated by someone who writes a background this way.
As someone who has handled countless apps in the past--and a lot of people know this of me--I fucking hate long backgrounds. And writing them as poetry would probably make it worse since I don't like most poetry, and why do I have to read your background in this format when it just makes it more effort for me? It's a game. It's not your weekly writing group. Give me the basics and that's it. You find it boring to write them, but it's equally if not more boring to read them. I would much rather just page with a player and talk about their character history; at least that way I'm engaged.
Honestly, if he'd said 'This is not the kind of app I'd like to see, please rewrite it' I would have done so without complaint. I'd have been a little disappointed maybe, but I was actually prepared for that; it wouldn't have taken much effort to turn what I'd written into two-three paragraphs of explicit 'this is who I am and where I came from'.
It was specifically the 'This makes me want to dock you XP' comment AND the fact that (when I picked up the message) it had sat there for ~4 hours with nothing for me to respond to other than 'This is bad and you should feel bad' as essentially the only response. that's what made me decide that it wasn't worth bothering to continue. My leisure time is a fairly precious resource these days; I've got no desire to spend it interacting with people who are angry/antagonistic... or even who are just bad at communicating, frankly.
Like I said, I understand. I just think it bears mentioning that lots of people don't tend to think about the person that has to read their backgrounds.
I've done it from the other end too. I would never respond to someone with a paragraph of aggressive text. If I really couldn't be bothered to read what they'd put, I'd just say 'hey, please redo this in a more conventional way'.
Oh, and whilst I was there, there was a grand total of one other person sat in the chargen room. I can't say for sure what the playerbase is, but I'm fairly confident that they won't be handling more than ~5 apps in a week. The workload is not exactly excessive right now. If this guy can't be polite at the rate he's working at the moment, he's just going to buckle if the playerbase actually picks up.
I have to side with @NotaNumber on this. If the background was unacceptable as is just say this is unacceptable please rewrite it. I don't care if it is your hundredth bg you have has to read that day, if you hate reading them then don't require them or if you don't have that power just refuse to do apps.
The "I would dock xp for this but I can't." Thing is pure passive aggression and would get me to drop a place immediately as well.
Now I think backgrounds are mostly a failed tool in general but that is another point entirely.
@ThatGuyThere said:
I have to side with @NotaNumber on this. If the background was unacceptable as is just say this is unacceptable please rewrite it. I don't care if it is your hundredth bg you have has to read that day, if you hate reading them then don't require them or if you don't have that power just refuse to do apps.
The "I would dock xp for this but I can't." Thing is pure passive aggression and would get me to drop a place immediately as well.
Now I think backgrounds are mostly a failed tool in general but that is another point entirely.
There's no one to side with.
I was simply commenting on a side-subject derived from his complaint. I already said I agreed that he was treated poorly and unacceptably. I don't think anyone is arguing that.
I know that coder pretty well. They're genuinely really nice and stay the fuck out of drama whenever possible. Sometimes I wish they didn't help -everyone- in the universe and take on way more work than someone should be doing for free, but hell, as far as MU* coders go, they border on goddamned saintly.
