Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?)
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@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
I'm complaining that "web-based" is poorly defined and a poor metric.
We can do better.Sorry for the double post, but our posts crossed and I think this is a great point that warrants a separate response.
I focused on the web-based aspect to respond to Arkandel, but you're right - that alone is not what makes it an improvement.
What makes it an improvement is having a better user experience. You don't have to learn a set of command-line commands and remember obscure syntax (is it bbpost title/message or title=message?). You can have images to prompt the story appear seamlessly in poses. You can use hyperlinks and bold text and other formatting things that telnet MU*s don't let you do. You don't have the game over here and the wiki over there and have to worry about integrating the two (often times manually). You don't have to clean logs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
And yes, you could do all of this with a new specialized client application. But again that's the beauty of having something on the web - you don't have to download and install a special app. You don't have to develop 7 different versions of that app for all the different OSes.
The barrier to entry would be significantly lower and I think there would be a lot less friction in many day-to-day MU* tasks. But that's just me. I freely admit to being in the minority here.
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@tragedyjones said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
- Grid Design - Part of me feels that a pre-made, pre-described grid is... a waste. Many players eschew the room descriptions, and many prefer to use +temprooms, RP rooms or private builds. How much is a minimum necessary grid design for a city? The sprawling layouts of DM or even HM are, imo, dead.
I disagree, for longevity, more grid means less of the same bar rp day after day. The other half of this problem is a) staff burns out and mu ends in 3 to 6 months, or b) players only stay for a few months and leave cause ' nothing to do', which relates to some players not wanting to ST or run PrPs. I don't think grid size is any issue, a few rooms to start and temp rooms as needed is good. But large grid for longevity, means players have more ideas for potential scenes the longer they stay ( what's this, we have back alley jewellery shop, gives me an idea for a one shot that could develop into a tp of some sort).
- An End to Bar-P - I have long ranted against random social banter RP, slice of life stuff, when that is all I can find. It is something I personally feel should be used as a downtime thing between active story
If you don't like social rp or slice of life, don't play it. In 20 years of this, loving all the action adventure, I can set the most fun character development for me is from slice of life, reacting to the last adventure, reacting to the big meta bbpost, developing more relationships. If I want adventure after adventure I'll do tt or just regular adventure day once a week. But slice of life helps perpetrate stories, ponder new points of view and affects adventure time.
- Homework - Some games thrive on this, some entirely balk at the idea. But in general, how much effort is fair to ask of your players? Is background too much? Scene tracking? How can we streamline this process as well. Clearly automatic logging is not something most people, or anyone, wants.
Character wise, minimal bg, but homework to know the game a little. My pref is after approval they contribute to the theme by adding to the game. Thru a wiki is the best, developing a house, an org, a hangout not on the grid, npcs, a new business, an idea. Anything. I'm off the mindset it's collaborative story telling more than a game where staff do all this work and players wait for staff to make things happen. This detracts from longevity through staff burn out.
- Making things matter - How do you make what happens logical, consistent, and important without dedicating a small team to it? How do you ensure that the firefight that happens in one neighborhood actually impact the lives of the characters who live there but were not logged in at the time? How can we establish continuity of Non-Player characters between stories, characters, players, and scenes?
I've tended to create tracking for player plots and npcs on the wiki for places I help with. The issue is usually player by in to contribute to these things. I started villain tracking on comic mu*s a few years back just to help with continuity; like reading a log with villain x when yesterday your group put him into space and planned to use him tomorrow. The homework is needed and lots of players just want adventure and hope someone else is stinging continuity together at some point.
It's a collaboration between all players (staff included) and without commitment and buy in, the rest inevitably doesn't work either way so well .
Sorry belated reply.
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@faraday said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
So someone will create another client for real-time communications with the server, one that might not be web-based. I actually think "web based" right now to be still pretty limiting; look at the number of people who use Skype as their game-enhancing system of choice.
I don't understand why you're equating "web based" with "not real time".
It was an example. I know that with AJAX techniques we can do pretty much magic (Google, everyone!), but we as a forum specifically keep saying "web-based! web based!" as if it means anything. I see that mantra as another way of backing ourselves in a corner because we're parroting one single technology group and not what you can do with that group.
Technology Is Not Application. Or in other words: If all you want is a hammer, you'll end up thinking of only hammer-based solutions. Or in other other words: I don't want to trade one box to get into another; I want to think outside of it.
That is, we are agreeing now.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
That is, we are agreeing now.
Watching you and @faraday discuss this sort of stuff is making me excited in the wrong, but right way.
Keep talking. Please. If this is where the hobby shifts into a new space and place, I want to be there.
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@faraday said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
I don't understand why you're equating "web based" with "not real time". I just responded to your forum post 16 minutes later. Is that not "real time"?
For the purposes of MUSHing I would not consider a 16 minute wait to be real time. I know it is a personal preference thing but if a sixteen minute wait was the norm for a scene with someone I would not be in a scene with that person often.
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@ThatGuyThere said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
For the purposes of MUSHing I would not consider a 16 minute wait to be real time. I know it is a personal preference thing but if a sixteen minute wait was the norm for a scene with someone I would not be in a scene with that person often.
Everyone has different expectations for pose times - that's not really my point. This is a reply 4 minutes later. The next reply might come in 30 seconds after this or 3 days later. That's not a limitation of the forum software, it's a cultural expectation. Like Theno said, technology is not application.
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@Arkandel Fear And Loathing kind of does, yeah. Our villain bits are called Heavies, they are played by STs (who can be players) and are statted like the Guest Stars (higher-powered characters with restrictions) you mentioned-- but they are ONLY used for that PrP (and future iterations), and they can pkill only as part of that PrP.
And yes, so far it's been working fine. Players have been responsible about following the guidelines, and offering leadership and mentoring without stomping on folks. We've been monitoring things as well, and have only rarely needed to suggest and clarify things to Guest Stars to help keep folks on track.
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@faraday said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
What makes it an improvement is having a better user experience. You don't have to learn a set of command-line commands and remember obscure syntax (is it bbpost title/message or title=message?). You can have images to prompt the story appear seamlessly in poses. You can use hyperlinks and bold text and other formatting things that telnet MU*s don't let you do. You don't have the game over here and the wiki over there and have to worry about integrating the two (often times manually). You don't have to clean logs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
That's exactly it. Not relying on text-only. Being able to offer a decent user interface - hell being able to provide visual, point-and-click one. We're all stuck on command-line stuff for so long but that's not what people expect; a black screen with walls of text and +command stuff is too much.
The way I like to think of it as an example is this: Imagine CGen where you see a character sheet not much unlike (or even identical) to the one at the back of the RPG book, and you fill it up in exactly the same way.
The barrier to entry would be significantly lower and I think there would be a lot less friction in many day-to-day MU* tasks. But that's just me. I freely admit to being in the minority here.
I'd like to think once the paradigm is shifted - and to do that we'll need a working prototype - things will take their course. It won't be easy for us (and I'm including myself in that list - no one gets to use a specific way to play for 20 years and then suddenly switch completely overnight without some regret) but I don't see another way for the hobby to actually start getting new players in any decent numbers. At the moment we only get those motivated enough to fight through it.
@Paris said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
And yes, so far it's been working fine. Players have been responsible about following the guidelines, and offering leadership and mentoring without stomping on folks. We've been monitoring things as well, and have only rarely needed to suggest and clarify things to Guest Stars to help keep folks on track.
I'm glad to hear it. It's good to experiment and try new things then have people prove you right for trusting them.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@tragedyjones I don't know, I always kinda enjoyed our frenemy relationship on TR, but maybe that was just me.
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@Arkandel said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
The way I like to think of it as an example is this: Imagine CGen where you see a character sheet not much unlike (or even identical) to the one at the back of the RPG book, and you fill it up in exactly the same way.
Yep. The chargen on the web prototype lets you go through the motions so you don't have to imagine quite so much
BSGU has online chargen that's not as fancy (due to ugly technical limitations of trying to munge together a web app AND a telnet app into the same architecture) but is actually fully functional. -
@ThatGuyThere said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
@faraday said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
I don't understand why you're equating "web based" with "not real time". I just responded to your forum post 16 minutes later. Is that not "real time"?
For the purposes of MUSHing I would not consider a 16 minute wait to be real time. I know it is a personal preference thing but if a sixteen minute wait was the norm for a scene with someone I would not be in a scene with that person often.
So, I'm a long-time MU*er but I also engage in MMO RP. (Predominantly for The Secret World, because frankly, who doesn't want to be a clueless newbie immortal fighting against eldritch monstrosities?)
And I will say, it's a wildly different thing. MMO RP tends to be on forums, or in Google Docs, and you'll write a paragraph or two and then sometimes find yourself waiting hours. I've had scenes that took weeks to play out because of that pacing. That can drive me nuts.
On the other hand, I can toss off a pose or two into a Google Doc scene over my lunch break at work, where I cannot really easily commit to enough time for a MU* scene. And I never have to ask for reposes in a forum or Google Doc!
But I don't think this limitation is inherent to the technology. There's an expectation among web-RPers of forum threads and Google Docs and so on being slower paced, sure, but that's a cultural thing. There's no inherent reason a web-based system has to be drawn out, just like there's no inherent reason a telnet-based MU* system has to be immediate. (Save the fact that the connection is inherently more stateful with telnet; you can't log in, pose, log out again, log back in and pose, etc. Not like flipping to a forum or gdoc to check for a pose and toss in a reply.)
And I think there are definite benefits to the idea of a chargen that happens in a webpage, setting up events via a web form, and so on.
Looking at a webpage and clicking on things are concepts everyone's used to; think of reading bboards with a web-forum like interface as opposed to, "Oh, wait, which was this game built on? Is it +bbread, or @bb/read, or @read, or..."
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@Faraday I love the sound of your thing (and I sort of enjoyed Storium for a bit, and can see some similarity)! I'd really love to be able to use visual aids, and just the portability of playing in a browser would be nice. I am also garbage about logging and hate having to fiddle with wiki code even though I like character pages, so that being automatic would be wonderful.
