I have pneumonia and I'm just going to be honest I do not have the energy to be chasing after this dingle berry this time, but my red flag is also going off on Arx RE: DWOPP.

Also, RE @Lithium. Funny enough, they were accused of being DWOPP on the previous MSB/Hogpit for the SAME TYPE OF BEHAVIOR as DWOPP . Probably why they are a little touchy /now/ or something. But. I'll say it again.

Not the same. Lithium was banned on 7/20/2018 from Arx, playing Barric and Cleo for "Had a tendency to be passive aggressive, guilt trip, or 'joke' in ways that made other players feel uncomfortable when turned down for RP or excluded in any way. Was warned a couple times about minor instances. When confronted about another instance and warned it could not happen again, ragequit."

Can 100% confirm that's pretty much to the point but with a distinctly rapey vibe that DWOPP didn't have.

@ZombieGenesis

FS3Skills is a separate plugin from FS3Combat. Many games have used the skills system without automated combat. I continue to advise against option #1 because the game will not be properly balanced as previously discussed.

The RPG plugin lets you basically use raw dice and a text/PDF sheet to manually use any TTRPG, so that's an option.

Or, of course, find someone to code the real 7th Sea system in Ares.

@Ganymede I'm still unsure on how the intraction of HBO, HBO Max, and WB/Discovery is working. The new CEO of WB/D seems to be taking a chainsaw to movie and streaming projects, but some people are saying this isn't going to affect HBO, just the streaming content on HBO Max...

@Macha if you get really stuck you can usually find a youtube walk through of someone putting one together. The instructions really are that terrible.

@Ghost There are a bunch of google collab things for Stability that are (relatively) self-explanatory, and if you don't mind slow and limited sizes, they can be fiddled with free or pretty steadily for $10/month for more reliable access.

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1jUwJ0owjigpG-9m6AI_wEStwimisUE17

^ That one is pretty solid.

(It says 'no NSFW filter' but don't assume that's because it's for porn-hounds; they set up a NSFW autodetect that is notoriously and often hilariously buggy. You'd see buildings, clouds, rocks all censored to much gnashing of teeth in the beta because the autodetect thought it might be a nipple.)

@Ganymede e6653f8d-5782-41ff-be9e-f4c939ff47d4-image.png

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

Without the "great equalizer" of PC death, player disenfranchisement grows as players will never be able to compete with older characters.

This isn't actually a problem unless plot-runners allow it to be.

A table-top GM may need to find ways to prevent the barbarian from bashing in every locked door before the rogue can have a go at it, and that same GM is doing a poor job of it if it's all straightforward combat all the time and the wizard has naught to do but run away.

And y'know, if it's difficult to come up with in-story complications to achieve this, you do have the option of putting 'This event/plotline is for PCs with n XP or less' on the announcement. I can't possibly count the number of times I've been told some plot that my PC would notice and care about and reasonably be involved in is simply not for me because of 'sphere' distinctions, leaving me to come up with the reason he didn't act. This is fine. I could do the same in keeping my nose out of stuff meant for lower or higher power-levels.

@tek Not that it wasn't included up there, but:

https://musoapbox.net/topic/3768/brand-mu-day

Really one of the stand-out contributors to the genre over the decades. Creative, determined, and always generous (even in disagreement).

You'll be missed, EUBanana.

-r

I created this thread over 6 years ago, which blows my mind. It doesn't feel like it's been that long.

But, it seems like a good focus. MU thing I love these days is telling stories, more than being in them.

I'm still looking to fill this role if anyone is interested in playing a fairly new to the nightlife (5 years) vampire with some older connections and a coterie already on grid to kick it with.

Update:

Infinite Adventures

Peacemaker 🕊 (2022-?)

@insomniac7809 said in Thirtsy Sword Lesbians wins some ENies:

I mean, the title says it all, doesn't it?

I read it as 'thirty sword lesbians' and I didn't know if it was referring to the number of blades or ladies involved.

Changing the World Takes Time, Gentle Readers
by Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin
Miss Manners | August 4th, 2022

GENTLE READERS: There is a disturbing trend in Miss Manners' correspondence that she wishes to address, lest Gentle Readers give up hope of a more polite future. It concerns letters that begin:

-- "When did it become OK to ...?"

-- "Am I just being hopelessly old-fashioned or ...?"

-- "Am I being too sensitive when ...?"

What follows is an example of something that was never OK. Miss Manners' field is external behavior, not internal squirming, but her concern is the implication that the victim has, or should have, given up hope of improving society.

A fourth type of letter underscores the point: It seeks a polite response to a slight, real or imagined, that the Gentle Reader already answered with a taunting rejoinder, a rude gesture or worse.

Miss Manners does, on occasion, supply responses which, though faultlessly polite, cause an offender to explode in a burst of mortification and apology. But she more often counsels more subtle responses, which, even had the reader known them when the event occurred, would not have required a fire extinguisher.

This is because the goal is not to strike someone who struck you first -- the goal is not to get hit in the first place.

This should be apparent, as even Miss Manners' most caustic advice is too late to touch a driver who has long since sped away, a line-cutter who is off offending new people out of reach of the Gentle Reader, or everyone else who has long forgotten what happened at that date, luncheon, meeting or class reunion.

It takes time to improve the world -- or even, truth be known, one's friends and relations. This is not because there are no solutions to rude behavior or because one must either accept rudeness or be rude oneself. Nor is it because the solutions proposed do not work.

True, Miss Manners' approach does not always provide the instant gratification of smacking our fellow citizens under the guise of good manners. She realizes this runs counter to a world that is impatient when the package just ordered is not already at the door. What she advises used to be known as solving the problem, an activity that Miss Manners accepts is old-fashioned, even if it is the only one that ever worked.

And just because we do not see the offenders shrivel up in front of us does not mean we have not succeeded. Who knows but that, having been shown a better way, they have not spent a sleepless night repenting?

@Misadventure

Yep. It'd amount to the same thing as 'XP is awarded at a diminishing rate' or as 'Advancement costs in XP increase with the total number of XP you have earned'.

I just think it'd be easier on people to frame it as this two types of points thing. You wouldn't have to figure out how much a stat increase is for you, the table would stay the same. If +votes are still used, you wouldn't want them to decrease in, eh, visible value. Because they're also a measure (not a great one, but hey) of how much fun you're creating for other players, and you might go 'fuck, what am I doing wrong?' if you can't see how many +votes you got (and it's a reasonable call to hide that info, as some games do) and your XP earnings drop.

I don't mean any slow transformation.

I'd base the rate on the individual character's XP total, but that's 'cause I'm thinking of slowing advancement, not about trying to keep all the PCs closer in power level. I don't think I want to do that, but I don't think it'd be a bad thing to do.

I hate the feeling I get staring at a place I would likely be welcome back to, but feeling as if I can't go back.

It's like staring at the picture of your ex. You know the one -- the one where things just didn't work out, and it's no one's fault. You want to believe that if you give it just one more chance --

-- but anyhow, I know I shouldn't, so I won't, and be content wrapping myself up in thing after thing in RL, until I forget.

Also, RimWorld.

I think one of the biggest mental benefits of Ares is being able to do multiple scenes at once, and async, because then I never feel like I am holding someone up. And people can feel freer to RP when they know they can set it and come back.

It seems like the MUSHing community has, by and large, stayed a similar community, and whereas a lot of us started our MU* career when were single without responsibilities, as we get older we start finding that we don't have six hours to spend roaming a grid and finding great pickup RP.

I always felt bad RPing with someone if I could not give them my full attention because I was working and prone to boss calls, or trying to accomplish something. Because I was keeping them from RPing with someone else.

With Ares, they can RP with that someone else and respond to me. And the same goes vice versa.

I think the other thing that is great about being able to easily do async is that there are amazing RPers that live half a world away that I would not be able to consistently interact with absent that.

Finally, I think the sheer versatility of the portal allows for you to do some really interesting things. Like have a game where you have a core character, but different versions of that character exist. You can use the same stats (or not stats if you aren't a stats game) and then just expand out from there with your variations.

Also, since it hasn't been mentioned yet, if you are a game with alts, being able to have ONE login in ONE place and connect all of your alts (if you want to, optionally) for the purposes of pages, channels, and RPing? Huge plus if you want to keep track of things.

Honestly, it's going to be a struggle to convince me to go to any non-Ares game at this point because I have simply gotten too used to the conveniences.