Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning
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You may disagree, but perhaps with a statement I didn't make. I didn't say you couldn't find RP by wandering the grid. I was talking about how it can never simulate a real life setting (if that is someones goal), and how there are more efficient ways to allow for random meetings.
If you had a +RP or +meetme or anything else with an explicit purpose of making random scenes in places more feasible, you filter out all the players who just want to get to a place to log out, or who have declared a differing time, who are idle, or racing to a scene they have already arranged.
I have nothing against places for random RP. Love them. +meetme, and potentially a +scene randomizer is more efficient.
+wander might be a better name. If you could eliminate places you would never go outside of a plot (prisons, the royal chambers, the crypts, holy ground whatever) you begin arriving at a common possible place of meeting before you ever type +wander.
More efficient. More purposeful. Potentially more helpful. Less code than representing all the NPCs and events as background chatter via @emits.
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I said it felt more like an actual world to me. Not that the developers' goal was to create a real life setting. I was speaking from my personal perspective. I am not staff there. Etc etc.
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I love the +meetme command in all its forms but yeah it will pretty much kill grid wandering for large majority of the players.
I know i could go on for a fair bit of time on the neat spots on the Dark Metal grid and I haven't been on that game in a decade.
I can visualize the grids of some other games from back in the day fairly well like Tartarus and that game has been gone two decades.
I am on Fallcoast most nights and I have no real clue about the grid, +meetme while a wonderful thing does devalue grid knowledge so like any other devalued skill people will stop working to develop it. -
@Caryatid said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I said it felt more like an actual world to me. Not that the developers' goal was to create a real life setting. I was speaking from my personal perspective. I am not staff there. Etc etc.
My bad on this.
The last grid I tried to learn was Haunted Memories, and they had both RP rooms and travel code. The grid was written short and sweet, both descriptive and sprawling at, what, 40 or so "main grid" rooms. Someone will probably correct me. The exact number isn't the point.
I didn't feel like I was being crushed by words and ideas that all competed for my attention. It felt painted and alive, and I know exactly what you're going for.
The Reach almost hit this, and I used the grid quite often. Almost every other game I've been on since HM has felt like it was trying to do too much. This is part of why I think a temproom system is so useful. It should be tied to the grid system, so no matter where it's made the system can still report where RP is happening.
I'm not tackling the travel code part of this discussion, because it's just as right as it isn't, and as I said above, if you hit the golden mean then that's all you need. How you get there isn't so important to me as the overall experience.
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Arx, now with 120% more rap battles.
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@Glitch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Arkandel I'm a fan of +meetme, but I don't think you're right when you say there are better ways to encourage grid use. I couldn't give you directions anywhere on any game I've played that has +meetme code.
Well, sure, absolutely...but so what?
My political lordling, crude blood-sucking overlord or mad inventor's roleplay isn't facilitated by knowing the directions from Joe's Bar to the Mayor's Hall are east-north-north-west-up. It means very little at all to know how to get around, especially since that in no way means I'd be even reading the room descriptions as I wander about.
There's an argument to be made about making the world feel more alive and immersive and that is what I meant before when I mentioned better ways.
For instance let's say there's a murder mystery and your character is trying to figure out who did it. One way (in 99% of the cases if there's no actual scene done for it) is to fire off a +job, staff ask you to roll and eventually you get some hints or answers. What I was suggesting is that before that point staff could go and subtly alter the descriptions to offer some clues - a forced door (opening into a new room that wasn't there before the killer used to discard his bloody clothes), footprints (which seem strangely animal-like, leading into the woods), etc. So you could actually have your PC visit the scene of the crime at your discretion and do 'live' research.
I'm not advocating this is how it should be, mind you, just that it seems like a superior way to me to make the grid matter than to disable everyday commands that have been successfully helping roleplay along in every other game. Some artificial changes do help RP (I mentioned for example coded clothes, instead of just describing anything, would be such a thing as it gives craftsmen PCs a purpose) but in this case I think it's not the case.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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cough+mapcough
At least one that knows where you are, or some way to easily tell that you're at a certain uniquely identifiable location. Then you wouldn't even need to give directions. Say, 'Hey, I'm at D24', and like any person in the real world, they'd check out where D24 is and get there.
A good directory system is a decent way for someone to translate analogue to digital, which is what this comes down to. Any way to get from "I'm at the Dead-End Cafe in Montreal" to a meaningful instruction is a bonus.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain Oh there are many ways to do it, I'm not questioning that. Sure, the map is perfectly plausible.
What I am questioning is how it enhances roleplay. It doesn't seem that more, well, immersive to me to speed-walk from A to B than to accept a +meetme request... what's the improvement on roleplay?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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Arx has their method. They've explained their method and defended it, and this is the Arx thread I think once the case is made it's up to them to make their own decisions.
If any of them are Mudders, they know about speedwalk. On Mush it seems like the polite thing to stop if there's a lone person in the room, say that you're just passing through so that they don't feel ignored, and move on.
I also believe that any game has the right (and duty, really) to re-evaluate their decisions if they discover that their method isn't working for them.
My post was mostly to say to everyone reading that there are options, ideas, and important considerations when your goal is "force people to use the grid", which is what I'm reading their goal to be. Does it enhance RP? That debate's happened, and the answer is "it can so sure, why not". There is the other side of it, which is "if people don't want to, they won't". Pros. Cons.
I just want cookies.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain It's true that sometimes I beat a point to the ground even after I've made it. I'll shut up about this one now unless there's something new to add.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I think it's important to explore ideas, tho, which is why I like discussion boards like Soapbox. How forcing people onto the grid can help stimulate RP is an important design consideration. How it can be accentuated, issues in design, this kind of back and forth can also be important.
Me, I don't think there's anything left to say, but that doesn't mean there isn't.
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A +meetme (with some caveats) is likely. The OOC room suggestion is prooobably a hard no. All I can speak to is my own experience, but of all the (four?) wod mushes I dipped my toe into, there was just 0 organic, random RP to be had. Also the OOC rooms were horrible and headache-inducing.
But, every character in Arx is assigned a home room, a private space in which they can idle and chat and watch paint dry as they like.
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I am so coming back to this game at some point.
It just presses the right buttons for me.
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I really enjoy playing Felix on this game.
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@Kanye-Qwest
As some one who mostly plays on WoD games I wholeheartedly support the not have an OOC room position. -
@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
A +meetme (with some caveats) is likely. The OOC room suggestion is prooobably a hard no. All I can speak to is my own experience, but of all the (four?) wod mushes I dipped my toe into, there was just 0 organic, random RP to be had. Also the OOC rooms were horrible and headache-inducing.
But, every character in Arx is assigned a home room, a private space in which they can idle and chat and watch paint dry as they like.
Or you get people who sit in the OOC room all day and then bitch about not having RP. Ran into one or two of those on Fallcoast.
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Or you get to know the other players. 'But there's a public channel!' you might say. And I had to keep it turned off because it was MUCH too spammy. I would rather chat with 10 other people in an OOC room than listen to 30 on a channel. And if some of them are idiots, some won't be.
But to each their own. It's just one of the ways I decided the game was definitely not for me. But as far as I could see in the limited amount of time I was there, the staff and players are fine so if it's the kind of game you like, go for it.
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I don't think OOC rooms are cesspools. I don't miss having one on Arx, but I never found them to be problematic either. There might be problematic players in them, but frankly, that just allows me to know who to avoid.
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Updated to the new version of Evennia to finally merge that ancient fork, and on a new VPS- 45.33.87.194 port 3000. Think we fixed most of the bugs related to the swap but yell if you see anything, and channels will need to be readded.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Updated to the new version of Evennia to finally merge that ancient fork, and on a new VPS- 45.33.87.194 port 3000. Think we fixed most of the bugs related to the swap but yell if you see anything, and channels will need to be readded.
Congrats on getting through the update! Also thanks for the input, fixes and discussions the conversion spawned on the Evennia side; beneficial developments for all!
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Griatch
