Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning
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I don't see why it's not possible on Mushlikes. The "Dynamic Space" system is easily tweaked to do things like this. Some people have managed systems that have had both random and stable elements in it.
Maybe this response more for @ThatGuyThere.
I sure started on Mushes coding Mud-like automation, so yes, it's extremely possible.
Anyhow.
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@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
- A GMing system for players creating PRPs, that would temporarily grant GM, staff like powers and code support.
- Full social combat systems.
Could you give some more details on those two items please? No need to go into the coded parts if they're just not fully fleshed out or designed yet, but I'm curious about your policies regarding them - i.e. how they'll be handled once the systems are in place.
If you can include an example that'd be great.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
- A GMing system for players creating PRPs, that would temporarily grant GM, staff like powers and code support.
- Full social combat systems.
Could you give some more details on those two items please? No need to go into the coded parts if they're just not fully fleshed out or designed yet, but I'm curious about your policies regarding them - i.e. how they'll be handled once the systems are in place.
If you can include an example that'd be great.
Lemme talk a bit about #4, since PRPs in code heavy games are kind of tricky, in that you run into issues with concrete elements that need GM support that would normally be handwaved in MUSHes, and really needs to have PRP runners have code to keep things immersive and exactly what you'd expect.
Like a PRP in a normal MUSH, while it varies a lot we know the general idea- a player gives staff a heads up for approval or not, depending on the game, it's checked for consistency, then everything falls upon the player running the plot and depending on how it resolves, sheets are updated and so on. There's not really hard code in so much, since everyone ultimately has the tools to do what they need.
But for a game like Arx, when there's automated combat, NPCs are attackable objects, currency and items are in game objects, there's three issues at play I think.
First, there's total handwaving, where players are able to @emit and do whatever they want, but they don't have the ability to create objects that would be consistent with the story- finding a dragon's horde can't happen unless they'd get staff to swing by and create the actual money, items, whatever to actually demonstrate that, which leaves players in this unfortunate position of @emiting and getting people to play along, but unable to create any kind of consequences that aren't handwaved unless they have the code support to go along with that and enforce consequences. That's just a big part of the whole MUSH/RPI type divide of consequences (good or bad) being kept by code rather than by hand. So until there's code support, or staff wanting to sit in and create objects/update things accordingly for a plot, it is stuck in this handwave-y state. That's where it currently would be until I get code support.
So then there's full coded support for players, that would in effect temporarily turn them into staff, and give them access to the coded abilities they'd need to make the RP consequential in the sense of demonstrable, lasting change at a glance to outsiders that aren't involved in the plot. The tricky part there is doing it in a way that doesn't have abuse cases, where if you are trusting players to act as staff even for just a single plot, what kind of oversight is involved. My feeling there is just an increasing degree of leeway granted to GMs based on feedback from players. For example, unless staff wants to risk messy retcons and constant oversight, probably shouldn't give a new guy the ability to shatter the grid and get carried away on his first try. Or similarly, the ability to bankrupt a great house or give something worth millions or arbitrarily kill players or so on. So this would be inherent limitations on the commands a player acting as a GM would have access to, and then just gradually removing the limitations as a GM goes.
And then there's the whole, 'well, how do we keep stories consistent and accessible and avoid a sandbox feel where everything happens in isolation and has no impact on other people?' My feeling there is something very akin to version control as a tool to help GMs figure out what plot elements are currently in play and being changed, to prevent any GMs contradicting one another and making those weird continuity breaks that happen in some games, particularly larger ones. For example, a player in house Grayson wants to run a tinyplot about Iron Guard elements that have gone rogue and are working with Abandoned to raid pilgrims traveling to Arx, and have been murdering Knights of Solace trying to escort the pilgrims. This would highlight different plot elements as a searchable index so anyone making a plot would know story is happening there- Grayson, Iron Guard, Abandoned, Pilgrims, Knights of Solace. Probably with a synopsis of each plot searchable in a database, then automatic sorting of different plot elements, so later if some dude is doing a story about Iron Guards purging disloyal elements, they'd see that previous plot highlighted and pop up and let them know what happened there, so they wouldn't trip over their feet and make anything contradictory. This also would let staff very quickly review proposed PRPs and see, 'this isn't possible because X happened' or 'This fits neatly along with Y, and will create potential story crossovers'. That kinda thing. While this sounds complicated, I think this would actually be much much easier to implement than the previous thing of giving players carefully controlled code, and probably would not be so bad, and it would come down to implementation being clear and easy to use, and not something that felt like an administrative pain in the ass.
Social combat I'll post more about later, there's a lot of debate about that, but the one thing I can say I'd never ever do is put in a system that made someone feel like they were obligated to RP with a creeper. That way leads to horror.
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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Like a PRP in a normal MUSH, while it varies a lot we know the general idea- a player gives staff a heads up for approval or not, depending on the game, it's checked for consistency, then everything falls upon the player running the plot and depending on how it resolves, sheets are updated and so on. There's not really hard code in so much, since everyone ultimately has the tools to do what they need.
Do consider the advantages though. For instance balancing out NPCs for a violent encounter (especially one in a system you're not very familiar and experienced with) is a bitch; it's as easy to get everyone slaughtered because you overestimated the PCs - which is never ever fun - as to make it trivial and see your big-piece villain get one-shot too early.
With a coded system you could theoretically be able to dynamically create credible threats for a party. If as a ST I could just pick the difficulty I want for the NPCs and let the MUSH crunch out the numbers for me that'd be awesome.
My feeling there is just an increasing degree of leeway granted to GMs based on feedback from players. For example, unless staff wants to risk messy retcons and constant oversight, probably shouldn't give a new guy the ability to shatter the grid and get carried away on his first try. Or similarly, the ability to bankrupt a great house or give something worth millions or arbitrarily kill players or so on. So this would be inherent limitations on the commands a player acting as a GM would have access to, and then just gradually removing the limitations as a GM goes.
This could be trickier than it seems, too, if it's hardcoded. Cliques are dangerous things and so are circle-jerks; you might not want to encourage situations where a specific social group mass-upvotes each other to 'enable plots' for themselves, which can create a power race to do the same thing ('why does House Jerk have three Rank 4 Storytellers and we only have one? Come on guys, VOTE FOR THIS!".
I think relying on your judgment would probably be preferable.
For example, a player in house Grayson wants to run a tinyplot about Iron Guard elements that have gone rogue and are working with Abandoned to raid pilgrims traveling to Arx, and have been murdering Knights of Solace trying to escort the pilgrims. This would highlight different plot elements as a searchable index so anyone making a plot would know story is happening there- Grayson, Iron Guard, Abandoned, Pilgrims, Knights of Solace. Probably with a synopsis of each plot searchable in a database, then automatic sorting of different plot elements, so later if some dude is doing a story about Iron Guards purging disloyal elements, they'd see that previous plot highlighted and pop up and let them know what happened there,
Yeah, that actually sounds pretty cool.
You should also factor in how much you want your players to play with the game's toys before you design how they'll get access to them to begin with. This is a poorly seen effect that sometimes surprises staff who think they'd have allowed folks to use an NPC, corrupt an once loyal military squad or have a prestigious resource destroyed by marauders if those folks had just asked.
However it doesn't quite work like that, and players who perceive staff wanting them to prove themselves, earn their trust or be worthy of certain privileges as roadblocks or even hoop-jumping - in other words you need to balance sanity checks with encouraging players to use thematic elements you have in place exactly so they can get used, otherwise you risk squandering them.
The greatest plot device left sitting there untapped might as well not exist.
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Is there any way at all that paging can be adjusted so that you don't have to type the person's entire name? It makes it especially difficult when you're maintaining multiple conversations and/or are on a phone or tablet. I'm not sure about the reason for it, but it's terribly inconvenient.
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
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Like a name alias? So you could be 'cup' or 'cake' or 'cc'?
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@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Is there any way at all that paging can be adjusted so that you don't have to type the person's entire name? It makes it especially difficult when you're maintaining multiple conversations and/or are on a phone or tablet. I'm not sure about the reason for it, but it's terribly inconvenient.
There's a nick command that lets players do customized string replacement but I'm preeeeeetty sure that broke in the most recent version of evennia with how it does aliasing now, so assuming that gets fixed lemme talk about making it more universal and automatic, for what you are asking for.
The short answer is yes we could but not quickly. There's a method to just compare partial string matching that we could use but I don't think it would work well by default due to how many naming conflicts would exist. There would be a lot of checks to make that works how someone would expect it to work, and how to resolve name conflicts in a way that's logical, like 'page bob' going to bobby rather than Talbobis, which means probably having to check the most recent people they've paged with a library for that, and failing a match there, build from start of strings for partial matches filling from the left. So yeah but non trivial.
Ideally will just have a new client with a UI with right click functionality for pages on names sometime in the far future and try to give options to move past the more annoying aspects of MU command line stuff.
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@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Is there any way at all that paging can be adjusted so that you don't have to type the person's entire name? It makes it especially difficult when you're maintaining multiple conversations and/or are on a phone or tablet. I'm not sure about the reason for it, but it's terribly inconvenient.
Name completion. Even when people don't use it, it's such a polite thing to code. A++.
I would at the very least do a first match on an alpha sort of connected character names.
Cupcake: The reason it isn't default is because it's an extra layer of code.usually not hard, but sometimes it gets in the way in every way conceivable. I won't divert this thread with explanations; PM me if you want to know.
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I am completely spoiled, but I desperately want a +po command to show the current pose order. I find I can't keep track of things anymore without it.
Basically, everytime someone says/poses something, they get moved to the end of the list. When everyone leaves a room it clears after a few minutes.
Pleeeeease.
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I'm leery of this. I think it's fine for people who just want to follow a pose order, but as soon as someone gets chastised for NOT following a strict pose order, I'm much less ok with it.
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How would you tell someone that posing three times in a row without allowing for any responses isn't a good idea?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I'm leery of this. I think it's fine for people who just want to follow a pose order, but as soon as someone gets chastised for NOT following a strict pose order, I'm much less ok with it.
I've played on two games now with code like this and this simply does not happen.
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<<broken sarcasm detector>>
Like this: "Hey, posing three times in a row without allowing for any responses isn't a good idea!". -
@ixokai Except it does. Just because it hasn't happened for you to see, doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
He/Him
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I don't see what the problem is anyway. The command doesn't impose an order, it just displays the default round-robin one.
Or if not maybe it can be configurable to allow for customizations like 3PR for larger scenes, etc. Then if it's in place you can be automatically made aware when it's your turn (a common point of failure is 'oh, was it my turn? sorry guys!' after 15 minutes of everyone waiting for someone else).
It doesn't sound monstrous.
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Even though I pretty much never use formal pose order, I could see how that would be useful- I use the 'here' command frequently myself, since it lists the idle times of everyone in room to give me a benchmark.
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 Another case scenario would be this (also pretty common):
A, B and C are playing... it's A's turn.
C says OOC "hey, skip me for a few, cat's on fire".
A poses. B poses. A forgets about C being AFK by then and just waits.Subcase: A skips C and poses, then B poses, then A doesn't know yet C is back so A poses again then C does... is that a new order (A, C, B) or does it go back to the old one? ANARCHY.
A system could clear these things up if it just let you know when it's your turn, and all you need to do is inform it when you're going AFK or are back in the rotation.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said:
@Apos Another case scenario would be this (also pretty common):
A, B and C are playing... it's A's turn.
C says OOC "hey, skip me for a few, cat's on fire".
A poses. B poses. A forgets about C being AFK by then and just waits.Subcase: A skips C and poses, then B poses, then A doesn't know yet C is back so A poses again then C does... is that a new order (A, C, B) or does it go back to the old one? ANARCHY.
A system could clear these things up if it just let you know when it's your turn, and all you need to do is inform it when you're going AFK or are back in the rotation.
Or people could just be reasonable and respond to poses naturally, without hogging the screen.
I hate almost everything about pose order, from the people who 'discourage' you from stepping out of it (and this absolutely does happen, and I've never seen it done in a welcoming or inclusive way), to the way it means people pose these bloated 3 to 4 paragraph poses, trying to address everything that's been done or said since their last 'turn' to pose.
It's mostly the latter that bugs me the most, as it kills any narrative immersion and also makes it take like twenty minutes for people to pose.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
to the way it means people pose these bloated 3 to 4 paragraph poses, trying to address everything that's been done or said since their last 'turn' to pose.
It's mostly the latter that bugs me the most, as it kills any narrative immersion and also makes it take like twenty minutes for people to pose.
Well, sure, and we all got pet peeves... but I don't see how that is affected by pose order whether it's supported by an in-game system or not.
I can play in perfect order and still respond to everything anyone does trying to take over the scene.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
