Alternative Formats to MU

Arkandel

@sparks said in Alternative Formats to MU:

They RP in Discord. On Tumblr. On forums. In Google Docs. And if I want to RP with them, I need to go there. It's eye-opening how many people are RP'ing that way; the number of people doing Tumblr RP probably dwarfs the userbase of this board. The number of people doing forum or Google Docs RP almost certainly dwarfs the entire MUSH/MUX playerbase.

Speaking for myself and my own experiences which will obviously vary, I don't care about the amount of RP that's taking place or the number of people participating in it when the quality is as low (or at least dramatically inconsistent) as I have seen.

I've tried roleplaying on WoW and it was disheartening. The tools simply aren't there (255-character limits, reduced ability to backscroll, text being hard to read while stuff's happening in the background, etc) but also the people themselves... well, I wasn't impressed.

Similarly experiments with Google Docs didn't pan out very well. I remember when ES put something up a long time ago - maybe offline/turn-based play isn't for me, but I just found I wasn't looking forward to participating, and without the familiar momentum of RP carrying scenes forward I didn't care enough to try.

For me RP needs to be real time. Again, it doesn't mean this is the only 'valid' way to do it, but that's what would work for me.

Three-Eyed Crow

@sparks said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The number of people doing forum or Google Docs RP almost certainly dwarfs the entire MUSH/MUX playerbase.

And what I find kind of amazing about this, is how ill-suited and often semi-broken for real-time, text-based RP a lot of these formats are (I've read Facebook RP, man. I have read it and shall never forget). But people muddle through because life finds a way, to quote Jurassic Park. I think part of the reason Arx is so - comparatively - explosively popular is because it's found a way to hook some of this audience into a MU-like format, which is MUCH better for this kind of RP in so many ways. Once you get players into this format, its positives for what we do become clear. It's an indication of what's possible, to me, not an anomaly (and it displays the problems of scale when you manage to tap this audience, but that's another conversation).

Roz

@three-eyed-crow said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@sparks said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The number of people doing forum or Google Docs RP almost certainly dwarfs the entire MUSH/MUX playerbase.

And what I find kind of amazing about this, is how ill-suited and often semi-broken for real-time, text-based RP a lot of these formats are (I've read Facebook RP, man. I have read it and shall never forget). But people muddle through because life finds a way, to quote Jurassic Park. I think part of the reason Arx is so - comparatively - explosively popular is because it's found a way to hook some of this audience into a MU-like format, which is MUCH better for this kind of RP in so many ways. Once you get players into this format, its positives for what we do become clear. It's an indication of what's possible, to me, not an anomaly (and it displays the problems of scale when you manage to tap this audience, but that's another conversation).

Yes yes yes. A lot of these formats are actually not great for RP, and that's another thing I've discovered from players who try out MU* and manage to hook in: they find it a much better platform for RP than others they were using before. Like, guys, we actually have a lot of potential to bring in a lot of new players, we just need to lower the bar a little where we can.

Ganymede

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

A lot of these formats are actually not great for RP, and that's another thing I've discovered from players who try out MU* and manage to hook in: they find it a much better platform for RP than others they were using before. Like, guys, we actually have a lot of potential to bring in a lot of new players, we just need to lower the bar a little where we can.

Okay. I like this.

I'm not a coder. What can I do to help?

Roz

@ganymede said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

A lot of these formats are actually not great for RP, and that's another thing I've discovered from players who try out MU* and manage to hook in: they find it a much better platform for RP than others they were using before. Like, guys, we actually have a lot of potential to bring in a lot of new players, we just need to lower the bar a little where we can.

Okay. I like this.

I'm not a coder. What can I do to help?

I mean, the stuff that I did while I was still staffing was things like -- write some really, really basic "Intro to MU*" type of guides. Take a hard look at terminology and try to recognize what stuff seems obvious to us but totally unintuitive to someone brand new. I wrote up descs for different "paths" through the chargen rooms to basically be like "If you are BRAND NEW, please follow THIS PATH by typing THESE THINGS" type of deal. And those rooms had a much more detailed outline of how to do things, how things work, etc.

Also we, like -- just went to places we knew people were RPing about our game theme. (For us, there was a lot of Tumblr RP around the IDW Transformers comics, so we advertised on Tumblr.)

Ashen-Shugar

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Unless you are actively participating in a development effort (like Griatch and team seem to be), I wouldn't hold my breath. Seems like something that will eventually go the way of pay-to-play, and you'll lose a lot of the current crowd with that.

Exactly this.

I and others have worked on RhostMUSH for, what will by start of 2019 be 30 years.

Moving MUSH into mainstream runs into some very real issues. They are (but not limited to):

MUSH is a monolithic interpreted single thread process.
MUSH has a non-locking non-reinterant non-threaded backend database
MUSH has a single-thread linear queue
MUSH has an entire backend process based on all of the above 3 points being absolutely true
MUSH, at its core, is built on ideas and technology that's 30 years old

To make changes to that we have:

First... rewrite the whole damn thing. From scratch.
Try your best to keep compatibility but likely toss it out the window because, well, it limits you horribly
Spend years doing this with zero appreciation because a fairly large amount of people will bitch that it's not mud
Balance free time with work, you know, the shit you need to actually pay your bills, because mushing doesn't put food on the table.

This is why you won't see much effort.

The majority of mud developers (like myself) are frankly burnt out, jaded, and cynical.

We've been doing this for 30 years, half our lives, and likely longer than a fair portion of you have been alive. We're tired.

We did what we did for the love of it. Not for what people may or may not appreciate, love, or hate. We did it for our own love and interest. We did it because we hoped others would find the same love in it we did.

We would love to take mudding to the next level, but did I mention we are tired?

So if you all want to see it happen, you all are going to have to help us with it. We just don't have the time we used to. We have families now, some of us have grandchildren. I myself have great-great-nephews and nieces. I find staying up after 10pm is hard as hell now, where when I originally wrote on Rhost I could do 48 hour stints with a glass of mountain dew and some anime on TV and maybe a bucket of hot wings.

Frankly put, we just can't keep up anymore.

To quote Futurama: Our minds are willing, but our bodies are weak and flabby.

faraday

@ashen-shugar said in Alternative Formats to MU:

First... rewrite the whole damn thing. From scratch.

That's what we did, though, with Ares and Evennia. Are they perfect? Of course not. But they’re new. Imagine them once they've had 30 years to evolve like the existing MU servers have.

Actually, no... if you guys are still using Ares in 30 years I think I'll cry.

So if you all want to see it happen, you all are going to have to help us with it.

Speaking just for myself, what I want isn't coding help it's player help. Like @Ganymede mentioned - she doesn’t use the BSGU web portal. That’s understandable (and she's certainly not the only one), but the only way these platforms are going to get better is by people using them, finding the glitches and pain points, and providing feedback.

And when providing feedback to devs, a little bit of patience and kindness goes a long way. It’s hard to maintain your enthusiasm for a project against a barrage of criticism. A bug is a bug, but it matters whether you report it as "Grr, this is broken again..." or "FYI I stumbled across this..."

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

For me RP needs to be real time. Again, it doesn't mean this is the only 'valid' way to do it, but that's what would work for me.

I really do think it’s just a matter of establishing a social contract about how things are done on web-MUs. We already do that for telnet RP. Nothing about the technology says you can’t take 2 hours to pose. The people control that. The same can apply to web. You’re expected to pose every 10-15 minutes or excuse yourself. And the IC:RL time ratio can help force folks to resolve scenes in a timely fashion because otherwise it’ll be so stale it won’t matter.

The only thing the technology impacts is making sure it’s easy to receive notifications so people don’t routinely lose track of scenes the same way I forget about the Verizon guy I started a tech support chat with.

Apos

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@three-eyed-crow said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@sparks said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The number of people doing forum or Google Docs RP almost certainly dwarfs the entire MUSH/MUX playerbase.

And what I find kind of amazing about this, is how ill-suited and often semi-broken for real-time, text-based RP a lot of these formats are (I've read Facebook RP, man. I have read it and shall never forget). But people muddle through because life finds a way, to quote Jurassic Park. I think part of the reason Arx is so - comparatively - explosively popular is because it's found a way to hook some of this audience into a MU-like format, which is MUCH better for this kind of RP in so many ways. Once you get players into this format, its positives for what we do become clear. It's an indication of what's possible, to me, not an anomaly (and it displays the problems of scale when you manage to tap this audience, but that's another conversation).

Yes yes yes. A lot of these formats are actually not great for RP, and that's another thing I've discovered from players who try out MU* and manage to hook in: they find it a much better platform for RP than others they were using before. Like, guys, we actually have a lot of potential to bring in a lot of new players, we just need to lower the bar a little where we can.

Yeah, I should point out I'm not like some lifelong hobbyist. Relatively speaking, I am new to MUing - at this point I've invested almost as much time into Arx as other MUs total. I come from those other formats, and I intentionally created Arx because I just think the format is better for telling really big, interconnected stories that let people weave their personal RP into a much bigger tapestry. Other formats just don't do it nearly as well.

But I think there's three really major issues, that come up time and again, even with it being imo a way better RP format than docs, forums, freeform in MMOs, messenger services, etc.

Technical barriers for entry. Specifically downloading clients, and then figuring out extremely complicated commands in an archaic command line that's not at all intuitive. I think Ares/Evennia and a client that's much closer to what people would expect from other games would be a world of difference. Right click, drag and drop, and the typing is pretty much all for creative writing, not archaic commands.
Social barriers for entry. Particularly being intimidated, with a lack of organic RP. For every really outgoing roleplayer that's a-okay with grabbing a dozen strangers and creating storylines for everyone involved, there's scores of people that are exceedingly uncomfortable with making the first move. And this is more true the more it feels like an ooc requirement. If people can just show up and RP, or have tools to do this, it is way more accessible to a new person. If we put the onus on a new player in a strange environment to reach out to strangers in order to RP, that's vastly more intimidating and difficult. Mentoring, and just a friendly, welcoming environment is really vital, and rewarding inclusive behavior.
Lack of satisfying alternatives. This is the one I think a lot of people would disagree with me on, but I think minigames and giving players the ability to engage in fun side projects is nearly vital. When you look at games like Firan or RPIs that have a significant amount of coded time sinks people could optionally mess with, it adds a great deal of sustainability in creating an environment where roleplayers are accessible and filling in their time between scenes. With the nature of MU being a game environment with constant up time, I really think that if players are given tools to fill in the dead time between RP scenes, the environment becomes far healthier for it, as players are more consistently available, organic RP happens way more often, and scheduling becomes a much smaller concern. There's significant drawbacks (like to the extreme of people consciously avoiding/shutting down RP because they enjoy a tool way more than RP itself), and risks there, but I think it makes games way more accessible when someone that is having a more difficult time integrating has fallbacks aside from sitting silently in a room or listening to the loudest voices in ooc chats.

Rook

Why not start a project based on Electron, which is a cross-platform desktop application written in NodeJS, HTML and CSS (which a lot of people can then contribute to. This is the core of the Atom editor by GitHub, it powers Slack, Discord, Twitch, the new Skype, and hundreds of production applications. It combines the V8 javascript engine from Chrome, and is very easy to work with, and thus has a development ecosystem that is both very active and huge.

It could be modularly coded so that it could support plugins, and since it works natively with web technology, you can build it to interface both with old-school MUSH and new-school Ares/Evennia.

I'd be willing to help and contribute to the project, as I've always wanted to build a coder's editor that integrated directly with a MU* client.

EDIT: I'ma just going to start a project. Ping me if you wanna help/join/poke/test/contribute.

Ganymede

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

It’s hard to maintain your enthusiasm for a project against a barrage of criticism. A bug is a bug, but it matters whether you report it as "Grr, this is broken again..." or "FYI I stumbled across this..."

I'm going to try to remember to always connect to BSG:U via the web portal. I want to get to feel it out better.

When I played Arx, I hated the web portal. But that's probably because I'm an old fart.

Gonna try harder, you whippersnappers.

Lotherio

@apos said:

Just wanted to add more cents to the pot. I re-arranged based on easiest to most difficult to address.

Technical barriers for entry. Specifically downloading clients, and then figuring out extremely complicated commands in an archaic command line that's not at all intuitive. I think Ares/Evennia and a client that's much closer to what people would expect from other games would be a world of difference. Right click, drag and drop, and the typing is pretty much all for creative writing, not archaic commands.

For creative writing, all the bells and whistles can effectively be ignored; +phones and coded vehicles are clutter in the way of RP. I think a more important question here is, what is being fixed by making new ‘systems’? What need is being addressed? If it’s the immediacy of RP that seems to only exist in a MU environment, its not really a new or updated MU that’s being created, its somewhere between MU and IRC of some sort, but its something new. There is more being lost than realized I think. We’re going from an environment (MUD) where everything was coded and automatic to this open box of creativity (MUX then MUSH then etc.) but back towards MUD.

Lack of satisfying alternatives. This is the one I think a lot of people would disagree with me on, but I think minigames and giving players the ability to engage in fun side projects is nearly vital. When you look at games like Firan or RPIs that have a significant amount of coded time sinks people could optionally mess with, it adds a great deal of sustainability in creating an environment where roleplayers are accessible and filling in their time between scenes. With the nature of MU being a game environment with constant up time, I really think that if players are given tools to fill in the dead time between RP scenes, the environment becomes far healthier for it, as players are more consistently available, organic RP happens way more often, and scheduling becomes a much smaller concern. There's significant drawbacks (like to the extreme of people consciously avoiding/shutting down RP because they enjoy a tool way more than RP itself), and risks there, but I think it makes games way more accessible when someone that is having a more difficult time integrating has fallbacks aside from sitting silently in a room or listening to the loudest voices in ooc chats.

Just a historical note, a lot of alternatives have been put in. MUDs gave mobs to begin with for focus, RP was added, many still have alternatives which is probably why they stay so popular as its not the RP (which can be found on RPI MUDs or any other MU or on a forum or any other venue as has been mentioned). Even in MUX and MUSH, from trading economies and ship mining, other things to do have been added and turn out just as you say. Some people focus on that and it creates an imbalance where the person who mines all day has a monopoly on some resources and the RP’ers have missed out.

Social barriers for entry. Particularly being intimidated, with a lack of organic RP. For every really outgoing roleplayer that's a-okay with grabbing a dozen strangers and creating storylines for everyone involved, there's scores of people that are exceedingly uncomfortable with making the first move. And this is more true the more it feels like an ooc requirement. If people can just show up and RP, or have tools to do this, it is way more accessible to a new person. If we put the onus on a new player in a strange environment to reach out to strangers in order to RP, that's vastly more intimidating and difficult. Mentoring, and just a friendly, welcoming environment is really vital, and rewarding inclusive behavior.

This should be addressed. Honestly, it feels we’re in an age of, if a person doesn’t know you, they won’t play with you. They’ll only do it for some bonus (bonus XP to RP with new players), but otherwise, they are waiting for friends to sandbox their own stories. Half are doing it in google docs. The biggest barrier I have seen lately, and I’ve played on-line RP for over 30 years, is the clique mentality. Every place I’ve tried over the past few years, if people did not know who I was, I couldn’t get a scene to save my life.

I really want to express again, the choice of something new that removes what makes a MU a MU is fine and well depending on the purpose. IF we’re only after immediacy of RP, that works.

My concern is the adaptability and versatility of the news systems. Its going back to the point that the system itself (game system) is being limited to what the developers want. This is closer to a MUD, which is fine and well, but we have to accept versatility is being lost. I haven’t looked much at the new systems because this is my understanding. I mean, really, if I want some other system to play in, how hard are these systems to change? Without learning a new language to code in, a new way to alter it.

If its an update to MU in general, flexibility of the platform to include Admin ability to change how the system works should be taken into account, otherwise it feels like a step back to me to be honest. I don’t mean a change of globals like setting actors or finger notes, I mean the game system itself. FS3 is great and flexible, but in the end the dice pools aren’t much different than other systems. What if I want a system based on SAGA (cards), or WEG dice pools (your difficulty is not ‘per dice’ but the sum of the roll against 1 target number), or Amber/Fudge sans Fate Dice. How adaptable are the new systems to sweeping changes in mechanics? Or, like MUDs of old, are admin level utilizers locked to the game system that is being hard coded into these new systems?

The biggest influx of chars over advertising on Mudconnecter/TopMudSites or directly in various forum based RP environments, is the web-based developments. A handful of new players that I've seen have bridged the gap through Arx, but wanted to try other themes, thanks to said bridge, have drifted into other games over the past year and a half or so.

Ganymede

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

For creative writing, all the bells and whistles can effectively be ignored; +phones and coded vehicles are clutter in the way of RP.

I want to interject here.

Someone else has said it, but I've had the best RP by +phone or +text. It's all mildly hilarious. My interactions with @RizBunz (with Wes) and @skew (with Ripley) were on the right side of laugh-out-loud.

So, let's not go calling 'em clutter, man.

Lotherio

@ganymede said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

For creative writing, all the bells and whistles can effectively be ignored; +phones and coded vehicles are clutter in the way of RP.

I want to interject here.

Someone else has said it, but I've had the best RP by +phone or +text. It's all mildly hilarious. My interactions with @RizBunz (with Wes) and @skew (with Ripley) were on the right side of laugh-out-loud.

So, let's not go calling 'em clutter, man.

Oh, I agree, +phone is great, especially if you field a call during a scene with another person, can create some very interesting RP. But a wealth of globals could be one of those hurdles for new players is all. I like bells and whistles myself, but can still be part of the clutter when staring down a new environment and wondering what all one must know to play in the environment.

Roz

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@apos said:

Just wanted to add more cents to the pot. I re-arranged based on easiest to most difficult to address.

Technical barriers for entry. Specifically downloading clients, and then figuring out extremely complicated commands in an archaic command line that's not at all intuitive. I think Ares/Evennia and a client that's much closer to what people would expect from other games would be a world of difference. Right click, drag and drop, and the typing is pretty much all for creative writing, not archaic commands.

For creative writing, all the bells and whistles can effectively be ignored; +phones and coded vehicles are clutter in the way of RP.

I don't think that's true, I don't think that's what it looks like to people new to the hobby, I don't think it's how we present it, and it also ignores the fact that there is still plenty of code that is required. We don't have to talk about the bells and whistles: just start with the weirdo process of downloading some weird client, figuring out how host names and port numbers work, connect to a game, understand that it's some weird textual/virtual grid, see people maybe talking to you in different ways, maybe have instructions in the welcome room desc that gets quickly scrolled by and you don't even know how to bring it back up again with the 'look' command.

This, to me, is one of the biggest problems. We think of lots of things as intuitive that are entirely alien to people who have never played a MU. And you kind of just proved my point by dismissing the very idea of a technical barrier to entry with "well people don't have to use these additional code toys to RP."

faraday

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

If its an update to MU in general, flexibility of the platform to include Admin ability to change how the system works should be taken into account, otherwise it feels like a step back to me to be honest. I don’t mean a change of globals like setting actors or finger notes, I mean the game system itself. FS3 is great and flexible, but in the end the dice pools aren’t much different than other systems. What if I want a system based on SAGA (cards), or WEG dice pools (your difficulty is not ‘per dice’ but the sum of the roll against 1 target number), or Amber/Fudge sans Fate Dice. How adaptable are the new systems to sweeping changes in mechanics? Or, like MUDs of old, are admin level utilizers locked to the game system that is being hard coded into these new systems?

This really doesn't strike me as a problem.

Evennia is pitched as just a building kit, so you can build whatever you want. I'd say it has the opposite problem, where you have to cobble together building blocks for even basic stuff like finger, bbs, jobs, etc.

Ares comes with more stuff built-in, but it's designed with a plugin system so you can add/remove things. Of course, if you start stripping things out, now you're getting into the realm of custom coding. You can take out FS3 pretty easily, but now you've got to code up something to replace it - and that's not trivial.

Sparks

To add to what @roz says: my MMO guild buddies are used to a single document/thread per RP, even if that RP involves multiple scenes and moves from place to place. The concept of a grid—of rooms you move between—was both alien and alienating to them when I tried to describe it.

Does that mean they needed a particular "session" of RP to spread across multiple logs? Oh, your client thing just keeps one ongoing log? How do you do two separate scenes with different people at once then? Etc.

There are a lot of assumptions we take for granted; even just knowing "look" and "page" are not givens for newcomers, which can make even learning how to get started a puzzle for folks. Especially when they are used to an entirely different set of assumptions about how RP even works.

Ashen-Shugar

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

This really doesn't strike me as a problem.

Evennia is pitched as just a building kit, so you can build whatever you want. I'd say it has the opposite problem, where you have to cobble together building blocks for even basic stuff like finger, bbs, jobs, etc.

Ares comes with more stuff built-in, but it's designed with a plugin system so you can add/remove things. Of course, if you start stripping things out, now you're getting into the realm of custom coding. You can take out FS3 pretty easily, but now you've got to code up something to replace it - and that's not trivial.

The problem isn't in the tool, so much, as the experience to use the tool or the time available for the end-point person to spin up on the knowledge to use the tool.

Ares with the Ruby/rails integration.
Evennia with the Python/django integration.
RhostMUSH with the restful(ish) API.
MOO with its built in language system.
MUCK with it's FORTH integration.

All have tools available to do some fairly amazing things both internal and external.

But it has the base expectation for the end-user who wants to make it happen to be comfortable with the tools to do so.

We're not there yet.

And honestly I'm not sure it's our job to get there. The best we can do is provide tools, documentation, examples, and empower the end-user to actually use it. But them to actually use it is not our decision.

It's theirs.

And that's the problem

Lotherio

Let me try a simpler response.

There are two groups of users to consider.

Players. We had a good number of players migrate at one point or another from Arx to Fifth Kingdom because they wanted other themes.

Game Runners. Who do not have all the code experience to change something and want the ability to make changes and their game unique.

FS3 lead to an increase in potential games, good or bad (sadly the code was targeted versus the game runners at times).

Arx has lead to an increase in players from what I've seen (Evennia based with customization from my understanding) personally.

I see nothing wrong with any of it all, more positives this last decade I think.

But if its cutting out the game runner's access to changing the system (a strong point in going from MUD to MUX to MUSH 25-30 years ago) to suit their themes, a part of the creativity of MU'ing is potentially being lost.

Roz

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

But if its cutting out the game runner's access to changing the system (a strong point in going from MUD to MUX to MUSH 25-30 years ago) to suit their themes, a part of the creativity of MU'ing is potentially being lost.

New platform development wouldn't have to mean this.

Lotherio

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

But if its cutting out the game runner's access to changing the system (a strong point in going from MUD to MUX to MUSH 25-30 years ago) to suit their themes, a part of the creativity of MU'ing is potentially being lost.

New platform development wouldn't have to mean this.

I completely agree, it wouldn't, depending on how its built and offered as a new tool for the immediacy of RP that a MU offers, but part of the development of the MU is also the game runner's ability to do what they want readily in the system versus on the hardcode side.

I've seen lots of good from newer developments, but I'm also seeing this waltz back to hardcode that MUSH tried to get away from by giving admin all the softcode tools they need to make it what they want. I'm good either way, but is it really still MUSH, or something new. Tons of other RP formats out there, on-line, including immediacy of RP as has been pointed out.