Favorite Minigames

faraday

Now OOC Drama is another thing entirely, and the bane of many games existence. It's certainly chased me off of games in the past.

I was referring to OOC drama and toxicity. I'm all for IC drama.

Arkandel

@apos said in Favorite Minigames:

I don't think it's too off topic if we redirect it very slightly. How about from a perspective of someone that really dislikes minigames and sees them undermining the narrative focus of storytelling on MUs, what would be games that aren't a big deal and aren't disruptive even if they aren't something someone is into? In other words, what would be ones that are tolerable for people that dislike them, and what are ones that would send them running to the door?

I wanted to make a quick disclaimer here - sometimes all kinds of systems - and definitely ones not designed as minigames - can influence or even disrupt RP to an extraordinary degree just because their designer didn't think of everything in advance (which ties into @faraday's clause about us all being amateur designers). Carrots in general absolutely work that way.

For example Haunted Memories implemented a +vote system with diminishing returns at some point to provide a source of XP. This almost immediately made large scenes the best way in the game to farm XP - and as anyone could guess, it turned nearly every scene overnight into a gargantuan 12+ player affair, many of whom were completely silent but present to benefit from +vote/here. This absolutely influenced the kind of RP people did, and those who couldn't handle those were left behind.

There's always risk when we introduce new things. They could work as intended or they might lead into unforeseen directions, but you don't know what you'll get beforehand... whether you're a amateur or a professional. Diablo 3 launched with a real money auction house thinking it'd be amazing for players to generate an income through play (from which they'd get a cut) and it was an epic disaster that almost sank the whole franchise before they got rid of it. It happens!

Ultimately we pick the games that reflect what we want from them. And I want my damn carrots.

Lotherio

@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:

And I want my damn carrots

You'll have to help @Pyrephox with that rabbit problem to save those damn carrots, just saying.

Thenomain

@lotherio said in Favorite Minigames:

Sort of what @Thenomain may have been getting at by referencing combat as a minigame, one they may not like buy in essance a side element of a MU that some people enjoy or look forward too.

This was the thrust of it, yes. What Is a Mini-Game? I think we don't have a solid idea, but that it's optional seems to be key. Sometimes games put up things that are meant to be optional but end up being the kind of thing that if you don't engage with it, e.g. crafting or buying or getting crafted hand-me-downs, that you can't engage with the core game as well as those who did, that's the kind of thing that people don't particularly like. (Unless they want to engage with it, of course.)

One of the major complaints of D&D 3/3.5 was that you needed magic items to build a credible character at higher levels, thus taking the core game fun out of it for quite a few people who would rather have focused on their character and leave the crafting subsystem alone.

Can someone realistically play an enjoyable game of Arx without clues or interacting with people who are using clues for RP? If not, then it's probably not a minigame. Ark's comment about soul-binding crafted items got me thinking about combat in the same light; if you don't focus on combat for your character on Game X then is it a minigame? How about combat being something you could ignore completely; does that make it a minigame? What is a minigame?

Gingerlily

@kanye-qwest said in Favorite Minigames:

fun minigames: actual minigames. Games of chance that people can play IC/gambling, that has a slight chance of reward. Gambling games, darts/knife throwing/games that can record a list of "high scores".

Outfit code, so you can build up pretty outfits and switch between them without having to group them all into different bags and wear them.

fortune telling/tarot style code.

Anything random that generates rp, like the @randomscene code. I think @randomseethe would be cool, too, could let people roll dice to pick who to snark on in journals. I don't know if this would be better or worse than everyone ganging up on the FOM. Would be fun in the right hands, though.

Anything that produces something, like gardening or animal breeding

IC gambling/poker has been fun on other games. Even with really buggy code, just the posing gambler poses and people handing out cards, fun fun.

@randomscene is the best but I kind of support @randomseethe too. I mean not really. But kind of.

tek

No Return was a shitshow, but I adored their scavenge/hunting system to pieces.

surreality

Things like coded gambling and similar I can get behind, simply because it adds something IC that people can do together to the game world. Same with things like coded tarot and similar.

Thing is, most people I know just go to any number of available websites for these things. I know I've done it for tarot readings IC and it has universally been easier and more fully-featured than any text-based code, with zero stress on the coders.

Similarly, stuff like the scrabble game I described... odds are high a group of people from the game could all hop on a channel and head over to a website for that. I know The Reach did something like this from time to time with Cards Against Humanity, which was fun and OOC social bonding fu for players. This kind of thing shouldn't be underestimated as a means of generating community goodwill amongst players or creating opportunities for new people who don't know anyone there to chill a little with folks socially if that's what helps them get their comfort zone going. I'm completely down with the idea of setting up a game account or group or whatever on such places and putting a channel or similar on the game for that sort of thing, but in these cases, finding a way to do it on the game itself feels a lot like re-inventing the wheel... as what will probably be a less functional and feature-rich wheel.

Apos

So with caveats about everyone having different tastes and interests, and there being a huge range in good implementations and bad implementations, I think there's a few general categories that can have systems or minigames rub people the wrong way:

If the minigames feel required, or pressure is put on someone to participate in something they have no interest in. Doubly so if they are grind-y. And particularly for game runners pressured to implement things they don't want and don't interest them.
If they replace RP or get in the way of RP. Like if someone would have a fun scene about A Thing, but instead a coderun is done that makes it unnecessary. Or even if it occupies players in a way that makes them inaccessible for RP.
If they create a competitive environment that is unhealthy and quickly turns toxic due to resentment and ooc frustration. This one is particularly meaningful to me, even with my very limited implementations the majority of people that got super oocly antagonistic or problematic for me on Arx came from RPI backgrounds where there was pretty much no IC/OOC separation for them in competition over alternate coded systems, like resources.
If they break immersion by acting in absurd ways. IE, someone oocly forgets to wear clothing objects, so their dignified and intelligent character is now randomly streaking. Someone forgets to do a code run for eating, so their experienced survivalist character starves to death. Or games randomly giving flavor emits that make no sense to the character, like a Bioware conversation wheel option that isn't anything like what someone expected it to be.

That's what I see as the broad categories of drawbacks, and what I'd have to keep in mind whenever making something or adding it to the game. For me, I personally distinguish between a mini game and a full system just by degree, and whether I see something as a core component for game play that will almost certainly be part of someone's experience, or whether a player could have a solid roleplay experience without ever really playing with the system.

My list of pros, for why I'd add a mini game (or a full system), if I didn't think it would brush up against any of those pitfalls would have at least one of:

Adds immersion or flavor to the RP experience, helps inspire or foster RP, gives characters reasons to act together, or throws out plot hooks or minor touches of the game world that give people something to play off of. Can create a lot of organic RP by random, unexpected events.
Anything that's fun and engrossing that lets players feel like their characters are building towards something, producing something, that gives them a feel of progression or dynamic change in the world.
Automates things that would require a great deal of staff work to track, and adds richness to the world, where if it didn't exist there would be a lot of handwavium and stories about it would die or be so vague they lose meaning. Helps players feel like their characters actions have more consequence and it's not immediately lost at the end of a scene or a story.
Fun activities that creates a feeling of community between players by giving their characters reasons to play off of one another.

I think where they go wrong mostly is people getting excited about something in the latter pros and missing (or being biased and intentionally ignoring) something in the former cons, particularly when it's a matter of taste.

Three-Eyed Crow

@tek said in Favorite Minigames:

No Return was a shitshow, but I adored their scavenge/hunting system to pieces.

At a certain point I wanted them to take the stupid Cheese Hat you could get out of the generator, but I did really like this piece of code, and I think it actually could've helped a lot with RP immersion on a different kind of game. No Return was, in general, quite well-coded.

faraday

@three-eyed-crow said in Favorite Minigames:

I did really like this piece of code

Despite my previously-stated dislike of minigames/coded systems, I am genuinely curious -- what made it good? I'd contemplated doing a scavenge sort of system on prior games but couldn't figure out how to avoid making it suck in the ways @Apos listed. How did they avoid the pitfalls of things like....

Sorry, nobody +scavenged food this week so everyone starves.
Mary is ignoring the +scavenge system, but is RPing having scavenged something nifty from the rubble anyway.
Joe had a cool idea for a plotline involving scavenging something, but he's trying to honor the +scavenge code and doesn't run it.
I've +scavenged seven times this month and all I keep getting is this lousy Cheese Hat.

surreality

@faraday said in Favorite Minigames:

I've +scavenged seven times this month and all I keep getting is this lousy Cheese Hat.

Apropos of nothing, my dice and randomizer luck would guarantee I could start a Cheese Hat concession, which I could just scrape by on until I find that winning lottery ticket!

...five minutes before the server hard reboots and has to be rolled back a week.

No, really, this is completely my luck.

Lotherio

I think, and could be wrong here, that the +scavenge code referenced isn't a necessity to eat or find potable water.

The one's I've seen that were enjoyable were added as an RP booster. They might find interesting food (twinkies in the wrapper still) or other odds n ends, location dependent such that scavenging a house might turn up a first aid kit, but scavenging in the forest might find murshrooms or some old junk. Just it was never a scavenge or die implementation. Again, only from the times I've seen them and enjoyed them. But similar to the Cheese Hat, which is sort of what I was getting at in that scavenging on survival places is fun, they need updating such that the same odds and ends don't keep cropping up. On the place I used it most, plastic model (car or some such) cropped up, it was a novelty until everyone had one to build and couldn't find model glue. Its a simple fix too, instead of just generic list, fun unique things could be pulled from a word bank and removed as they're found.

Apos

@faraday said in Favorite Minigames:

Mary is ignoring the +scavenge system, but is RPing having scavenged something nifty from the rubble anyway.

This makes for an interesting digression because I had this exact same worry about pretty much all systems that effect how people RP, and imo if you could pick one thing to feel reassured in general about MU communities being largely pretty good folks, it would be from this.

I was really worried about just this happening with coded objects, and what I found was it basically never came up. I've only had to mention this maybe a few times 'hey that really should be a coded object' and each time it was just a small misunderstanding. What I discovered really is that it pretty much falls into the, 'Well, @emit can say anything, how do you stop your players from doing crazy, ridiculous things?' and it just doesn't come up much, as long as the objects or standards are visible to everyone. People want to be respected and liked for their RP, and because of that, if there's a clear community standard like X things are objects that come from a +command, they just won't do it because no one wants to look bad in RP.

I think, with just how so much of MUSH rp culture is self-enforced, as long as something is clearly visible to players, we as game runners don't need to worry about that part.

faraday

@apos said in Favorite Minigames:

I think, with just how so much of MUSH rp culture is self-enforced, as long as something is clearly visible to players, we as game runners don't need to worry about that part.

I'm glad you've had a good experience with it, but I wouldn't take that to be universal. Especially among more narratively-inclined players. My experience has been that they're more likely to be resentful of having code intrude upon their RP and skirt around it, especially if the code is perceived to be optional. This can then lead to sour grapes with people who are actually trying to follow the systems in place. (Granted this experience has been more around economy systems than scavenge specifically but I believe it's still relevant.)

Apos

@faraday A lot of those can be like the tabletop arguments between a GM and player like, "Well, did you remember to buy rope? Flint and steel?" that kind of stuff, that players take for granted and a Gm thinks can't be handwaved. Imo a lot of those are avoided with heavy emphasis on expectations, where if it catches people by surprise they get really annoyed.

Ominous

@tek I also am curious about the scavenger minigame. Can you elaborate on how it functioned?

Lotherio

Also on +scavenger game, to second what @Apos said:

as long as the objects or standards are visible to everyone

The ones I've played on, nothing over the top was ever gained by the +scavenge code, it was just an RP aid. No one found a $40K commercial grade, operational generator and a home propane tank full of natural gas to run it for the following month, ever, with scavenger code; or a car, or a secret militia armory. That was still meta/gm related or requested. It was hand waved sort of things that they could find anyways, but added flavor to scavenging without breaking the game. Finding a twinkie didn't provide food for a week, finding one first aid kit didn't break the necessity of the doctor PCs role, it was a lot more curious odds and ends. The ones I have seen. The code wasn't necessary but gave a little flavor to RP.

tek

Once a day, you could +scavenge or +hunt. It was almost entirely RP flavor. Sometimes you found nothing. Sometimes you'd find cool things. It was like a Skinner box. One time, I found a chicken.

Three-Eyed Crow

Yeah, the thing I liked about it was that it never felt compulsory, but you could in theory find things to use for flavor in RP. Nobody starved because they weren't +hunting and you could still run scavenging scenes/missions (which weren't common, but plots in general weren't common when I was there, so it's a flaw in ourselves and not our stars/code kind of thing).

Jennkryst

Obligatory mention of SPACESHIPS and such.