Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!

[Ifrit]

So, first off, I love Ares. I love what it's doing for MUSHing, I love how it's made RP so much more accessible to me, a GMTer with occasionally shitty connections, with its web portal and so on.

However, for me, there is sometimes a lot more I want to do with custom stuff, things that would be better suited to Evennia and a more basic starting point. (The fact that I know Python like the back of my hand is part of that as well, of course)

One of the things that I've looked at would be implementing some sort of scene/web portal thing into Evennia, but also trying to keep that grid based feel - so that one can just go sit in an interesting place on grid and see who stumbles in. But also allowing you to have private RP in a temporary copy of a room if you just want a scene in a place without people coming in.

I know people on MSB have a wide variety of opinions on the subject, so really this is me throwing open the doors. Tell me, what would be the perfect system for you? Maybe the answer is 'Ares does everything I want and more', maybe it's 'All grid all the time, down with web portals'. But I'm curious, and should I ever actually go anywhere with this project (ha), it'd be awesome to get a sense of what it is that works for people.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I think basically any plug-in that could be installed with Evennia would be pretty awesome. There's clearly an audience for stuff you can plug-and-play for your own box, based on the response to Ares, there just doesn't seem to be the same kind of stuff available in Evennia for non-coders at the moment unless you want to basically duplicate Arx's systems and setup.

[Lisse24]

As someone stumbling through trying to do my own thing with a very limited knowledge of coding. Yes, any plug and play option would be great.

For me, the draw of Ares was that most of what I needed (boards, WHO, etc) was already there. Even just getting closer to what would be considered a MU-in-a-Box with a tutorial for dummies on how to set up character sheets would be a great leap forward.

That being said, the main complaint against Ares is finding RP when you don't have an established clique. The grid helps solve that issue by giving the user helpful information like: 1. Who is currently looking for RP. 2. How active they are likely to be. 3. Some sense of the nature of the scene.

I don't think a grid is the best way to convey that information. Years ago, my non-coding self proposed a +wantrp command that added a line with proposed hooks to the end. If that same command automatically idled out after 15-30 minutes, it would provide the same info you get from +where on a grid system and might help provide some scaffolding for old-school players who are struggling with Ares.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

FWIW I think the biggest incentive to do something like this for Evennia is to give more options for coders who prefer Python over Ruby. I suspect you could rip the web portal out of Ares/significantly change its functionality to make it a more 'traditional' grid-based MUSH experience (if one had the coding capability to do that and wanted to as a gamerunner philsophically).

[L. B. Heuschkel]

I'm not familiar with Evennia. But as a GMT+1 person, what works for me with Ares is the accessibility to people who aren't in US timezones. The ease with which scenes can be started and paused. And of course, the ease of logging and sharing.

[krmbm]

@Ifrit said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

One of the things that I've looked at would be implementing some sort of scene/web portal thing into Evennia, but also trying to keep that grid based feel - so that one can just go sit in an interesting place on grid and see who stumbles in.

Just as a note... there is absolutely no reason you can't do this. Ares culture has emerged to use the RP Requests rather than grid-sitting, but you can still walk out on the grid and wait for RP. People can still type where and see who's just out idling in public.

It just quickly became culturally accepted (on SL and then GH) that people ask/advertise RP on the channel vs grid-sitting. Admittedly, if you are a passive seeker of RP that sits in public and waits for people to come to you? The culture of most Ares games to date isn't supporting that. The code still does.

[Sparks]

I have a partially-done drop-in (well, drop-in provided you have the other Pax<whatever> libraries on which it depends) Ares-style scene system for Evennia that I started writing, uh... like last fall. I just have had no time/energy to really work on it lately.

I probably should finish it...

[Sunny]

Code creates / influences culture. The way a platform is presented and setup dictates how people interact with it.

It is my opinion that rather than focusing on what people prefer / think / state, a game creator needs to consider what their end goal is, and then create the tools to support that. If they do not consider their end goals and base it instead on other inputs, your code/tools will enforce a culture/game that is not what you're aiming for.

For example, to encourage grid-based roleplay, you would not put in tools that allow people to skip the grid to get to RP (meetme, teleport). Instead, you offer tools to help people find their way (directions), and you bribe them with rewards for being out on that grid -- be it XP, bits of lore, whatever. You also don't put in tools to let them take themselves off of the grid. If you put those tools in, people will use them, they take themselves off of the grid, and now you aren't encouraging grid-based roleplay any more.

Using Ares as presented removes a lot of these thinking-steps and assumes you're going to go a particular way, encouraging a particular culture. It can be used to encourage other cultures, but you have to approach it critically and think about every piece of it that you implement, and what that piece is going to ultimately do to the culture and how people interact with your game.

ETA: The culture of a game only "just happens" if it's not done intentionally. These things CAN be planned for. It's not magic.

ETA2: For a counter example of what I'm talking about (sort of), consider PVP. If your policies all say 'this game does not encourage PVP', but you developed a code-system that gave XP for killing other PCs based on how much XP they had spent, it does not MATTER what your policies say, people will actively engage in the PVP your systems have encouraged.

ETA3: Ares comes packaged with a particular culture. It can be used in other ways, but out of the box it absolutely encourages the specific culture that it was designed to encourage. This is a BENEFIT, a huge one, until the people using it don't understand that X or Y choices that the platform itself made for them has A, B, and C consequences on their game.

[bear_necessities]

@Sunny said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

For example, to encourage grid-based roleplay, you would not put in tools that allow people to skip the grid to get to RP (meetme, teleport). Instead, you offer tools to help people find their way (directions), and you bribe them with rewards for being out on that grid -- be it XP, bits of lore, whatever.

I really think that for Ares games, you can have your cake and eat it too. There's no reason why people can't sit on the grid and hang out there and have people walk around the grid and RP that way. I mean, maybe if that's what the game creators want, they can put up a "here's how you find RP on this game" post or whatever. I don't know.

[Sunny]

@bear_necessities

I understand that you really genuinely don't see the difference, but I am going to reiterate that for those of us who do really register the difference, it is a big deal.

[Lisse24]

@bear_necessities
So, one of the big stumbling blocks in the past has been the way +where works. If someone is on the portal in a scene, but not logged into the game, they don't show up on +where.

So, if someone wants to get a sense for what is actually happening on the game, they look at +scenes, not +where. This actively discourages use of the grid.

Which, again, is fine, because I don't think grid-stumbling is the best way to find RP, it's just the way many of us grew culturally use to because of the MUs traditionally operate.

[Sunny]

It's not a criticism, it's a difference in preferences and a square peg with a round hole.

eta: I honestly do not at all understand the INSISTENCE that a particular tool is good at all the jobs, rather than just the job that it was designed to do. It's NOT good at all the jobs, but it IS good at its job. It's not a criticism to say that you can't use your lawnmower to clean your effing pool!

[faraday]

You can remove 'meetme', but you can't force people to engage with your grid. Speedwalking has been a thing since I started playing in the 90's, that' s why tools like meetme came about in the first place.

You can remove the scene system, but people have always found a way around the grid. TP rooms, private apartments substituting as some alternate location, google docs RP.

Obviously you should not have tools that run contrary to your culture (e.g. having an elaborate set of PVP code & rewards if you don't want PVP in your game), but code doesn't create culture. People do.

[faraday]

@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

If someone is on the portal in a scene, but not logged into the game, they don't show up on +where.

I mean if that's a big deal, I can add a "In Web Scene" section to +where, but most of the non-grid scenes are typically private anyway. I don't really understand how that "actively discourages" people from using the grid? You can still wander to the grid and start your own scene?

[bear_necessities]

@Sunny I'll readily admit to not truly understanding the issue that you have with Ares but I really do accept that you have a problem with Ares and that's OK! We can have a difference of opinion and I'm not criticizing you any more than you are criticizing me.

@faraday the only thing I can say is that the "big complaint" I've heard about Ares is that it doesn't work for people who passively seek RP and that some people have honest difficulties with opening up a scene that might not get used, or asking on RP request. Which... I honestly don't know how to fix for those people and it might just be that Ares games are not for them and that's OK.

[Ifrit]

@bear_necessities said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@faraday the only thing I can say is that the "big complaint" I've heard about Ares is that it doesn't work for people who passively seek RP and that some people have honest difficulties with opening up a scene that might not get used, or asking on RP request. Which... I honestly don't know how to fix for those people and it might just be that Ares games are not for them and that's OK.

Absolutely, and this is the spirit I'm approaching this in. That I really like Ares and it works great for me, but I get that it doesn't work for everyone and that's okay! But maybe there's a way to marry the two together.

I mean, maybe there's not, either, but I still think it's a worthwhile endeavour. Plus, if it got more plug-and-play stuff into Evennia that'd be cool too.

[Sunny]

@bear_necessities

Oof. I don't have an issue with Ares, and I don't know how many ways I can possibly say that.

[Ganymede]

@Sunny said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

eta: I honestly do not at all understand the INSISTENCE that a particular tool is good at all the jobs, rather than just the job that it was designed to do. It's NOT good at all the jobs, but it IS good at its job. It's not a criticism to say that you can't use your lawnmower to clean your effing pool!

Look, you clearly haven't tried hard enough with your lawnmower; if you just --

[Sunny]

@Ganymede

that is literally how I feel like I am being spoken to right now, so thank you for making me feel less crazy for it.

[bear_necessities]

@Sunny OK, I'm sorry for misrepresenting what you're trying to say.