Optional Realities & Project Redshift

[Bobotron]

@Thenomain
Ahhh. I see. Thanks for the info!

[Jaunt]

OtherSpace is running again. They're actually in the process of porting the game over to the newer Evennia engine, which is what we're also designing Redshift with. I wouldn't classify Redshift as MUD or MUSH. I personally don't think that either acronyms are good at marketing our genre (they both sound sort of unappealing and gross), and sort of wish folks would stop relying on them so much.

Haven's original codebase doesn't really have a true classification. IMO, they're more MUSH, philosophically. As Orpheus has noted, BURP's more MUSH than MUD in terms of a lot of its design choices, too.

Our perspective is that separating game genres based on engines is silly. What gaming genres do that besides ours? It's super derpy that we're still classifying ourselves the way that we are, and probably plays no small part in the overall stagnation of the genre as a whole when compared to MMOs and other "off-chute" genres that have dominated the mainstream.

@Thenomain

I consider four of the games on OR to be MUSH-like games. I consider four of the games on OR to be RPIs. I consider four of the games on OR to be sort of their own unique thing. I consider all of the games on OR to be storytelling intensive RPGs that feature non-consent permanent death as a core feature.

Also, your final count doesn't add up, regardless of your personal interpretation of what genres games that you aren't familiar with fall into.

[crayon]

@Thenomain said:

Final Count. Mush-types: 2. Mud-types: 9. Moo/Muck-types: 1.

I believe you mathed wrong? In any event, the type of code being utilized doesn't really much matter so much as the design philosophy behind the game. Haven's actually an interesting case in that while it's exceptionally heavily automated and almost certainly a "MUD", I want to say, its design takes a lot of prototypically "MUSH" approaches in terms of how roleplay happens. Tangential, really.

In any event, I haven't been active through here for a few days, but I'm going to try to respond to some of the points I've seen as best I can.

Yes, we're working to revise both our criteria and our mission statements to make it a little more clear what our target audience is. Part of the source of the confusion, I think, may be in that while we're not trying to be all-inclusive, in the sense that we have a specific focal group, we're not actively trying to be exclusive, either; we're open to and encourage discussion well outside the range of our focus group and a large portion of our user base is from outside of the focus group.

Others have expressed concerns with us having the focus group that we do at all. I admittedly don't think this is a valid argument. You're welcome to try to convince me, but you're going to have to be more convincing than using diction with loaded connotation to try to emotionally sway others, like making racist and discriminatory analogies.

I'm yet to have found concerns about our update posting here to have much validity, either. Communities aren't static things, and it's possible at any point that some of the discussion happening on OR might appeal to people here that it didn't a week ago. Additionally, the argument that MUSoapbox's community is unilaterally and wholly not our target audience doesn't seem all that convincing. Some members of this community have been active on OR in various degrees, and no I'm not going to name them because that's their business. Repeatedly asking us to name them is kind of bizarre. What I feel happening here is that, as valid as @Thenomain's mention of hive mind fallacy has been, a few people have actively been trying to argue as if the community here is a hive mind, while eschewing arguments directed towards said (nonexistent) hive mind.

I'm also yet to have really found the arguments that we're being particularly sleazy by advertising here, because this community has a different focus, to be all that compelling. I haven't actually seen anything about this community that indicates a specific focus besides the interests of its user base. Among members of that user base are several present or former players of games in our target genre. There is a lot more overlap here than the majority are perceiving. I think the OR community has ideas that could be useful to the MUSoapbox community and that the MUSoapbox community has ideas that could be useful to the OR community. Maybe many of the ideas we've been hashing out on OR have been hashed out ad nauseum here, or have little to no application to the games the majority of this community's members are involved with. But at the same time, I think it's unreasonable to assume that new discussion of a previously discussed concept can't bring out new ideas, and I think that any exchange of ideas, even where one in ten of the ideas is interesting to the one in twenty people actually interested in the exchange, is good.

And so, here's the weekly update:

Read and discuss an article on breaking away from fundamental RPG gameplay in text games!
http://optionalrealities.com/text-based-gameplay-breaking-the-mold/
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=327.0

Contribute to discussion on the nature of the staff-player relationship!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=299.0

Send a submission in for our September Monster/Antagonist concept contest!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=301.0

Contribute to discussion on the merits of recasting characters to new players!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=300.0

The article's mine, and as is usual with my articles, is a little bit on the conceptual side and not all that concrete. It's about the ideas and inspiration behind the games we make, moreso than the concrete information that goes into their creation, and this might not be all that useful. Still, I think it's an interesting thing to think about, and it makes me wonder when we'll see a bit more diversification in text-based gaming. I think that one of the questions that implicitly comes up, thinking about the idea behind the article, is what really makes a game an "RPG", and if it's roleplaying, why do we attribute all these other concepts to the genre like progression, combat, loot, et cetera.

I'd be interested in hearing what this community thinks about recasting characters when one player is no longer interested in playing them. It's something that Haven's recently implemented in a sort of roster, and that a fair number of developers have been weighing the pros and cons of. I'm told that this particular approach was used on FiranMUX, but I can't say I ever experienced it firsthand. It would certainly seem to remedy some problems that crop up from time to time, but I have to imagine it creates others entirely.

[Thenomain]

@crayon said:

I believe you mathed wrong?

Then math correctly, please.

In any event, the type of code being utilized doesn't really much matter so much as the design philosophy

Explain? Or ask for an explanation and don't just assume that I mathed wrong because you disagree on how I'm evaluating? That is, don't just assert; discuss.

It's little things like your statement being definitive ("you're wrong because I'm judging on a different context") is what I believe is your part of creating the us-versus-them atmosphere.

I'd like to have a discussion about what makes a MUSH and not an RPI, or at the very least what the heck you mean. If I opened a new thread, would you participate?

Mind you, a due warning: I think you're wrong, and I believe people here have a more vested interest in this distinction than you do so that you should listen to them. I am biased, but I am willing, nay eager, to be wrong. I'm more eager to transform this thread into something productive.

Because it's, y'know, very one-sided on both sides, and I'd rather build bridges than ... this.

Thanks.

edit: Another due warning: If you don't want to discuss here, I will gladly take Soapbox to the Mountain. I hear that this kind of stuff goes on at OR all the time.

[Thenomain]

Oh for fuck's sake, OR forums. Entering both 'game' and 'games' here kicked me out.

[crayon]

@crayon said:

I believe you mathed wrong?

@Thenomain said:
Then math correctly, please.

I did. You didn't. Your sum isn't even accurate to the number of community partners we have, total.

@Thenomain said:

Explain?

We don't especially care what engine the games in our community use as a distinction, though the merits and uses of different engines and classes of engines are interesting in their own right, we care what that engine's built or has been built upon to provide in terms of basic gameplay, via design philosophy. Why don't we care about the engine distinction? I think @Jaunt already hit this, but the relevance of whether something is a MUD or MUSH is borderline nonexistent, except insofar as MUSHes have evolved a few common cultural approaches to roleplay. I think the burden of proof is actually on you, here, to explain why it does matter in this particular context. Because this has never been about MUDs vs. MUSHes or anything of that sort, and this is the third or fourth time I've seen you bring it up for seemingly no reason at all. What argument are you trying to make by counting the games in our community partnership, and miscounting at that?

[Thenomain]

@crayon said:

Your sum isn't even accurate to the number of community partners we have, total.

I explained where my information came from. "No it isn't" isn't really what I would call a convincing reply.

I think the burden of proof is actually on you, here, to explain why it does matter in this particular context.

I don't know what you think I'm talking about, but you said there were several MUDs that you would classify as MUSHes. I don't know how that's up to me to disprove.

If you're asking me to explain what I think a MUSH is, then that's one thing. Saying it like this, however, is just being a dick.

I don't mean this to be a "no, you", but I think my points are pretty salient.

---

edit: Sorry, I missed the actual question at the very bottom of @crayon's excessive and inappropriate antagonism. The buried lede:

What argument are you trying to make by counting the games in our community partnership, and miscounting at that?

Because you can't read, doesn't give you the right to get all pissy at other people, Sancho Panzer:

@Jaunt said, in post http://musoapbox.net/topic/341/optional-realities-project-redshift/624:

Half of our community are MUSHes.

Now, what Jaunt has also been doing is defending the Three Laws as to what your site represents, and that other people can come along too, but his overall thrust has been the site is for games following The Three Laws.

So sure, let's count the list from your site of partners. Go on. Look up what your website says. Here, since you can't seem to figure it out, and are happy to blame other people for your dementia, let me list the URL.

http://optionalrealities.com/partners/

OH WOW! THAT WAS SO HARD TO FIND!

Now, Captain Know-It-All, let's count the number of games. It's under +Games.

Nnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnne?

Oh, yes, it's nine. My total? Nine. My oh my, how stupid I am, what an idiot I must be for getting it right as per the conditions I explained not one line above the list of games.

Did I mention you were being a dick? Excessively so? Now either counter with facts or I shall taunt you a second time.

And a third.

I have the time to waste, now. Just for you.

[crayon]

I never said that I think some MUDs are MUSHes, though I do think some have cultivated design systems similar to what is pretty typical within the MUSH community, or have designed around philosophical approaches to roleplay more common in the MUSH genre than in the MUD genre.

I'm not sure how you really expect me to convince you that nine is not seven.

Project Redshift - Evennia
Shadows of Isildur - Diku
ArmageddonMUD - Diku
HavenRPG - Custom
Sindome - MOO
Evolution of Esos - Diku
The Sea of Storms - Smaug
Otherspace - Penn
No Return - Penn
The Burning Post II - Diku

MOO/MUX-types: 1, MUDs: 7, MUSH-types: 2.

If you're classifying MUDs as an umbrella type that includes MUSHes and MOOs/MUXes I can see how you'd get the number you did. It also seems our partners link is out-of-date which probably needs to be fixed. However, treating "MUD" as an umbrella is wholly inconsistent with some of your rhetoric previously, eg. differentiating between a "MUDder's perspective" and a "MUSHer's perspective" which implies the two are distinct concepts.

That said it's certainly worth discussing what you think distinguishes a MUSH from a MUD, or a MOO, and what in general you feel is the criteria for that. My understanding of what makes a MUSH is probably a good bit different from Jaunt's, and both perspectives are seemingly different from yours. That distinction, however, has nothing to do with whether a game meets our criteria for partnership, which is why I'm not really sure where the hell it's coming from. Personally, I think the MUD/MUSH/MOO distinction has gotten to be kind of archaic, except insofar as each has evolved a similar but different culture.

[Thenomain]

@crayon,

Can you explain to me where I said there were 9 MUDs on that list? Like I said, I really don't understand what you think I'm saying, but I don't think it's what I'm actually saying.

I like the word "rhetoric". I think I'll use it here more often. Thanks.

The What Is A ... question I'll split into a different thread.

edit: A different thread.

[crayon]

@Thenomain said:

Can you explain to me where I said there were 9 MUDs on that list?

@Thenomain said:

Final Count. Mush-types: 2. Mud-types: 9. Moo/Muck-types: 1.

Did I misunderstand this in some way? Also the sum of games above would be 12. I'll look for your What Is A... thread because it's interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll have much to contribute to it personally, though we'll have to see when it splits.

[Thenomain]

@crayon said:

@Thenomain said:

Can you explain to me where I said there were 9 MUDs on that list?

@Thenomain said:

Final Count. Mush-types: 2. Mud-types: 9. Moo/Muck-types: 1.

Oh for fuck's sake, Theno.

No, you're right. Edited.

Also, I'm sorry for the exploding part of that.

---

I'll look for your What Is A... thread because it's interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll have much to contribute to it personally, though we'll have to see when it splits.

If you're not going to participate, then what's the point? This is to explore what you think a Mush is, since you're ready to redefine how we describe things, which is a very common theme in this thread. Again, on both sides. In the interests of bridge-building, I thought it might help.

It's like a lot of people here saying that RPI means something different than you do. Would you want to understand, or would you say, 'No, you're wrong.' Both heavily rely upon authority of the topic at hand, and social dynamics.

Again, a common theme in this thread.

[il-volpe]

@Jaunt said:

We're not some sort of threat, or invading force. We've answered folks' questions, responded to their concerns, and made changes to our site based on the actual useful feedback that we've received.

You've made changes? Where?

You've responded to people's concerns? When? Please exclude all instances where you're telling them that they're wrong to be bothered.

Honestly, hilarity. You're not an invasive force, but you're aggressively telling @Lithium that you're gonna squat here, and demanding that I prove the non-existence of people who appreciate your behavior but happen to be silent about it.

And then, right after @Lithium and myself comment about the unwanted nature of the weekly updates, here's @crayon with another one! Whee!

@crayon says:

There is a lot more overlap here than the majority are perceiving.

Yet you are the newcomer to the community.

Communities aren't static things, and it's possible at any point that some of the discussion happening on OR might appeal to people here that it didn't a week ago.

Hint: The current active community members are probably not following your links, or if they are, it is not for the reason you hope.

Members of this community who are interested in OR will go to it without your prompting, now that you've got the advert up at all.

Hint: Yes, we can ignore this thread. But no, we cannot make it stop appearing on our feed as new material. NOW, if there are newcomers to MUSB, they will probably look at every section of the board. They will see your ad until enough new ads are posted that your ad is pushed down onto the second page. Then, they will visit OR if they are interested.

When you post your updates weekly, forcing a reminder your existence into everyone's 'unread posts' page, some folks find it annoying. It violates a standard of internet forum etiquette. What you do, to be polite, is wait until the ad gets pushed back to page two, and then come up with some excuse (in this case, "we have new content!" is sensible) to post on it and get it back to the first page. One calls this giving the post a "bump". Doing it every week is not cool.

[Thenomain]

@il-volpe said:

Yet you are the newcomer to the community.

See one of the interesting things about this discussion is that there is argument over 1) what is meant by 'this community', 2) who represents which community, and 3) whether or not 'this community' is subservient to 'that community' since 'they' were around first.

I'd rather talk about authority. Since this is an academic discussion, what does 'authority' mean? I don't mean it as in one person having power over the other, but who is an expert on what. It's pretty easy to say that a lot of people here are authorities on MUSH, but there are a precious few authorities here on MOO or even MUCK.

To us, it looks like the OR staffers are saying they have authority because of their home games being a Mush, not long before there being argument that a Mush is not a code-base but a design philosophy. (I find this even more interesting, because I would bet that the majority of Mushes throughout history fail the Three Laws of Optional Realities.)

I'm sure that to them, we here look like we're doing the same thing. "Trust us, we know" is easier to say, IMO, when you enter a community site based on the thing we believe we are authorities upon. Like if I went into a Jackie Chan fan site and started telling the others there they were wrong.

Being a newcomer to a community is fine.

[Alzie]

@thenomain So that would make people who have coded on all the 'design philosophies' root?

@crayon Hey this is crazy, and I just met you, but here's our ancestor, and he was a pick your own adventure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

[il-volpe]

@Thenomain

My point is that the expertise that @crayon needs to have the authority to make claims about the overlap between the two communities would include expertise about this community, and cray-cray hasn't got that.

[Thenomain]

@il-volpe said:

@Thenomain

My point is that the expertise that @crayon needs to have the authority to make claims about the overlap between the two communities would include expertise about this community, and cray-cray hasn't got that.

Well I don't think @crayon claims to be a Soapbox authority, and I think it's only @Justin (whatever his name is, not @Jeshin) that has tried to claim Mush authority on all three of their behalves.

[WTFE]

Well, @crayon's backslide means we're going to need something harder.

Yesterday's hooch was nasty, rude stuff, but it still had a discernible taste through the raw burn. This stuff ... is not that way.

While it is technically a "五粮液/Wuliangye"-style drink (Wuliangye being the largest brand of liquor in China), and while it is made from the signature five grains of Wuliangye (sorghum, corn, wheat, rice, glutinous rice), this is emphatically not the delicate, complicated flavour of true Wuliangye. The reason why should be apparent when you look more closely at the side of the bottle.

Yes, that's really saying that it's an 85%/170 proof liquor. There ain't nothin' surviving that alcohol content flavour-wise.

This is not a drink for sipping. This is not a drink for slamming back and waiting for the explosion in your head. This is a drink for playing chicken with your brain and your liver at the same time. Nobody drinks this for the taste. You drink it to show how tough you are.

Or, of course, if you want to dull the pain of watching the single most incompetent advertisers in history sinking lower and lower and lower into the ground with each post.

[Tyche]

@Jaunt said:

I consider all of the games on OR to be storytelling intensive RPGs that feature non-consent permanent death as a core feature.

There's that "intensive" word again. What's it really mean?

[crayon]

@Thenomain said:

since you're ready to redefine how we describe things

Where did I ever try to do this? All I had to say was that our criteria for partnership are standard and have nothing to do with whether a game is a MUD or MUSH. Unless you're talking about me redefining that seven does not equal nine, but it sounds like we cleared that up, after half-a-dozen posts that didn't even give me sufficient reasonable doubt to even look to see if what I was saying was the case was. It's certainly an interesting topic and one I'd like to look into, but it's not one I'd really contribute to because I'm not really looking to define what a MUSH is personally. I don't feel that I'm an authority, personally, on the genre to really understand the full nuances. The purpose of such a thread of conversation, for me, would be education rather than debate, because I don't have many, if any, firm opinions except what I've seen observationally from my own play and interactions.

[il-volpe]

@Thenomain said:

Well I don't think @crayon claims to be a Soapbox authority,

Oh, he was claiming that there's more overlap than 'people' (meaning, I presume, the membership of MUSB who've commented) realise, which implies that he knows more about what commenters here play than you or I do.

Or possibly he means that more people on OR play MUSHes than we realize. This just occurred to me, and concluding that this means there's more overlap on Soapbox than we realize is the sort of logic error that seems to be popular.