RL-Friendly Game Design
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I may or may not have said this a while back (as in years) so I'll just say it again.
I can't help but feel like the issue is the format of the technology.
Hear me out, here. So for DECADES the format has mostly stayed the same aside from some pretty cool upgrades (Ares, Evennia), but ultimately the format is: UNIX-based text emitter where everyone sets a pose order, writes a bunch of poses in turn, and then calls it a night. Part of me feels like another 20 years could go by and the same issues would be prevalent, so my mind starts going to "out of the box" options.
Given the technology these days of APIs, better GUI interfaces, etc, maybe it's a good time to come up with a "new way of doing things". Just off of the top of my head?
- Real-time typing with interrupt buttons
- Integration of online tabletop (Roll20) type resources, graphical character sheets, battle maps
- Chat interfaces that recognize the difference between OOC chatter and IC action without the need of things like spawn windows and colored text
I think the "Online Tabletop" industry is where all of the movement is at. For example: "WoD Nexus" is coming (via "Demiplane" at this website. With that includes the following:
- Shareable, viewable RPG resources
- Intergrated voice/video chat
- Battle maps, event scheduling, documentation creation (so, blogging, etc)
- Game/Group discovery and mobile support
So, I'm not saying "everyone move over to TTRPG or Demiplane", but perhaps within those technologies is the answer to taking THIS hobby and moving it into the 21st century.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@silverfox said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
@devrex said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
@L-B-Heuschkel does a great job of GMing async and making it really fun and I'm not sure what his techniques are there or what he's doing differently that I'm not doing (or if he's just wired differently as a GM) but.
I think it's just that they HAVE TO DO IT or they'd never RP. You grow into whatever restraints you have to.
Bit of both.
I don't really have a choice, playing from Europe. But I've also come to enjoy that I can present people with quandaries that require more thought -- because they don't have to react at an instant.
I also have a hard rule that if someone doesn't pose for 24 hours I move the scene on -- unless they've let me know that something is up. Real life happens to people, after all.
http://keys.aresmush.com -- Come to Chincoteague, we have ponies.
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@l-b-heuschkel True, and that's something I haven't enforced. I say 24 hours and then get really uncomfortable moving on. Especially if 24 hours have passed and nobody has posed.
@Ghost I've sort of jury rigged maps and stuff into some of my scenes some of the time, and it worked well (sometimes with an utterly terrible Google Sheet that nevertheless got the job done) I certainly wouldn't say no to some sort of integration that let players move tokens around on one and let me present some information that didn't solely rely on text without forcing them to go to some other site.
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@ghost said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
within those technologies is the answer to taking THIS hobby and moving it into the 21st century.
It depends on what you're looking for really. I'm not interested in "online tabletop" or heavily-tooled games that have integrated battle maps, graphics, etc.
I'm a writer. I want a collaborative writing system with some rules attached.
I know you've said you've been out of MUSHes for awhile so I dunno how much you've seen about the Ares web portal, but it already does things like "chat interfaces that recognize the difference between OOC chatter and IC action". I could add real-time "Faraday is typing..." indicators if I chose to (I just chose not to).
The limiting factor to the next step, in my mind, is the native clients. There's nothing stopping the hobby as a whole from moving toward a Discord/Slack-like client that is a lot more usable than raw text in, raw text out. But that would require a collaboration between the client developers and the server developers that does not yet exist.
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@faraday said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
@ghost said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
I'm a writer. I want a collaborative writing system with some rules attached.
This, 100%. Also, I'm too old to learn fancy new tech things.
However, I do think it would be cool to have a platform like what Ghost is talking about, because I know I've played with some people who could take functions like that and make interactive story with it. I think it's something I'd love to watch others do. I bet it would look awesome and be very entertaining.
