Best posts made by Apos

@cobaltasaurus said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

• Pour through Arx-code graciously shared by @Tehom.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

It scares me a little that there's enough options that it's hard to narrow it down.

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@ganymede said in Alternative Formats to MU:

All of this may be true, but good games differ from one another. Your package may have all of the great features we've come to know and love, but I don't think, for example, that the developers are interested in coding up special, unique features for each game.

Of course if you want special, unique features you'll need a coder. That will always be true. But right now you need a coder even if you don't want special unique features, and that's silly.

Systemless games + Games willing to run FS3 + Games willing to run a simple "descriptive stat" system (like many comic games) ... all of these will be enabled out of the box with zero code in Ares. And that's not even counting games that can be enabled it somebody does a drop-in plugin for a new system.

And if somebody does want custom code? Unless they're already a kung-fu MUSHcode master, it's going to be way way way easier to learn the new systems than the old.

Yeah, I don't mean this as a slam on WoD at all, but it seems to me that a core reason for its popularity is the already existing softcode that can be plugged into it. It's significantly easier to set up a sandbox and get going there than anywhere else, along with a great many people familiar with it that are willing to pitch in.

I'm sympathetic to people that are extremely proficient in softcode and prefer it, but I just don't see any advantages to it outside of that familiarity.

About descs and clothing objects, there's a few interesting consequences of design choices there. Generally speaking, the more information about current state that's available passively, the more organic the Rp tends to be. In other words, if you have information that isn't readily available to someone passively, and has to be mentioned in a set each time someone comes in, the less organic I find the rp. This is just a stylistic difference and not good or bad, but I should mention I never even heard the term 'pose order' until I tried a WoD game, several years after playing routinely on other MUs, and sets tended to be extremely minimal in other places due to current state-of-play being accessible on 'look' in other games. So I definitely am more in the minority (which would probably be closer to a majority for RPI type games) of using 'look' regularly, paying close attention to descs, using clothing objects to change the current state-of-play, and not really paying much attention to wikis. It's just a stylistic difference, not right or wrong imo, like Faraday said.

@carex I think there's a bit of correlation rather than causation there though, and that being a result of a power imbalance rather than the cause of it. In a world where someone can just straight up murder someone with magic, it might develop differently.

I don't think it's a big deal to say, 'nah not doing this', and just quietly nudge off anyone who wants to argue 40 different ways why it should be his fetish game.

@surreality Glancing at that link, one piece of commentary about Anne Rice's explosion jumped off the page at me:

"I suspect that most authors don’t really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so."

That sounds very uncomfortably close to our hobby here.

Really small differences in game environment make dramatic differences in the RP pacing. If a game enforces a sequential order and runs at the pace of its slowest contributor in a scene, that game is going to develop glacial RP unless a game takes means to counter that.

Edited to add: Think of how different MU rp in a scene would be if we saw a typing indicator for someone that was posing.

Hmm, I think every creator would feel put out by someone ripping off their work, and it would be generally a communal standard that not crediting someone else's work is a shitty thing to do.

I think it might be better to ask 'how specific does something have to be in order to feel justified in feeling ripped off'? Like for example, if someone used like some of my very broad and vague ideas, I don't think they need to credit me, and it probably wouldn't be reasonable for me to get annoyed by it. Like Arx's random scenes, first impressions, very general design and incentives are pretty simple, general ideas that I think anyone could come up with independently, and I don't think I can feel particular ownership over them. On the other hand, if someone lifted the actual code without asking or giving credit and used it, that moves from general ideas to work, and that would probably make Tehom annoyed (even if he would have said 'sure' if someone had just asked).

Put another way, one person had to be the first one to decide that a wiki to go along with a game was going to be a great idea, and enrich the RP experience of a lot of players. That's a general game design idea that just became a largely agreed upon best practice, resulting in most games using wikis, and I certainly have no clue who the first person that had that idea was. But ripping off the specific formatting code on the wikis moves past the territory of best practices to stealing someone's creative work. And I think the line between the two can be a little vague sometimes.

@arkandel In a very broad sense, yeah. I mean if there's anything in any way to compete with, even if only one person feels competitive. Like take @faraday talking about kill boards in her game and how drama came from it. Some players would be like, 'oh hey I have X kills, cool' and don't care about how they fall in relation to others, while a couple feel a burning need to be #1 and are going to be huge dicks about it.

Discovery falls under the same thing. Some people want it because it's cool, while some feel competitive about feeling like they know the most, are the best at uncovering something, are the person known for doing something first. And some people can be perfectly healthy and constructive and fine while enjoying that. It's not that people feeling competitive drive is bad but a lot of MU players are just really terrible at doing it in a constructive way that makes them not be a dick about it.

So I'd more take your statement and make it even more broad, not so much rare and special, but -anything- that can be measured or have some metric that someone with a competitive drive can use as a basis for comparison, and story or the respect and admiration of their peers definitely fall under that. Just someone feeling competitive about, 'I run the best PRPs and am the most fun for RP and entertain the most people' isn't usually anywhere near as toxic, with some exceptions. (Spider, maybe?)

@Lain God almighty that's cringey af.

Zoolander reference.

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I personally think that this is a bit of an insult to the ability for adults to act like adults when treated like adults, and expected to act like adults, but this is my take on the entire issue.

To me the really insulting thing is the implied suggestion we can only be adults and treat each other with some civility if there is some rule forcing us to. Or that otherwise we'd all be acting the way of the Hog Pit, all the time.

I really detest that idea.

I harbor doubts about the Hog Pit being productive or useful and I still don't think that. What I do think is that a light touch in moderation or no moderation guarantees derails will happen in most cases. Someone says something provocative or accusatory, someone responds, that response gets a counter, and on and on and on even if it had nothing to do at all with the topic itself. So if you allow provocative statements, and this can be positive statements too as I'd consider 'Ditko is a swell dude' a pretty fucking provocative statement, then derails are just natural and any thread is gonna have to be forked or moved if it happens.

I think the vitriol isn't great but that's almost really beside the point, if there's 50 pages of 'are furries good or bad on comic book games' and 2 pages of 'hey this staffer sexually harasses people in pages and drives everyone off the game', I'd really rather those 2 pages be noticed than the Great Furry Debate of '17.

@wizz Dude don't worry, if other people like the game they'll have the self-absorbed eulogies on lock down. Going gentle into that good night is probably not going to be a thing.

@Ganymede Saying, "hire the best candidate" is one of those things that makes me raise my eyebrows because... I mean, of course they will. It's like if someone invites you into the house and then as you enter seriously warns you,"Hey, don't steal anything." It's one of those things that's already well understood, and saying so says a little bit more about the person saying it than the person being told.

I honest to god am not sure how many characters that are Ramsay esqe that I've denied, or had the potential to be. I'd have to count.

@SparklesTheClown said in Differences Between MUDs and Everything Else? (MUSHes, MUXes, etc):

Like, at what point in a game's design do you think an average MUSHer looks at a game and goes "that's too MUD for me"?

The places a MUSH player will opt are pretty simple but also very dependent on an individual.

a) Something coded in the game that they feel they have to deal with but do not enjoy. Ie, RPI having to eat/drink/sleep or required maintenance tasks.
b) Feeling that they are prevented by coded constraints from roleplaying about something they want to do. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be sanity checks and automatic thematic enforcement.
c) Feeling that code is removing their narrative autonomy over a character. In RPIS this is mostly automated actions.

I think the most effective trade offs are making interacting with the environment feel rewarding and responsive, and act as thematic reinforcement of what a character is really good at and what they are bad at in regards to the environment. But always making sure it stays true to the character and players aren't forced to handwave things away for narrative ease.

@faraday said in A Lack of Imagination:

Meanwhile if you asked me to describe my kitchen, like @Ninjakitten says, I could do so in fact-based terms... the cabinets are brown, the sink is right by the back door, the stove is gas with five burners... but I don't really see a vivid image in my mind. It's more like fuzzy still pictures at best.

It's interesting in that there's definitely degrees, between people that have photorealistic imaginations vs fuzzy imagery vs nothing at all. For me, asking me what color things are in the kitchen is a lot like asking me to remember the calendar date that something happened. I can take a guess. It might be right, might be wrong, I have no idea though I might sometimes get an extremely vague sensation.

On the other hand, if I imagine a song, I can often hear it so vividly it can be difficult to tell if I'm listening to something for real or just imagining it, and I dunno how true that is for other people.

@peasoupling And I can understand how it would be useful! The details I was thinking of were very much so people could enjoy them, rather than something like, 'how far from point a to point b' and would effect the RP.

@rebekahse said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

This is actually a really good example of what I meant when I said it felt like there had been some kind of shift in the hobby over the past few years. Nobody would be asking this question, as @surreality already pointed out, about murdering another PC. You can end my character that I've worked on for five years in the blink of an eye, and that's not wrongfun, but playing a construction contractor who won't hire me because I'm a woman is somehow far worse and somehow has far more impact on my enjoyment of RP? I genuinely do not get this point of view.

I dunno about that. I wouldn't understand a game that has intense limits on how characters can speak but then unrestricted PVP and no limits on PKing. I think you either have a collaborative environment where you have reasonable restrictions or you don't police it at all and let the chips fall where they may. There is absolutely no way I'd approve like a serial killer PC, or I'd be permit like random PKing newbies or whatever because that's not the kind of game I'm making. Some games are fine with that, and I can respect the entirely hands off style, but I would have no idea why they would only be interventionist on speech and not on stuff that arbitrarily ends stories for no reason.

@Arkandel The problem is you think it's an even dialogue, and it really isn't. What @Derp is doing is not reasonable, not friendly, and not even handed, and to think so illustrates an extremely large degree of bias. That is why it is appropriate for him to be mocked, since he is attempting to present it in that way.

"Hey, someone that's been assaulted before is talking about someone acting creepy that's making her feel unsafe. Now is my time to chime in that not all men are creepy and maybe that guy didn't mean harm." While that qualifies under 'no fucking shit', saying so demonstrates such a mind boggling cruelty that even if it wasn't coupled with a lecture to older and wiser heads on 'how to adult', it would have been despicable.

So yes, he should have been mocked, and I devoutly hope if he says something as jaw dropping-ly idiotic in the future he is again.

@collective That is wildly disproportionate, you could have one dude say one problematic thing once a year and it being the rarest of unicorns ever sighted upon the MU greens, and reading a disclaimer like that people would think it happens in every scene ever.