Best posts made by Apos

@Tehom said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Griatch said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Could you elaborate on what you think should work differently (apart from adding a RESTful API as a new input in the first place)?
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Griatch

What I was more thinking about was the response rather than the request, if that makes sense. Evennia does support using input_funcs out of the box to call commands: but those commands do not currently have a generalized way set up to generate a response afaik, it assumes that the only meaningful output needs to take place in-game. If we're assuming that the text response is just one type of View, that's not necessarily the case - we want any sort of action to generate some sort of JSON response which we'd pass along to wherever. So what I was picturing was commands calling methods in objects that'd return some dict-like structure that could be converted to JSON for web responses, though you could do the same thing with commands directly as well.

Just to translate for everyone that is wondering what Tehom is talking about in his discussion with Griatch and isn't familiar with the coding terminology, let me briefly (and maybe at least partly accurately) summarize:

He is saying that since people trying to create their own games using evennia would probably instinctively first go to changing commands (you know, the really common ones shared across games that Evennia has out of the box also), it should probably be a lot easier for a coder to learn to do that. Since there's an awful lot of ways something can be coded and implemented, he was debating about ways to set it up so it's a lot more accessible for new coders to do it, rather than very experienced ones, since a new coder sitting down to try to learn python and django and use Evennia is going to want to do that early on, and it probably shouldn't need more advanced concepts. That's why it's such a technical discussion, because they are basically coders talking about what might be easiest out of a wide range of choices.

I don't think it's constructive to adopt a dismissive approach towards one of the most popular features that people use as a creative outlet, and therefore is taken as a reflection upon their approach to the hobby in general. It implicitly says their way of approaching the hobby is incorrect, and the way they enjoy the hobby is not welcome and should not be supported.

I mean. That would be one definition of wrongfunning, I guess.

@faraday said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

I disputed the earlier assertion that MUSHes share a culture, but I guess it comes down to what you define as "culture". Certainly MUSHes share a general philosophy of emphasizing roleplay over code (which differentiates them from MUDs) and having a 24/7 persistent IC world that tracks with RL time at some set ratio (which differentiates them from forum games). Beyond that, though, I'm hard-pressed to come up with any universal MU constants.

I think you're right on using the word philosophy. I might tweak the word 'emphasizing' about roleplay, since I immediately think of RPI MUDs that roleplay is a core focus, but are dramatically different than MUs because there's a lot of gameplay in MUDs that are tangential to or basically unrelated to fostering RP. So I might just say that code in MUSHes is there only to foster and support roleplay, and provided coded tools for roleplay, which probably distinguishes them from MUDs that have roleplay but want to have a lot of other gameplay elements that are distinct and separate from RP.

Like what distinguishes MUs from other RP environments like storium, discord, tumblr, boards, googledocs, etc is the relative ease that staff can track very divergent storylines and help keep a cohesive, continuous world as a play environment, where players can relatively seamlessly go from one story with a group of friends to a different group of friends with a different story, and all of it is happening in the same world with a larger overarching story. Other RP formats just don't do that well, and most don't even try.

MUSHes in my mind take it a step further MUs in de-emphasizing the world as an interactive character and wanting to make sure no single-player game elements can get in the way of RP interactions between player characters. Just a more streamlined, story driven and character interaction focused experience. I was hesitant to call Arx a MUSH, not because of the technical definition that's inaccurate about codebase, but because I think philosophically it doesn't quite fit right. Since I definitely do want some MUD-like elements of an interactive environment as a way of spurring on spontaneous RP, and automated ways of having game-like interactions that can organically act as RP prompts, and that's leaning away from a MUSH philosophy that can see those things as distractions, imo. It just is still different from a MUD philosophy that wants those things as gameplay elements for their own sake, rather than how they create RP.

Things we can control:

1. Community resources that makes starting games easy
2. Community resources that help people find games they'd be interested in playing
3. Support for game runners trying to solve issues on their games, best practices
4. The games we're actively involved with

Not much else. Categorizing games might be boring to other people, but it's not irrelevant. There's a world of difference between someone that comes from a very freeform, prose driven RP environment that would like Ares games that really supports that and hammers it home in a fantastic way, versus someone that's transitioning from RPIs and would feel lost in something without some coded immersive world. Knowing the differences does help us nudge people to games that work for them, or at least explain the difference.

@Ganymede I don't think it's as hard to draw the line as it sounds. In a non-consent scene, if a pose or emit would detail graphic harm done to another character, or describe sexual or non-sexual torture or assault, could just state that it's going FTB before that pose or emit is said. And then players can state if they'd all prefer to proceed, and go on as normal.

Say you were gaming with an underage gamer, and there's a point where the scene would get uncomfortable graphic. I think most players would say, 'well okay it's going this way, so we'll handwave it and this is generally what happens' in an ooc explanation.

Mind you, I just ban all sexual assault storylines. It's just not permitted, and that's understood, because I don't want to have to spend time sorting those. If staff wants to permit it, that's fine, staff can and should do whatever they are comfortable with. I'm just saying that almost every game I saw that said, 'well okay we'll allow it and just leave it to players to set boundaries', I've seen threads pop up over some huge blow up specifically over this. And I think that a, 'default FTB' is probably a wiser course that would avoid that if you don't want to ban it all together like I do.

I also worry that we can easily forget how petty people can be, and how much they really want to see their 'enemies' on games get what is coming to them. An awful lot of people want their opponents to RP out scenes uncomfortable for them. Embarrassing and humiliating ones. I have, on at least 4 different occasions, seen people complain that someone not playing out some kind of torture or punishment scene as trying to avoid the consequences in ICA=ICC. Even if they would be fine with taking it in a FTB. No, they want that player to be upset. Wanting to see a character in an antagonistic relationship be publicly humiliated and punished IC is pervasive, and that can go way too far way too fast.

@Pandora Pretty much any command would be a huge cultural shift for the game in how it feels, but a command doesn't have to be on an opt-out.

One approach would be to not put responsibility on the party that feels uncomfortable, with not using a command to duck out in the +Iamreallynotdownwiththis or whatever, but instead to go entirely to a culture of affirmative consent. Say that every scene in public defaults to a PG-rating, and anyone wanting to take it to say, a hard R rating would have to do a command of, +okaytimeforadultcontent and if everyone codedly agrees, it's now an R rating scene and scene keeps going as private/adult/whatever. If they don't all opt-in, scene ends and FTBs, and they then do a handwaved, offscreen synopsis. If contentious, just arbitrated through dice.

I think virtually any kind of coded flagging for adult activity is going to squick at least some people out, because it says the quiet part out loud in a way that can't really be politely ignored very well or code going places where they feel it has no business at all going. There's a lot of really strong reactions to Haven, Firan's sex code and so on, and I think anything coded trying to establish boundaries for consent is going to run into that, as well as people feeling that it just guts the organic feeling of RP and makes something that's freeform and flowing into a mechanical hassle they don't want to deal with. That said, if you are looking for more of a MUD-like vibe of player arbitration to reduce terrible outcomes and prevent creeps from trapping people in miserable and deeply offsetting scenes, I think forcing affirmative consent is a strong avenue. And for a MUD-like, you can do a lot with say, tagging specific grid areas as very clearly having different defaults that are not PG, and or categorize what people are comfortable with. And filter people's 'No, Absolutely Not, Will always FTB if this is in a scene' categories with very awkward degrees of detail.

For staff, I think code like that comes down to whether you're okay with approaches that feel ham-handed, in-organic or controlling, that could scare off anyone that takes a look at commands and decides you're running a sex game and they want absolutely nothing to do with that depending on the degree of the commands and the sensitivity in implementation. Otherwise, it's accepting that creepers will probably pressure the fuck out of people and put the responsibility of saying, "I'm not cool with this" on people that might feel like they should go along with intensely creepy shit because they don't want to feel like they are being dramatic and making a big deal out of someone slowly racheting up the pressure on them, like they have to 20 other people, since boundaries are not clearly defined and consent is just assumed until someone sets their boundaries very clearly.

@BlondeBot said in Model Policies?:

I'd say limit what can or can't be said on channels is a good one. Keep the guidelines clear and the consequences consistent. For instance:

No religion
No politics
No social justice
No sexuality/gender/orientation
No 'just saying' or 'telling it like it is'
No recent tragedies
No cat de-clawing
No bad-mouthing other games/players/staff

Of course, tailor the exact guidelines to the kinds of conversations you want/don't want to see, but in my experience, not allowing people to bring up hot-button topics that are proven powder kegs helps to keep things calm! And helps keep the focus where it should be: on your game!

In general I don't think I'd define many specific categories, except to broadly avoid controversial subjects or one that would reasonably start arguments. Since the problem is if you define one category as a problem that some people find unobjectionable, that appears to be passing a value judgment on all discussions of it whether it would start an argument or not, and helps nudge towards an environment that can be slanted.

I'm remembering the dude I had to ban for a joke about Harambe right now. I dunno if the 'no recent tragedies' would have even occurred to him, since it had been some time, but he just predictably did the thing of making a tasteless joke, someone saying they didn't think it was funny, him getting upset someone implied he was insensitive and bites back, and on and on.

@faraday said in The Fate of MUSHdom:

I like to see innovative ideas, but I don't think this is a sound proposition.

It's all well and good to say "advertise and get more players", but those players need to have somewhere to play, and those games need to be able to support the influx. MUSHes don't scale well, primarily due to limited staff bandwidth. You can't fix that by dumping a bunch of inexperienced new players into the mix.

Also the idea of onboarding new players is noble, but MUSHes are so very different. I question how effective it can really be at preparing people to play a real game.

Faraday's right on the money here. I struggle to support the players I currently have which are generally very familiar with MUs and comfortable being relatively self-sufficient. My game would not be able to handle it if I spammed like gigantic non-MU rp forums with ads and had several hundred brand new 'how do I MU?' type players show up. Pure sandboxes and MUDs can handle loads like that but most of the games talked about on here are not that, so it's pretty hard to do.

I registered to reply to this thread after I noticed it because of how close it is to my experiences. About six months ago, I decided to start creating a new MUSH with my room mate. I've been MU*ing for a few years with a decent amount of soft code experience but no experience at all with Python while he had very little MU experience but a pretty heavy computer science background. We had a pretty big argument since he was horrified at softcode and didn't want to learn it, while I was extremely reluctant to try something I had no familiarity with at all, but we went with Evennia.

I'm SO glad we did. While definitely a few features would have been faster to add as we stumbled, there's a good amount of features we're adding that would have been flat out impossible with softcode. Particularly on the web framework side. One nice thing is that since django is bundled into it, you can do a lot of stuff for web support rather than just use an external wikia. We're still working on this ourselves, but there's a lot of potential there to have a far more rich web experience than just wiki character sheets. When you think of how critical wikis are to most games, there's a large potential for eliminating tedious tasks players often complain about, like cleaning logs or updating things about their characters sheets that would be reflected on the web. Ultimately the game might wind up being closer to a web browser game than a true MU, but with how niche MU gaming is I think if anything Evennia will lower the bar to entry rather than raise it.

I had to think about this when building my own game and finding out that every single page ever made was logged permanently server side. On one hand, sure, that pretty much means he said-she said was never going to be a factor. But I decided to remove it entirely, simply because I think even if I was completely transparent about it, a lot of players would feel extremely uncomfortable about the lack of privacy.

I think staff has to cultivate an atmosphere of trust, and I think a lack of privacy/spying undermines it heavily.

Related on the subject of posing speed, but probably an unpopular opinion here: I think pose orders are god awful and inherently destructive to the tempo of any scene. I was horrified by them on the Reach. They were an unholy abomination unto the lord. Any scene with a few strangers was so very excruciating and pointless and arduous that I was like, 'Oh. So that's why everyone here hates social RP. MAKES SENSE NOW.' Holy shit they made things so damned slow and tedious. I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER play on any game where that's an accepted part of the culture again. No fucking way, I'd rather have a root canal without pain killers.

Fuck 4 hours for a 1 page long log. Jesus christ.

I really would not want to put a sexual assault victim in a spot where they have to say, 'I am uncomfortable with any part of this RP and wish to fade to black any and all of it and just let a GM determine the consequences', but it is the logical conclusion of a (nearly) completely hands off staff in a yes-first type game. I think that you should probably be as painfully clear as possible in any fade-to-black policy. It's very surprising how many players feel pressured to RP out scenes they are deeply bothered by and they really, really need to feel that staff has their back. I wouldn't take it for granted at all that players would think first to fade even in scenes.

I'm a big believer in fostering grid roleplay and open events since I think it greatly reduces the feelings of exclusion, and time permitting it's fun to try to reach out and make RP for new people and hope it works out, but it can be pretty easy to get burned on doing it.

A lot of the people I've met who were the most vocal about it was strictly because their form of RP was extremely self-absorbed and wasn't a whole hell of a lot of fun for other people, and they weren't particularly interested in hearing the most politely worded nudges of how they might tweak their style. Worse, the really vocal and needy have a way of trying to dominate every open RP and make it about them... which reinforces cliquish behavior by other RPers to exclude them, and in turn actually does create the kind of alienation that makes the more just quiet and shy types feel really left out. So it's important for activity generators to keep being open for the latter group, while hoping staff sorts out the former, rather than letting things drift to an unfortunate logical conclusion.

@Thenomain I think you're missing one really core point in your argument.

The way a number of MU players approach their characters is fundamentally different from one another, and there's a distinct culture clash that shows online when these groups of players are put together, and what IC/OOC means to these players is nothing alike to one another.

One group sees their characters as essentially avatars for themselves, and they care about what they accomplish and what they represent, and that group is pretty much never ever okay with sacrificing the character for a story. This group tends to have the players that go idle rather than risk losing something their characters have accomplished, even if it makes it effectively meaningless if they aren't playing. IC motivations don't really come into it nearly as much, it's decidedly secondary. They tend to be less invested in roleplay except in so much it shows the continual development of their characters. I don't think this is a bad thing or anything like that, but it's important to understand their investment there compared to the RP as a whole.

Then at the opposite of the extreme, are players very focused on the stories, and the only care about the characters they play in so much that they are critical for the stories they want to be involved in or find fun. A lot of these players are the ones that simply don't care if their characters die, provided they are getting good stories and having strong narratives around it, and will do whatever. A lot of these players will do IC actions they know are extremely self-destructive, since why would they avoid it if it makes sense for the story and contributes to an interesting story? A lot of these players are just as happy with one shot throw away characters since they don't care at all, it's just the stories attached to them. So obviously if you start thinking about IC/OOC rules about judging the attachment of players to their characters you are going to swing way wide when it comes to them.

Realizing if a player is way more invested in the stories and the roleplay surrounding them, or whether they enjoy building a character and what it represents, is a huge part of keeping a player happy. And obviously most players enjoy a good blend between the two and fall somewhere on a scale there, but IC/OOC can mean markedly different things to both. I just feel like your posts were missing this as you talked about making characters more important than the game itself, which obviously would be wildly inaccurate for large group of players... that can still cause grade A drama if they think people are pissing all over their stories even if they don't care whatsoever about their characters.

@Ghost I don't really think it's so much player bases as the way a lot of games are designed. It's not so much that there's very few players interested in deeply plot driven stories or intricate themes or anything like that compared to a huge amount that want to ignore it for TS, in my opinion. It's that the former is very reliant on GMs and highly active staff or an incredible code base to keep active, while the later is like, 'Well. Nothing's going on. Guess time to make our own fun' which will inevitably happen in between stories or when waiting on GM responses.

YMMV, but I met very few people that were like, 'Just going to ignore everything going on in the game to have my social rp with the one person I like' and a ton that just did that while waiting on things to happen. I can think of, I dunno, maybe 40 or 50 players I know in the later camp and I think that'd be enough for me to get a game going.

@secretfire I like high fantasy quite a bit, and I very much agree about endless sex romps not being the same thing as character-driven RP. But for me the difference between low fantasy and high fantasy is just pitch and degree, since it's about making characters and how they react to the world and their setting.

A character that lives in a world where magic acts as a constant deus ex machina and they have magical travel and can magically handwave hand wave all diseases/ailments/common problems immediately has a different tone in stories from ones where problems like that just can't be solved. This doesn't make high fantasy bad, and this doesn't necessarily even make low fantasy grimdark, it just changes the perspective of characters from ones where cure all panaceas might exist to ones where they very emphatically do not. I personally find high fantasy focus a lot more on describing the world and their possibilities, since they are so markedly different, while low fantasy take a perspective closer to the character and playing more the similarities.

@ThatGuyThere said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

To me having them separate makes sense, simply looking at combat, a WoD combat round is a matter of seconds much like that for any other rpg system. The actual time needed to play this out is well more then seconds, even in table top. Pretty much every RPG book I have ever read addresses the matter of IC time not equaling RL time. If MUDs want to say it is that is fine but then also to make sure that it takes longer to travel your grid during Rush hours at least on a modern game.

I think this really captures well what @Ganymede was talking about earlier in the simulation vs narration, which is also what I think the key cultural difference between a mush and mud. I don't think most mush players hate coded systems really (look at RfK), but they deeply resent any coded system that removes narration and applies the simulation in a way that yields an absurd result they disagree with. Where a character dies because code say it happens, even if a player can think of a dozen reasons that code doesn't make sense. It's not imo that the MUD attempt at simulation was wrong, but missing variables from a coder not thinking of them is jarring and is no longer immersive. I'm pretty sure most mush players are okay with code that would operate largely the same way a narrative would play out and just automates it, but a lot of MUDs try to take a step way past that, and then ignore mitigating circumstances. That's where I think most of the cultural pushback happens.

@mietze said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

I feel you, Wretched. One of the irritating and just morale grating experiences I had on TR as a Ling admin was denying MGMT his fucking 9 foot long tail and a whole bunch of other shit mien...at Wyrd 2. So much public boohooing, lying, so much other people saying "OMG YOU BITCH Y U DENY PLAYERS SOMETHING". Verbal abuse on the job, in pages. Relentless. But you know, guy was "having a bad day, he's not usually that bad."

Who on earth puts staff in a position where they have to rein in players for thematic violations without empowering them also to deal with abuse? Wtf, that's horrible. If some staff told me I made a desc or background or whatever that was over the line, I would be like mortified and apologize. Who fights about that shit?

@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Tehom said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@WTFE said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Meg said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

They have an easy application

They want an email for application. That's an instant "nope!" here. On two grounds:

1. I don't know them from a hole in the ground. I'm not going to hand them my email.
2. If(f) they think this somehow "secures" things they're too stupid to staff.

I don't know (or care) if #2 is true or not. #1 is sufficient grounds for turning and walking away.

I am honestly confused how anyone could ever imagine that an email would be anything more than a convenience for automating the application process so that a GM doesn't have to be on hand.

Because there have been several times in the past where people have taken those email addresses and abused the trust of the people who've asked for them. We here, esp. us dinos like WTFE and myself, have been over this and we can't come up with a considerately valid reason why having the email in the first place has more benefits than risks.

I'd be happy to waive it if someone is unwilling to provide an email, though I'd wonder why they wouldn't just google 'temp email' and save both of us time.

There is something that saves everyone even more time: Not needing s system to validate over email to being with. This is how Mushes (et al.) work.

As a coder, I would then be able to get other things done. If the email address is used for "is a person" except then you're ignoring fake email addresses, then it's helping nobody. It's a hoop that nobody cares about. So why have it?

I don't suspect the answer is much more than habit. It seems like a very Mudlike requirement, though I honestly don't know why.

Because the alternate implementations are worse, more cumbersome, and unnecessary when the few people that have issues with it we could just manually make exceptions for? I can understand people that have been doing this for eons having a ton of baggage with weird stuff that's happened, but like I don't see the point in designing unbelievably arduous workarounds when I can just say, 'yeah sure I can do that for you manually' instead and skip an email by hand. If you're designing a system where staff and a player applying for a roster character don't need to be on at the same time, you can just automate mailing out a confirmation email saying you're good to go... or you can make a giant account based system where anyone even guesting to the game has a brand new account, track characters to each account, design auto pruning so there's not a horribly unmanageable scroll of dead accounts, probably protect the accounts with false deletes, make sure an internal mail system accommodates them, and so on. Or you can use an email. If you wanna say it's more logical to do the Giant Catastrophe Option for the 2 dudes in the world that are scared that I'll track them down through their fake throw away email, okay man, whatever you say.