Best posts made by Apos

If it helps to think about whether code arbitrating something like this is a good fit, I'd say games that are specifically designed to be competitive versus ones that are collaborative have very different priorities, and this is much more suited to the latter.

For a game designed around being competitive, the most central aspect of the game environment is fairness and consistency in creating a level playing field. People have a much more difficult time being invested and pouring in their effort without a guarantee it will be treated equivalently to every other player. This means that players in general are very suspicious of any means to alter an outcome based on personal preference. A lot of MUD players, with entirely coded, mechanical outcomes, would never, ever be comfortable on a MUSH where a GM arbitrates outcomes because of this.

For collaborative games, we're much more interested in fostering environments that allow shared stories to thrive, and for that the comfort of players is critical, and vastly more important than perfect game balance. Someone that's a raging asshole can actually be pretty healthy for a competitive environment in some circumstances, where even someone that is merely unconcerned about whether a shared story is fun for other people is detrimental in a collaborative one.

So I kind of think it's a little bit of the wrong question when talking about collaborative story environments like MUSHes to ask, "do we need a tool like this" and it might be better to start a step further and ask, "what's are the best approaches in making sure people feel at ease in withdrawing from RP that makes them uncomfortable without any disruption to them or shared stories?" And I think that question is the critical one for any game runner in making sure no player is sitting through squicky RP that creeps them out because they don't want to be considered a problem and they don't want to feel like they are screwing up other people's stories.

@wizz said in Who are you?:

• I love, love trying new food. Bizarre Foods is like, my one reality show I love. Favorite cuisines are fairly spicy or just interesting, like Indian. "Weirdest" thing I've ever eaten was probably balut, and I felt awful about it and had to eat it with my eyes closed.

I'm filipino and I'm pretty sure that balut isn't really meant to be eaten and is just used to prank people. Don't believe their lies.

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

Well, you heard the lawbot.

For the sake of this thread let's give up on trying to define what a "MUD" or a "MUSH" or whatever is and drill down to the essential question; can a roleplaying game be designed with little or even no staff necessary to run it?

I don't want to limit the thread too much by explaining how this is to be done - if it's via advanced automation, if the answer is 'code' or 'people' or 'systems', etc - but I'm curious to see what you all think.

I think it might be the wrong question, since a lot of games do it, and I tend to agree with @Sunny in her post about it depends on the game. I think a better question is, "With many tools for automation available, what are the reasons people would choose to not do it, and have staff instead?" Because I think that gets to more interesting points, where you see different philosophical differences in who has control and where.

Like my personal take would be that I only feel staff is necessary in a couple of cases:

If you want to have an overarching, cohesive story that ties all the players together, and you don't want full narrative control completely disseminated in a way that makes it less coherent and introduces constant contradictions.

Or if you feel code, while plentiful, is a limiting factor that can't full cover the full range of creative player responses, and you want the flexibility of an arbiter accounting for new situations on the fly that don't neatly fit scopes of rule sets, that might be too fast to be fairly handled in a crowdsourced way. This fits the point by @mietze I think.

My personal preference is a game that could run pretty comfortably with virtually no staff and players would still have plenty to do, but then staff can help bring the game to life and move the story forward.

A lot of people are reminding me lately why MUs can be an amazing medium. I think the reason so many people burn out, become cynical and get jaded in the MU format is just how much effort someone can really invest in creative writing when they get excited about it, and then feel like all their effort is dismissed or taken advantage of. People get burned like that, and hesitate to ever do it again, and who can blame them?

But man, running a new game and having complete strangers decide to take a chance and just pour their hearts into it, seeing all the work they invest and the amount of fun they have, it's hard to think of a more fulfilling medium. You guys are goddamned incredible sometimes.

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

@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Same will hold true for any kind of social combat, where, 'tell me ur sekrits so u die' is pretty much the social equivalent of some dude standing outside of the newbie gardens spam killing people in a MUD.

Except isn't this exactly how the interrogation social combat worked on Firan? Not that anyone is holding Firan up as some paragon of coded system excellence by any means, but you can't quite claim that any social combat system will punish people for that kind of fuckery, because it was pretty much the status quo on the last L&L game we all knew and loved(to bitch about).

There's two distinctly different kind of social systems that people are really talking about, that have very different goals. The macro ones we took very light nudges towards (reputation, renown, prestige) and those will all be massively revamped- basically anything dealing with any NPCs at all have to come through a social lens, and how well someone will rule will largely depend either on their social skills, or the political and social characters helping them with that. That kind of, 'I want to sell the nameless NPCs on something' is something not many people have problems with, since even if characters are both trying to convince NPCs to do different things so it's effectively PvP, it still is at one divide.

The really fucked up, 'tell me a secret that is suicidal' is the kind of social combat that a lot of people justifiably have huge gut rejections of, because they've seen the gigantic abuse cases there which just completely remove autonomy. Simply put, no social combat system should ever allow any kind of absurd situations that is wildly out of character and self-destructive for them- it just doesn't make sense. I vastly prefer buy in and carrot approaches to things like that, and though yeah I need to make sure social characters have teeth and have plenty of ideas about that, no charming stranger at a bar is going to talk a calm, rational person into cutting their own throat because it seemed like a good idea at the time. One reason so many people had such a problem with Custodius oocly is because he tended to try to sell other players oocly into a direction for their own characters that was wantonly self-destructive by taking advantage of ooc thematic ignorance combined with staff indifference or active collaboration in other games. That's actually a design flaw that isn't really addressed so much- characters should always be representative of actual people, they shouldn't really be permitted to take actions that are so self-destructive they make absolutely no sense in the context of the story, and are a result of ooc collusion or ignorance. And I carry that same philosophy on social combat or anything else in the game- if some rational, calm character has no good reason their happy guy wants to self-destruct, and it is purely ooc motivated, it can't be permitted.

Virtually every game will let player characters walk off that bridge, because they don't want to impede player agency over their characters, -even if- it makes no sense whatsoever. I say that's bullshit, and bad for collaborative games. It makes a shared story worse when you allow the absurd, even if it is purely self-destruction that can't be explained or rationalized.

Ten people having a blast is in my opinion more successful than two hundred people that are utterly miserable.

I think just rephrasing the question makes it self answering. When someone asks what a metaplot is, and it's defined as, 'overarching storyline that binds together events in the official continuity', then I think it just becomes, 'do you need an official continuity?' And the answer to that is, 'I want to run a sandbox where people make their own fun' and one is unimportant or, 'I want all the stories bound together' and one can be very important. I think the metaplot question almost can't be separated from, 'do you want a sandbox or an interconnected world?'

Sandbox is used as a perjorative and I think that's stupid and mostly just done by people that would never really be able to run a non-sandbox themselves for any length of time. It's really just the kind of game you want to have and the energy you're willing to invest into having it.

So I didn't want to clutter up the ad thread of United Heroes with a big tangent, but @Arkandel made a joke about how much drama there was compared to WoD games, and I think it's important to consider why.

When making a game, someone has to ask themselves what design choices they are making that will put any players in a position to feel antagonistic to one another. If they opt into that, if they -want- that, what they can't do is say, 'I expect players to be mature and never get upset' because that will never happen. Encourage it, foster it, but absolutely never depend upon it. So either you take active steps to avoid a toxic, antagonistic environment where players loathe one another, or you ignore it and let it happen, and just hope for the best. I've never enjoyed games that opt for the latter and I swear an awful lot do, because it isn't really fun to think about this stuff for game runners.

So what design choices are resulting in extreme toxicity on some comic or multiverse games?

For games that are essentially entirely PvE and collaborative, they have one of the most antagonistic setups imaginable from an ooc perspective. You have people wanting to play or play with other feature characters as their motivation for playing the game to begin with, put in a position of judging other people's roleplay and whether they are basically doing their job by roleplaying. With not being able to really see what other people are really doing, and motivated to believe the worst about others if they don't get the interactions they want, there is absolutely no way that does not become toxic without extraordinary effort to prevent it. Look at the huge number of posts on UH's ad thread bitching about how people are playing their characters, and I really, really do not think any of those people read that and go, 'Wow, that's a fair complaint, I better spend more time RPing with this person shit talking me. Thank you, @Social-Diseases , I learned a lot today.' Putting people in a position of feeling competitive for either time with FCs or playing the FCs themselves is always going to result in resentment for how they are played- it doesn't really matter if the criticism is justified, just the fact it happens is going to create fights.

Games will usually have a honeymoon period and then a crash, and how violent the latter is depends upon how much resentment is allowed to build. The game opens, there's a wave of a hundred people taking characters. They are having fun, so they ignore the shit that really bothers them. Months go by, they still aren't getting the RP with some FC that is off RPing with his friends mostly, they get annoyed about it, say that FC is always TSing. FC might be spending 50% of his time RPing with strangers, but the larger the game, the less that will be noticed or appreciated. Criticism gets back to him that he doesn't do shit, he is now intensely resentful also, scales back what he was actually doing. Repeat this 500 times, as people become less and less willing to ignore the stuff that they were annoyed at to begin with. Complaints pile up, Staff starts dealing with embittered people rather than making story for people that aren't embittered, resulting in people that were having fun and happy not doing so. Eventually staff quits, game collapses, or there is a mass exodus as staff retaliates in ways that punishes people for having resentment and drives them off.

So what do you do to avoid that?

For starters, create powerful incentives for people RPing outside their circles and not just their friends. This is important to begin with in games. On games with FCs that are why people are there to begin with, I won't even say it's important, I'd say it is vital. Like I disagree with the reserve system to begin with, but if I had to maintain something that checked activity with votes or one ups or whatever, I would never allow the same people to ever vote again, relative to the size of the player base. For something like UH, you could pretty much say someone could never claim the same person again and be fine. On a WoD sandbox, cliques can exist pretty much without incident since no one really needs one another at all, or even particularly wants to interact with them, and a game of 200 people can be more like 50 games of 4 people each. That just isn't true for a FC game, and the dynamics are way different, and each one of those 50 cliques is a recipe for intense resentment. If they aren't playing with one another, there will eventually be a blow up.

Now on the flip side, when I said that staff should not expect players to be mature and never get upset without creating a place that encourages that, staff has to absolutely be proactive in creating the positive atmosphere and pushing back against the kind of behavior that will create long term problems. That sounds basic but very few people want to deal with behavioral problems, and the ones that DO want to deal with it are very rarely the people that should be. This tends to be the default because most staff don't create games because they have a burning desire to punish bad behavior from their friends or from socially dysfunctional members of the community. It is mind boggling that people think that, 'I really don't want to start a fight with the people I enjoy RPing with and police them on the behalf of strangers' is the most machiavellian, mustache-twirling corruption, because I guarantee you that will be the default for almost everyone. If you see problematic players and they aren't talked to, you can be absolutely certain that problematic staff aren't being talked to either, and the place is probably doomed. That is not rare, and that's not special, that's normal, and if a game opens as a lassiez faire, anyone-can-do-anything, that often probably means they have zero desire to police things and you can expect this. Basically, if there's chatter on channels that is snarky and acerbic, and it goes by without being challenged, run. So yes, running a large game is exceptionally challenging, but you either run it, or you let it devolve, and god help you if you set up it up in a way that has players disliking one another for their RP.

I see overpopulated games as a consequence of a lack of choices, but also people feeling a real risk in investing themselves into RP that doesn't have staying power. The more stable something appears, the more likely they will have a satisfying experience, and they don't feel like they are wasting their time.

I think there's like 4 general categories of challenges.

1. We have technical challenges, specifically in how difficult it is for anyone to initially create or maintain a game. If creating a game was as easy as a single right click and then running a setup wizard, of course we'd have an explosion of games. Right now the difficulty in creating a game is analogous to the difficulty in creating an entirely new platform. It's not like starting a new thread on a RP play by post forum. It's like creating an entirely new forum with code you made yourself.

2. We have creative challenges. It's a creative, collaborative hobby, and usually the person creating it is putting in immense creative energy. If they burn out, the setting stagnates, or even if they don't create something other people find interesting. And sandboxes by and large just pass the creative buck downwards.

3. We have administrative challenges. Specifically in arbitrating ooc disputes. Most people don't spend their fun recreation time because they enjoy working out personal issues between strangers who are ostensibly adults. And also doing it in a mature and balanced way that doesn't try to take advantage of the other people contributing, or make them a supporting cast to staff's main characters. Worse, the lack of transparency in the hobby tends to obscure other people's challenges, promote a feeling of entitlement due to how much someone feels they are doing while they can't see what everyone else is doing, and makes those with responsibility often feel justified in rewarding themselves.

4. We have awareness challenges. How many active MUs are out there? Fuck if I know. Doubt anyone does. We're a niche hobby, I probably run the biggest non-sandbox, and I doubt even a majority of people involved in the hobby have heard of it. We have community sites that have listings of games, but those are deeply flawed. A lot don't update, or are endless lists of things that have been dead for years. There's hundreds of thousands of new, younger gen RPers, and I doubt more than a tenth of a percent have even heard of MUs existing. Not that some games could handle an influx, but it is a little messed up.

I separate it into two different categories. If someone is really out of step with how seriously everyone else takes a game or event or something, and also would not feel bad if his or her own behavior was inflicted on them in turn because they don't take it seriously, I don't see that as a big deal. It's just being step and maybe a bad fit, but they would be okay with someone paying them in kind. This is like the playful shit talk people give one another, when they are fine with people bantering right back at them. That I don't judge that harshly.

But if someone would really NOT be okay with their own behavior being given back to them, and is using the anonymity of the internet to act terribly with no consequences, yeah... don't trust that person. That's who they really are imo.

@templari Like I get that dog piling sucks and someone probably doesn't need 8 different people all telling them they are terrible or whatever but it depresses me beyond measure that 'please don't use slurs if I ask you to stop' is considered a political stance.

I agree with most of the posts, but it might just be easier to try to think of concepts in terms of, "How am I going to make this character fun for other people to interact with?" Especially with an unlikable character, it is important to nail that. If you do, people will want to RP with you, if you don't, they won't. So I think it's pretty simple.

There is an upper bound to how many people staff can invest their time in and entertain, and if they aren't doing this then there is not much difference between MUs and less arcane RP formats. Table top writ large can only be writ so large before people are constantly forgotten and left out.

Someone could advertise hard on all the younger demographic RP communities but there's only a point in doing that if you can support them, and take the time to help get them into the game. I mean the larger RP forums, chat room type places have tens of thousands of users and I'd guess maybe like a tenth of a percent have even ever heard of MUs, but if I threw down ads and had like, 100 people log in as guests to ask questions on how to MU, there's no way I could support that.

@Prototart pretty much the entire reason Arx is as big as it is was because of the hardline stance that @Kanye-Qwest took against many of those elements. Like people assumed that banning early and often would shrink a game but the opposite is true when those elements alienate regular players.

So a couple quick comments, first I want to echo @faraday with her comment of:

Tech is not the only answer, but I wholeheartedly believe it is an important part of the solution.

I think we should remember that tons of people aren't RPing in google docs, or an MMO client or some random chatroom or something because they think it's the best format for roleplay. It's just easy and accessible. There's an awful lot of good people that could be amazing game runners, but they both know running a game takes a tremendous amount of time, and even if they have that time, the initial investment of effort into setting it up is huge. Game in a box is the best counter to that. Most people aren't going to create a game unless they can do it as easily as they can open up a google doc or make a new server in discord, and what a MU format offers to make it worth it past that has to be pretty clear cut to people.

I think it's important to also realize that our hobby is really driven by enthusiasm and how willing people are to pour their creative energies into it. So games tend to have sudden bursts, as an idea takes root and everyone is excited by it, pours into it, and then tends to move on, the same way tabletop campaigns can build and wane. It's important that game setup is simple and easy enough so people that have that excitement can capitalize it, and not run into factors that stall it out. Ares is an excellent step in this direction.

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

Just ping @Apos to give his top, mm, three to five things people should do or not do. Or one. I have confidence he could get it down into one.

We have a lot of people that have really different ideas of what they want out of games, and not everyone is going to be entirely honest even with themselves about what they want. I think with some people coming up on 30 years in this, most of you all with more experience have seen what makes healthy games probably more clearly than I have. But I think we could sum things up as like:

1. A safe, friendly environment that's welcoming. Feeling like a friend won't be creeped on if they invite them to the game. Being able to establish boundaries that are respected. Creating an environment that players feel comfortable in, and know they won't be abused.
2. Respecting the time and effort of everyone involved. It's a collaborative hobby, everyone is investing their time in it. Fairly recognizing it, never being dismissive of someone's contributions however invisible it might be to others. Whether someone gets into a game or stays in it often just comes down to whether they feel their time will be respected, or if they'll get invested only to have someone stomp on it.
3. Facilitating story and people finding RP. Creating an environment that makes it feel rewarding to be proactive and get stories going, where people feel comfortable reaching out to others. Whether it's completely organic of happenstance or whether it's ooc contact and building, there's healthy ways to encourage this and unhealthy blocks that have to be pushed back against.

These are pretty fragile things. If someone isn't invested, a single bad experience will usually sour them. If someone is invested, they could become very soured and become an active detriment to the game environment that's makes it unfun for other people and kills the environment.

@Wizz said in Model Policies?:

But I don't get OOC rooms. They're like, the Pub chan condensed down into a very tiny pond that doesn't always have oversight and people who might be inclined to be an asshole on Pub will almost certainly be an asshole in one, in my experience.

I think they can be a positive if there is by happenstance a group that enjoys hanging out there that greets new players, makes them feel welcome, and oocly fills them in on what's going on in the game and makes them feel more of a part of things. I have never seen this actually happen, and all the OOC rooms I've seen have been a negative for the game. To me they are an artifact of bygone times when the player base was made up of a majority of people with way more time, way less obligations IRL, and way more energy. Then I think the majority of OOC rooms would reflected that kind of energy. Right now, it reminds me of automated announcements for someone leaving a channel- probably useful back in a bygone era, but now pretty much just used by people to passive aggressively announce they don't like the people talking. Net negative in the current era.

can confirm, am old

We're a hobby that feeds off the creative energy of everyone around us and waxes and wanes, and that's a fragile thing. A few lukewarm or bad attempts at trying to stir something up is enough to discourage an awful lot of people in the hobby, and that goes for a format with hundreds of thousands of roleplayers or ten.

Really all it comes down to is just a few things. Are people able to find roleplay they enjoy when they want it? Are they left alone while doing it? Are they able to draw on the creative energy of others and combine it with their own? Are they confident they'll be treated fairly? Are they confident that the stories they get invested in won't be ended capriciously before they are ready for them to end?

Some of these things benefit from a large playerbase, but a lot don't. Just energized and active other people.

@tek said in The 100: The Mush:

My character: just lost her parents, distraught
His character: "If you want to talk, I'll be in my room"
Me: goes to find him in his room for a scene. scene starts.
Him: "Btw, I'm into Dom/sub relationships." switches to second-person text
His character: starts getting handsy

Yeah. Not sure how else this could have been interpreted, dude.

If someone asked me, "Hey what's the RP equivalent on a MU of sending an unsolicited dick pic to someone you just met?", now I have a really good example. If I was ever put in the situation of trying to explain why all that is fucked up, I really wouldn't bother- what's the point? Just wish them well in their future endeavors and move on. I mean normally I'd shake hands too, but in this case it seems a really, really bad idea.