Best posts made by Apos

I think restarts are very rarely successful because they face more challenges than would be immediately evident. They inherit the negatives connected with to a project without any of the positive inertia they maintained before, and need more work than a fresh start would. I think it can be done but I think it's significantly harder when most people are probably expecting to say, 'Open, come on back' and I just don't think it works like that at all.

Eta- reading 'restart' in this context as 'relaunching a game that's been dead for a while'

I don't think there's any kind of rules there, people have way different goals and kinds of games they want to run. And a lot will approach stuff in stages. Like, we need X code and theme done before we start, then ideally Y done before we really get going, and Z somewhere in a nebulous future. I just think people get tripped up when they aren't realistic about what they want to have done or the work that it takes to get there, whether it's code or story.

@pyrephox said in What Is Missing For You?:

I think it goes to show that there's really a lot of space in MU*dom for diverse cultures and visions. It's a different way of conceiving of the game space, but if you groove with it, it works really well, and has remained in play for...decades? at this point.

Yeah I think that there's a pretty wide scope of different types of games that would appeal to people. If someone would enjoy a type of game, no matter what kind of game that might be, if they are willing to put in the effort to run the same kind of game they'd enjoy, chances are other people will be into it.

I think it might be fair to say that a large percentage of players join a game because they have friends there that also help them get acclimated to a game and provide them a foundation of RP that they can then develop from.

I don't think that varies too much whether someone is very experienced or brand new to the hobby.

@faraday said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

Also, looking at the game wiki/help/etc., most games are centered around the assumption that the people coming to it already know how to MUSH and just need to know the specifics of how this particular MUSH operates. Even someplace like Arx, which someone mentioned as being particularly open to other online gaming styles, is still geared this way.

I agree. What I found challenging is how to present information, because really people brand new need information before they ever connect to the game, and where to put it, and what kind of tutorial and where it should be, and how to make it not get in the way of people that already know that stuff. The last part is what I think is the most difficult, since if it's accessible but unobtrusive, it will often be missed. But if it's not unobtrusive or mandatory, that will annoy the hell out of most MU players. At least until the entire platform is changed to be more intuitive and accessible.

I think the most practical short term solution is to be as friendly as possible in game and encourage mentoring from MU players to people brand new to the hobby, but that doesn't help people browsing the web that wander over a MU website and have no idea how on earth someone plays it.

On the other hand, MUSHes and population are weird because every game has a different sweet spot in what they would consider an ideal population, for how many people the admin really would want on their game and how much they can handle, so judging games by population in my opinion makes no sense. So while sure we want the hobby to grow, it's super awkward in whether a lot of games would feel pressured or even collapse if that was successful.

@mietze said in Let's talk about TS.:

My hard line in the sand nope: anyone who claims to be married or partnered who then spends time bitching sexually about their spouse/partner. I'm not talking about occasional grumpy stuff, look I've been married/partnered to the same guy for like 20 years, every one gets on each other's nerves sometimes. But constant complaining or worse, /denigrating/ one's partner? Yikes. I have met people that were so ugly and mean about their SO that I did not feel comfortable interacting with them again. On any level.

Another hard note for me is someone who is constantly complaining about their other RP partners. Especially if its accompanied by "you are the nicest and the only one who understsnds." Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Holy shit, people do that? That is mind boggling to me, that would strike me as uncomfortable as someone asking like, creepy personal questions, maybe more so. To go with the D&D posts, I think no one should ever get near their Wand of Regrets and Disappointment.

@thesuntsar said in Arx: @clues:

@oldfrightful I'm pretty sure becoming one/fighting one/obtaining an army of them would solve a lot of my problems.

Trust me when I say that it wouldn't, without knowing how much you know about Arx werewolves.

Arx - play.arxmush.org for website and play.arxmush.org port 3000, or IP 45.33.87.194:3000

@surreality that is because it always turns into, "hey could you not use that word, I don't like it" and someone responds with "no, fuck you snow flake, I do what I want." Then is shocked when they are called an asshole.

@prototart said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

@arkandel said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

Folks ignore the fact ours is a shrinking hobby because they can personally get RP, or they've personally helped someone new get into playing (which is great, btw, don't get me wrong) despite how playerlists are becoming shorter and more games shut down than get opened

so

yeah

I don't think people ignore it. I think almost everyone is keenly aware of it, but everyone's influence largely ends at their own game if they are a game owner, and most players feel very little to no ownership over improving the hobby and have limited ability to do so. And I think most people just don't want to spend their fun time policing other people that aren't super over the top problematic, even when those people are intensely alienating to new players not willing to just deal with them.

@sunnyj I think it is challenging but possible, even if people need realistic expectations about it.

@Thenomain I'm still going to hold that having any character statistic that can be interpreted in wildly different subjective ways based on the player is just bad design. Appearance is just a dumb stat.

@Wizz said in High Fantasy:

@Apos said in High Fantasy:

I don't think it is either, but that wasn't what I was getting at earlier. Okay so take like werewolf characters you see on the wikia for any WoD game, and read them over. I'm positive that if you looked at them, you get a pretty good idea how that character spends their time, day to day, between the major plots that shapes their lives. You can probably picture all the little minor social interactions.

Now try to do the same thing with a lot of dungeons and dragons characters. [...]
And those are the questions people need answered when doing the random RP that shapes social interactions on MUs, so anyone setting up a game in those settings has to be the one to answer them, even though the thematic settings already seem to be established.

What you all seem to be saying is that what we think of as a functional, successful MU* needs to look and play basically like a simulator rather than a role-playing game. I think that mindset is also behind a lot of the complaints we have about the state of most current games -- dinosaur characters, treehouse clubs, endless bar-p, sandboxes, etc.

I'd kinda like to see a MU* that is run more like a public OTT. Players can have bits that multiple characters are attached to and these characters are part of limited campaigns (as in, will end, characters get sent to that giant tavern in the sky) with scheduled scenes. "Downtime" rp is an option, but not incentivized or rewarded in any way - no weekly XP, no cookies or votes or whatever.

I mean...I'm not gonna do it but. XD

I wouldn't go that far, it depends on your goals. If you wanna use a MU to run a weekly campaign, or act as a waiting room for players and GMs between those campaigns, games do that. I'm not really into that style but I view it as a personal preference thing.

@Sarah said in Good MU with sense of progression:

Sorry guys, it was a hell of a month. I left from Sindome actually, mostly because as I said they discourage any and all ooc communication and so I was completely on my own for figuring out basic survival mechanics.

Anyways aside from a sense of progression?/i guess medieval? Lord and Ladies games where I can /do/ things, etc.

So most MUSHes are really designed for a tabletop RPG writ large feel, that's very character relationship driven with GMs often telling stories or maintaining plot, but they generally don't have the kinds of game mechanics you'd see on a Sindome or HellMOO or Armageddon that has a player versus environment feel, that could give you the kind of sensation of progression.

I'm adding some of that to my game over time for what you might be thinking of, but it's still really downplayed, because games that are MUD-MUSH type hybrids are deciding where their focus is on creating an environment that can act as RP prompts for players and let them develop things on their own, versus a collaborative storytelling experience where the focus is really on letting those players drive stories without an environment possibly getting in the way. I like to try to combine the two and want to keep adding in more environmental features on Arx, but they are still noticeably different styles of RP.

@tragedyjones You can't escape it though whenever you tie something subjective like, 'they have an attractive appearance' to a stat. There's objective physical characteristics, but whether those are considered attractive is subjective, which is why Theno was able to call Lithium a dirty fatshaming horrible person by implication, even if he acted obtuse about doing it. So like, if a player has a skin condition or Proteus syndrome at the tabletop and is really sensitive about it, I also wouldn't want to be the asshole to say that orcs are considered hella ugly because of their skin and how their bone structure differs from commonly held societal standards of beauty. I mean sure it's true and we all know it's true but why even get into it?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that characters with extroverted personalities that are given an out from consequences due to their age or any other variable, are going to attract a lot of problematic players.

Doesn't really matter why someone is given an out from consequences. Age, Tragic Backstory, Strong Dude That Doesn't Afraid of Anything, Family That Will Protect The Princess... whatever. Any character that can act like a prima donna and get away with it for some reason is going to attract the worst people in the hobby, with a small percentage of positive, collaborative roleplayers.

Whether someone is a player or staff doesn't really matter all that much, just whether someone is there to create story for other people. A player on a pure sandbox running stories nonstop for 20-30 other people is probably way way more important to the game's vibrancy than a staffer grinding through jobs, and a storyteller on a non-sandbox tying people together and making the stories overlap is gonna be more meaningful for a game's success than a half dozen players chatting in an ooc room or whatever. I honestly don't think the setting matters all that much aside from that initial interest.

@Thenomain Put in a bug report ticket a little bit earlier on that github run by that Potato developer, though I figure might be a while before I hear back. If @Warma-Sheen managed to get it working I'll definitely try to tinker with it but I don't have windows 10 on my box so I can't reproduce it myself.

@olsson Yea, I mean it's sexual assault. It weirdly feels like an escalation to describe something accurately, but I mean, by definition it is.