Don't beat yourself up. From everything I heard, people had a great time, and you can be proud of that. You're one of the most generally well liked people in the hobby because of your willingness to put time and effort into things for other people, and running things for people is just another example of that. There will always be parts that don't work out how we want, but it doesn't take away from the fun people had.
@faraday My perspective might be biased since I'm missing out on the hardline dinosaurs already by running evennia, as those folks wouldn't play on a new codebase anyways. But I personally feel that the amount of dinosaurs like that is pretty tiny compared to the people that would get introduced into MUs with a web only format. Downloading a client is a big bar for entry for some people, let alone archaic command line interfaces in telnet.
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in How to Change MUing:
@Gilette said in How to Change MUing:
@AlexRaymond -- I actually think it is that, that there are still a lot of people who might log in a bit every week but don't really play. And, in my mind, they don't qualify as active MUers.
Maybe this isn't what you're trying to say, but the implicit attitude of YOU MUST BE ACTIVE AT ALL TIMES AND RP EVERY NIGHT FOR 6 HOUR SCENES is part of what drives more casual players out of the hobby. I don't think somebody who RPs a couple times a week is inactive at all. I think it's a reasonable level of activity and the hobby overall would be healthier if it was encouraged as a desirable median.
IMO there's no quicker way to make people quit than by saying, 'your fun relaxation is now an obligation'. F no, people are out of there.
@apotheosis said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@apotheosis said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
It would lower the workload for administrators, allow for the Hog Pit to serve its purpose, and also create a reasonable mandate of civility in other forums.
Our workload isn't the primary consideration. We also need to feel good about what we do here, and administrating an even partially racist, homophobic, etc forum isn't something I'd be interested in doing.
Demanding ideological purity always backfires. I can't accuse you of having ignoble intent but I can tell you that you're making a mistake. This policy you stated is a recipe for a purity spiral, the kind where you find yourself blindsided by a devastating dose of reality when you least expect it. Do you really think your ban button can protect you, or for that matter, anybody else?
Look. Rick. I don't even dislike you. Not really. I think your posts are often dumb, but you are obviously trying to be calm and reasonable this time. You register millions of times basically trying to participate, you keep talking about new game design approaches and you probably legitimately like this hobby. But you just have a chip on your shoulder ten miles wide about this stuff that's obvious to everyone.
It's not an even environment, man. It's not balanced to tell people what they are being too sensitive or thin skinned about, when you don't have any perspective of what they've been through. Yes, I get it, that saying, 'well okay just let anyone say anything and let the chips fall where they may', but when you're left with is only a tiny little segment of people that are cool with that. Anyone that's not just leaves. If you wanna run a game or forum like that, more power to you, but anyone that has friends that just wouldn't enjoy that won't be there.
And that's my problem with complete free for all environments, 4chan included. It really only represents people that are totally okay with it, and that's just not that many people, and it pretty much is only people of a very specific group that just haven't been or won't be effected by people punching down.
@rnmissionrun I dunno man, there's nothing intuitive about '+bb/post #_of_board/Re:Archaic MU syntax=I think this is awkward syntax'.
Like there's a good reason we're all posting on this website rather than using +bb on a community sandbox we connect to.
@Faceless Was pretty much my sole reason for having coded objects, 100%. In theory, it shouldn't matter. And yet. AND YET.
Well I think the comment about verisimilitude was pretty accurate, and that a lot of people want to have a feeling that their RP matters outside of the immediate scene, and it's not something that is just lost and vanishes into the ether if the participants are gone. It's about playing off the world, and that needs a certain game to do that.
Now I do agree with @Sunny in that I think it's a dangerous topic because like, a lot of people are going to judge others unfairly and act like, 'That person shouldn't be on this kind of game, they are looking for something different', and that can be a super damaging and unfair assumption. I think that thing should be discouraged. People might be on the 'wrong' game in that it might not really suit their needs, but that's kinda up to them to decide, or if they are disruptive up to staff to let them know or part ways with them, but I think it's a bad idea to try to categorize people as bad fits if they aren't disruptive.
@Tinuviel said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:
The main one, and it's a deep'un, that I took forever to learn is this: Most of the time people don't think about you. If you're not a complete boor, you don't have very much to worry about socially. Whatever you think people are obsessing over or gossiping about you behind your back... they probably aren't.
ETA: This doesn't count for this community. We're vengeful pricks.
I dunno. I've gotten approached several times in the past year by people thinking I have some kind of grudge or antipathy for them and I have no idea what they are talking about. Even the people that I'm like, 'yeah I don't think we work well together and I'm not gonna collab on anything with them in the future' I'm not building creepy shrines of hate to them, and I don't think other people are either. Of the couple dozen 'thanks but no thanks' I've said, only one has stalked my facebook and used a VPN to spam profanity at me so hey, that's hitting at under 5 percent.
@Sparks said in The Metaplot:
@Thenomain I think the problem Apos is referencing is when people either don't act on the responses to their requests or don't put in requests in the first place at all, then complain they aren't involved.
I think part of the problem is that people sometimes view "the staff is GM'ing a scene for me" as the only sort of involvement with metaplot that matters. Which is deeply unfortunate, because staff on most games doesn't have time to run complex GM'd scenes for everyone; requests and such are likely to give you the plot hooks to run with and involve others in order to get a plot to the point of group GM'd scenes.
Yeah @Sparks pretty well nails it. Like we have a lot of very shy, introverted people in the hobby. To a degree we have to be built around that, with reaching out to them and giving them nudges and trying to give them a lot of low pressure ways to get involved. If those aren't taken, then you're at the point where any more outreach becomes downright intrusive. Sure, someone can find anything they get as insufficient, or they just don't care for it, or they don't like the story or any of a hundred reasons and that's fine, but I think if it's accessible fairly evenly to players across the board and at least a large segment find it engaging and fun, then it works. And for a larger game even if we had the time to reach out to the 1/6th or whatever that give it a hard pass, I dunno if it's a good idea to do it, since the answer might be, 'I just wanna RP with my one friend here, why are you bothering me'.
So I mean yeah make it as accessible as possible but after a point trying to get people involved becomes downright pushy and is fun for neither party and actively detrimental.
I think that having an original setting that draws upon conventions is rewarding, though I do think it takes a really large investment of time and you'll never really be 'done' in explaining the world. Questions just not answered by a show or book series and pointedly ignored can also now be asked, so a creator can wind up pressured to define things they never would really want to address.
On the other hand, avoiding pedants who want to argue minutiae given in source material is imo very well worth it.
@Three-Eyed-Crow Nah it's simpler than that. Those are ones interested in the hobby, but steadfastly hold to two principles: a) they should be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want, without any consequences whatsoever. b) no one should be able to do the same thing to them.
@Lotherio The end of Inglorious Basterds was a historical WW2 MU where staff totally did not care about keeping the metaplot immutable.
@SparklesTheClown said in Differences Between MUDs and Everything Else? (MUSHes, MUXes, etc):
@Apos said in Differences Between MUDs and Everything Else? (MUSHes, MUXes, etc):
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.
The idea of reward, immersion, and constraints is a pretty useful thing to think about. I absolutely despise eat/drink code and never thought they added to anything. But I think certain code that add to the narrative of the game is definitely useful. Sanity checks is definitely a good example. Having code that pushes narrative rather than hinders or limits people I think is the ideal nuance here.
One thing I can't overemphasize enough is how much variance there is here in what players find acceptable or not, it very much is a 'you cannot please everyone' thing. It can be really, really easy to kind of find yourself constantly chasing an implementation that pleases everyone when it doesn't really exist, so I'd focus on what you'd personally find the most fun in terms of sanity checks/thematic enforcement.
@derp When multiple people with no previous affiliation all corroborate a pattern of behavior, I find it credulous. It's one thing to take an accusation with a grain of salt. It's entirely another to assume that a score of people with no provable prior connection must be involved in a grand conspiracy to get back at Bill Cosby for his jello commercials. I think that is an extremely foolish stance to take.
And let us be blunt. Predatory individuals have relied upon the willingness of others to dismiss something not easily provable for decades. It is very prevalent to many people's daily experiences. This is a backlash against that, and it is a good thing.
Anyways back on topic, I'd lean towards a single sticky'd post of current active games, because it trips me out that I have seen a few different subjects of people posting like, 'HEY ARE THERE ANY X GAMES STILL OPEN' which is a little fucked up that on the one forum actually dedicated to this hobby that someone needs to do that.
And then for the ad forum itself, yeah I'd say just a single post by owners introducing games, which they could update with responses or whatever/a faq, and then a separate thread wherever for the actual questions that can lead to people posting for 30 pages about why not having hookers is bad.
@derp said in Celebrities that are Dead To Us:
@Apos
What, it's a good thing that people can have their reputations ruined by a handful of accusers with no evidence of their claims? No. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Sure, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. Yes, I think it is an extremely good thing they can. And I mean no disrespect by this, but I think that people relating to the accused in these cases and thinking, 'dishonest accusations could bring me down' comes from a position of immense privilege that is ethically bankrupt.
@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Conversely, some of the posters here are staff on various games, and I suspend they wouldn't have tolerated neither the tone or degree of criticism applied they are themselves showing. Nor is it easy to shrug off being told you are complete shit at what you do publicly, then come back and word a polite response back from that.
I think most wouldn't have tolerated Tempest freaking out, but the rest...? I think that's selling the different staffers posting in this thread short. Yes, it's extremely difficult to be unfailingly polite when you feel insulted. I am pretty sure most of us get that. A lot of us also feel it's okay to speak in the same tone as you are spoken to, just we also feel it is a failing to be the first one to drop the tone lower and escalate things further. While it's great if someone can consistently be unfailingly polite and consistently try to always deescalate things, I don't think anyone expects mods or staff to be punching bags. That would be unreasonable. Just not to also be the first one to throw a punch either.
Alright, well... cool then? I mean, by all means, stop trying to help educate women on how to protect themselves from predatory behavior because it puts too much onus on them to take responsibility for their own safety. Let me know how that works out, I guess?
I mean I guess if your take away from Matthew Shepard was 'don't take rides from strangers'.
Yeah discussions will be dumpster fires, buuuuuut...
Lock the advertising threads to a single post, editable by the the creator. Make a new area for MU Reviews, in between mildly constructive and hog pit. -Any- thread created relating to the game is linked to the advertising thread by a mod in a single posted reply by the mod, giving a list of all applicable threads, including every single time a discussion turns into a dumpster fire and is forked. Nothing is hidden, and anyone clicking on the ad threads sees a list of a dozen thread links. The pain in the ass this would be for mods to update that each time would be offset by getting to name what the thread is to, like, 'Why Terrible People Do Terrible Things'.
@Warma-Sheen said in Fandom and entitlement:
@insomniac7809 said in Fandom and entitlement:
"We wrote a gay couple but didn't acknowledge it" doesn't stop being chickenshit because it might annoy China or Russia.
You make it sound like producers are hiding in a corner scared, instead of making decisions that make money. These decisions aren't driven by fear. They're driven by greed.
Someone is making that decision. You have screenwriters, you have a director, you have producers. All these people have input into the final product. You think they're all scared of something? That seems downright silly. You must have a very, very different world view than me. If so, that's cool. To each their own.
But I doubt it.
It is often self-defeating though. Look at how often very mechanically trope driven, completely derivative works are blasted and unpopular because they are checking boxes and play it completely 'safe'. Check out the interview with Chadwick Boseman where he mentioned that they wanted to have Black Panther's Wakandan characters talk with a British accent rather than an African accent because they didn't think it was marketable. Those kind of very safe, low grade decisions would have made a much worse, and almost certainly less profitable film.