Posts made by Apos

@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.

I tend to think in terms of what story I can drive with what characters, how I can be entertaining, who needs what. I'm most comfortable on male characters I can be funny with, whether it's making fun of themselves or a character that quips or whatever, because it's no fun to play characters incapable of changing the mood of a scene that's obvious no one else is enjoying. It sucks to be on a character where it would break character to be anything but a passive witness to a scene that everyone else finds a drag, and you know you could change easy.

And I guess I kind of judge people, in the sense of seeing problems coming from miles away about what headaches a concept will generate and thinking the person either doesn't care to fix it or won't. I try to give the benefit of a doubt till I see it but it's so very rarely wrong, and such a shock when someone is super chill about the incredibly obvious consequences that come from the storylines a particular character generates. Like the honest truth is the vast majority of people that say, 'I am totally fine with all the consequences of my character acting like X! Hit me! No boundaries!' are totally full of it. I've seen that statement like dozens of times and I honestly can't think of a time that didn't blow up.

I've had so, so, so many conversations start with, "Hey, I'm cool with there being consequences to my character's IC actions but" and almost none with, 'Oh yeah I'm fine with whatever.'

@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.

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.

@three-eyed-crow said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:

@pyrephox said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:

For me, it's a lot more about setting building than mechanics. The more a world or setting 'holds together' and operates by consistent rules (even if they're complex or hidden from the players), the more that I get excited about it, and the more 'immersed' I feel in it. Mechanics rarely enhance or detract from that, for me, unless they're really egregious or contradict the 'fluff'.

I'm the same way. I can RP with a decent degree of immersion even in something like a Gdoc, which I know a lot of players can't, because there's no skeleton of a world to hang anything on. But if I feel like the internal consistency of the setting doesn't have any meaning, or that my actions as a player don't carry any weight? I lose it, whatever systems are in place.

Players who I don't feel are playing thematically are a far bigger problem for me than staff or code most of the time, I will just own that. I've been in this game long enough that I'm quiet about it and try to tune it out. I don't have the strength to be a scold in me. But, it is a thing.

There's kind of a sliding scale there for what will ruin someone's immersion by seeing characters that in small ways or big contradict someone's understanding of the setting. I find that most of the conversations about Wrong Funning people come from this, of some character that's just too contradictory and snaps other people out of it with a, 'Okay yeah but that character can't exist though' type vibe. Like the movie star perfect looks in a post apocalyptic setting without running water or whatever.

@seraphim73 Yeah the lack of permanence means it's difficult to refer to things that other characters should contextually know, which impacts RP.

Mmm, I think that having something as a coded accessible construct means that people knows there are inherent rules with how people will treat it. Like if an NPC has a bit or does not, and is referenced only inside a pose, yes, by terms of the world they are equally as real, but players will react differently because the unspoken or spoken rules of how you interact with them are different, and so are the consequences.

So basically, the only way to have the same feel, would be to impose the same kind of consequences to PCs from things that don't have coded constructs, and people won't do that. Like I can't think of any well run, popular game that's going to arbitrarily kill a PC off because they mouthed off to a nameless npc given as background contextual flavor, and in order for PCs to treat codeless constructs the same way, that would be necessary.

@thatguythere said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:

So I guess to try and put it in a simple phrase an adaptive world that also forces my PC to adapt to it. that is what makes a game world feel real to me. Now code can certainly help it or make it more difficult but in the end it is the interaction between world and character that does it for me.

That was going to be the second thing I think of immediately when people talk about immersion, but I think it might be a little bit wider than that. I think it is both seeing the world reflect the consequences of actions, an adaptive world like you said, and also interconnected permanence.

What I think drives home immersion is some kind of mechanics or ways for actions of any characters to have influence or effect on the game at a whole, or vice versa, and then also players feeling confident that whatever happens sticks, and isn't limited to the ability of players to self-police and keep track of what happened.

What I think destroys immersion for many players is having something that would cause some major response or shift in the world, and then it just failing to do so. Or anything that would cause permanent change in characters or storylines, and just not sticking because it isn't written down anywhere, or shown in any mechanics, and is just gradually forgotten.

By contrast, what reinforces immersion can often be unexpected reinforcement, by getting news of what happened in something players had no personal involvement in, or seeing storylines overlap accordingly, or having the world respond in unexpected ways.

Credit to @faraday for making me think of this. Immersion as a subject is something I've had a lot of difficulty putting a finger on, because it seems to mean very different things to different individuals, and it can be hard to even describe why something feels immersive to the point it is impossible for a game owner that isn't into that stuff to know what anyone is talking about.

Now people can talk about individual features they found immersive or what they like, but that still leaves a dev just picking from a really wide scattershot of confusing things and asking, 'why on earth do people love this IC messenger thing that is basically functionally identical to @mail' and even the people that like it can have a difficult time articulating why. I think it's worthwhile to take a shot at that, because it lets owners put in easy to implement tools that aren't disruptive to their own design philosophy and are nowhere near as manpower intensive as things that would need them to radically alter their games from things they do like.

So I've noticed people have really different comfort levels in RP areas that come up all the time on here, but aren't usually articulated as the actual issues. This is stuff that I think causes a lot of fights when people are really different in what they like. I'll start with one, ambiguity.

Ambiguity: People vary wildly in how much of a setup or how much contextual clues they expect to have, and more importantly, how much ambiguity they enjoy dealing with in their rp. This comes up all the time. Take part of a set that includes, "Two people are fighting at the bar." Some people wouldn't blink at this. It doesn't matter, it's a minor detail, they ignore it. Some people would be driven crazy by it.

Not having the contextual clues and information that their character would possess that would inform their decision making usually means one of four things happen for players that care:

1. They ask oocly for clarification. "Did my character see who started it? What are they fighting over? Is one bullying the other? What do they look like?" All things that would inform their decisions and character actions. They break character to ask.
2. They roll with it, and make a guess, even if they know it might be inaccurate for their character. "Well, I guess I'll break up the fight, and assume that it was truly violent and not an argument, since my character wouldn't want someone to get really hurt." And they don't break character to do this, even if it's jarring for them since it could result in their character acting in a way contrary to how they are.
3. They don't respond at all, even if it's something their character might respond to, because they don't want to take the risk of doing something jarringly out of character due to a lack of information. Like #2 this doesn't break character, but it's still jarring because they don't have context.
4. They make up the details themselves. This comes across as twinking or godmoding, so isn't normally done, but it's common in other RP formats when little detail is provided and people are expected to build on it.

Now this isn't often a case of bad writing or anything like that, but two players having different expectations of what they should be giving each other to work with. Someone that's more immersion focused I think expects others to give them context that is sufficient for them to build on and run with, without the need for asking questions or clarification, and expects to do the same for others. Other people that don't mind ambiguity, see that as totally unnecessary, because hey we're all writers and if something is confusing, just ask.

Now where immersion really comes into play here, is when the game is the one to reduce that ambiguity and give the player more context. Now the most extreme example of this are RPI MUDs. I had been RPing on MUs for a few years and I had never heard the term 'set' for 'setting a scene' until I tried the Reach. That might sound outlandish and bizarre to someone that's only RP'd in MUSHes, but the reason is simple, in that all the context is provided by the game and the environment they cultivate. Understand, I'm not advocating that at all, but I think it's important to understand the stylistic differences in storytelling. Basically in something like those MUDs, context is incredibly narrowly defined. Painfully narrow. Any action of characters must have some coded response which shows. If characters are injured, they display injuries when looked at. Everything the characters are wearing or carrying has a coded equivalent. Everything in the room has emits or something responsive. There's no context outside of what is coded, so this also means anytime someone enters a room, they have the context they need to immediately roleplay, which makes sets unnecessary.

Now obviously we all play MUSHes, not MUDs, but we should know that the more freeform nature comes at a tradeoff of ambiguity. We use that to tell more powerful stories that aren't limited by code, but it does mean that for some players, it would be very helpful to provide more context to them from the game. So as an example, let's look at IC messengers versus @mail or page.

Functionally, they should be identical, but here's some important differences, forgive me for the general variations from game to game:

Mail:
TO: Stella
FROM: Bob
Subject: Hey we should meet
When are you next free? Please hit me up.

Messenger:
Stella's wrist communicator lights up, signifying a new message.
From Commander Robert, to Ensign Stella, sent at 10:37 am yesterday, IC time.
"When are you next free? Please hit me up."

Okay so the content is identical, but the context is different. For the mail, does the player of Stella have any idea whether that is IC or OOC, and whether they should respond ICly or OOCly? Probably not. It would be likely decided by the environment of the game, but what if she's new? All those two little lines around the functionally identical messenger does is provide context immersion. Some players absolutely would not care, some would eat it up, particularly for some because it's one less thing for them to worry about. They do not need to seek clarification, they can just RP immediately. Which is what a lot of them want.

There's a ton more to it, but this is getting long, so I think I'll get into other parts later.

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

@lithium said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

The how is important because it helps make the world feel /real/, at least for some

I get that as a preference thing. What I'm saying is it doesn't resonate with me. I don't know if it's because I'm a coder and I automatically see behind the curtain on everything, or if it's just how my brain is wired or what, but I feel no immersion while MUSHing. So it's like trying to explain color to somebody who's color blind. I just don't get it. Like the folks who like an IC message system. I understand those people exist, but I don't grok that either. Just use pages or mail. I don't get how it makes a difference.

But yes, to OP's point - it absolutely unequivocally does make a difference to some segment of the MU population.

I've been thinking about this particular point all day, and it's one of those things that's so hard to define that I think it merits it's own thread where I can talk about maybe some aspects that might make it more accessible to people that don't feel that way. And just from the context of even people that don't care about it at all can maybe see the minor easy ways to implement around it rather than worrying about the massive manpower intensive design choices (like creating huge grids).

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

@seraphim73 said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

if you can't just walk into the room, and have to "teleport" in, it feels more private, and there's a barrier to entry. I think that our hobby would be better off with more scene code if we could get past this, but I don't know how to get past it.

Sometimes I feel like this is a no-win situation. If there's RP on the grid, some people are tentative about joining without an invitation. If there's RP in a scene room - even if it's got (OPEN) emblazoned all over it - some people are tentative about joining without an invitation. This is a people problem, not a tools problem, and I don't know how to get past it either. Maybe we can't, and just need to look at the other pros/cons and call the comfort zone/invitation problem a wash.

When it comes to the feel of commands and immersion I think it is incredibly difficult to get it right. A single word choice in the output of functionally identical commands will make it popular or dead.

@packrat said in What is your turning point?:

Weirdly I have a kind of hard mental cut off for scheduling RP, outside of specific events. If somebody say asks if I will be free 7pm on Tuesday to RP?

The internal response is almost immediately a kind of mental FUCK NO! NEVER!

Even if I was originally probably planning to be around and RPing at that time.

I dunno why, but as soon as RP is hard scheduled with a date and time I just don't enjoy it. It carries a feeling of obligation, and it's no longer fun. I'll do it for people because some people can't RP otherwise and need me to help move their stories along, but I just think of it as work. I'm glad they enjoy it, but I often am so dialed out that when people talk up about how they loved the RP I have no idea what they are talking about since I don't remember the scene at all. It was a job that was taken care of.

@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.

It's really easy to build off of people that are enjoying themselves or enthusiastic, invested and engaged. Can see that just from how they RP, strictly IC, or how they communicate ooc. That really helps me when I see it. Conversely, if I think I'm boring someone, yeah that's mortifying and I'd never want to do that again.

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.

@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.

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.

@kay said in What Is Missing For You?:

At this point I would give a kidney for a completely original superhero game. No DC no Marvel but really original with all OC characters.

Yeah, if I make another game, it'll probably be that. Original universe superhero.

Way, way, way more people are okay with their characters dying in a cool way than they are ever okay with being made to look like an idiot, or just being wrong about something. It isn't even close. People will tolerate catastrophic losses no problem as long as it doesn't undermine how they picture their character, but if you basically ever suggest their character is less cool than they think it is, a lot of players will fight that to their dying breath, and would way rather be banned while throwing a meltdown of epic proportions than take that.

My personal take is that you should just build the environment around people that like story and get invested in it, and reward them for that behavior as much as you can, because they are the ones that generally make the environment really come to life and generate positive experiences for other people. Then you can try to create as much incentives as possible for buy in from people that aren't as invested in story, but mostly I'd be looking at how to stop them from damaging things for the much smaller first group.

Like I honestly think it's pretty simple, though simple doesn't mean easy. Just keep rewarding quiet, no drama players that gracefully deal with consequences and roll with stories. It's incredibly easy to fall into the trap of trying to appease people that are cool 95% of the time but freak out 5% of the time, particularly when they have tons of friends, but you really should just focus on the 100%'ers rather than tweak the game to accommodate 95%ers at their expense.

ETA: OOC environment is the #1 reason very chill, story focused players aren't on more games. If someone is just looking to collaborate and tell stories with other people and only invested in RP, what do you think they do when they log into the game and their first experience is seeing someone be a dipshit in an ooc room? They are gone immediately.

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

@apos My brain is going a little swimmy trying to follow all of this, but that's likely because it's late and I've had a headache for almost eight straight hours now....

What I am taking away from this is a lot of "making social skills relevant" and I cannot tell you how incredibly happy I am about that, particularly as someone who has spent hundreds of XP on the damned things in order to fit both the concept my character came with and the idea of 'good leader'. I have had little cause to use most of those skills outside @actions thus far, but such is the pitfalls of pretty much any social system on any MU* ever.

To keep it simple- there will be a lot, lot, lot of automated things for social characters to do, in terms of generating prestige, resources, or AP, with different systems costing one or the other based on what someone is doing.

Over time, we'll just have more automated ways of effecting the environment, and letting characters feel like their actions have a meaningful effect on the game world. Domains will rise and fall, characters will become famous or infamous, and that stuff can be automated. I wanna focus on metaplot and the more politics can be system driven and by players I think that's fine.