Posts made by Apos

I'd go a step further and say I'm not even sure a majority of people playing MUs are aware of any of the community websites that exist for them, this one included.

@sockmonkey Deliberate obfuscation of numbers has some strong and weak points, and it is something that's existed for a long time. I've played games that didn't use any numbers at all, hiding them entirely to staff side while there was still automated systems.

Dedicated min-maxer types try REALLY hard to reverse engineer the formulas and numbers. Really, really hard. I was one of those people, and as a much younger person I ran a whole lot of tests on MMOs the embraced some numeric obfuscation to reverse engineer the numbers on mechanics so I could create optimally efficient paths. Just having a character spamming abilities thousands of times in a row, recording results and so on. Figuring that stuff out was basically a mini game.

Now in some games, like RPI type games that forbid ooc discussion, that is partly because they want to ban that behavior, of people talking oocly about mechanics in a way that would let them game the system. What happens then, of course, is that people that really, really know how to abuse systems become at a privileged position in the game with them and their friends. If the game has any competitive aspects at all they become extremely dominant, since new players don't have any way to access that knowledge with performing the same kind of exhaustive tests themselves.

So imo the way to stop min-maxing is to make strong, effective ways of designing characters be very, very, very intuitive and what someone would do anyways.

@tinuviel said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@thatonedude If ya don't want staff interaction getting in the way of your stories, go read a book.

I personally recommend "How to Maintain A Consistent Game Environment Without Creating Unnecessary Hurdles That Stifle Roleplay", it's part of the This Shit Ain't That Hard trilogy.

@faraday So to be more productive and thinking about system design, what about... a player defines an inclination, defined with a descriptive string and then an integer for magnitude. So 'Total Coward: 10' and then defines a will and won't, for something they won't do because of it, and something they will do because of it, for a vulnerability and defense. Could be a secret, or could become known and publicly viewable due to their reputation. Players could have fun with defining them.

Then in disputes between players, if someone says, 'My character would never do that' for something undefined, that's fine, then add it to their sheet along with an equivalent point of vulnerability. So PCs become more fleshed out over time whenever it comes up and people can show their character's evolution over time in response to stories showing what effects them or not.

@faraday said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

@marsgrad said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Also, I don't think anyone is suggesting 'my characters has goals and personality quirks' should act like ironclad armor.

Just to be clear: Yes, I am suggesting exactly that. Some things just won't work on some people, just like you can't take out a tank with a pocketknife. Just like no matter how many points I make or how well I make them, I won't sway some people here to change their views on social combat. But those "hills to die on" should not be unlimited.

I personally am in favor of approaching unshakable convictions as points of resilience and vulnerability based on approach. For example, someone that's sheeted as Total Coward could not be compelled under any circumstances to take a risk to life or limb- they can't be manipulated, bribed, seduced or convinced in any way to doing something suicidal. But on the flip side, someone like that would pretty much autofail to resist any kind of intimidation ever. And I think most people are way more okay with playing ball with approaches that are consistent with their characters, even if the outcome to them might be detrimental in some way.

I think it just helps to take any personal strength as also a potential vulnerability, and make that implicit into the characters as a tradeoff.

@selu Cirno?

@rizbunz If the population is small, that can be an advantage in some ways in that you have the time to be incredibly hands on and weave stories specifically for the individual players in a way that a large game can't match. You can think hard about individuals and what they want to see, and also go out of your way for new players and help them get integrated. Generally if people have that kind of attention and are enjoying themselves and having fun, they'll stick around and invite their friends, and growth will follow anyways.

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

I dreamed I joined a game where staff assigned you a character from a roster based on the outcome of a personality test. All the characters were dogs.

I feel like this is somehow Arx-related.

Can confirm, would run a pugmire MU.

@ganymede said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

The people I'm currently working with have discussed this, and we simply feel more comfortable narrowing our focus for the sake of parsimony and sanity. We have also agreed that we will not be adding more to it.

I think that's a good call. I think most people when they hear more spheres think, "Oh, more character options, this means that there will be more characters, and more chances for roleplay." I don't think it works out like that.

It seems like the more difficult they are to truly integrate, the more time is spent on resolution of extremely niche issues that would get in the way of staff being proactive and helping to generate activity that is necessary to drive forward any non-sandbox. And the more specific characters are to different spheres, the harder it is for their Rp to be relevant outside of it, making it a lot more difficult for characters to create the kind of self-sustaining RP stories for each other that lessen the load on staff.

To me it just sounded like you didn't want to feel like you were being a huge dick by saying no to people you wished you had time to help, and putting up costs would help reduce how much you're asked. I think it would help a bit, but yeah you then might get way more stressed out and feel a lot more guilt and obligation for the ones you do take. Hard to say, since I mean really only you know you and this sounded not really about money at all but for your peace of mind.

@ganymede said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

@faraday

I have edited my response slightly. I'm talking about complaining about the game while on the game, which is what I think Apos is getting at.

We're two different people! If we ran a game together, you'd be the good cop, and that's okay with me. But, as I said, I don't mind complaints or whining as long as they aren't broadcasted because I think that has a very negative effect on a group of players.

Yeah, pretty much. I just think you can't talk about encouraging proactive players without talking about what discourages them, and criticism from other players is always going to be a large part of that. Can see the same thing with any enthusiasm in the hobby, such as people wanting to pitch a new game idea and getting disheartened, and I don't think that we should have the proactive creators just be people able to barrel through it all.

But of course where someone draws the line is up to them, I just err on being more strict.

@fortydeuce Ya one thing we have eventually coming is essentially a huge GMing system to link people's goals together and nudge people together based on their character desires, what stories they are involved in, and the plot hooks they get. That sort of thing.

I still have kind of an outsider's perspective when it comes to this, since I've only been on MUs for a fraction of the time as most people on the board. I see high energy, really enthusiastic proactive players often in conflict with older, more experienced players and it really took me aback, since I didn't really see why they would come in conflict. From my perspective, a lot of the really older players are very good at developing the RP they want, only the RP they want, and are intensely protective of that and are not inclined to welcome things that could disrupt that. That isn't great for fostering environments that's welcoming and encouraging players to be really proactive.

I think you can kind of look at helping proactive players from two angles- giving them the tools they need, and giving them an environment they need. And then you can break it down further.

1. What does someone need to get started.
2. What does someone need while running and coordinating a story.
3. And how do they feel afterwards that makes it a satisfying experience that they could then do it again.

What for the first part, someone needs to be very easily to get any kind of information to run a story. Easy access to theme, easy access to specific questions about the world, how to make it consistent with the game, what kind of rules there are. All that needs to be very easy, and that can be tools to very easily access it, and an environment that encourages someone to do so. Brainstorming is part of this. How easy is it look at other stories that happened in the game? How easy is it for someone that is new to build off existing stories, and cross reference stories? How can they find out about PCs, and their hooks and goals, and make things meaningful to those PCs on a personal level? How do they know what people want, what stories they can create that will be rewarding? All these kind of brainstorming elements can have tools created to facilitate them and an environment that fosters asking that. People build off shared creative energy- you see a ton of drive in creating a game because it's new and fun, and not a whole hell of a lot in keeping a game running. Because the former is more of a shared creative experience. So it has to be fun. And that means encouraging interaction that makes it fun.

With the second part, that means making it incredibly easy to get people together, roleplaying, with as easy to use and convenient tools possible for running a story as can be realistically done and an environment that makes it fun. For tools, this has to be very accessible, something intuitive or easily explained, and not feel like a ton of work with the ability to make mistakes without it being a disaster. Communication tools in particular are huge since MU players are mostly flakes, and the more things that can easily get them together and on the same page the better. But I do think the environment being fun is more important.

All it takes is staff tolerating a single negative, whiny player that shows up to stories and makes unreasonable demands. If they tolerate Negative Nancy or Whining William, that proactive player's drive is dead. And staff not saying, 'Sorry, you don't fit in here, best of luck to you, William' means that you are saying, 'We are keeping William, and it's okay if he drives off Driven Dave or Proactive Paula'. So all the tools in the world are worthless if staff and players are unwilling to enforce an environment that keeps a high standard of behavior.

Now for the third part, making sure someone feels appreciated I think is vital, and I think for a whole hell of a lot of STs, they might get 1 or 2 thank yous, but then they might see 10 people making sadface emoticons of how no one loves them and takes them to plots, or bitching that one person on their plot got a shiny, or someone whining that Proactive Paul gets to go on every story and on and on and on. Again, if those kinds of things are tolerated, I do not believe almost any proactive player's enthusiasm will survive in the environment. Honestly you can give a proactive player all the xp in the world and it won't matter if they get one super negative player that gives them sadface pages every time they do something.

Stomping on the last behaviors of people complaining about exclusion or mad someone else got something I think is vital. I don't think any game can sustain a proactive environment without policing that. In fact, from older players, you see them become more and more insular. Someone whined about how their public event went? Well fine, they do private events for their friends until the game shuts down. It takes someone that is unbelievably hardcore to just blow off dipshits calling random things favoritism and keep doing public events and creating for RP and ignoring people desperately trying to dump sand on the fire of their enthusiasm. I think there's probably no more than one person like that in a couple hundred.

For most, the moment they get pushback or a complaint, they are done. So reduce the pushback and complaints, and the latter is harder, because it's from players, not staff.

@surreality said in Social Systems:

Question: do you think it's necessarily relevant whether someone is telling the truth or a lie when it comes to convincing another character about the story they're telling?

No. Only how sincere they seem. Someone that's telling the truth but looks nervous probably seems insincere and are thought to be lying. The actual truth doesn't matter imo. I'd just make a check on how sincere they seem in regards to how convincing the pitch is.

@seraphim73 I think metagaming's a slippery term since we all know clearly positive ooc communications (people creating fun collaborative experiences), and clearly problematic and abusive ones, and then some really wide range in between that people are going to lean in the more IC or more ooc camp.

I lean a lot more heavily to IC myself, since I think some ooc communications are problematic that other people don't- for example, I think powers to detect lying are a bad idea on a MU, other people think they are fine/good for games, and that could be a core part of many social systems. I don't think it's too big a deal, most people know abuse cases when they see them.

Defining social combat from the perspective of the aggressor is not difficult really, but defining it from the perspective of the defender is really difficult. In physical combat, not many people argue about coded Dodge or defense, except in systemless games where some jackass refused to ever be hit. But in social combat, defining how vulnerable someone should be too an attack implies a degree of customization of approach that only the most anal systems bother with in physical combat. I think there has to be one of two approaches or a combination of the two. Either you have it be free form with the attacker having to demonstrate a solid understanding of the defender and what would reasonably work on them, or you have to codedly define on the defender's side what would not work on them in advance with a system that illustrates their strengths and weaknesses in a fair way that shows their points of immunity and vulnerability. So people cannot define new ones on the fly because they really hate an outcome, not an approach.

My first experience was in a PVP environment that had extremely easily exploited and abusive coded social combat stuff, and in retrospect, the surprising thing is how extremely rare people abusing the hell out of it really was. I mean reading these threads that pop up make it feel like everyone was spamming, 'make ur dood commit suicide' or whatever, and those kind of cases stood out to me because they were rare, striking, and against the cultural norms. People used it all the time for flavor and fun, and I saw maybe hundreds of coded 'try to make character do X' that people just rolled with, and only a handful of, 'Try to do something god awful and clearly exploitive' things.

I think for something so open and freeform, I think it's a lot better to just give decent and reasonable roleplayers fun tools they can build stories with, and just remove people that aren't reasonable. I think trying to design a million safeguards around edge cases is probably not worth it for something so broad in scope. Can just approach the most obvious ones and let it go.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

3. It's personal. Nobody thinks poorly of an action hero who takes a round to the shoulder and soldiers on. But the sap who gets conned? He's a sap. Players empathize too much with their characters. It's bad enough to lose, but to lose in a way that makes your character look like an incompetent idiot? That pushes peoples' buttons.

In my experience, way more players are comfortable having their characters die in a glorious /impressive way than they ever are with even the smallest embarrassment, tolerating a slight, or looking foolish. I'd say the majority of ragequit, 'Write me out and kill my characters' come from embarrassments, from my recollection.