Posts made by Apos

@sab said in How old are MU* players?:

I think there's a huge market to bring younger people of that sort into the hobby, it's all about marketing and offering the right thing, we just haven't yet.

I think MUs can offer things as an RP format that other formats just can't match, and I think a lot of people would find them very compelling, but the flip side is the very story driven 'table top writ large' type games just have a sharp ceiling on how many people they can really support. Like most MUSHes that aren't a 'do it yourself' style sandbox would just flat out collapse if their player bases doubled or tripled, which makes games always want new people but at a pretty controlled and steady rate, rather than huge influxes.

@mietze Yeah, I wasn't trying to make a value judgment on whether it's good or bad there, just that I believe people will use the systems, to contrast with the posts arguing they'd go unused. I do think that simpler systems will get used more, particularly if the introduction to them is fun and engaging. I think the drawback is simple systems are really great for cooperative play, and help create fun RP between friends, but I think anything for PVP needs to be more robust. Simpler systems means staff oversight and judgment calls, and even if a staff member is fair, our community's trust levels when it comes to PVP is not great.

But in order to avoid that, I think we need to have really detailed systems that have characters do incremental change and define what their characters will and won't do, and probably detail how their initial stances with other characters would be, and how their relationships shift and change. I think that's amount of bookkeeping can be successful if it also tries to make the development of that fun, and play to a lot of players really wanting to define their characters likes and dislikes, and providing meaningful incentives for characters to have pronounced vulnerabilities, and making some required. IE, a character that trusts no one, has no empathy, and is stubborn and unmovable is socially toxic and no one would have any reason to ever involve them in anything, and making those kinds of tradeoffs clear.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

@derp said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

At the end of the day, the rules don't get taken seriously because of desuetude, essentially. It's not that the rules aren't there, it's just that people have gotten so used to being able to break them that they have come to expect they will be ignored.

Let's suppose for a moment that the rules will always be enforced by staff when needed.

Would people still use social stats to resolve conflict? Why or why not?

I've only been MUing for a few years compared to most people and I can think of 3 cases off hand of someone asking some version of the question, "Can I roll my social stats to try to talk my way out of this and not die?" when they were faced with imminent execution. There is basically zero chance someone doesn't try that if social combat exists and someone is trying to PK them, and whether it's allowed and reasonable is one I'd have a handle on.

@ganymede I think the simpler an implementation, the more likely it is to be used and create fun, spontaneous RP under good conditions. Such as by groups of friends that know and trust each other enough, so they are fine with doing random rolls to help nudge RP one way or the other for fun as basically RP prompts. The drawback of a simple and accessible implementation is imo you can't easily shift that into meaningful consequences without a ton of staff oversight since then you open up to people trying to use it for things that don't make sense, but I think that's not much different from someone randomly attacking another person physically for no or trivial reasons. I think in both cases, the antagonist must feel a great deal of risk for attempting anything that would permanently hurt another character's experience, and at best feel they have no more than a 60-40 chance to remove another character from play without being removed themselves imo.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

@auspice said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

All of these still come down to one thing in the end:

Physical stats trump all.

Which is sort of the crux of the issue.

I disagree. This isn't what I'm asking about at all. It is, however, a very large concern.

If we want to delve into "reality," the vast majority of potential violence is sidetracked by concerns about consequences. People generally don't try to shoot me in the courtroom because there are bailiffs with guns around, and because I'm the Mistress of the Tae-Kwon-Leap. In a MUSH, however, the consequences to the player are substantially less, which makes physical violence a more-available option to resolve conflict.

Maybe I have this all wrong.

Maybe the solution isn't fewer social stats, but giving them more power. Maybe a successful intimidation roll would result in a Condition that would bar or reduce the ability to engage in a fight. Maybe a successful seduction roll would result in a Condition that would bar refusal of simple, non-Breaking-point requests.

So, let's flip the question:

Would you make social stats in the World of Darkness more powerful? If so, how?

(Note, I'm not talking about powers that rely on social stats.)

I generally think it is helpful to go to the endpoint first, of making characters with an equivalent degree of investment in them feel roughly equally threatening to other PCs and roughly equally powerful. In other words, earning the ire of an X amount of xp character specialized in physical, mental, or social skills should represent an equal amount of danger.

Hmm, one suggestion- a step by step tutorial of building a couple simple commands added to characters in game I think would be very useful, since I think most MUSH players think in those terms for implementation.

Anyways.

Just do whatever helps you learn, and I think if you want to try to code something and aren't sure where to begin, it might not be a bad idea to ask here. I don't think examples of python implementations would hurt at all for anyone else trying to learn.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

@apos said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

I don't know if it's the right question. I think a better one is to ask if you want PCs to have complete control to be able to attack/kill/do whatever to other PCs, regardless of the kind of attack, whether physical, social, whatever. I think if the answer is yes, then you don't need to really restrict social skills that remove agency. If the answer is no, then I think you remove them.

I think this is a red-herring question, but I'm pretty sure that no one wants PCs to have that kind of complete control. And I know of no game that permits PCs that kind of control.

Example: I know of no game that would allow a player to use his PC to threaten another player's PC with death if they did not engage in TS.

Probably not no, but I'm not so sure a lot of games would block people from PKing over a slight, or picking a fight for trivial reasons. I think unrestricted PVP is pretty rare now in MUs to avoid them becoming dumpster fires, but trying to police what's reasonable or not has its own set of issues in trying to avoid favoritism pitfalls when staff becomes the final arbiters of any kind of PVP conflict. So I think wanting to remove social combat is more secondary to trying to codify what's reasonable in trying to remove other PC's agency, and coming up with something that's consistently enforced and intuitive. I really just think that if an environment allows people to be bullied then the game's going to go toxic really fast, so for me it's less 'should social combat be banned' and more, 'what conflicts systems do I have that allows for people to get bullied without risk or consequences'.

I don't know if it's the right question. I think a better one is to ask if you want PCs to have complete control to be able to attack/kill/do whatever to other PCs, regardless of the kind of attack, whether physical, social, whatever. I think if the answer is yes, then you don't need to really restrict social skills that remove agency. If the answer is no, then I think you remove them.

@goblin said in Tomorrow is the Deadline....:

The fact you have to register to do something that is your full right has me so entirely baffled. Why is it like that? (Honest question, no sarcasm here.)

Isn't citizenship good enough?

Every four year over here, every eligible voter gets sent a voting card. No charge, no registering - we're already registered to be citizens. Then we go vote, bringing our voting card and ID, they compare it to the 'voting ledgers' and notes down that this person voted and which instances they voted for (and then of course there's several checks along the way before the final results are in.)

The designers for American governance were very shaped by federalism, and wanted to place a great deal of authority in the hands of our individual states, meaning that control is at a local level, so we have county boards and state boards of elections, and only broad federal government oversight. You can imagine how wildly inefficient and confusing this is with a lot of different layers of government that in theory work seamlessly together but in practice have no idea what they are doing and create an kafkaesque nightmare.

This list is pretty decent. http://musoapbox.net/topic/2342/a-mildly-complete-list-of-current-games?page=1

@tyche said in RL Anger:

We've talked about this 'empathy' issue before, in regard to judges and other things.
I think the comments made in this thread are quite revealing of the dangers of empathy.

I think a little more empathy might have led to different decisions in Korematsu v. United States, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Buck v. Bell, or Plessy v. Ferguson. And Bowers v. Hardwicke might not seem all that old to you, but quite a few voters have been born after it, and it seems pretty alien to them to have so little empathy that it was once established law.

I'm not wanting to start a fight, and as sad as it is, I think this is a hopeful good thing. But if you look back 2 years ago, on page 96 through around 112 or so, in this very same thread, we had a big argument about believing survivors due to someone posting a thing about someone being harassed pervasively in gaming. I think its noticeable even here that people are more willing to believe survivors now, and I take some comfort in that.

I'm by no means great at it. Anytime someone is able to identify me by writing style, I feel like I've backslid and didn't try hard enough to make a character have a unique voice. That said, I usually try to think of mannerisms unique to the character, and try to build a unique voice there. I tend to try to incorporate that not just in the language the character uses, but the overall poses and emits, in thinking of phrases and wording that fits the flavor of the character, for a style that really fits them.

A thug might get a very curt, simple, low brow style of writing. A pretentious and arrogant academic might get a grandiloquent one. These can definitely be overdone and I try to not be overwrought but I think it does help to try to come up with a number of different styles that fit overall archetypes.

@faraday said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

Earthdawn is a neat system but it's pretty tied to the lore of the game. And it has some interesting min-maxy quirks (step 7 is my nemesis). But I still enjoy it.

Yeah exactly, it's neat and I find it fun in a crunchy way that I just don't with a lot of other systems, but I can't imagine it applied to a setting that's really not that. It's very much a,'this is streamlined for adventurers doing adventurer things in a very specific way' system. Same that I can't picture Ars Magica in anything but mythic europe really tied into old medieval folklore.

It's hard to think of a game system I actually get excited over that isn't implicitly tied to a setting that I'd find interesting. oWoD Demon single sphere, Ars Magica, Earthdawn as examples that come to mind. I can't say any system by itself would excite me, though some I just wouldn't enjoy and might make me avoid a setting I'd be interested in.

@wizz said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

I've said it a few times over the years, but my dream:

God Wars 2's map/movement and combat systems, integrated with like an RPI's social systems. Change the mechanics behind progression and powers and skills and whatnot to fit whatever theme, you could make it modern-day or fantasy, it would be really versatile and fun.

I'm going to need to read up more about this since it's piqued my curiosity, I keep seeing mud players mention God Wars and it seems to have a devoted following

My advice would be to think of the different tools and approaches you can lean hard into making a sandbox that's easier to use and more convenient than other options. I think full automation is a great starting spot, but what imo really needs to be nailed is giving tools for people to create content that drives activity in a sandbox.

Tools for GMs to very easily run plots, for people to very easily manage information in how to get involved, or how people can gate involvement, the ability to very easily filter bad actors from contacting them and manage how little or how much people want to be involved, making finding people easy, introducing people to each other, making it easy for stories to overlap or split off, and not relying on any person to keep track of it but having automated tools to do so. Like in most sandbox games there's not actually like... 'story' code. This is just people trying to remember who is involved in what, with maybe some vague jobs or request strings or board posts. Just focus on the tools to make it easy for people to find RP, find the things they want, and avoid what they don't. And that will be a popular sandbox.

@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.

@wizz said in Potential Buffy Game:

I don't think you understand the thematic differences of the show if you think you can break it down with "one's set in high school and has a higher joke ratio." Like, at all.

Angel has a completely different tone, a different message, a different storytelling style (can you tell me with a straight face that you think Buffy is noir?). Angel goes to very, very dark places and stays there, where Buffy dips its toes occasionally. The shows end on completely different pages.

I think the point about tone might be one of the hardest things for games to pin down, because it can be so subtle, and just an even slightly different outlook from one GM to another can completely subvert it. Like you take two GMs with an identical game, and one likes to tell very grim stories, and the other does light hearted, and the game is going to get subverted one way or the other from it. And these might not even be conscious choices, just what mood the person is when they decided to create. And I think these can be the most jarring for a player too, and what quickly will make them feel alienated if they had a different idea for the feel of a game. See beach party in post apocalyptic or whatever.

I think it would just be important to state what kind of mood they are looking for in the overall theme, and what kind of stories, and really hammer that home early, because otherwise it's setting up for misunderstandings and people being upset when it's not what they are looking for.