Best posts made by Arkandel

@wizz said in Potential Buffy Game:

@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:

For what "tier" the game will be on I'm thinking we're going to start small. The first "season" may focus on something localized and personal, something specific to Dayton.

Just throwing ideas against the wall, but you could have two grids with two different themes, Dayton for small town Buffy shenanigans and like, Columbus or Cleveland for gritty life in the big city.

Other games have done something similar.

Splitting up the playerbase geographically, especially in niche MU* I'd expect to have fewer logins, is never a good idea in my opinion.

@Roz The worst monsters are STs who don't answer questions and feed players with hooks after the PrP is over.

@Ninjakitten I'd thank you but you're ignoring me so you won't see it.

@faraday The question of scope when it comes to documenting code projects is still valid, though.

How far into linux sysadmin can such guide afford to go into, especially since minor mishaps from common tasks such as mandatory package upgrades (which can affect configuration files, require process restarts, checking logs to find the root cause of a downtime, etc) are probably too numerous to go into in detail, let alone a "if <X> happens then do <Y>" guide.

@Taika Yeah, that's the flipside. I'll revise my earlier statement.

The worst monsters are players who don't want to chase down post-PrP leads.

I just would rather not have to pay attention to my high scores here at all. People tell me I'm in good standing, that's great, but I still don't want to have to care.

If I do then I'm no longer posting, I'm posting with an agenda.

@auspice We are derailing this poor thread in the most unexpected way possible.

@tempest said in FCs on Comic MUs:

People camp characters like a mother fucker. If the rule is "one log posted a month", there are dozens of people who will take an alt, and regularly go 27 days with that alt offline, then log on, get in their 1 log, and disappear for another 25 days. And they're not breaking a rule....technically?

That's on staff. In fact I suspect that's on staff copying the rules of previous games, since it doesn't seem to be a single MU* that's the main culprit there... it sounds like every new one that opened just copied the last one's rules which allowed camping on characters - which is as stupid an idea as it can be. If FCs are offered to regular players, and they're allowed to be important, then they should go to active and involved players.

Hell, even if the activity rule allowed for this malfunction when the game started it should be the easiest thing to spot and change afterwards. That's 100% on staff, it's not like policies are written in stone.

I was shocked the one and only time I played on a comic-book MU* a long time ago ( @Vorpal was in my group, if he remembers) and I found out the same person had Superman, Flash and... I want to say a Green Lantern, too? Man, that's half the JLA right there. Let someone else have a toy too, didn't you learn that in kindergarten?

@il-volpe said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

@arkandel Yep.

I'm more-or-less against XP as a plot-reward on MUs, since getting to participate in a plot/event (especially one that's risky and meaningful and not a birthday party) is itself a reward more desirable than XP. The extra XP seems like, here, you did such a good job eating cake that you deserve an ice cream too. Some most intense 'no fair fucking favouritism' feels came from hearing somebody talk about how many "luck"/"karma" rescue-me-with-a-reroll-or-a-deus-ex-or-I'll-die points they'd spent when other (equally active with older or same-age PCs) players never had call to even consider using them.

Some good questions quickly arise; what you reward XP for, how one receives them (is it a 'pull' where you file a +job or a 'push' where somehow XP is granted to you proactively), and the most important one of all - what are you trying to promote through XP rewards in general?

The first question is perhaps the easiest. Is it participation? Achievement? Effort? Activity? But - as staff - you need to consciously be aware of what you're throwing XPs at.

With the second question gets trickier. For example a 'pull' system is by definition biased towards those who will file such +jobs; some players do, some really don't (or not nearly as often). Not everyone likes to type justifications or face scrutiny from staff, no matter whether staff will scrutinize or not; the expectation is often enough of a barrier. And yet 'push' systems are prone to their own issues - automatic systems don't understand nuance (how could they). But staff isn't always there at every scene either. +vote systems are notorious for promoting cliques. So how do XP reach your players? What is the poison you're willing to pick for your game?

Finally... rewards (including XP) are there for a reason. Which kinds of players - which sorts of behaviors - are you, as staff, directly promoting through its distribution? For instance noted above, if the main way to earn it is PrPs then those who run scenes (and those who befriend them ) are the main beneficiaries. If you only incentivize success then those who win get ahead; is it any wonder, then, that some folks metagame, get upset when they lose, etc? You could always reward things on a flat scale, too ("everyone gets <X> experience a week if they log on") which promotes... logins. Is that enough of a bar for you and your game?

I feel until questions such as these are part of a MU*'s design then working on how to mitigate the negative side-effects of IC failure itself is more challenging than it needs to be.

@ziggurat said in Midnight MUSH:

There's a tendency to throw around terms like 'success' or 'thriving' or the like when it comes to discussing MUs

The most common metric of success (at least in conversations like this) is the absence of failure. Are you logging on and there are multiple people online who don't seem to be idlying? Have you never seen threads about their staff screwing up too much? If you created a character did CGen seem to churn along at a reasonable pace? Well, then it's successful!

But in terms of individuals it's a crapshoot. Hell, even 'are people having fun' is just an empty phrase as usually it means 'people I personally know and asked'. In many cases it can be completely arbirtrary criteria that determine it; 'that superhero MUSH is terrible because the Flash is Wally West and not Barry Allen'.

To me longevity counts. I don't care too much for flashes in the pan kind of games; run it for a year+ without losing your players, then you're doing something right. I'd maintain that even for games I actually don't care for, or whose staff I believe to be unethical, because it's difficult to argue with the results.

@kanye-qwest Also keep in mind character 'tiers' affect the impact alts can have on a game.

For example if I have Superman and Batman, my BFF has Flash and Green Lantern and another person has Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter... well, there goes the JLA, all owned by a tiny clique.

@mietze And similarly it's not even just failure.

What about the person who's all over a plot, has done a lot of the ground work, has participated in scenes about it both while PrPs were still running and through 'regular' RP... and when the final scene is scheduled they don't get to join in? Either because there are too many participants or something as mundane as RL schedules getting in the way.

It's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointment. That's the equivalent of watching your favorite show until the last episode, but you can't watch that. All you can do is read a review about it afterwards.

@Bad-at-Lurking said in Wheel of Time:

Guys have so many options for being 'special' in the Wheel of Time that not being able to make a Channeler character isn't a hardship at all. Everything from Gleeman to Illuminator to Dreamer to Wolfbrother to Warder or Thieftaker, nobles, scholars, rogues and such.

And just like Star Wars not being able to play a channeler (or Force user) might be a sensible thing to do but it's not exactly the most exciting design choice.

@surreality Self awareness comes at a premium. Usually you have to fuck up, and have others tell you, and drill it into you until you actually get it. It's not always the same kind of fuck up, either.

When I was head staff in games a long time ago I lost perspective. I was more authoritative than I should have been, listened to input less, did things that sounded good to me because I could and I had no idea since people still played it. We kept running into recurring issues because of these directions - massive red tape was one of them - but I didn't want to hear that I was solving problems by introducing larger ones.

It's not easy to spot these things when you're directly involved. And when you are staff there is always criticism, much of it unwarranted, which means distinguishing between legitimate concerns and general whining becomes even harder.

These days I don't staff. When I do I prefer being someone's right hand - I'm better at that than being in charge. I like myself more, too, which comes in handy.

@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

It was decided pretty much unilaterally that MSB would be something it never had been in any of its past incarnations. I've been here for all of them going back tot he original WORA before Nymeria got Tasteless Descs shut down.

As you know, I've been here that long as well.

If by "unilaterally," you mean "without consulting the rest of the community," then that would be an accurate conclusion.

And just to be clear. This is something I supported, and still do.

Just because MSB was ran a specific way by me that doesn't make it the 'right' way. There is no 'right' way to administrate a forum any more than there is to run a game. During my time at the helm folks had plenty of concerns about the Hog Pit, its rules (or lack thereof) and the way personal attacks were permitted to happen.

There is nothing wrong with changing that. I picked my poison. Gany picked another.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

This point has been made many times, here and on the new board, and there's always an underlying thread that people gloss over:
we are not a community.
Or, more precisely, not one community. There are several different communities, philosophies, and ideologies lumped in that 'community', and frankly, some of them are incompatible in rather volatile ways.

On that though we need to firmly disagree.

Of course there are different points of view and philosophies. I don't think they are nearly as incompatible as you make them out to be - otherwise MSB would have imploded years ago.

Creating (or changing) policies creates friction. That should be expected, accounted for and some more patience and understanding would have gone a long way.

In my opinion it behooves anyone in an administrative position to be at least willing to account for the fact they could have handled something differently, to see things from someone else's point of view even if they are prepared to stand their ground, and to be patient when a plan doesn't go well.

However what concerns me here, and I'll be honest, is that you don't seem to think the plan went wrong.

@yyrqun said in Wheel of Time:

Not in an "it would disinterest me", way, it's just that depending on the points of divergence... well, it's not the same world that I read and fell in love with!

Regarding this particular point... no matter the intentions, game design or even players nothing will be the same world you or anyone else read and fell in love with.

Even in the best case scenario someone will be playing some concept 'wrong' by another's perhaps justified (or maybe arbitrary) standards, RP will lead to some unlikely direction that 'would never have happened in the books' or what have you.

A great deal of leeway has to be extended since RP takes its own course and no meticulously planned narrative controlled by an author will feel the same way, especially when seen through nostalgic lenses - which most of us will almost definitely have on.

@social-diseases said in FCs on Comic MUs:

It really is. Places that allow absolutely anything end up having little to nothing of quality. They're always slapdash, crude, and often incredibly contradictory in every context because they're trying to allow for any possibility in an attempt to attract players.

And it's also easier to set up since it's essentially a sandbox.

Frankly to me certain kinds of games are impossible to play. If I don't know some basic fundamental things are set in stone (such as the current public history and roster of the Justice League) then it's all silly. Do we know what the Skrulls are? There should be a definite answer to that. Hell, is there just one version of the same character? If there's an adult and a teenager version of Peter Parker around there'd better be a thematic answer, rather than "well, two people applied".

And don't get me started on mixed universe approaches, especially when they are poorly documented ("so there was a rift, and here we are!"). Ugh.

@faraday Have you seen https://www.artbreeder.com/ yet?

There's also a subreddit for it, and some of those people do incredible work. There's a Harry Potter-verse set of posts which are just amazing, in my opinion.

@gryphter I'd play a post-books game since then you can use the canonical characters as glorified quest givers without them overshadowing the entire plot.

However:

1. You lose the chance to use the Forsaken (and the whole darkfriend conspiracy) as the amazing plot device that it is to build up paranoia.

2. You don't have clear cut bad guys so you'd need to generate some. Sure, you can have rogue Aiel clans, Asha'man branches or even incite the Seanchan into taking that role but that's not the same thing.

However it would give you more politics, a wiped slate's worth of Daes Dae'mar, perfectly playable male channelers (albeit without the OMG I'M GONNA GO NUTS AND BLOW SHIT UP angle) and the chance for staff to create their own metaplot. It could work.

(I do apologise for the title)

Here on MSB we criticise everything, but I'd like to think that power can be harnessed for good as well as for evil! So let's use it to improve MSB itself.

How would you improve the forum? What would you do differently?

Before I give you the floor please let me offer a couple of guiding principles. Think of them as constraints - those won't change, but they can also be viewed as goals.

• The only content that's curated here deals with the utmost asshattery; misogyny, racism, sexual harassment, doxxing, real-life threats, spamming, etc.

• I'd rather have as little 'moderation' as possible. You shouldn't have to trust the people who run this place to do anything more than keep it running and not sell/abuse your data. Otherwise the forum is populated by peers and we're all equal here.

• I am lazy. Please create as little recurring work for me as humanly possible.

Having said that, MSB is sometimes accused of being too attack-happy and that's... a fair claim. To me though it's also a perversion of its original purpose, which was to succeed and not copy WORA; we should be criticising games out of love for the hobby in order to make them better, not because we are cynics who've seen it all and get off my lawn.

Ideally I'd like us - as the adults that we are - to handle our own when they go out of line, and allow members to be exposed to the level of negativity they're comfortable with. The Hogpit has worked to a certain extent but its... spirit, let's say, has been known to take over other threads.

So how do we reconcile all these goals and encourage constructiveness?

Make MSB better. Tell us how you'd do it.