Best posts made by Arkandel

@deadculture said in L&L Options?:

@Tempest Which is something most Lords and Ladies games sorely lack: compelling political vicissitudes to drive a story. It always ends up being a zero-sum game where two political interests are aligned in complete opposition, because even if there's a peaceful transition for someone's rise, someone likely gets dinged for it. Conversely, it is why player vs player action like civil wars and stuff never end well or are just killed in the cradle by staff: because the attrition will cost the game players or derail the theme.

One of the frustrating narratives encountered in political games is that the zero-sum game is a predetermined outcome - that in each encounter someone has to win, and that means another has to lose, the same way that it happens in a sword fight. After all if you're sparring with Joe either he wins or you don't, and it's clear who the winner is.

Politics doesn't work quite like that. For starters the very idea you walk away from a negotiation with Joe leaving him red-faced and fuming while you get what you want is a silly one; it's kind of a trope in books, but that's because the author set it up that way and the geopolitics are perfectly aligned to accommodate the total win for the protagonist. On a MU* player agency guarantees this is rarely seen; piss Joe off and he (or perhaps his player) will rather take a bigger loss than give you a win.

Worse, political games aren't that different than action-based ones (or any others, for that matter); it's all done for fun. If you piss off everyone you meet then they won't want to play with you, and how well is that going to work for your illustrous career as a political force? This isn't even a rhetorical question - I've seen disagreeable players of highly-ranked characters rely a hundred percent on their title to try and carry the day, thus missing the point of both how to be political and to play games.

The best politicians on MU* are people whose scenes you love being part of. Which, weirdly enough, is the same as in any other kind of MU*.

Not only are we crazy, we're running our own asylum right here!

New entry: High Priest Tykalos Alcaldia on Ithir.

I understand there were some... polarizing parts in how the character has been played at times. If there are allies, antagonists, political collaborators, assassins or such who want to maintain and rekindle past RP please contact me and we'll figure something out.

@auspice said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

It's not the format. It's largely how we play. If you look at a lot of those places, their play style is vastly different from ours. They don't roleplay like we do, at all.

There's nothing at all about a web-based game that dictates the style. You can have the exact same environment as for a MUSH, with a far superior interface, and pose the way we all know and love.

It just doesn't exist quite yet in a way that we can base games on. Obviously the hope is for Evennia, Ares or a newcomer to evolve the platform to the point where that's doable.

Telnet is going the way of the dinosaurs.

I'll do mine.

I'm sorry for flaking out on games for the last... I want to say year and a half. I mean to play regularly and while I'm in CGen I actually get excited about giving this a shot but then I often find myself taking the path of least resistance.

Sure, I can sit in yet another office chair like I've been doing all day at work... or I can go watch TV or play a video game on my recliner which requires less effort. I very often lose enough of those battles that I can't build RP momentum and the character fades into the sunset.

I know I pulled some of you into RP that I then dropped so I apologize for that.

@rook said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

People are getting personally offended by the voicing of opinions, so it seems much less a technical discussion than it is a preference discussion. I have tried to guide both of these threads into some sort of technical planning/dreaming/design direction, and each time people have apparently taken offense.

I don't think it's that bad. We can be passionate in all things, but it's not like anyone's going FUCK YOU while stating their preference, so that's fine.

There are however two issues here:

1. We don't really have a proper example of a telnet-less MUSH at the moment so any criticism of that is premature. Judging its potential by other web games which aren't even trying to do something similar to how a MUSH does things is flawed.

2. It's possible the first example of a web MUSH we eventually see won't be very good. It might simply lack features (and it probably will on Day One compared to codebases which have taken decades to evolve), or the implementation might just suck... but it could paint expectations either way based on its shortcomings rather than its strengths.

And if you don't mind guys, a personal note at the end... it's expected that people will stick to what they know. We're a conservative bunch, and highly critical as things go. There's no way there won't be 'ohnothisiswrong' complaints no matter what is actually done, or (as @surreality has correctly sighed over at times) even over anything that's considered.

That places a higher onus on developers here. Not only do people need to be good with code but they need an extra thick skin to handle all these gripes without wondering too much why they're doing all this extra work for what sometimes seems like an unappreciative community. This is not the case. We are far from unappreciative. It's just that some voices bitch louder than many others praise.

@Rucket To be honest I don't think I've found RP just wandering around the grid in a very long time.

For the most part my scenes (okay FINE... my scenes when I actually have some) are either the product of stalking +where and paging people if it's okay to drop in, arrangements made over channels, or of course scheduled PrPs.

It used to be that I went to 'nexus' type rooms to look for scenes but the quality varied so much I often cursed myself for doing it, so I stopped.

TL;DR: I don't mind Ares' way of constructing scenes.

@Silver The Jedi and Sith are causing such problems for Star Wars. Off with those robed fools!

@MarsGrad It was more of an existential question.

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

Options can be a bad thing if they distract from the gameplay or give an advantage that some might consider unfair, both things others have offered some concern over. This is normal. I wouldn’t want the rules to change my character or force me into unwelcome gameplay either.

What's 'unwelcome' is relative though. People have different tastes, and in many cases don't even know what they want until they're given it, let alone what others might want. For example I've told @Apos in the past I was shocked at how much interest there was in purely cosmetic stuff like customized item descriptions (without any stats) or messengers who do the exact same thing as the default ones. To me that feature offers nothing but to others it does.

I will however also agree emphatically with someone in this thread who pointed out that without meaningful money sinks the economy can't turn... and it's not easy to find things people want. And usually you can't go wrong with putting that gold toward buying numbers on your +sheet if what you're after is to provide such sinks.

@bluebird May that remain the worst thing autocorrect does for you.

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

It'd add either a barrier to entry for new crafters, or a cool rp hook as they try to build a reputation from the ground up

I haven't played on Arx in a long time, but dinosaurs having an advantage was always part of how its systems were designed, or at least a byproduct of them.

New character, new game!

Arcturus Rousse, Comte of Nimes.

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

I don't want to contradict anyone's lived experience.

Oh, regardless of what character's specializations are or what system a game uses, nothing trumps the player's ability to use what they have and leverage it to gain traction or convert it to actually having fun.

That's why anecdotes by players here must be taken with a grain of salt either way. An OOC well known player who's OOC social, maybe already has OOC connections in the game and who can put a decent pose together will find things to do. Someone who possesses fewer of these qualities will find themselves with less to do. That's a given.

What's important is that the game itself at least tries to correctly translate the sheet's strengths and weaknesses into what's actually happening on the grid. Not all MU* are able or willing to do this - many will simply blame it on the player and call it a day.

Updated with my first ever superhero. Let's see how this one goes.

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

Pyrephox said this as well, but the path isn't putting up a roadblock to prevent socially-inept people rising to power. And that's what I was getting at, obliquely.

I never said there should be a roadblock. In fact you should be able to claim power through brute force - ranks aren't the sole product of social engineering.

But since you can do so as either Robert Baratheon or Littlefinger, yet being Robert lets you do so and be part of more types of scenes on a day to day basis (since Bobby can be part of diplomatic delegations but Littlefinger can't be part of combat), and as a bonus you are able to bash Littlefinger's head if he pisses you off, yet being Littlefinger gives you very limited venues to fight back... that impacts gameplay. It impacts theme.

And we're not even talking about the social consequences that should be attendant with being a combat monster, generally. No matter how genial Vlad the Impaler might have been in his court, one cannot forget that he was Vlad the Impaler, as reviled as he was feared, as he was beloved in hindsight.

Sure, and that's why Vlad should buy Intimidation. But he also should be an one-trick pony in that regard - sure, he can scare the shit out of people but he can't give a good speech to rouse the troops, tell a good lie, convince someone to make a bad deal thinking it's a good one, etc.

And in a good social system doing such things should have a value roughly equal to impaling people. Else why do the same skills cost the same XP?

@tragedyjones I read this as "...that aren't me TSing".

@lisse24 said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Even in non-coded games, Combat plots are the low-hanging fruit. Anyone can show up to them and Do a Thing. It's easier to pull someone in. In diplomatic/social plots, you usually have to know the right people in order to get involved. It's also easier to keep pulling on the same group of people.

Although I obviously agree with you there I also don't want to blame MU* for this. Look at most published game systems; for something like nWoD, Pathfinder, D&D, etc... how many more pages does social engagement get covered in compared to combat?

It's just the place most of us have 'grown up' seeing as the focus of RPGs. What we're discussing here is more of an evolution of it, specifically geared toward MU* rather than table-top games where that sort of thing isn't nearly as important or even applicable.

@Auspice I am sorry I said anything!

(ADMIN VOICE)

Since this is a huge thread, and Arx isn't a 'coming soon' kind of game any more, I moved this over to the Mildly Constructive section.

If the game's runners also want a curated ad thread that's perfectly fine and they can create one. If they want this one renamed I'll be happy to do so as well.