Best posts made by Arkandel

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

so if you're brand new and you roll up a 40 year old, grizzled hunting veteran, should i explain to you as a new player oocly where to find everything

No, just like if you're brand new on any modern game and you roll up a 22 year old computer hacker, staff doesn't need to explain to them OOC how nmap works.

Roleplaying is an abstraction. You don't have (or you very rarely do) the information, experience or expertise your characters do. Do you suppose all those doctors on TV have graduated from medical school?

@WTFE said in Where's your RP at?:

Well, the first thing I need is an answer to this question:

0. What does an economic system bring to the table that enhances my fun?

Because that's what any system added to a game needs to do: enhance fun in some way. I've not yet heard a convincing answer to this question. I'm open to the idea that such an answer is possible, however.

So, assume a Vampire or Werewolf game. It doesn't matter which for the purposes of this.

Domain ("our turf") is incredibly important to the theme but on most MU* there isn't really a reason why; holding or protecting territory - or gaining more - doesn't convey any tangible benefits to your character, so the only reason you might do it is because the book says you should.

With an economy you can provide that reason to characters, encouraging politics, exchange of favors (in fact favors themselves can be a currency and thus part of the economy), etc.

Just as an example, as requested.

@bronn said in Armageddon MUD:

I don't really care about how many people you managed to rope into signing up for a forum account to jump in and defend Arm's honor. Once someone immerses themselves in Armageddon for a while it becomes blatantly obvious that players - especially the veterans - have formed an exclusive club.

Please review the forum rules.

If you wish to criticize the game or those who run it then you - or anyone else - are free to create a new thread in the Constructive or Hog Pit section and please do so there.

@Misadventure said in Where's your RP at?:

For a player who does not really need dice or "consequences" etc, does it affect your enjoyment to see players living in a bubble significantly different from what you expected? From what staff expected? If so, how would you communicate more strongly what is expected? How would you make the core "what you do in this setting" more engaging, producing more variety of player actions and stories?"

Absolutely.

For starters not needing dice is not the same thing as not needing consequences; the idea of consent-based games is that you trust your fellow players to convey their characters' actions as well as their consequences.

But glorified sandbox games don't work well. At least not in an autopilot, which we've seen by several WoD MU* which launched in the past few years and quickly became inert wastelands with bubbles of activity behind closed doors here and there. They promote (perhaps even require) cliques and isolate newcomers; worse, they place the burden (again, perhaps even the blame) on players for it; what do you mean you can't find any roleplay? Why, I and my four friends are having a blast!

Games which reward being extroverted and are made from scratch to be inclusive work much better.

@Royal Excellent. Now every time I'm bored I'll feel better about it, because it's only because I'm too good for you all.

Thanks for the kind words @Ganymede, you sex-mad robot. You've inspired me once again to write good things about people, so I hope you're happy about that. Jerk.

So let's see... @Maira has to top the list - she's imaginative and fair to a fault, continuously second-guessing herself in case she's not treating everyone well, but also to ensure everyone around her is treated right; few people care when they are not themselves the targets of unfairness.

There are people I've met over the years with whom I had unexpected rapport, by which I mean we met and clicked without knowing each other ahead of time, simply on the merit of chemistry. @surreality and @caryatid definitely fall into that category, in that our playstyles matched well and worked right out of the box without trying.

But it's more than just RP; there are some of you that I rely to play the unofficial role of moral compass for me, @Ganymede, @surreality, @Emmahsue have all gone down that pit of snakes with me when I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing for the right reasons; I've only recently leaned on @Sunny for the same reason. Our hobby, for all that it's a game, also encompasses a community and I'd like to do right by it.

I thought about hitting the game design name-dropping here - @Misadventure would definitely top the charts there - but to be honest... we do that so often on MSB itself (and WORA before it) that it's hard to single anyone out. I feel there are a lot of talented and experienced people here volunteering their thoughts on a regular enough basis for us to take it for granted, but it shouldn't be.

Before I close this, I wanted to give a bit shoutout to @Thenomain. He's one of the people we are taking for granted and whose efforts have really made a huge difference. He's coded his heart out so many times and we - collectively - haven't given him his due until we've actually needed someone to make sure we have a game to play on, who would spend countless hours making it even possible to do so.

Thanks, nerds.

@cupcake If there are no Brits involved something has clearly gone horribly wrong.

@surreality A very common way things turn to shit is because staff don't want to get their hands dirty. It's done so much it's cliche.

"No, I know Bob has been toeing the line of acceptable behavior but it's not a big deal. I have more important things to do than that shit. I have plots to run, good players are creating characters, a ton of +jobs to answer, code to make, a wiki to fix".

Then six months later the game is a toxic shithole through these miniscule escalations of petty grievances and players being mean to each other. That's when you get staff turning into hardliners. The banhammer will fall.

Yeah dude, if half a year ago you had squinted your eyes at those starting incidents instead of letting them get out of hand you wouldn't have to nuke from orbit now.

@kay said in Valorous Dominion:

To explain, he's being cheeky

Cheeky! How dare you. I give such matters the sober attention that they deserve.

Hey folks! Please remember this is the constructive (<winkwink>) section so let's pretend to be mature, civilized people.

I've been sorta kinda hijacking threads about this for a while and maybe it's better if we have a thread for it. So this is my objective: How do we do IC conflict between characters right? I don't necessarily mean bad guys - although that's possible - but handling concepts which are thematically supposed to clash for ideological or practical reasons.

Here are my assertions regarding PC antagonists going into this:

• It's a good thing IC. It creates dynamic, shifting political environments where different factions can prevail. Everyone getting along perfectly all the time is boring.
• It's a good thing OOC. It lets people create RP by playing off against each other, be driven to recruit new players into the game to play their allies, compete for IC goals and support a wider variety of roles.
• It very often turns to drama. Common accusations (people collaborating OOC, cheating, etc) can be difficult to prove, and paranoia can lead to toxic environments. Staff need to dedicate resources handling complaints instead of running the fun parts of game.

Now, we get the kinds of games we reward. In most games there is nothing positive about having opposition to your IC actions in any conceivable way other than the joy of roleplaying. But that's not enough for everyone - clearly. At the same time games offer incentives for all sorts of other collaborative things which also fall under the 'joy of RP' umbrella (allies +vote each other more often, for example). So conflict is always a net negative and conformity is always a net positive - by inadvertent design.

In my mind the main problems here are:

1. Mitigating the negative impact having an antagonist has on an individual
2. Reducing the positive impact OOC factors - metagaming on Skype for example - can have on the game
3. Letting staff stay as fair and transparent as possible without impacting on their ability to keep certain things from players (metaplot secrets, for example)

So, what do you think? For starters do you agree with the general premise of having PCs antagonistic to yours being a good thing or do you believe it's a lost cause, and games should stay purely collaborative?

Either way, what can we come up with to do something about the problems I listed? Do you have other ones to add?

On a tangent, I would like to not need to depending on 'good, mature players' for things to work as what kinds of players we get either can't be systematized or falls outside the scope of this exercise. Ideally we can design systems where great players thrive, okay players improve, and bad players are marginalized.

Any takers?

@d-bone said in San Francisco: Paris of the West:

More constructive phrasing: What is the policy on xp? I think my above notes make it very clear on the RAW in many of these books.

Next time please keep it to the constructive phasing. The rest of the post is unacceptable in this section.

@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:

Antagonism makes for good stories, but in a MU* environment I think it's a lost cause. Mostly for the reasons you mentioned, but it's even more than that. Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend. Because 95% of MU scenes are social in nature, and who wants to hang out with their antagonist? Antagonists are best metered out in small doses, and that runs contrary to what you want to be doing with your awesome RPers.

I see your point. But if we reverse it, do you still think it's a good tradeoff, and why?

So let's say all of the great players are playing your friends. In fact everyone is friendly to each other. Now, obviously you can have as many scenes with these guys as you want - there's no reason not to - but what are you going to be playing about?

If all challenges come from the environment then the game is stagnant in the absence of someone playing its elements. I would argue it's why sandbox games haven't worked out, for instance; there simply weren't enough STs around to provide everyone with things to do, so while small pockets of activity (i.e. those with a pocket ST) could thrive, a critical mass of players couldn't be sustained - and MU* floundered.

On the other hand one can thematically arrange for reasons to play with your antagonists. Council meetings, uneasy truces in the face of even greater adversity, Elysium politics, etc. Yes, absolutely, you probably won't be seeing that great person as often as if you were buddies, but there'd be that much more meat to it when you do. ... IMHO, of course.

@tempest said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

If anybody doesn't get "Fallcoast staff is panicking because it dropped from 100+ person who lists to 30 person who lists in the span of about a month" vibes from this "advertisement", I think it's a case of being willfully obtuse.

This is the Ad section. Please stay constructive.

I do agree with the sentiment that discussing plans of opening a new game too early probably hurt activity (since it'd have seemed like any RP would be redundant) but it is possible to get those players back fast - for example by letting them resume their characters in the new game, transfer any in-game achievements (such as XPs) to lure in oldbies, ties to the old metaplot to mark the new MUSH as a sequel, etc.

We're a fickle lot in MUSHing but TR/FC has been around for a long time and it has a strong base, assuming the right moves are made now.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in PC antagonism done right:

Whatever a game does, they need to be upfront about it. It's like a consent/non-consent policy. This shit is important for players who're deciding whether or not they want to play somewhere. I strongly dislike PvP to the point where I'll generally avoid games that emphasize it, but I can tailor the design of my PC to minimize my need to engage in it (and generally prepare myself for something I'm eh on) if I'm aware it's a thing. If I'm not aware OOC, I can't do this.

Absolutely, consent settings (maybe with adjusted values on certain in-game benefits) could be a good idea. Then players can choose their own level of engagement in the adversarial race - or to simply not participate at all.

@sonder said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

Also please explain to me how I’m stealing a game from someone who is helping me code mine. This is so confusing.

This could be discussed in a different thread.

In this one! So what are you guys thinking to do? Can you please give more information to those of us who're not in the loop about the general intent about the new game, and how it will differ from (or be related to) Fallcoast? What made you want to switch over?

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

Keep it IC. Always.

Let me rephrase this.

• Keep the antagonism IC. Always. Being an IC antagonist doesn't work well when you're an OOC bag of dicks.

Yeah, but other than people reporting each other over this, how do we make it happen?

I think a valid approach is by making being IC antagonized rewarding for you. Then you might (I dunno, might) be inclined to not be a complete asshole to the guy playing your political nemesis, who also happens to represent 40% of your total XP revenue in the last three months.

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Yes. It's supposed to be confusing. It's supposed to be a cacophony. You're not really supposed to have a coherent exchange. It's supposed to be stream of consciousness, emotive, etc, but definitely not coherent.

I'd just advise keeping full (non-anonymous) records somewhere even if staff aren't around at the time in case you have to deal with creeps.

You still need to know who called people names, and set limits in your policies about what the cacophony can, and cannot, be about.

@surreality said in What do you WANT to play most?:

There's stuff that can be crowdsourced for it, but I think without a really solid foundation to build from, and a solid understanding of how your pet reality works, things become disjointed and glommed together very quickly.

Yeah. I don't think crowdsourcing works on any high-concept theme design. Too many cooks, it's easy for the result to be inconsistent or just uninspiring.

A handful of people who work really well together with a common vision, yes... but get seven people working on a 'gritty fantasy game' and it'll be harder to do than with three, not easier.

Is it not likely that speaking to a couple of people on a MUD for 30 minutes might not give you a general consensus of how things are done on all MUDs, any more than having a 30 minute conversation on a MUSH might not speak for the MUSHing community as a whole?

Although yes, the lingo is different. I remember thinking when I made the jump to MUSH that "tiny sex" was a hilarious term.

Magic works the same way as any other element - you need to know why and how it adds to the experience of playing the game.

The key concept when it comes to staff using it as a way to settle disputes or write themselves out of dead ends is pretty well known to fiction; it's all about suspending disbelief. Did magic up to today involve subtle effects and suddenly a grey-bearded wizard started throwing fireballs around? It could be a problem. Did PCs capture and imprison a key NPC at considerable cost and he just teleported out of his meticulously guarded cell because magic even though no one had ever displayed that level of effect before and no one has since? Again, it can be a problem.

It can also render archetypes useless. Playing a kickass warrior if every fledgling spellcaster can make themselves invulnerable to sharp things might be less attractive. Being a smart investigative character with a perfect memory isn't as great as gazing back in time to see whodunnit. This sort of happened really prominently in every mixed-sphere Mage MU* ever - sure, you could play anything, but being a Mage meant you were better at it, plus you had other tricks at your disposal.

In other words magic is great... as long as you, as staff, are aware what its place is, and have a plan for it. It shouldn't just be added because lol, it's cool, and there should be reasonable limitations that make other things playable as well - unless of course your plan is for all the PCs to use it.