Posts made by Arkandel

@thenomain I think the first question would be to ask yourself what you're doing it for; either you're a professional getting paid, or you're a hobbyist making a buck on the side.

If it's the former then you need to be paid the usual way; market price for your time investment. That means having a contract, a deliverable goal set in advance, a timetable, and as little maintenance after as possible; this is where many coders for hire realize they got screwed, when they spend twice as much on a project that's over implementing "oh, and one more thing" things.

If it's the latter I'd be very careful. To some degree you're enjoying and taking pride in what you're doing, but getting paid for it brings in some extra burdens - dealing with expectations, obligations and financial haggling; you probably don't want to get in a situation where you need to nag a friend, or someone who's friendly, for money owed, or to withhold features from a live game for that reason.

Personally I think charging $20 for an uncoded sphere is insanely cheap. Even the $$ per hour price is really low, but at least consider protecting yourself with an estimate of how long it would take beforehand. We all know how time can get away from you while you're coding.

I hope this didn't sound discouraging.

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I use Mac or Windows because I know it'll work. I can work with Unix, I have worked with Unix, but regardless of distro, you're going to sit and spend time finding packages to make shit work.

Dependency hell is so 1997!

These days there is a GUI and everything. Not that I'd use such a dirty, heretical thing.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

The kind of metagaming you hate? I love. I view MUSHes not as games first, but as a collaborative storytelling community with some mechanics to keep things moving smoothly.

You might be misreading my preferences though. I can't remember the last time I rolled in a non-PrP - and I mean anything at all, not just social stuff - unless someone asked me to. I prefer consent based systems to anything else.

But this thread is about a social system! So I'm trying to come up with stuff I might like - which means, typically, which enrich my experience. I don't just want something that works, I need to have something that makes it better, which lets us do more stuff than what's available now.

It definitely doesn't mean I'd still like it. But it's fun to debate what could work.

As for metagaming, the definition of it (for me) is playing the MU* as a game-within-the-game. Of course it's a collaborative experience, but I don't view "getting my OOC friends to vote for me in the upcoming IC election" as collaboration, for example.

Are the lines thin though between that and 'my OOC friends are who I usually play with, so they're my IC allies as well, which means they're more likely to vote for my character' thin? You betcha!

@ghost said in Social Systems:

Social rolls won't get rid of metagaming

I think three types of systems - in tandem, not individually - would help run a political landscape. It wouldn't get rid of metagaming, but it'd go a long way.

• Social stats mattering to whatever degree the game deems appropriate and thematic, allowing characters like Littlefinger to exist.

• Resource management offering the game the concept of consequences, without which politics are meaningless. If you don't have to make hard choices what are you doing?

• Offering an incentive for people to lose. We can't seriously expect everyone to "like losing" or even to be okay with it - but give them something back so it's not a constant zero-sum game. Did you lose to a master politician? Damn, you must have learned something from them in the process! Get some XP, a modifier to future rolls, something.

@ghost said in Social Systems:

But it's just a damned shame that I can't RP with every single approved character and expect the same level of metagaming ethic when it comes to that kind of stuff.

I despise metagaming. It's because it has such a subtle, corrupting influence on politics - and it's nearly impossible for staff to do anything about it.

For example let's say we're in a bitter IC stalemate; I need someone to transport shipments of my produce over to the capital, and your House has all the boats, but we can't agree on a price.

Workaround: I ask a friend of mine who makes an alt (perhaps in your House, to add insult to injury, but it can be another faction with boats) and they make a cheaper deal with me.

Fuck that. And the problem is this kind of problem can't be fixed with a social system either; it would require resource management to tackle (i.e. sure, my friend can cut me that great deal, but it loses their House money, so hopefully one of the other players there goes WTF DUDE? at them).

@ghost said in Social Systems:

I won't get on my soapbox about how this I think has become the norm more than not and why so many Mushers care about which player is playing which bit...

About that bit... the easy answer is to not play with (or limit interactions with) people you don't like. It's pretty intuitive too - we do it in every other game, both online and iRL, so why not MU*?

Now if I know you hate my guts and I keep showing up to throw dice (or even just poses) at you then I'm an asshole, and that's not a problem systems can solve. But it's not a problem per se - I'm totally fine with people caring who's playing whom - and it only becomes one when circumstances or policies try to force them to continue interacting on any meaningful level.

You know how sometimes we talk to someone on a MU* and think "wow, people online are assholes"?

About that... a guy posted on Reddit recently about his daughter dying, and his wife leaving him shortly after that. He went there looking for closure thinking it might be a good outlet for it.

This is what he got instead:

@surreality Hey, I never said my interface was good. It was just an example.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

These are things that define who the character is, not things that you figure out by throwing a few dice.

Note that in the example I gave of how a system would work, this is already factored in.

Like so:

• (Arkandel is trying to talk Faraday into giving him $20 again although he never pays her back)

Arkandel:
+influence faraday=Gimme $20

Faraday:
+influence/list=arkandel (it's #4 on her list of ongoing influence attempts by Arkandel)
+influence/difficulty arkandel/4=6 (it's a scale from 1 to 10... she's losing her patience but she's not going to make a huge fuss over that amount... yet)

• (Arkandel is trying to talk Faraday into signing over her beloved car to him)
  +influence faraday=Gimme your car

Faraday:
+influence/list=arkandel (it's #7 on her list of ongoing influence attempts by Arkandel... he keeps bugging her)
+influence/difficulty arkandel/7=10 (That will never get corroded. No matter the rolls, it's there to stay)

In this system Arkandel never gets a message when the difficulty is set. I would never have any idea how hard it is to success or how far/close to it I am other than what's revealed through poses.

A social system doesn't need to be all-or-nothing, either subject to one bad roll (or series of them) or better of gone. There are compromises we can make which can enrich social interactions instead of making them captive to the dice - and I say this although I almost never roll anything in my RP. Anyone here who knows me can probably attest to the fact.

@ghost said in Social Systems:

We should be adults, and it is a game.

Sure, but this discussion is about systems, and you can't systematize maturity.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

My characters have been conned. They've been used. They've been seduced. They've been manipulated. They've been cowed into submission. I am not in any way, shape or form against the idea of someone else 'winning', nor am I against bad things happening to my character. I just want to have a say in whether it makes sense for it to happen, and not leave such decisions up to the whims of a crappy (in most RPGs anyway) dice mechanic.

As a disclaimer please let me know if I'm over-arguing with you because while I find this debate interesting, I realize it can also get annoying.

Having said that, what makes sense is a matter of narrative and we're all fallible when it comes to how we interpret what we're doing. So in a in a traditional 'physical' stated system it might make perfect sense for my combatant's personal journey at that point to result in victory... only I keep rolling 1's, and he continues to fall on his face despite the odds. Hell, what about those unexpected triumphs? Sure, my guy is a bookish nerd, but he just broke a baseball bat over the villain's head and knocked him the fuck out because I rolled out of this world - woohoo!

That's arguably one of the advantages of having stats - that no matter what circumstance and accidents still play a role in the IC world and things remain exciting in the OOC realm as well; if I, as a player, know beyond any shadow of doubt my guy will fare well (or even that he won't) then it takes some of the thrill and anticipation from the outcome.

Adamson's BBQ... the best goddamn barbecue in Toronto, and the stomping grounds of my team at work as of an hour ago.

I can't move. Plz send help.

@ganymede That was where everything went terribly wrong!

@surreality said in Social Systems:

If people took the same approach to the seduction attempt as they did to the combat -- namely, it's not a 'one shot and I get everything I want the way I want it' -- things would be different. For example, it's going to take a bunch of punches for most people to go down as described above. How about 'I'm going to make a roll to see if I can get your character's attention in a positive way' first?

Right, so since we are discussing social systems (rather than whether to have any) let's see what we could come up with that can address this issue.

The way I see it a primary problem here is quantifying social 'damage' (maybe let's call it influence?). Obviously no one thinks changing someone's beliefs in one roll, even for a single encounter, is appropriate.

Also a secondary issue here is actually tracking this down; there are immediate short-term effects - maybe your character made mine chuckle - and long-term ones.

So a scenario: You are on an IC campaign to make my character vote in your House's favor. We meet for the first time ever, so both of our influences' 'scores' are neutral.

My take on this: When a player starts working on a goal communication is systematized; there's no sneaking things in on the OOC level. It's all clear, right on the table. So you'd start by typing something like "+influence arkandel=Vote in surreality's House's favor" which I see immediately as a message and in my sheet. At this point I can assign it a difficulty factor - which you don't get to see, so you might end up overcompensating for a project that's easy... but that's part of the fun.

So at this point there are two 'scores'; our PCs' personal relationship, and the goal your character is working on. The better your score on the former, the more you can move the needle on the latter.

Then by limiting the frequency such rolls can take place (it could be one a day, or one per scene) there's a timeline... further compounded by the fact you might need additional social attributes (Empathy versus Subterfuge?) to see how far along you are or how well it's going so far.

I really like this because not only does it not open doors for creeps, it actually closes them; they can't spring "panther penis" on anyone out of the blue - it needs to be a goal, OOC stated right from the start. Nor can anyone insist they changed a character's views overnight since, by definition, long-term goals take a longer time and their player gets to pick the difficulty of the task.

Thoughts?

I brought back Richter at Reno. Let's see how it goes this time around!

@faraday said in Social Systems:

Sorry for double post but I missed this before... What you describe is the norm on the consent games I've played. You can always TRY to manipulate me, but I have to give my consent to BE manipulated.

I don't understand that. On those games you need to give your consent to be punched, too, but no one is (or seems to be) making the argument physical skills shouldn't exist.

I think the issue here is a combination of a high overhead in making social plots compared to making physical ones, which devalues the former even when it comes to using them on NPCs, and pure stigma; far more cases have been recorded where assholes tried to abuse Manipulate to get others to play out stuff they didn't want than Brawl.

I still think we haven't seen this done right yet. It takes a combination of staff who set the culture right from the start, a system built around having social skills around in the first place instead of them being plugged in as an afterthought, and a culture where they are simply valued. Not tolerated, not forced, but wanted.

@wildbaboons said in Social Systems:

Agency is the big one here. Social stuff against NPCs all day, but no, I don't care how high you rolled on your manipulation/persuasion/whatever roll. You're not going to convince my character that drowning kittens is a good idea.

I'm not saying you are right or wrong about this, but if that line of thinking is the cultural norm for a game then all social attributes are automatically devalued, since you get more bang for your buck buying physical ones (no one has ever said you can't punch them in the face no matter how high you rolled on your strength roll).

And if that's the case no one buys social stats, and people complain there are only combat monsters around. Well, there's a reason for it.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

1. Fewer consequences.

Exactly. And that's what I feel we absolutely need robust social systems for; after all things with the most impact in a system should be the ones most clearly provisioned and accounted for, right?

How many times have jerks tried to get away with things like

• Buying up physical skills but 'faking' social ones through poses
• "if you don't play the consequences of my social skill then you'd be cheating"

etc? If this can be done right (and mind you, that's a big if) there is much to gain.

2. We're used to not rolling for social stuff. There are hundreds of micro-interactions on MUSHes in any given RP scene, and none of them are rolled. We trust players to resolve social interactions without rolls until suddenly we don't and that feels a bit insulting sometimes.

Again I quite agree. But part of the reason we don't roll is because it's either complicated or a bit PvP-y; there is never really an incentive for players to have social skills used on them. It's always a zero sum game where one person 'wins' and the other 'loses', so it's natural for the aggressor can sometimes feel like a jerk.

I feel this can be fixed. Games should be rewarding the use of social skills; I've proposed in the past for example a system where you slowly build up your nemesis - playing with characters with whom you clash more often (which registers through the use of social dice) generate more XP.

I'm not saying this is the only way mind you, but I think it has potential.

3. 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.

Do you think an approach like the above could work?

They just want to roll Persuasion vs Willpower and call it a day, and that's silly. The lack of shared boundaries also leads to the uncommon but very real extremes like I'm going to make one roll and force you to betray everything you believe in.

Yes, physical damage is quantifiable (there's a fixed number, after all) but social damage is not. But I'll let others chip in here.

@ganymede Why don't players fuck non-social system rolls (or don't do so as badly)?

@sunnyj The main requirement is to be extremely simple and not interrupt the scene's flow.

If either of those conditions isn't true then a social system will simply not see use in day-to-day scenes, which renders it nearly useless.

If I need to consult an arcane table of modifiers and spend ten minutes talking over pages with people to see how far my PC's minor manipulation attempt got him then it's almost certain I won't bother with it.