@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:
Hopefully people can see why I didn't start with my plans until I got a good survey response.
Yes, but it's also true most people show up to express an opinion if they have one in the first place (I might neither agree or disagree with your take on Shadowrun but could still be interested in giving it a try if it was available) for example - so a survey like that shows you those who have strong views.
I don't have a lot to add to this thread except this: Ganging up on people gets a big sigh from me.
There are posts whose contents can be summarised (and not by much) down to people giving a +1 to their friends - and I don't mean in lol-karma but just showing up pretty much only to show support. This bothers me because it cheapens dialogue - arguments stand or fall on their own merits and who has them should be irrelevant. There really isn't such a thing as 'losing the argument' either since that implies several things that invalidate debate itself, but the "hah, we sure showed him/her" mentality completely rubs me the wrong way.
@Sunny It's okay - what I was arguing is that historical accuracy can easily cripple gameplay by making it so portrayed females, minorities, etc could be essentially locked out of participating in the game if it goes too far, but it's still important (in my opinion) to not reverse it completely because it could actually be interesting to portray such struggles in game.
For example, to avoid the sexism angle, someone mentioned earlier playing an independent Chinese store owner. In most modern games the choice isn't very significant - in every western world big city these days there are plenty of Chinese store owners! But in the Victorian era or any basically reflecting the time period that wouldn't be normal at all, so that's an opportunity to play something which isn't available to be played elseMU*.
I personally couldn't care less about ultra faithfulness to the depicted morals of a time but I like having roleplaying venues open but playable at the same time. So for instance the owner in question should still be part of the game's large factions, have access to every IC hangout, etc - it'd really suck if they couldn't go to where RP is happening because 'that cafe doesn't allow orientals' or whatever.
@Sunny It was an example of something that would affect gameplay and theme at the same time. I'll refrain, my apologies.
@WTFE said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
- approximately $50,000 (1980s money!) of cocaine in brick form
I'm picturing the cops were wearing light blue double-breasted jackets over white shirts. Don't ruin this for me.
@thebird said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
About 60 cake orders a day all weekend. One of our three decorators broke her foot, and a bunch of other stuff and was in the hospital (still joke she was the lucky one)
TIL that although war is hell, cake decorating involves an attrition rate.
@Songtress said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:
But something to consider. As someone said: Women's Lib was farther along in this alternative timeline? Did they pull a (was it Finland?) basically al lthe women just stopped working, stopped boning and said: We'd like our rights now, no sex, no work is done until we have them. And the men gave in REALLY quickly.)
It's a tough balancing act but yes, it should be made very clear what's thematically acceptable, tolerated, frowned-upon and all-but-illegal - or actually illegal. Exceptions can still be made since IC these lines are blurry at any era but the broad strokes have to be well defined so players know where they stand.
I think it's crucial to draw these line somewhere that's not too liberal - nowhere near modern standards - but allows female and foreign character concepts to be successfully pulled off. If women can't be in public without a chaperone for example, even if it was thematic, it'd be pretty damn annoying so for gameplay reasons if nothing else. However make it too comfortable and it might as well be a modern setting with slightly different clothes and technology which is probably not the desired state either.
@Coin Maybe it's my own RPG coming-of-age but my non-Tolkienesque races all came from Dark Sun.
Them dwarves on Athas aren't short and if you meet a tribe of halflings it's a good idea to start running. Even their magic rules were amazing and fit the world really well.
The whole setting... sigh.
Maybe link CGen to a web form? You go there, fill out your character sheet and it spits out the +commands needed to get what you wanted, so you just copy and paste it into the client.
Then have a very clear, concise, basic index to the most common game functions right in the opening screen. page, newbie channel, meetme, emit.
I think experienced players such as the ones mentioned in the thread already are very important, it's true, but it goes maybe beyond that. Once we get a newbie it's much easier to keep them since what we do - the persistent IC world stuff - is sort of niche, but getting newbies is a problem. Hell, newbies knowing MU* still exist as anything but an ancient relic of the pre-MMORPG past is a problem.
So... being ambassadors for our hobby in venues other than MU* might help, too. Not going aggressively after it, we don't need to be gaming's equivalent to vegans and announce our existence/superiority uninvited, but making sure to mention the idea in peripheral, related discussions on forums, chat channels etc as it might organically be on topic could be a good idea.
Or a terrible one, what do I know?
@Thenomain said in New Player Onboarding:
Okay, I'm going to rant. Not at you this time, just in general because this keeps coming up.
What in hell is the difference between typing in a Mu* client and typing in a web client?
A lot. The entire interface, including the client itself you're using to access the game. The presence of graphics and enriched text. The sense of familiarity and continuity from stuff you're already used to doing.
For example the very first part of doing anything on a game...CGen. Anyone who's played an RPG could fill out a character sheet and over the web you can actually show them a character sheet then have them click on the dots or whatever they're increasing and it's all visual right there on a page. On a MU* they need a collection of arcane-looking commands, sifting through help files and asking on channels, right at a time when they might (and most likely) never have used either a command-line interface, know how to look at help files or know how to use channels.
That's fairly effortless for seasoned players and not that hard to figure out for someone already hooked. But at that point they are not hooked; they heard from a friend or read something about these games and we probably have like 10 minutes' worth of their attention (I pulled that number out of my ass 
) before they give up and go use a web chat or whatever kids do these days.
The typing you are referring to, the typing we can't and don't want to be rid of, comes later - once they're on the grid and they need to pose, or when they are chatting with other players. And even that can be vastly improved - consider the difference between a modern PM Hangouts-like interface with a multi-recipient page command, people logging on/off who need to be taken off or added, names with spaces in them, etc. The simplest things are what we can't improve.
Oh, and graphics. Making things actually pretty to look at. I don't need to tell you why that's important to gaining new users for a service. Have you seen some of the wikis folks like @surreality have been making? They look pretty damn neat - but they can't do much to improve the black screens with un-enriched text on them.
This stuff matters.
The biggest barrier to entry for MU* when it comes to attracting new players is the telnet protocol itself. I mean sure, the the erratic placement of help files (to see the command syntax sometimes you +help $commandname, other times type it without arguments, etc) and even CGen in some cases doesn't help.
But the average user has probably never been exposed to a command-line interface before at all. So that's an immediate hurdle right after installing 'a MUD/MUSH client' which to most people is just random gibberish. They are greeted by a big black screen with an ASCII logo or something and a prompt but you can't click on anything, what is this madness?!
So to answer the OP's question... I've been on games where both coders and staff bust their asses to help new players out, and even some whose culture was newbie-friendly... but that's all to overcome that big ol' hurdle. It's through no fault of their own, there's only so much we can do until it becomes easy to migrate on a web platform for our purposes.
@Cupcake Those are reasons we should want games in different settings. A character like yours in a modern city wouldn't even raise eyebrows for example, so the whole concept is different.
As for historical accuracy, that's why an 'alternate' Victorian-era is crucial. I don't want to have to care about who was Prime Minister at the time.
I don't run into drama often - or maybe I just don't care enough to recognise it as such when I do. If things get weird or awkward though my immediate inclination is to ignore and play through it, hopeful that it will just go away on its own, but very rarely try to act or actively try to resolve it.
I suspect it's not an ideal policy (although I still think it's not a bad one). My concern, always, is that I'll end up contributing to the awkwardness by voicing it either directly to the other player or more so to staff, who always have more fun and pleasant things to do than deal with some interpersonal issue.
If it ever gets to the point where I do make a stink though it's because I'm running out of options. At that stage either the issue goes away or I do.
@Coin Yeah - what I don't understand, and I don't mean that sarcastically, is how anyone who's watched The 100 can expect most characters to not be total assholes to each other. Especially among the delinquents, those kids on the show were goddamn jerks.
It's like going to a hardcore Vampire political game and hating backstabbing and snarky attitudes. Hell, it's probably not entirely unlike playing an FPS if what you're looking for is a first-person RPG.
Games can't be all things to all people and, more importantly, they shouldn't.
@Coin said in RL things I love:
@Arkandel said in RL things I love:
@Coin Nah it's not ruined, your mom loves Friday nights.
She probably hates this one. She's going to have some major jetlag.
Jetlag can bite my shiny metal ass. 
I've tried every trick in the book , none of them work. On overseas flights I get there, it's morning, I'm all primed to last for the day and go to sleep at a proper time... then by 4 pm or so I'll sleep in an upright position if I have to since my brain's like "fuck this, shutting down".
@Coin Nah it's not ruined, your mom loves Friday nights.
@Coin said in RL things I love:
Fridays.
Graffiti on a wall near my bus stop a few years ago I always liked: For every Monday morning there is a Friday night.