@Coin said in RL things I love:
@HorrorHound said in RL things I love:
@Coin said in RL things I love:
@mietze said in RL things I love:
@Coin Are you pregnant, girl, or just really fat?
I am none of these!
Can't a man just love naps and oatmeal with brown sugar? Gosh. So oppressed. ;_____;
Wait...are we not supposed to love naps?
I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!!!
@Coin If it's any consolation, you never did.
@Vorpal Well, it makes no sense. No spoilers here but Cap had a ton of chances letting a certain group achieve ultimate victories in the past quite easily simply by not doing his very best to stop them. All he had to do was slow down slightly and they'd have won.
I mean there's playing the long game and there's this is fucking dumb.
But Marvel does this constantly. Spider-man movie out? Oh, in the comics he's a clone/Doc Ock/dead. Thor's got movies out? Let's replace him with girl-Thor! It's like they hate selling comics.
I did not, but I read the new Captain America and my eyes are rolling so hard people think I've been possessed by the devil.
@Vorpal said in RL things I love:
I can wear polo shirts at work instead of stuffy button-up shirts.
I'm good.
I'm wearing a Flash t-shirt at work as I type this. I am better. 
@Pondscum said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
Everytime I see this thread pop up, I misread it as "How does a Mu* become stressful?"
Well, you log on.
@faraday Of course. My point was that it shouldn't be considered universal that someone unable to be OOC present for an IC event should get to pick the justification for it.
Generally they should, but it shouldn't convey any particular advantage - my rule of thumb is to handwave it completely. If it's something we just don't mention IC then that's for the best.
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@Arkandel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
and while your PC was at risk of dying in the Slaughthouse of Horror please assume I was also there fighting valiantly at the back. What, it's time for you to put in a spend for Glory 4? Me too! We're old war buddies, you and I.
So if A, B, and C go to the Slaughterhouse of Horror and die, are you going to log on dead as well? I'm asking seriously, because I'd like to know where the line between plausibility and convenience is drawn in the sand.
That's what I'm saying; in my example I'd get to reap the IC benefits of being there without actually having to share the risk, simply by getting to interpret whatever happened after the fact.
If A, B and C go to the Slaughterhouse and get butchered my PC had a flat tire and didn't make it in time. Shame, he'd have saved the day!
@mietze said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
I don't know why it's so hard for people to just say "oh darn, this person wasn't able to be here oocly, well, let's just assume they were prevented from acting by something unforeseen until we have a chance to talk."
There are two reasons, one better than the other.
Because said people are jerks.
Because this person is actually abusing the fact they aren't around. For instance I log on maybe once a week but please assume I've been to all the political meetings, and while your PC was at risk of dying in the Slaughthouse of Horror please assume I was also there fighting valiantly at the back. What, it's time for you to put in a spend for Glory 4? Me too! We're old war buddies, you and I.
... I guess I could have summed it up by stating 'people are jerks' and leaving it at that.
@Three-Eyed-Crow Oh, I hate writing backgrounds... but I write some extensive ones. It's not that I can't do it, it's just aren't very useful for what they're supposed to do.
To me they are a hybrid relic that's still A Thing partly because it's tradition ('every other MU* does it, we'll do it too') and partly because RPG systems include them in their books for new roleplayers to get a basic understanding of what a character is. It's the same crutch as alignments in D&D.
@surreality said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
The more defined and specific a background is, the harder that can sometimes be to do. Leaving some wiggle room there strikes me as a good thing for people to use to make connections with other characters coming into the game later
I agree. One of the mistakes people make is generate characters who've already done all the cool things in their lives before they ever step foot on the grid - so everything from that point on is bound to be a disappointment. You go from having rescued princesses and led armies to doing bar scenes or looking for a date to go to that birthday party +event on Wednesday.
@ThatGuyThere said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
After all the purpose of backgrounds is to show the player has a clear idea of the character and that the character fits the game.
This is anecdotal of course but when I roll a new character I have very little idea of what he is about. I don't get a handle on a fresh PC until several sessions in, and there hasn't been a time I thought "hey, writing his background really helped me get some insights into this one".
If anything the only times I've had lightbulbs was, strangely enough, writing justifications for XP expenditures - something about delving into the character's downtime, the stuff I don't usually get to roleplay about (since much of it involves his 'alone' hours, the boring procedural things) has been quite helpful now and then.
But backgrounds? I write them because they won't let me out of CGen if I don't. Obviously YMMV.
@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
they don't want to waste on-line time having to fathom some IC excuse for why they were absent.
Yeah, I really don't understand where this became about wanting a favorable outcome or not wanting to fail. I don't care about that. What I care about is being forced to come up with a preposterous explanation (I fell asleep in the crawlspace with noise-canceling headphones on!) for something that is an extremely routine MUSH event (someone not being online at the exact moment you want them).
This was actually a thing on HM from time to time. Did the big scenes where a Covenant's domain was attacked happen at 3 am in the morning for one of the political aspirants in it? "Where were you when we were fighting for our lives, you COWARD?".
Yeah, it's a douche move.
@ThatGuyThere said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
For me the answer is both simple yet amorphous, a game is a success if it gains a player base and the players on it have fun.
Well, yes, but that's more true than it's useful. Of course when everyone is having fun things are great, but I think the more useful question is - how do we make that happen? Or... when it fails, why does it?
A large factor towards a game's success - and where many fail - is actually knowing what it intends to be; a MU* can't be all things at all times for all of its players. And once you know what you want you can then plan for both how to get it and what the consequences are; there is just about always a catch.
For instance let's say (for the sake of argument) you want to make a big popular game. While there's no recipe to make sure that happens having many players will mean you need procedures in place to handle the workload; the coders must automate as much as possible - so you need more coders - and you need staff to answer questions especially early on - so you need more staff. Now you suddenly have everything else on your plate you'd normally do (make a wiki, build a grid, etc) but also management woes, since you can no longer count on yourself and a couple of trusted long-time friends to carry that load, you actually need to hire out, keep an eye on your folks, be prepared to be unpleasant if they screw up, replace inactives... it's extra work. But to be 'successful' you need to do that well.
I can't overemphasize how much MU* often fail this simple test of looking at themselves in the mirror at the design phase and not seeing what's there. "Having fun" is a goal, not a method.
Success is having a goal and achieving it.
Not everyone wants the same thing - this took me a while to understand and longer to accept; why didn't everyone want to run/play the kind of game I did? Maybe if I only explained it clearly enough they'd agree? So I took a long time repeating myself in slightly different words until it dawned on me (I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer) that different folks legitimately like different things.
So for example it's entirely fine to want a tiny very niche game that caters to your exact itch; maybe it's a book series you just read that's sorta kinda popular but not really, so you'll never get many players. How do you define success in that? Probably in getting the mechanics to work for its theme and getting the (probably few) players you get to buy in.
Other folks, like me, like big games - those are meant to attract the largest number of players, and a core idea behind it is to build RP momentum - if you have a large enough playlist, the idea is, you maximize the chances someone will want to play at the same time you do, and there'll always be things happening somewhere on the grid. What's success? Maybe getting all those people to not hate each other and keeping theme somewhat consistent since many of them will (surprise!) have a different idea of what the MU* is about.
Some people just like an extra polished game with a tight theme ran on a very specific vision - Eldritch is a good example of that. @Coin (<something about his mother>) ran it and it either worked for people or it didn't; it wasn't supposed to be everything for everyone. Others just want a sandbox and we've seen several of those - the game runs, it's there, +jobs eventually get done... and you can go do whatever you like. What's success there? Probably that it continues to run while there are players left with stories to tell. And some MU* are meant to be vanity projects ('I run this because I can'), often devolving into dictatorships or deserted glorified chat channels. How would you define success there? I wouldn't know.
My point is... each game that opens has different goals. It's very difficult sometimes to reconcile what the players and what the runners want because the former want something the latter never put on the table.
When picking a game actually figure out what it's offering as soon as you can then ask yourself if it's what you're after. Don't try to change it to be what you want unless invited to do exactly that or it will become an exercise in frustration for everyone involved pretty quickly.
@Fantom A piece of advice: Enjoy your life, don't burn out working on this project.. After all most of your players are also out and about doing summer type things - do the same if you're so inclined. We'll be here.
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
You MUSHers are looking at me like I'm wearing a kilt.
It's so weird for me to be considered a MUSHer. I'd been playing and coding on CircleMUD for 6 years before I even logged on a MUSH and I was so lost when I did - I barely knew how to move from room to room. All those damn + commands!
It's like when you realize you're getting old, I guess. What do you mean the Matrix came out seventeen years ago? 
@ixokai Sure, but how would you be proven wrong? That was my objection. It's not like there's an objective way to say approach <X> is better than <Y>.
</nitpick>
@ixokai said in Better Places Code:
I'm still betting on: you can't make it better. You're reinventing rooms.
That's a brave statement! Can't is quite a thing to say - and how would it be proven either way? What's objectively better ?
And if reinventing rooms leads to a solution why is that a bad thing?
@faraday For me it would help at least. I'm not sure if that's the same for everyone, since not everyone uses a telnet client with spawn capabilities (the fools).
@Vorpal (Dating sim? I'm learning all sorts of things today.)