Best posts made by bear_necessities

I think the atmosphere of MUSHing has changed in the sense that you need to be proactive in your search for RP. Like a few people said, putting on the RP request board that you're looking for RP doesn't really get as much of a response anymore as offering up some kind of scene idea, for example.

I also see people have way more success when they are sitting in a public space with an RP flag on (as long as they make it known that they have a public scene open). Ares makes that a little easier with you being able to tag a scene "open", and then you give a shout out on RP Request or whatever channel going "hey I started a scene at the diner, come on down if you want RP".

@il-volpe I'd really nail down the game set-up before you even begin to worry about the time period. Having hedges + graduate students + Brakebills students + whatever is quite a large spread, and you really run the risk of cliques icing people out of plots, especially if there's not a common goal to unite them all.

Why not make a game about hedges? The hedge community has a lot of interesting aspects to it and could be a good game. It would attract people (like me) who are particularly meh about playing The Magicians: Harry Potter Edition and don't want to play magic college students going to classes.

@Arkandel
@Snackness
ETA: @thesuntsar @krmbm

@Sparks I'm sorry, but you're missing the point. It isn't saying sue and fred should have a 1:1 ratio of scenes and theres some kind of magical # that is the correct # of times that you have to rp with sue and fred. It is that fred and sue should have the same opportunity for staff npc time. For example, if you are running a scene to get the mcguffin that sue and fred are both capable of getting, you shouldn't immediately go "nah" to fred because hes boring or leap on the opprotunity to give it to sue because she isn't.

I get it. I get you have people you enjoy GMing for. But those people shouldn't get all of your attention. Maybe fred just needs a different plot to come alive in. Or maybe fred is just super boring forever but he still plays your game and deserves the chance to be apart of it.

I vastly prefer a game to have a grid that has a good handful of fully fleshed out grid-rooms rather than vague locations. It takes a lot of the guess work out. I don't want to sit there and have to worry about where I am, what it looks like, and also how I set the scene and how people RP in it. Plus it allows for some consistency? Like yes there could realistically be 500 different coffee houses in Manhattan, but at least I know what these 3 grid coffee houses look like in "your" vision.

I don't want to play "guess what this gridroom looks like". I just want to have a set desc in the gridroom and play.

@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Ghost Thank you! Things that are normal but out of place are my go-to for creepy. Nothing like being in the woods and realizing no birds are chirping.

That's an excellent set up for a Dream tbh. People think that they have to be sleeping to have a Dream but it's really just one of those situations where you can be walking along and suddenly slip into the Dreamscape of the Veil. I would try to sort recent logs by "Dream" if you want inspiration.

Obviously this is your game and you can do whatever you want with it but I'd be very hesitant to include any object that would allow a player to eavesdrop on other people without their consent. I have never seen that work in production where it does not cause major, major issues.

I think it has a lot to do with whether or not you're in the mood to set the "tone" for the scene. When I'm playing, a lot of times I'll wait for other people to pose in first because I'm not sure of a lot of things - I don't know how I want to arrive, I don't know what kind of mood everyone is going to be in, I want to wait for someone else to "dictate" the response to the GM set, etc.

In the scenes I GM, I tend to think that people feel the same way I do. The first pose after the GM set is the pose people will try to emulate. If that person poses what clothes they are wearing, I guarantee you everyone else will. That sort of thing.

I guess STs could just make you roll for pose order as the 1st thing you do to get that out of the way, but I can't really think of any other way to avoid this.

@carma I think that eavesdropping has a large tendency to be abused OOCly. I know in Firan, being spied on was something that was routinely used to manipulate people on an OOC level, the whole 'I heard so-and-so saying this about your character'. It was also used as a fear tactic - if you do XYZ on camera, someone will overhear and you could be killed/kicked out/etc! A few years ago on Arx, someone was soft-banned for pretending there was an eavesdropping mechanism and using that to manipulate several people ICly and OOCly, which granted is not entirely the same thing, but I can only imagine what this person would've actually done if there HAD been an eavesdropping ability.

Anything that gives someone control/power over another PC without that PCs consent is opening you up to being abused in a gross/manipulative way, and since they are using game mechanics to do it, people are less likely to report.

As far as the consent list being used to out alts, I really don't think that risk (which I perceive as generally small) to outweigh the benefit of being able to feel OOCly comfortable that my boundaries aren't going to be crossed either intentionally or accidentally.

@tek said in The Dark Side of online Role-Playing:

@Lisse24 Given the fact that this creep posted a sexually suggestive image of a child in the "random funny" thread, we know where they are coming from.

I thought you were exaggerating and then I went to look and wow.

Wow.

Why isn't this creep banned?

I guess the thing is like what does it matter? People complain there are too many small town games, too many east coast games, too many west coast games. Like. Its not hurting anybody you guys.

@thesuntsar Generic Lords & Ladies: The Mush! is going to be an AWESOME game dammit.

Bumping this thread for posterity. We have been at it for about 4 months now and have a solid playerbase! We have awesome plot runners and some stuff cool events happening this month.

Come check us out. CGen is stupid easy and characters are typically approved same day.

@ZombieGenesis You're wrong.

@Cobaltasaurus OK I'm down but no TS, I'm only going to play to hunt the dickcows and craft dildos.

To @LWhiskey 's point, I did see a lot of Euphoria's scenes were "open but..." and limited to certain rank/Navy people/job. And a lot of the scenes have been "open" for days and days and there doesn't seem to be a lot happening. I will say again and again that I think that can feel uncomfortable and confusing for people new to Ares, new to a game, or just in general. I am definitely one of those people who will not join a scene that's been going on for 6 days and hasn't had a pose in 2 and seems to be throwing a pose every 2.5 days. It just isn't my speed.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:

at this time, the game needs to be casual friendly.

This isn't a 2020 issue at all. People have had trouble getting into games long before this year because they are not casual friendly. It's not going to go away once 2020 stops sucking. Like, being casual friendly is something most games should strive for?

Anyway, we have had this discussion like 300000000 times. The hobby isn't dying. The tentpole games are out there. Ares has several active games.

@reason So me and @krmbm sandboxed for about a year to "test" our concepts and see if they could be playable which I think is a good idea? I mean obviously you don't have to sandbox with people for an entire year to see if it works, but giving the game a test run with a couple of friends isn't entirely unreasonable.

TBH I don't think opening in Beta really means anything to anybody anymore. A game in Beta just tells me that the systems might get tweaked as the game goes on, but I would not expect a huge overhaul of theme in a game that's been opened to the public, whether that's a game in Alpha or Beta or whatever comes after those two things lol

I wouldn't be afraid of failure though. Like, if you have a theme/setting that you're excited about and have some stories to tell ... people'll show up. They might not stick around forever, but that doesn't make your game any less successful.

@pyrephox I definitely agree with that, explaining to people your own expectations / meanings is really important

Going to throw in my support for this place. The OOC community is fantastic and low-key/no drama. All the players are top tier RPers and are all engaged and fun to play with. I've yet to have a "bad" scene here.

As far as the fluff v. substance thing, I think that the players can fix that without issue.