Posts made by Bobotron

I'm probably going to be the voice of dissent here, but I come from a MUCH different MU* background than the traditional WoD MU*er.

1. Staff should not play characters in positions of IC power

I've never understood this, but I have never been in a game where a staff PC, who was in a position of power, was abused. Now, maybe that's because of some of the background of games where I've been have most all been consensual RP, but at the same time, that doesn't seem to be an issue. The issue is asshats who abuse their power, not the fact that they're staff. On Megaman MUSH, I freely admit that I was a staffer and played a fachead. I also did this at a number of Transformers MUs, particularly my own Beast Wars MU, and Transformers: Genesis. And it was something that just happened on games. People apped for their characters, they got them or got denied, and... they played. They did their stuff as fachead and staffer and never really had issues. Or at least in my experience.

I don't feel that having staff in positions of power is bad, no. Though I feel that, positions of power should really often be considered 'semi-staff' in general. TF2k5 treated the facheads and XOs of factions (for a while the XOs, anyway) as TP staff, responsible for helping out the flow of the game. It's something I am debating doing as a policy at Houses of the Blood, in order to help maintain cohesion. And it worked okay at 2k5, especially in the pre-trololol days.

2. Staff can play characters, etc.

Mostly there, except for violation of point 1. If you don't play on your own game, you'll lose track of what's going on, on the ground. And most of us, I think we build games we'd WANT to play on (I know I do).

3. Metaplot/stuff

That's fine. That's pretty standard.

4. Staff is not operating as a staffer

Unless the caveat is that PC is treated as part of staff, and has a responsibility as described above. Otherwise, yes, no murderkills for pissing someone off and such things. You can't fix this without removing asshats through, which is the hard part.

@GirlCalledBlu

You can use CSS to manipulate the pictures, so if they have some base size that's default (you can link to a clipper if necessary), people can upload and layer via CSS. I am testing some of the CSS picture layering and finding it to be difficult, but not impossible.

http://hotbmush.com/wiki/Riley_Kauffman, the main pic on the infobox is two pictures layered.

@surreality
Neat. I have some fonts I like that I want to use for Houses of the Blood, and it's annoying to have the sizing go all crazy when a player's computer doesn't have the font.

Can you do this with a normal mediawiki installation?

@surreality
OH SURR

On that note, I found a piece of CSS code you can use on templates that causes images to automatically resize to the screen/container formatting (so images would resize to say, fit the width of an infobox constantly across all display versions). It's pretty neat, and you can just stick it on the template and be done with it.

{{#css:
img {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
width: auto\9; /* ie8 */
}
}}

Requires the CSS extension, but I thought you might find it useful.

Also, on the note of the game, I am actually excited. I really like the concept and am looking at the mass of sci-fi books and anime I have and going 'OOH BABY WHAT INSPIRATION'. I just finished Macross Delta, and Macross is my typical go-to space opera, though there's plenty of Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Excel Saga. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA. Space bounty hunter who spends too much money on food and booze and can barely keep his ship in ammo, here I come!

If you haven't gotten this yet, I think it's related to the GCC or PERL, as that's the only error notation for that specific line I can find. Make sure your GCC is the right version?

EDIT: I asked for you.

<Hardcode> [({<>})] Mike says, "For some reason, configure thinks your compiler knows that option but it actually doesn't. Open up your Makefile, there'll be a line starting with CCFLAGS= that contains -fstack-protector. Remove -fstack-protector from it and re-run make."
Huh? (What's all this then?)
<Hardcode> [({<>})] Mike says, "You might want to put a ticket up about it on github too, but off the top of my head I can't recall exactly what info you'd need to attach. Might just be your config.log file."

I've had people recommend ChroMUD Alpha for online play, it functions and looks a lot like MUSHclient from what I can tell.

http://chromud.whiteraventechnology.com/

@surreality
It can't hurt to test it. On Penn, you create whatever name (usually Guest#), give them the password guest and @power them Guest. Then they connect in ascending DBREF order.

@Wizz

Welp.

@Thenomain
On Penn, it just requires the Guest characters to have the Guest power, and have the password guest. Otherwise it then connects to them in DBREF order, and doesn't duplicate connect if they're all used up. Test it that way?

I don't know if everyone who believes in this stuff is 'roleplaying'. I know people who believe in real magic. And this is a common discussion on 4chan's Paranormal board, and... the level of 'tinfoil hats' that get into hyper conversations makes me believe that it's something people will believe in. It's origin is in Buddhist mysticism though, so it's not just a made-up thing like Slenderman (well, okay, not just a recent meme thing like Slenderman).

To me, there are characters that stay 'alive' insofar as I make plans in their headspace and such, but they aren't 'other personalities' and such things like that.

@icanbeyourmuse

Anything really good on CR right now? I'm excited for Digimon Tri pt. 3 next weekend, but I think I've watched everything else on there that I've wanted to watch.

Having to do a 3 minute waltz for an event. And Youtube coming through with some nice how-tos, plus lots of waltz videos to snag basic things to stick into the box step. YAY YOUTUBE.

ARISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!!!

Ahem...

General Update...

• Equipment Stuff is done; base damage ratings, how the weapons function and their base damage, list of weapon qualities that modify non-superpower attacks, armors and armor ratings. A lot of it is very freeform: if you want a Deagle, build a Heavy Pistol with appropriate qualities. If you want a SWAT suit, take Heavy Armor with appropriate qualities. Some equipment will be pre-built from a database and available, but if you want to make your own stuff, you can.
• Powers are underway and having heavier build. Some neat stuff has come out of some of them like Bloodworking and Shapeshift (the powers Sanguine Shield and Blood Purge from Bloodworking, and people who like Gangrel claws will like the Monstrous Talons power of Shapeshift, which modifies your Unarmed attack with a higher damage level and weapon qualities like Armor Piercing and such, which you can choose when you activate the power)
• I FINALLY HAVE A MAP OF NYC THAT I LIKE AND A RESOURCE FOR THE DISTRICTS. It's good for great detail for everything except for The Bronx, which I am using a less-comprehensive/cool resource, but it'll be fine.
• I have a layout for the Consul , the six Princeps, the Legatus, the Praetor and the Aedile. These will be NPCs starting out, that I'll (closer to opening) be recruiting for people to play these PCs out in conjunction with staff goals and direction, in order or them to feel more organic.
• I have about a paragraph each for the other supernaturals of NYC and the rough areas where they'll be, though it's still way open for development (mostly, NYC has a good arrangement of Fae; Therians in the form of Wolves, Crows, and Rats; a small Bygone community led by Euryale the Gorgon; and a single Arisen who gives no fucks about anyone while he's trying to figure out which other supernatural group murdered him).

I'm still a ways from opening, but I'll get there. Probably in the next couple of months, if not sooner, depending on how quickly some things go. More as it develops.

@Arkandel
Huh. I am cautiously optimistic. Legion's not my favorite character in any form, though.

Hey. I'm looking to see if anyone around here was involved with City of Shadows MUSH? I wanted to pick your brain if you were. Just message me here or post! Thanks!

@Gilette
That's part of why I brought up my anecdotes at MVC.

When I ran Beast Wars: Transmetals MUSH, and Megaman X MUSH, and was staff at a number of others in my heydey (mostly Transformers games), I think there was more of an impetus to 'do cool shit' rather than just the equivalent of bar RP, and so we had open lines of communication from players to staff who wanted to do stuff, or staff with access to setting information to build on/into. And in many of those instances, we had a 'setting bible' for lack of a better term that we could give players access to (we did this on M3 when I was Civilian staffer, and I shamelessly stole it for MMX), and Transformers Genesis did that as well (since they had such a complex merging of parts of different TF themes) to give them guidelines and places to insert their ideas.

A lot of it I think boils down to staff being willing to facilitate non-staff plotted scenes, and make sure the tools are there to allow them to do so. It's something I'm striving for with Houses, to have a setting document available to the public saying 'Okay, here's the base setting, build within it to your hearts content and refer back to here as we add stuff from player and staff-developed shenanigans'.

@Gilette
We code census commands; I wonder if there's value in having players set, say, short plot hooks they're interested in on themselves that can be seen by a +census-style command?

I'm going to speak from some of the history I've seen on games when plot became a difficult prospect. In my experience, it ends up revolving around 2 things:

1. Focus. I find that, in games where there is a lack of focus, meaningful plots end up going by the wayside. While I never had a problem finding RP at Multiverse Crisis, for example, a lot of it was less than impactful unless it was a pre-planned scene within someone's cast (which someone familiar with the group would run, like the SAO plots when I was Klein). Otherwise you can have plots, but at what point is it just 'filler' and becomes, after a while, just 'something to do'.
2. Tightness of theme. While I love tightness of theme and stuff, there also needs to be things in there that players could reasonably mess with. And on that note, if the players make something cool and it intersects well with other plot, staff should induct that plot and those players and help them with the outcomes.

I would have to agree that ways to manipulate and handle NPCs, without having to have them in like, goggledocs or many bits logged in is wonderful. Especially in games where there is coded combat. We used to use coded 'automatic combat' objects for things like, troops or weapon emplacements, and I've developed and used to decent effect a 'Virtual NPC' code before, where they have stats on the game and interact with all the coded systems, and it worked out well.