Posts made by bored

@deadculture Still that's kind of my point. You had a character with an agenda (in a similar way that Victor did, provocateur/etc) that put them into the story. That's not true of all of them.

And part of the frustration is that I took the archetype to be a bit different, but can see if I'd gone with something more like what I'd usually play (ie, if I'd just grabbed the Solider) I'd objectively have had more opportunity for involvement.

I'm far from saying no one is having fun, so your having fun doesn't really address it.

@botulism That's totally fair. It's a new thing and there's going to be learning steps, and if anything you deserve applause for actually doing something new vs. the same old that we're usually stuck with.

Those changes sound reasonable too. I'd just be cautious about the GP stuff too so that the people who kinda whiffed on round 1 will majorly miss out on round 2 because they lack cool toys.

@skew said in Horror MUX:

Likewise, I've seen some of the "important" types get to sit on their hands and do nothing at all. Conrad knowing what's going on doesn't REALLY give him more to do, when he's sat in the safe zone waiting to get word back.

Conrad has tons to do (to the 'I have people griefing me because I'm RPing with someone else instead of dealing with their request' level. I know his player very well.

Anyway, I'm not saying its universal or hard rule how this breaks down. But for instance, the prior (not last night's, but the night phase before that, so 2 rl days ago?) event had a lot of people in the Pavilion facing... 0 actual danger. This itself feels kinda contrary to the whole 'everyone must be IC if they can at night time, SUPAH DANGER OH NOES!' thing that's been pushed. Like I made efforts to be online for both those evenings... only to have literally nothing happen because I was in the safe zone.

And while certain less obvious archetypes got a lot of story, it's because their role was really tied into things. Buffy is 'just a concert goer' but also 'the streamer/instagram everything' chick so she's heavily involved in the whole 'getting word to the outside' subplot of the game (which also involves the computer people, see 'smart' archetypes above). I don't really see something similar I can engage with.

@Auspice The +request kudos thing is fine but I imagine people aren't going to heavily use it (compared to a normal +vote system) and it doesn't really solve Pavilion RP kind of being limited in and of itself. The people who are in 'dangerous' scenes get automatic GP just for being in them, plus (now) the chance to die gloriously for a lot more. I suspect Victor has all that GP because he was essentially the star of one of the longer PRPs (the prisoner thing, via his SC).

Also re the SCs... I think that whole 'everyone kill one of your SCs' thing kinda ruined that for me (maybe I stupidly picked the wrong one, but w/e). That was another thing that felt like a miss to me. If the Director needs people to have less SCs to get them killed faster they can maybe reduce how many we get next time? Or run some event we could all participate in where we'd really need to use them for survival. I lost mine without getting to do much with it.

Anyway, to be EXTREMELY clear, this is not 'oh this game is horrible' I just think its something to point out that there seems to be an engagement/usefulness/relevance gap across characters. I'm pretty much writing off this current story and would be happy to just get my character killed (so I dont feel guilty idling) and hope I get something better on round 2.

While I like the premise of the game I think it needs to work on integrating all the archetypes, especially since you're tied to one forever and/or have no real control of what you play. There's a lot of focus on the proactive archetypes, ie the obvious leader, fighty or smarts types, or on roles more tied/specific to the scenario (ie the festival staff).

In the last couple events, these people had things to do while some others... just got to watch? Worse, them doing well (ie, building and maintaining defenses etc) directly leads to others having less to do (oh we're safe... hooray?). Safe = little to do, no danger, no GP, etc, so I find myself wanting those players to fail those rolls just so stuff can happen.

I don't think this is intentional but it seems like something to consider for the next round. Also that if you're giving people perks from GP (that might tie them even more to the theme), you may be creating a feedback loop of relevancy.

That's legit Blizzard artwork though? Maybe I'm confused at what this is, but I don't see how they won't get in trouble and fast.

@deadculture Ehn!

There's a couple different arguments here, and I'm not in the mood to debate liberal vs. conservative vs. death squads in your neck of the woods (yes I know that's mostly hyperbole) vs. SJWs vs. whatever. We've had plenty of those conversations in more detail and the people I care to talk politics with know where I land on that stuff.

I'll leave fighting the newbie-oldbie to others!

@Tempest It's not a problem if the individual spaces are moderated per their own rules.

Like, I have no problem with someone who wants to be 'civil argument guy/gal' 80% of the day talking in Game Dev and being super constructive but also wants to be able to take an hour off to call someone a syphilitic cretin in the pit (as long as they understand they'll catch the same in retaliation while they're there). It's possible to abide by different standards in different places. I'm sure I'd catch the occasional wrist-slap in a more moderated area, but w/e.

@surreality Yeah, probably. An attack is an attack, and it comes with a combative attitude of fighting to win despite the casualties or collateral. Unfortunately right now attack is outright in the rules. 'Attack the idea.' Well OK /dials in the artillery

@surreality I mean I agree, moving whole threads is a bad solution (and this came up back in the days of the Advertisement forum discussion too) since it allows people to intentionally derail down to their level. I'm OK with mods just moving specific sub-arguments or deleting people who continue to be cunts dicks assholes despite warnings.

But that's implementation detail, in the end. It still needs to start with the actual cultural understanding of the space being a civil one. That requires a moderation standard higher than the 'attack the idea' routine.

I'm not sure it's a 'level of venom' thing. I imagine most people would agree I'm one of the more willingly combative posters and don't think the hog pit should go away. Sometimes torches and pitchforks are the required answer, particularly as it pertains to some of the forum's original function as a space where people can report on game abuses away from on-game censorship or reprisal (although the reprisals still happen, as we saw on the SF/Spider thread). Sometimes the vicious dog-pile is social correction.

And I very strongly believe we always need a space where someone can go 'look at this shitstain of a corrupt creeping fucknugget staffer and their garbage pile of a game, AVOID AVOID AVOID'. And when the staffers come on to defend their shitty behavior, they get dogpiled and it's glorious and proper. I support watching those people flail and dig their holes, and moderation in those cases would almost certainly be abused by the guilty staff to silence their detractors.

But I also recognize the value of having constructive spaces and have badgered until the mods gave in argued for the creation of places for people who want the civil discussion. That's actually how we got the Game Dev section. But civil discussion really means civil discussion, if that's what you want. In that thread, I had been suggesting that it get a higher standard of moderation per the desire of people like @surreality and @faraday who wanted somewhere they could discuss ideas with very strict controls on criticism.

We got the new forum, but we didn't get the higher moderation standard. So we still just have more of this shitty weird moderation that's hands off except when they personally disagree or don't like someone, that promotes 'attack the idea not the person' but has no fucking clue of where that line is (as mod participation in the OC thread demonstrated), etc. I don't know that we need a forum-wide revolution but yeah, maybe test 'actually be nice' on the forum where that was supposed to be the goal? Instead of just more half-assing it.

@faraday said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

@auspice said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

The "ftfy" imo fell into attack on idea rather than person.
Which goes back to my: learn to tell the difference.

This is why I don't like the whole "attack the idea not the person" strategy.

Because the root of the concept is still attack. People don't respond well to attacks, and particularly when the idea is some deeply held belief, or the attack is "that's f-ing insane" then it's really really hard for even an even-keeled human being to respond to it rationally.

I prefer the The Universal Rules of Civilized Discourse mantra of Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree.

We don't need to attack ideas (or people) with over-the-top baiting remarks or vulgar insults. We can be better, if we choose to be.

I'm going to echo this. The 'idea not the person' moderation policy is bullshit and doesn't work.

Because you can absolutely construct an attack to target an idea while still vilifying a person. This is what @surreality is complaining about here: that she stated her political views, and then another poster attacked those views by depicting them as equivalent to (what @surreality clearly believes) to be a much more negative set of beliefs. So it does both things: it attacks her by attacking her ideas in a very severe way and by means of comparison. If I tell a person (who I know to be a liberal in the US) that their idea 'sounds like something Trump would say' that is a personal fucking attack regardless of how much it might be grounded in the ideas at hand.

This was also what happened with me in the OC thread, obviously: sure, it's attacking my ideas to compare preferring certain RP partners to homophobia, racism, and sexism... but it's also a ludicrously extreme comparison that serves double-duty as personal defamation.

So your moderation rules don't fucking work, and it's pretty obvious that they don't work, as every garbage pile of a thread demonstrates. You can make the standard 'actually be nice and civil' and fucking enforce that, or you can deal with civility being nonexistant.

@Salty-Secrets Generally works except you need to handle the big teams, too. Many of those characters never have their own (at least ongoing) comics, but its hard to argue that the core rosters don't have big appeal. Also probably anything that's in other media is going to be more popular.

You can split hairs over certain characters of course, and case by case adjustments are possible (particularly if a character goes unplayed for a long time and someone wants to pick it up as an alt). Being reasonable is a thing.

Your scenario is pretty much what I was getting at previously. You don't want to lock people out of finding RP with an alt limit, but you also don't want people hogging a key position on every team so your top tier needs to factor that in.

I'd agree that #2 is really important too, though I have no idea how to make it happen. People on comic MUs seem adverse to any kind of slice of life RP, so it can be really hard to get team stuff to happen that isn't 'constantly run monster of the week plots,' which is fine but will quickly burn out the few people who actually do the running. I saw this in the Avengers on UH (I had Thor, Tony TSed all day, Cap played with his own clique, and none of the rest would RP if I didn't run an event for them).

Making villain alts an exception seems fine but villains seem to rarely contribute a lot. Maybe tie them to some STing roles, but again there's only so much you can do for people who won't RP on their own.

The difficulty of getting balanced, comic-appropriate OCs is another part of why I say staff should handle both statwise.

I think you'll get much better results if someone apps with a brief overview of 'I want to play an electricity-manipulator who's an IT professional in their civilian ID' and the staff comes up with some reasonable powerset and weaknesses. Instead of getting, y'know, that OC cyborg/electricity/technopath/whatever who could absorb all tech and grow to theoretically infinite size and and and and.. etc they had on UH. Or whatever example of people being little twinky fuckers that you want.

The people who argue for OCs say they need them for various reasons of creativity, variety, and even diversity of representation, and yet I cannot think of an OC I've played with who wasn't a nightmare like this. Cut the bullshit, call their bluffs: let them do the creative part, you do the power part, and if they qq about what they get show their munchkin ass the door and you're not worse off.

I went with the first one. I get people want as many restrictions as possible, but there's some pragmatic concerns. However its also the case that the efficacy of option 1 varies a TON by how you implement.

'No alts' (for any amount of time), is going to turn some people away and also (cynical observation or not) suppress early +who numbers and such which may well kill your game before it starts. So I think limiting them out of the gates isn't a great idea.

The problem with just using the first option tends to be that games aren't aggressive enough with their definitions. UH was a good demonstration of this, where the Tier 1 characters were basically... the trinity on DC side and Cap/Iron Man/Jean Grey on Marvel. Then basically everyone else but the characters only the biggest nerds would know were in the next tier.

This doesn't work so well.

So if you're doing it this way, you need to be a bit more broad with what the tier 1s really are. Unfortunately DC has a really shallow pool of recognizable characters compared to Marvel, and I have my doubts if pure DC games are even really viable as anything but very small, personal affairs.

@zombiegenesis I am a little confused as your post seems to have two completely different sets of assumptions using two different sets of rules. If the main question is between systems, I am generally adverse to highly complex systems for super games. I am capable of doing the min-maxing and spending a gajillion points on a gajillion widgets, but I am kind of over it and it often feels like it works great for some characters but terribly for others and ends up being more pro-math than pro-RP.

I would suggest that if staff is making sheets for FCs, they should probably make them for OCs too (if you end up allowing them, if not, no skin off my back), at least in more complicated systems. Otherwise you'll get min-maxed OCs tooling on FCs.

Beyond that, app process wise, I think there's only so much that's useful on a comic game. I find it tedious to have to write up the well-known backstories of well known characters (aside from a basic which version I'm playing, if there's multiple), and more valuable to have information that is a bit more player-oriented: what comics/other media are their favorite appearances of the character (can tell you a lot about the tone to expect), what kind of scenes/RP are they most interested in (big cinematic fights, plot-y cerebral, ts social, etc.), etc.

I think there's a lot of absurd hyperbole in this thread, and I say that being notoriously absolutist about shit.

Decreasing general literacy? Who cares. We're pretty much a hobby of amateur (and occasionally professional) writers, we're gonna be in the 1% no matter what. 'Well there are people RPing in all these other ways'? Yeah, they were back then, too. Discord RP is basically indistinguishable from AOL chatroom RP. Web 3.0 slickness and simplicity in general? In the end we're still playing pen & paper RPGs. You can't magic away the complexity of a 300+ page rulebook by tossing node.js at it. Our hobby is what it is, and we've actually had the test case of the lite version: it's Storium. We tried it, shrugged, and mostly came back to MUing.

I think the only 99% necessary thing is playing in the browser. Pushing some advanced (and logical, like bboards / wikis ) features there is a good goal but its not going to fundamentally change anything.

Also, I really can't stress enough that people need to look at what @faraday's done and realize much of this has already happened, or is happening. Maybe there's a barrier due to Ares association with FS3 and its own microcosm of players, but from a technical standpoint its ridiculously impressive and a huge step forward. If someone put together a WoD module for it, I think you'd see a shitton of games pop up running it almost over night.

(And I don't mean to discount Evennia - it's amazing - but I feel it will remain an outlier until it has similar 'out of the box' functionality. Right now it just requires a game runner to be a much more capable coder.)

@faraday I think people have avoided it, so far, because the pressure hasn't truly existed. IE, people might like Penn better than MUX or whatever, and pick among those games where there are a ton of them with that being one (of possibly many) deciding preferences. Or 'the new thing' is just a single test case, while they can just as easily keep playing on their favorite WoD game.

If the older code actually started dying in favor of something new that was drawing new players and interest and whatever, I think the picture might be different. People just haven't actually been made to adapt, they've been allowed some degree of preference between similar choices.

I think the 'the syntax has to be completely the same or the oldbies will rebel' is... exaggeration by the oldies for the sake of hating change (like most people do). Push come to shove, I do think people will play where they can play, so long as its achieving the functionality they desire. The key thing is... 'simplifying' or 'modernizing' the syntax doesn't guarantee that functionality remains untouched. That's what why Storium failed to hold MUers.

Its important to differentiate syntax from function. You can pretty things up or organize them how you like, but in a text interface how far can you get from '(qualified)verb objectlist' as your basic template? Sure, you can do 'get towel from basket' vs. 'get basket's towl' vs 'get/container basket towel'. You can do attack/ranged shotgun/dragonsbreath=punk imma pk vs... I dunno, some other horrendously complex thing, but all of those are going to hit limits based on simply what info the command needs to parse. In the first one always requires 4 pieces of information, a general command (get), a switch to a specific form of the command (/container, 's, from) and the two targets.

I'm not sure how you ever get away from that in text. And making buttons for web interfaces will still face that problem assuming you want that functionality - you don't just need an attack button, you need a pulldown for the weapon and ammo, maybe a list to click the target, etc.

I think conceptually there's something here, it's just not a trivial thing to put together.

Presumably the point of doing something like this is trying to leverage the community aspects of MUing and get a lot of people logged in together, to hold up activity across the various games while also providing the resource. You want people making alts across the different games and all the activity feeding across games. If not, its just an inferior option (in most technically ways) for playing a tabletop with your friends when you have software custom-built for that purpose.

However its definitely trickier than it sounds. Multiple games in one place can just as easily steal focus from each other, turning it from 'the rising tide lifts all ships' to zero sum very quickly (which is part of whats being implied about multiple games in the same system/setting). A bad apple in that community can hurt multiple games, the creepers can creep more efficiently, etc. I think youd' really need to focus on it as a positive community space first, and then curate the games you'd allow to make sure no one was intentionally GOMO'ing each other, that every game was going to be a draw TO the community (from the general MU pop) not just on other people in the community (competitive with other games).

So yeah, potentially great but very difficult to implement.

To echo a few, I know a lot of people here use roll20 or equivalents for non-MU tabletop (I had a D&D VTT game last night), and a lot of us tried out Storium when it came out.

Yet mostly, people still come back to MUing for that experience. Because these other options basically divide things in half, with roll20 et al taking the systems and Storium/forum style taking the community RP stuff. Neither handles both, and so if you want to play Vampire with 50 people... well, we know where that goes.

Put another way, most of the alternatives (forum/tumblr/etc style) are closer to the earliest talker and pure social-MU style games than what we've come to be used to. They accomplish loose, often consent-based RP, but not a lot more. Alternately, you can use VTTs to play the games but not bring in the people. Neither is a complete solution, and its hard to create that complete solution without a degree of complexity.