Posts made by Creepy

@HelloRaptor said:

I don't know if I would assume they'll be the least popular sphere.

See Renown-talk.

See Packs in Werewolf being vastly more integral to playing Werewolf than subgroups in most other spheres, and how much of a pain in the ass schedules are for multiple folks.

So on and so forth. Werewolf suffers from a lot of issues more than any other game, I think.

You're right.

Part of that suffering is due to pack ooc stuff, like folks leaving or RP schedule issues.

Part of it is the intense focus on territory, which can be difficult in a MU setting as most games don't allow players to make significant changes to the grid.

You can plop your pack down in a high crime area, spend a RL year running daily scenes with logs that show you fighting that crime, but the crime level will likely not be changed by staff. At best you'll buy retainers, contacts, and other influence merits for your territory. Get a +note set saying you pissed all over the place and there are tags marking the place as yours. But dynamic changes based on the pack's actions? Nah.

Don't even get me started about cleaning up Wounds.

Territory and packs. That's the core of Werewolf. Renown follows actions taken by packs and keeping territory.

Charlie, dahling.

Can't. Sorry. Long day.

Meh. There's stuff you do on the grid once your character gets approved, and then there's a lifetime of crap your wolf did prior to entrance onto the grid. Sure, you can pimp smack a Pure for a low level dot of Glory, but there's no reason (in my opinion) that you can count something you did pre-grid towards a higher dot of renown. That's why backgrounds are a great thing to write for your wolf. It gives staff more information so they can weigh your request for Purity 5. Meh again, I say. Guess we'll see.

I see the Demon stuff on your wiki is getting filled in. Had a quick question. If I'm not planning to play a Demon, are any of the new books worth getting for non-Demon content (i.e. additional merits or items non-Demons can use)? If so and you only had the money to buy one of the new books, which would you recommend (you being anyone whose read them all)?

@Wretched said:

Both she and Tori looked young despite being of age both IC and with the models they chose. They referred to friends and family by familial names (Ernst was either Uncle Bad Touch or Daddy.) Which I thought was both creepy and kinda awesome. But I like changeling showing various damage, especially when it's uncomfortable shit. Other people assume it's some pedo perversion. (Seriously, the amount of people who thought Leka was some pedo fantasy was silly)

I did one scene with Clover that was both creepy and gut-wrenching at the time. Completely caught Clover off guard but that guy could seriously RP. Rolled right with it. Tori was the first and only seriously mentally unstable character i ever played. Sure, I took some of the sexual stuff too far. But my PB wasn't /that/ young looking. I wish I'd gotten to play with Leka. The two of them at the same time. Poor Uncle Bad-Touch.

Fuck ice in the walkway.

Fuck gravity.

Fuck what just happened when the two combined to wreck my back.

Ultimately, as is always the case, it boils down to staff structure and capabilities. Broadly speaking, you've got your STs, who run scenes and occasionally assist with admin, and you've got an Admin person who handles the gruntwork of +requests. Arguably, its the staffing levels that affect whether you have to kick in a sphere cap.

I've always felt that the players have a certain level of responsibility beyond "Don't be a dick" and "Be as active as RL allows". Several games have allowed players to be quasi-staff story-tellers (lower case st) and nearly every game grants some sort of xp incentive for player run plots.

Rather than focusing so heavily on limiting the sphere based on what staff can support, maybe a different way to view it is to ask, "What can staff do to facilitate/empower/incentivise players to entertain themselves, regardless of sphere levels?" Granted, you've got metalplots (lower case m, as noted in the wiki) that staff will be running, which I'm sure can be broken into smaller scenes rather than the sphere-wise scenes I've attempted to run. But there's no reason some stuff can't be handled by the players themselves to lighten the load and allow for higher sphere caps.

So @Coin and @Eerie, in an ideal world, you've got 30 players in one sphere, an admin staffer and lets say 2 STs (staff ST). There's 2 really solid players that are dependable which you can ask to run smaller scenes. Give us an example of how you'd operate and link it back to why you'd need to set a sphere cap utilizing that normal operation method. That analysis may better inform your policy (or at least entertain me).

@Eerie said:

@Creepy said:

ETA: Are you going to allow Becoming to circumvent this?

Since I haven't seen GMC werewolf yet, and this wouldn't apply to Demons, its a vampire specific thing. And no, not to circumvent this, though IC becomings with staff approval should be fine. Also we'd talked about a 'if you are murdered gruesomely, you can re-app into your old sphere' clause if, and only if, you didn't plan your own death just because you wanted to re-app.

What about inactive folks coming back and wanting to unfreeze into a Capped sphere?

@Eerie said:

@Glitch said:

so if we do end up going with simply 'first come, first served' I'd be inclined to only keep a 5-10 person waiting list and then we'll announce when we're ready to take more names in the future.

Given the alt limit, someone would likely have a character they're playing when you finally contacted them once their number came up. At that point they'd have to retire their current character and switch to whatever sphere they were waiting for. I think you'd prob move down that list pretty quickly as some folks will have left the server and others decide to stick with their current characters. So its likely to not be as big a problem as some might think.

ETA: Are you going to allow Becoming to circumvent this?

@Ganymede said:

@Creepy

Your equilibrium will be reached when certain players get fed up with their +requests being neglected. I'm not sure if that's a good policy to stick to.

My point exactly!

Or...

Realistically there's a natural ebb and flow of sphere migrations that happen based on the activity level (and assholeishness) of the players, and the support of staff.

Open the flood gates, set no caps, and watch folks leave when they can't get an ST to run something specific to them. Eventually some equilibrium will be reached.

I hate quotas so much and feel pretty strongly they happen due to alt-madness. My normally unpopular opinion is to be much more restrictive in the number of supernatural character slots each player can have.

Right now you're planning to have Demon, Vampire and Werewolf.

You're also designing the game to promote cross-sphere role-play and (digitally) physical cohabitation.

Why not simply limit players to 1 supernatural template?

Having said that, you're introducing a sphere that hasn't seen much (any?) activity on a MU before: Demon. So that might be something a lot of folks will want to play. There you might see the waiting lists grow due to the staff intensive nature of the splat. My humble suggestion would be to based your sphere caps, if necessary, on a player to staff ratio you feel is appropriate. Most folks realize there's an initial glut of new applications and some settling in that occurs when a game opens so you'll have a month to let the dust settle at least. Maybe lock the sphere then, regardless of cap, and spend 2 weeks running plots. That will give you a feel for just how staff intensive it is and inform your cap limit decision.

Another option would be to say: Alt limit is 1 Demon and 1 Other supernatural template for the first 6 months. Then shift to 1 super template period.

Of course none of this answered your question so based on the options given, I vote option 1. Lottery's suck.

@Glitch said:

@Creepy said:

You know what I always needed help with? Finding rooms. I know there are search commands and whatnot but sometimes the help files read like a foreign language as I have no coding background.

For example, if I want a list of all room dbrefs, what would I type, exactly?

@search type=room

The rest of these mostly want to find an object of a particular type and then do some check with it. So here are your <thing> + <do> searches:

  EOBJECT   - A combination of TYPE=OBJECT and EVAL=<restriction>.
  ETHING    - An alias for OBJECTS.
  EROOM     - A combination of TYPE=ROOM and EVAL=<restriction>.
  EEXIT     - A combination of TYPE=EXIT and EVAL=<restriction>.
  EPLAYER   - A combination of TYPE=PLAYER and EVAL=<restriction>.
  PARENT    - Restricts to the parent designated by <restriction>.
  ZONE      - Restricts to the zone designated by <restriction>.

If I want a list of all rooms with a certain parent, such as an outdoor parent, what would I type?
To get the outdoor parent's dbref (or find any object with a given name)

@find Outdoor Parent

Then, if the Outdoor Parent's dbref is #25, for example:

@search parent=#25

How about a search for any rooms or exits without some attribute set? Say, desc or odrop? Then I could plow through to see what areas I haven't finished yet.

We'll use eroom and eexit for these:

@search eroom=not(get(##/desc))
@search eexit=not(get(##/odrop))

How can I use basic commands, such as @desc here, without being in the room? @desc dbref#=Text here?

You got it.

ETA: This may have been better as part of a more thorough tutorial. I have a different one lined up right now (part of which @Cobaltasaurus has now kindly already covered for me), but I'll keep this one in mind too.

That's awesome. Thanks!

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Creepy, after thinking about it I went ahead and put in some placeholders for those and will fill'em out. We'll just try to be as code-friendly as possible when we get there. X D

Perfecto!

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@2mspris, no that's wonderful! I've added it to the main list with a link to your post, and set up a 'contributors' list in case anyone else wants to drop in any tips / How Tos for building. All build knowledge is great!

@Creepy: Some of that is a little bit of somewhat advanced code knowledge, and might be better suited in another tutorial? However, I've updated the 'desc' post to show you how to @desc from afar.

For the sake of answering you in case you're working on something and actually need/want those answers, give me a few and I'll post up some code you can c/p to find rooms.

Nope. I'm currently an unemployed builder/desc'er. Just giving some general feedback on problems I've experienced in the past.

@Darinelle said:

Constant, unrelenting darkness is almost never sustainable (except IRL). What's the point of a dismal death march? But the times in between, the occasional light and hope give people reasons to soldier on, to try to make the world better. Which in turn gives more hopes and dreams for the GMs to crush while cackling maniacally.

It's win-win, really.

The wiki, btw guys, looks awesome. And I'm excited to hear you're nearing launch! HUZZAH!

Yeah. I really enjoy some heavy dark RP, but it can wear you out quick if you never get a chance to achieve some sort of victory. Its the little wins and a sense that you're slowly winning the overall battle that makes it a challenge, rather than tedious monotony.

And yesh. The wiki is quality product. Visually and content-wise.

You know what I always needed help with? Finding rooms. I know there are search commands and whatnot but sometimes the help files read like a foreign language as I have no coding background.

For example, if I want a list of all room dbrefs, what would I type, exactly?

If I want a list of all rooms with a certain parent, such as an outdoor parent, what would I type?

How about a search for any rooms or exits without some attribute set? Say, desc or odrop? Then I could plow through to see what areas I haven't finished yet.

How can I use basic commands, such as @desc here, without being in the room? @desc dbref#=Text here?

Those are the sorts of things I'd love to see included in a tutorial, along with the standards.

@Thenomain said:

@Creepy, I heard many complaints about Tori. The same kind of "I have a stick up my ass" complaints that I heard about Leka.

Well, to be fair, there were plenty of complaints about the scenes my staffbit ran too so I might've just been blocking them out. Willful ignorance is still blissful.

@Thenomain said:

@Wretched said:

@Creepy said:

Uncle Bad-Touch!

Tori! She was fun, was sad when she left.

I was waiting for staff to start the same vendetta against the player as they did against Leka's player.

Well, it helped that I was staff at the time and I don't think anyone took Tori seriously.