Posts made by deadculture

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities

While I did +1 because of this right here, I still wonder: What replaces it? Is it the chance that things can change? Does this require an oppressive world to change? Is Shadowrun (to coin a term I heard recently) "post-Cyberpunk"?

Post-Cyberpunk is basically an existentialist conclusion to the nihilism in Cyberpunk. You see that by contrasting the ending of Snow Crash with the ending of the entire Sprawl trilogy, and then contrast the same Sprawl trilogy with the Bridge trilogy, by the same author, years later. CP's message is desolation, loneliness, grim realization, whereas post-Cyberpunk has that glimmer of hope at the end of tunnel, that things might turn alright, after all.

I think Shadowrun sort of transcends the actual thematics of Cyberpunk by adding the fantastical element, I think it's that magic defies reason, and because it does, the inevitable grim conclusion of the reality before magic (and this includes even the most cynical understandings of medicine, physics and chemistry as we know it) is no longer applicable, so people can be whoever they want, whatever they want, provided they are gifted to do so and can believe. It's a little more idealistic than 'pure' cyberpunk, which also means it loses a lot of the noir element.

@Thenomain Noir is typical and intrinsic to Cyberpunk. Not so much Shadowrun, as magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities. On the other hand, I recognize what attracts me to the cyberpunk genre is what pushes people away. I like the gritty, bitter pill of cynicism that cyberpunk fiction prescribes. I am not so much for suspending my disbelief for elves and trolls and shit.

What turns me off of Shadowrun is the elves, dwarves, that stuff. If the fantasy limited itself to the spiritual fighting the technological, perhaps one of the chiaroscuro themes of cyberpunk I really enjoy thinking about, then I would definitely consider playing.

For instance: taking the Adept class, with its martial arts emphasis and spirituality, so much at odds with a materialistic, capital-first world.

Hog Pit is that way.

@Admiral I would also bet it has less griefers per capita.

@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

There's always a few drug dealers and a few cyberdoctors and a few BIG importers. Unless the pbase has just shrunken that much. Which is possible.

http://mudstats.com/World/Cybersphere

Players Connected:
7 (20 hours ago)

Maximum Connected:
15 (last 30 days)
Status:
UP

Version:
MOO

Average Connected:
10 (last 30 days) ▲11%

Minimum Connected:
5 (last 30 days)

With Sindome being thrice as big.

@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

He tends to get overly emotionally invested in his IC relationships and seems to tie some of his self worth to his characters.

To be fair, that's something a lot of people are guilty of. I just don't find the guy to be a 'problem' player. Your experience with him may be totally different.

I don't play there currently, incidentally. So maybe he's taken a turn for the worse in recent months/weeks/years.

Yeah, I think the problem is more that a lot in the game seemed centered on him. The sole drug dealer, the one person through whom someone has to buy cybernetics from, et cetera. So with so much surrounding him, the 'problem' definitely worsens.

@Admiral Maybe not the player, but I am judging the character as such. But that's my experience and ymmv, whatever. Can you expand on the issues you said he has?

@Admiral Right, SpitMonkey/Atticus/Bleh is sort of infamous in this community as it is over there. He's prone to random ape-outs in which he tries to hit on a girl, gets ditched, then tries to kill people as a result or something like that.

As for Shady not killing people who don't interact with him, that's a bit of downplaying. What you mean is that you can't interact with anything around the 'Shadysphere', in which I case would agree. But, you know, you admitted yourself he's obsessive. And he's obsessive about permakilling anyone he's set on PKing. It's what he does.

@Admiral I think I said he's cancer. I don't exactly hide my dislike for characters, or people, for that matter, @Admiral.
Although, let me ask you this: does the name SpitMonkey sound familiar to you? Perhaps Atticus? Just curious.

Most of Cybersphere's still extant problems are not the theme (which is good), the game culture (which are good, I like the corp writeups and stuff) nor the timeline (which is also good). The staffers are also very helpful as of recently. It's the negative, griefing element. I'm guilty of doing some shitty things ICly, too, but it seems that the game punishes new people for being newbies and rewards the oldbies. For instance, the cancer-character I was talking about. He's obsessed ICly about some girl's character, so any dude that interacts with her is going to be under scrutiny, and because of that, he's going to try and kill them. I'm not even joking. That guy's behavior is rewarded because when he ices someone out in the street, he's taking their loot and cyberware. No consequence whatsoever.

They can say it's cyberpsychosis and shit, but to be honest, it's just a guy from PK/griefer culture deciding to find a flimsy reason to kill someone else without trying other methods. Like threatening, blackmailing, sandmanning them and telling them what's going to happen to them if they don't stop. Plenty of ways to be a threatening villain without having a murderboner.

Oh yeah, and to top it off, he gets unoriginal points for naming himself after a famous rapper's second nickname.

@Chime said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

Technically Cybersphere was the second MU I approached.

Initially there was some mud thing that I peeked into in 1995, but I didn't do much with that.

Cybersphere I tried making several different characters over a period of time, but I think 96-98 would have been when I was around the most. I don't remember much, but it did leave me with a lasting respect for MOO as a technology, and I still prefer that over MUSH.

The RP seemed sporadic and punctuated by random unexpected PK by people wandering through the scene. At one point I got killed while stepping into the first room, without even saying anything. Guess my desc was that bad.

Didn't really bother pursuing it further until my partner dragged me back in by way of mushes.

I do think a coder like you could do something really great to update the MOO codebase for Cybersphere/Ghostwheel/etc. Would certainly make launching a new game based on MOO more viable, and perhaps without the cultural pitfalls that the medium seems to have.

As you mentioned, my latest foray into the MOO had two characters meet an abrupt end by a guy I have described (and I did point this out to a staffer as to why I thought it wasn't a right fit for me) as an elementary school bully with an automatic shotgun. And this guy monopolizes a lot of the game resources and can easily outlast most other people except other veterans.

Not exactly conducive to new players.

@surreality At least it looks like a wiki to me. Could not be one. Same layout as the rest of the game though.

@GangOfDolls If their wiki is current, both the griefer gang (Cyberfuckers) and KiNGs are still active apparently.

@Admiral It's less their stats and more the availability of resources they have at hand. Which is why 'a clique' is better than going by yourself, most of the time.

@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

I'd go back if there was enough incentive to it. I don't hate the game. I'd just want to have some RP avenues aside from the standard fair offered.

I guess it would have to be a group app. Something I always appreciated about Cybersphere over Sindome was that you could come in knowing people. You could be someone's brother, or friend, or member of the same cool new gang moving into town.

The game isn't unplayable. It's just... there's very few people there I enjoy RPing with. Those who I do like I do miss, obviously. But you can't play a game just to RP with two other people.

Cybersphere is my favorite game theme/world out there, but that could just be nostalgia talking.

I would only go in a clique, to be honest. The dinosaurs really take it away from the game.

@surreality Yeah, it would be cool to see a MOO running that had similar characteristics as those two; I loved the combat in CS, and the decking code but would make entertaining missions for the various factions instead of what they have in place for, say, the Mafia.

Also, a dinosaur limiter.

@surreality Yeah. Thank god for Lisdude. That's a guy who got more than half of SquidSoft angry because he made a Star Conquest copy called Miriani.

As for HellMOO, uh- I'm not sure about that, but HellMOO is basically 'Le Edgy Goon Game'.

Ditto. And @surreality: any idea where we can get said 'Quinncore'? Tried taking a look and searching for it, found a website with HellMOO's database and some other things but not that server base.

@surreality A six-armed stripper sounds fucking hilarious. Mutants, man.