Best posts made by Derp

@Sammi

Mad Dog.

@silverfox said in Brandon Sanderson:

@rucket Yeah. Considering how some people here feel about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I was avoiding saying it.

I really don't think it's anything particular to LDS. The same criticisms could be levied against pretty much any modern organized religion, and have been, by the same people.

If you replace "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" with just "Church" it would probably be more accurate. Catholics and evangelicals have taking way more of a bruising here for basically the same criticism. So I wouldn't take it too personally. There is a LOT to be said both in favor of and against most modern religions.

But that's likely a topic for another thread. Just wanted to put that out there real quick because -- yeah. It sucks feeling singled out, or personally attacked. But I don't think that's what's really happening there.

@7Wonders said:

Re: PBs.

I will never understand the wikis with multiple pics of a PB (usually female) that are intended to be sexual. By that I mean, sexualized topless shots or that old gem of thumbs hooked into the g-string as if to say 'teehee! I'm about to whip these off!'

The wiki goes on to say that the PC loves to nail anything with a pulse in game but the out of game information goes on for several paragraphs how they don't TS so don't ask and don't try and don't even look at my PC like that.

Don't want TS? That's cool, a lot of people aren't that into it. Playing a PC whose sexual exploits are all FTB, offscreen fun times? No problem here! But why then would you make this way sexualized wiki with soft core (or sometimes hard core) skin shots only to vehemently and often combatively make it known that you refuse TS on a blanket level? Wouldn't telling people on your PC wiki page that your PC likes to love their fellow man a lot without all the over the top visual aids just uh, be enough?

I think part of this is the culture of TS-shaming that tends to happen. Liking on screen sexitimes -and being ok with admitting that openly- gets people to stare down their noses at you. I don't understand how or why it works like that, but it's like... private promiscuity is cool and open promiscuity is not.

We're all adults. Why can't we just say we like sex?

For all of you voting 80's, I would JUST LIKE TO REMIND YOU:

@HelloProject said in Computer Science:

@Derp I'd be interested in knowing more about this 0_o. What is it and how does it help?

It's where you take a statement and substitute in a mathematical formula for it, which allows you to do geometry-esque proofs on it to make sure that it actually does what you think it does. It does a lot of the same stuff as boolean logic (if, and, not, or, etc), but comes at it from a slightly more approachable (and I feel, more widely applicable) way. For most people, it helps with reasoning and such, but really learning any form of standardized logic will help you immensely with understanding how computer stuff works, as they're essentially just logic machines.

@lotherio said in How do you discover books?:

Luke Skywalker doesn't count because even though he's an orphan that leanrs a style of teaching (jedi), he's not quite humble?

Isn't he technically royalty?

You set a WOD game in 80's L.A. and I think all the people would show up. This could be good or bad.

@TiredEwok said in Just checking interest in a concept.:

I'm a child of the 70s and 80s, and the 80s is what I hold near and dear to my heart.

Bonus points if you have any images from your youth wherein you look like either Punky Brewster or one of the girls from Full House.

@HelloProject said in Computer Science:

@Jim-Nanban This is actually very helpful, and a part of my interest in computer science and such. So I think that I -can- gain something out of using MUSHCode, to be honest.

Honestly, MU code is one of the harder programming languages I've seen. It'll really force you to look at how, specifically, something needs to happen (from a data-manipulation standpoint) from beginning to end, and it will punish you if you do it wrong. Which makes it an excellent thing to learn when it comes to general data handling things and problem-solving skills.

@reimesu said in How do you discover books?:

@derp Luke? No. Leia was, but that's because she was adopted by royalty.

Yyyyeah but their mom was a queen, and then went on to be a galactic senator.

Right?

Part of this in my experience comes down to something we tend to talk about a LOT, but put into practice much less frequently: separating IC and OOC. If your character is a huge racist jerkass, people just sort of -assume- you are too. It gets more muddied the less extreme the example of 'particular deviance/weirdness' is.

Look, we tend to talk a big game about keeping IC and OOC in their own corners, but as a hobby we -suck- at this. Maybe not all of us, but I think I can safely say that there's a nice bell curve between 'what separation?' and 'picture perfect model of person keeping things distinct'.

Until we're willing to roll with the idea that horrible characters who do terrible things are not by default played by awful people, I think this is a losing battle. We're too quick to take offense to... just about everything, and we as a hobby have way too long a memory for these things. I think this is unfortunate, but I think that it's the nature of the beast.

My two cents.

@Groth said in ISO: a comics/superheroes MU* (give me your recs):

Just after RFK closed we brainstormed a few ideas of what a fun MU* could be and one of the ideas we had was a superhero academy where the Staff and people volunteering to PRP would play the teachers and the grid would represent an artificial city filled with training scenarios and every now and then they'd be attacked by actual villains.

The way I'd set up a superhero game these days would just be to use Ares since it gives you practically everything that you need out of the box.

That's some straight up Maze Runner type stuff. I'd be down.

So, about the only 'universal' things that we can really talk about are the things that @faraday mention above, things that we've actually discussed earlier in the thread. So let my try and make a more generalized point here.

Simplicity is not always your friend. There is a point at which there has to be a learning curve with these games, because what may seem extremely un-intuitive at first glance is actually pretty damn handy.

Let's look at the help system, for instance, as an example. Every MU type game comes prebaked with a set of hardcoded commands and functions. These can be found under the header 'help'. For every flavor of MU*, these files are universal. I know that if I go to a MUX, there will be a 'page' command. I can use @emit to post things to the world. Etc.

But then there are these pesky +commands, and +help. Wtf is that about? Why can't we put our +drive command, found under +help, under 'help drive'? By god, that would make it easier, right?

Except, no. It wouldn't. In fact, it would create complications. What if I go to another game, and try to 'Drive <somewhere>'. The game tells me 'huh?' Well, what kind of jank shit is this? It worked on this other game. Why is it not working here? 'help drive' gives me nothing. And when I type 'help', it pulls up a list of stuff that I've never even seen before. Jesus, now I have to navigate a whole new help index.

So... what if there were a way to distinguish commands that we add (+) through softcode from other commands that just come pre-baked with these systems? We know how the pre-baked commands work, we just need to know how the new stuff works. It could even have its own additional (+) help system, to keep it cleaner.

And that's what I'm talking about, here. On the one hand, yeah, sure, it seems pretty counterintuitive to someone looking at it for the first time, but to anyone who's been around a while? That is nicely packaged, and pretty intuitive. Because there's a learning curve that is pretty much necessary for these systems to function well.

Just like video games. Many video games are not point and click, or whatever. Tekken is one of my favorite games. Sure, at first it seems simple. I hit this one button and it does this thing, I hit another and it does another thing. And really that's all I need know, if I'm patient and lucky and masochistic af. But man can I really make that baby sing with that ten-hit combo whose formula requires three lines on the TV to follow.

So there has to be a line, somewhere, and across these kinds of games, stuff like that does tend to be that line. It requires some investment to learn how these things work, but just because it seems confusing at first doesn't mean that it's not the best way to do it, either. It's not 'shitty design', it's pretty damn handy. But it also takes practice.

I think I mentioned this one awhile back, but: Project Hail Mary

Honestly, I'd give you a synopsis of what it's about, but not knowing what it's about is kind of the point. The main character wakes up with amnesia, and has to piece together what happened, where he is, and why he's there, and it comes back to him in bits and pieces throughout the entire book, each one taking you deeper down the rabbit hole.

But the characters in it are absolutely adorable. They have just the best -- let's call it bromance, for lack of a better word and without going into spoiler territory. And you get to watch these absolute science nerds just science the shit out of their situation in plausible ways.

Seriously, you should read it. It's fun as hell.

To be clear, I haven't had antagonism directed at me, but I rarely do antagonists. But I have see the sorts of doublespeak that happen around them. 'Jane/John is such a bitch/creeper, did you hear how (s)he did/does X ic thing I find gross/offensive/manipulative' is just as often a reference to a player as a character. I've seen it as staff, as a player, even on this forum.

I honestly feel that our 'separation of IC/OOC' exists more as a comforting fiction than any sort of norm. At least in my experience. YMMV.

@silverfox

Is it just on one Ares game, or all Ares games? Is this maybe a thing with the 'quotecolor' setting being 'blue' instead of a color code?

@WTFE

The @ vs. + vs. . vs bare thing never had an excuse except POSSIBLY the hardcode vs. softcode divide if there's no way to override hardcode commands in softcode. But ... a few questions even if that hardcode/softcode divide needs to be kept:

1. Why prefixes at all? Why is it so necessary to TELL people that they're using soft-coded commands instead of hard-coded? Is it really so necessary to have +finger instead of finger? What does the "+" add there at all?WTFE

Because people need to know where the documentation for this command lives. It's really that simple. That + distinguishes it as a custom command that did not come in the box, so they need to look in the help files for commands that did not come in the box. Mu games are a class of games, with some universal and some custom elements. It is important to keep those distinct, both for players who will go to new games on the same platform and for people wanting to learn the code. +posebreak is nice, but if I want to make a game, I need to either find it, make it, or steal it. That prefix conveys a lot of info. New players might not get that, but older players and coders do. Learning curve.

2. I can see, if I squint right, how @desc me=foo makes sense to distinguish a property from a command, but why is it @ for some and & for others? Pick one and stick with it, dammit! Or even better just make setting a command! set <property> <target> <foo>. And to read it get <source> <property> and to read it in code get(<source>, <property>) and so on.

NOW you are doing what @HelloProject was talking about. This is thinking like a coder. New players have no way to know what those properties are. These commands exist, with their own help files, to explain that. Plenty of us use &whatever me=stuff, but a newbie doesn'the necessarily know what properties the hardcode already knows versus arbitrary attributes. Those files go a long way in helping that.

As for the 'common being the default', in many ways, this is already the case. Many of us use myrrdin's bb system, anomalyjobs, etc. They are common to the point of being default. But they got that way by convention. Most MU systems are not this way. There is no 'common' except as the most basic of systems, and often just a barebones command will give you the most common thing players use it for '+equip bringing up inventory/equipped gear, for instance'. So this is in and of itself pretty arbitrary if more people spend time buying equipment than changing it. What is 'common' to one player is wholly subjective and vastly different depending on experience and investment.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

Calm yourself down there, guy. No need to carpet-bag and escalate that. So horrible.

Of course people who have been actually stalked and harassed shouldn't be tricked into the kill zone of their prior abusers. There ARE some pretty crazy and dangerous people in the hobby. Sure. Watch out for them. There are, however, people who take this to extreme ends and stalk/track the whereabouts of people who disappointed them, which games they're on, which PBs they like to use, etc.

There are absolutely valid cases, but there are also cases where it does more damage than good.

But, of course, you're welcome to take that as an intended malleus maleficarum-level insult to abuse victims or whatever...

Ghost, keep it about the thought, not the person expressing it.

@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:

@auspice said in System dealbreakers:

YOU TOO COULD BE A WASTE MANAGEMENT PRINCESS.

I have my next WoD concept.

I'm afraid you'll have to fight me for it. puts up his dukes

@horrorhound said in Cyberpunk:

@jennkryst Addy?

If mudconnector is to be believed:

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