Best posts made by faraday

@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

That if I do not RP with both Susan and Fred precisely equal amounts, I am being a bad staffer and doing it wrong.... But what's been bothering me on some level is the implication of these rules: that staff are inherently obligated to do certain things, whether or not staff themselves have pledged to do so.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but here goes: Nobody - and I mean nobody - is entitled to my free time. It is for me to spend as I choose. If RPing with Fred is excruciating, then I'm not gonna RP with Fred, as player or as staff. The only thing I am obliged to do is that which I have willingly pledged myself to do, and that does not include providing everyone NPC-RP on demand or in equal measure.

What I do pledge, though, is to "provide a sane, fair and friendly environment for you to tell your stories." Part of that fairness means ensuring that Fred has the same opportunities for success as my BFF Mary. I do not need to RP with him to do this. Off-camera scenes and +rolls are a thing for this very reason.

If that's a dealbreaker for you, don't play on my game. Problem solved.

Of note, since not everyone reads the Ares forums...

The player in question has been banned from AresCentral.

Being banned from a particular game generally does not affect your AresCentral status. However:

1. If you’ve been banned from a game, you may not come here and pester the game-runner(s) who banned you. Take the hint and leave them alone.
2. I reserve the right to make exceptions in extreme circumstances, like someone who’s been serially harassing people and maliciously attempting to bypass bans across multiple games.

They responded (due to a glitch with the forum ban... my error) protesting that they had been so very polite while doing #1, while apparently completely missing the fact that it was inappropriate to do so in the first place. (And also letting #2 sail right over their heads.)

@derp said in Idling all day on MU*s:

I think that I would personally challenge the premise that this is some kind of problem.

This. A MUSH is more than just a game, it's a community -- at least to many people.

So folks like to hang out and chat even when they can't necessarily go out to play.

I don't see any harm in it. If your game isn't getting any RP, there are probably larger issues going on. Trying to discourage people from hanging out and chatting isn't going to make them play - it's just going to make them not log in. I don't see how that helps anybody.

@downwithopp said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

When I first read this thread, my intent was to apologize to @faraday - who I put in a terrible spot, because we had communicated numerous times as friends and I had worked within the framework of BSU to help her when I could.

I said it once before, but seriously - leave me out of this. You didn't need to post here to apologize to me. You apologized months ago when I kicked you off BSGU. And you have my email.

I really do want to believe that your apology is sincere. The original post sounded heartfelt, which is why I reached out to say thank you for that. But I don't appreciate being continually used as a prop in your crusade here.

If you are indeed truly sorry, then just say so and leave it at that. No excuses, no arguing, no 'I was frustrated because...', no 'I didn't come here to fight...'. Just 'I'm sorry. I screwed up. I'll try to do better in the future. The end.'

Y'all are sweet. Thanks.

@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:

anyone actually seen, read, or heard (interviews/articles) where it's explained by the people who make the decisions that they're not "taking chances" on women or POC?

It’s pretty well documented, yes. There are numerous examples of Hollywood people being asked to change a role from a woman to a man or from a POC to white. Then there are the basic stats on representation (or lack thereof). You can either conclude from this that Hollywood is flat-out racist/sexist or that they have a pervasive belief that such casting is “risky”. Neither is good.

Here’s a nice article on representation: https://paris7masterculture.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/the-representation-of-poc-people-of-color-in-hollywood-a-case-study/

I particularly like the quote from Viola Davis: “The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

Also relevant

@tinuviel said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

Apparently not! Apparently restrictions were the idea all along, if @Noodle-McDoodle is to be believed.

I think that's assuming an awful lot of ill will based on a random comment from one person who isn't even on staff.

There's absolutely no indication that there was some unadvertised population cap, and every indication that it's just a case of staff dramatically underestimating how popular the game would be.

"oh this is going to be pretty niche, let's advertise so it's not a ghost town"
"ZOMG ALL THE PEOPLE CAME"

Disappointment is perfectly understandable. I was bummed I didn't get tickets to a show recently because I didn't find out about it in time. It happens.

But giving staff grief for making a tough call to try to make a quality game? That's not cool. That's the sort of attitude that makes people reluctant to run games in the first place.

@Darren said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

When I first started tinkering with Ares, some of my friends warned me that Faraday was not at all receptive to people modifying the server in ways she did not personally approve of and that she and I would most likely end up butting heads.

Yeah, y'know, given that I've spent an astonishing amount of time writing pages and pages of tutorials explaining how to write custom code and how the underlying engine works, that's not only patently untrue but kind of insulting.

There is an immeasurable difference between saying "no" to implementing something in my own spare time and objecting to someone else spending their time implementing the thing.

Ares is open source. Do whatever you want with it.

But there is a limit to how much of my free time I'm willing to expend hand-holding someone through hammering down the walls of the thing I've built to build something I don't approve of. I won't apologize for that, nor should I have to.

@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Does Fred have any barriers to access to this NPC?
Are you the only one that plays this NPC?
Not all PCs get access to all NPCs for various reasons, but 'I don't like the player' is not one of them. Not for a staffer. You don't get to just arbitrarily decide that a player isn't worth your time, and therefore doesn't get access to said NPC, even if you are providing 'other ways to succeed', because that sometimes doesn't work.

"Access to on-camera RP with a NPC" is not some inalienable player 'right'. It just isn't. If being staff on YOUR game means that I would have to provide hours-long scenes to anyone who asked for it, regardless of quality or player contribution, then you wouldn't have to fire me because I wouldn't touch that job with a ten foot pole.

"My character needs to talk to the king" can be resolved off-camera. There's no need for it to take up three hours of my real life. And if that's unsatisfactory? As I said, there's the door; no skin off my nose. I am providing a game as a voluntary service to the community. It is not for the community to dictate to me how I run that game. If my methods are intolerable, people can and should vote with their feet.

ETA after catching up on some of the other back-and-forth: Staffing is not a job, and MUSHes are not employers. Comparisons to the Fair Wage Act or expected behavior for paid customer service staff are absurd. Even unpaid volunteers in RL are only expected to meet the obligations they actually agreed to do.

There's a patch out for Ares now that fixes the bugs in the ban feature.

And contrary to what Troll may insist, they were, in fact, bugs. Silly oversights like "doh! the ban list is checked alongside the password but guests don't use a password", for instance.

Ares and Rhost both have an optional proxy blocking feature that will block players from known proxy sites (using a list graciously managed by @Ashen-Shugar). This doesn't stop all VPNs, but it can make it a little more difficult for a troll to play whack-a-mole with you. (At the cost of inconveniencing legit new players who may want to use proxies from work or whatever.)

That said, MUSHes are not exactly bastions of security. A savvy ten-year-old can bring down a MUSH--it hardly takes a Machiavellian tech genius. This is nothing more than someone wrecking the sandbox to keep the other kids from having fun. Sad, really.

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

Mercedes Lackey (ole MMO clanny of mine) once told me "Roleplaying isn't writing". She is 100% right.

Respectfully, I think she's 100% wrong.

At least in the context of MUs. Tabletop RPGing or LARPing is not writing, but MUSHing absolutely is. I mean, we're literally writing.

We have characters. We have scenes. We have plots that sometimes tie together into larger stories. We have dialogue.

It's not the same kind of writing as writing a novel, but all kinds of writing have different characteristics. How you write a novel is different from a short story, or a novella, or a screenplay, but they are all still writing. Also, how you write a story solo differs from how you write a story with a team.

MUSHing is a hobby that blends collaborative writing and gaming together, to a degree that varies depending on which specific game you're talking about. In that, it definitely has unique challenges compared to other kinds of writing. But it is still, inescapably due to the medium, writing.

@ZombieGenesis said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Third, sometimes I fail.

I also think that we as a MUSH Community often have a very narrow definition of success. Like the only games that have perceived value are ones with a zillion logins like Arx or that run for years and years like Elendor.

If five people showed up to a game and had fun for six months, it's okay to consider that a success. Heck, that's more than some TTRPG groups get out of a campaign. Certainly more than the longevity of your typical PbPost or Storium game.

It's okay to want more. But let's not sell ourselves short either.

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

Why would this thread exist if that was either acceptable or appropriate?

Why would the behavior have persisted for months if the behavior was neither acceptable nor appropriate? The community not only tolerates it, it encourages it. GIFs of popcorn being eaten as the flames are tossed around. (And I'm not even in the Hog Pit.)

I remember the last time a thread like this was posted, I was ridiculed for suggesting that discussions should be less negative. Because apparently "civil discourse" equates to "singing kumbaya" in many peoples' minds. "Enforcing community standards" equates to "cruel censorship".

The community has proven time and again what it wants this place to be, by what it is. Expecting that same community to suddenly change its tune seems beyond optimistic. But I would love it if it happened.

@goldfish said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:

I'm just gonna state this: When I made the ad for Echoes, I felt the need to mentally prepare myself for the critics. I'm a sensitive soul but my desire to help out outweighs my nature. Now, if you think that users need to steel themselves before posting an add, fine. If that's not a problem, make a change.

I will second this. I didn't advertise BSGU here for months after the place opened out of fear of getting lambasted by criticism. (It was a player who eventually posted an ad. It didn't go as badly as I'd feared, but nor would I say it was particularly fun either.)

It's all well and good to sit here and say "Well if you can't take criticism, don't make a game."

But here's the other side of it... if you want people making games for you to play on, it helps to treat them and their creations with respect.
This doesn't mean "only say positive things". It means keeping criticism constructive and respectful. (Unless of course they've done something heinous. Then warn away.)

And let's not fool ourselves about the supposed "purpose" of the community being to warn people away from bad apples. Most of the commentary in these ad threads isn't "warning" anyone. It's rants and criticisms and doomsaying about decisions that game-runners have made, and it's freaking demoralizing. Even if it's not your game!

If you think that's beneficial to the community? Well, carry on I guess. It seems to me though that we should be encouraging game-creators, not discouraging them. There are few enough games being made as it is.

Not stomping all over their game advertisement is one way to do this.

@skew said in Coming Soon: Chontio, a Star Wars Stand Alone MUSH:

As such, I'll be standing up my own server today, and copying everything from Chontio onto that server. @faraday has agreed to help, so I think it'll all go smoothly.

In the interests of transparency, I just wanted to confirm that I'm on board with this. Alex hasn't posted on MSB in almost a month, hasn't posted on the Ares Discord in several weeks, and hasn't been reachable via any other means. Alex had given skew access to the server shell, which is basically the "keys to the kingdom" as far as I'm concerned. This demonstrates a great deal of trust, and skew has done a ton of work building and setting up the game/wiki.

Having been on the receiving end of a headwiz suddenly going AWOL right before opening (on Battlestar Pacifica), I am sympathetic to skew's situation. Given skew's pledge to work things out with Alex if he does return, I think it's in the best interests of the MU community for this game to open on a stable server.

(To be clear - I have no involvement in the game itself other than helping with this transfer and some Ares setup questions/bugfixes.)

One of the main reasons I made Ares:

You want more variety? Somebody else needs to solve that problem.

I don't understand why we can't just lock the ad threads once they're posted. Preferably to the owner so they can update it as needed, but even making them post a new thread each time would be better than this constant bickering we've had for the past year. Either way, having a policy that isn't even slightly enforced is just invitation to ignore other policies too.

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Should staff NPCs be wandering around, roleplaying random mini-golf games that don't do anything for the story? Setting? Pretty much anything but their own desire to have a mini-golf scene?

It depends on what kind of NPC it is. Nothing says that all "staff-run NPCs" need to be these big quest-givers who only show up to send people off to destroy the One Ring. NPCs come in all shapes and sizes.

Should the King be chilling at the bar every other weekend? Almost certainly not. But could the Admiral show up for karaoke night and cause some lulz? Sure. That can bring richness to the character and make their interactions with other PCs more than just "click on me for a quest".

@Mercutio I would add to that a new branch:

Do You Have a Coder?
--> No
Are You Willing to Run with the AresMUSH code as-is? (Bearing in mind that there are several plugins available for different skill systems.)
---> Yes
Use Ares. You don't need a coder.

Though I will put out my usual disclaimer that Ares is still in Beta. It's very stable, but bugs do happen.

@Coin said in The 100: The Mush:

But there are an infinite number of these courts, and anyone can have one if they have a little money and the motivation and time to put into it. This is not a public court at a park that needs to be shared.

A thousand +1s for this. There are some pretty insane things that staffers do that are abusive, underhanded and craptastic. (A certain thread in the Hog Pit comes to mind.) But playing an active role on your own game, allowing players to play their PCs as they see fit (barring OOC abuse) and expecting people not to splinter off into unmanageable sub-factions that might destroy the game are NOT things that should invite public shaming.

If you don't like it, cool. Mark your disagreement politely and vote with your feet. But respect that staff is devoting their own time and money to running a game for the entertainment of others. That doesn't mean all others. It means others whose vision aligns with theirs.

The amount of OOC hostility and antagonism on a thread complaining about IC antagonism is staggering.

(And for those taking "you're just on the bandwagon" potshots... I will reiterate that I neither play on the game nor know any of the people involved. I judge solely based on what's been said here.)