Best posts made by faraday

@Thenomain said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

I was having this very interesting discussion with a bunch of Mudders on the Evennia Discord about if Mush is a culture or a codebase.

It's an interesting question.

From a technical perspective, there is obviously a set of codebases - Penn, Tiny, Rhost and Ares - that call themselves MUSHes, and share a base set of commands (more or less) to navigate a grid and communicate.

But the codebase definition alone feels insufficient.

If I code up an escape room simulator or informal chatroom, I don't think most people would say I've "opened a MUSH" just because I used PennMUSH to do it.

And what about games coded in other servers that don't call themselves MUSH servers? Is Arx not a MUSH because it's using Evennia?

I disputed the earlier assertion that MUSHes share a culture, but I guess it comes down to what you define as "culture". Certainly MUSHes share a general philosophy of emphasizing roleplay over code (which differentiates them from MUDs) and having a 24/7 persistent IC world that tracks with RL time at some set ratio (which differentiates them from forum games). Beyond that, though, I'm hard-pressed to come up with any universal MU constants.

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Unfortunately, I don't think it'll happen either way. It seems to me another of those scenarios of 'without a perfect description that covers even edge cases, we cannot have a consensus and thus must quibble over minutiae.'

Yeah true. And I think it's okay to have something that's like... "This is a MUSH except we're doing this one thing differently."

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

That's great unless you're also talking about people who are already into text-based roleplaying (e.g. forums, storium, discord, tumblr, MUDs, etc.) It can be helpful to have some way to explain how MUSHes differ from that, and how MUSHes differ from each other.

For example - in Storium there's a standard template that games fill out to establish things like:

• Writing tense
• Is power-posing allowed
• Expected speed of moves (though nobody pays attention to this one in practice)
• Trigger warnings
• etc.

That kind of thing helps get new people involved.

@Sunny said in Consent in Gaming:

I can see your perspective, but I don't think there's a problem with somebody opting out of something even if it's just 'that's not fun for me' as a reason.

It's one thing to say: "Nah, no thanks" to a RP invitation because the plot/scene/whatever doesn't sound like fun. You can't force people to RP. That to me is different from raising a red flag on the scene using a rule designed to protect people from uncomfortable, potentially-triggering events.

@Sunny said in Privacy in gaming:

No PII is involved in a mush. Your IP does not, in most cases, qualify as PII, as it identifies a computer, not a person. So, uh, yeah.

If we're getting technical about it. From the GDPR:

Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags.

Though there's some debate on the subject when it comes to dynamic IPs. Also many games require or allow you to store your email address for idle notifications/password retrieval/etc., which is most assuredly PII. There's also the potential for PII to be included in mails, pages, etc. which one might argue players would have a reasonable expectation of privacy for (unlike public scenes or channels).

ETA: For example: I send a mail to my buddy with my RL name, address, phone number, whatever. One can debate the wisdom of that, but one cannot debate that it happens.

@gryphter said in Privacy in gaming:

@Sunny That's very interesting. I guess I need to think a little deeper about our supposed doom. Perhaps I'm just being a little too cynical.

This might be useful to you: COPAA Regulation Applicability. @Sunny is right - if you're not deliberately targeting the app/site to kids under 13 and you don't have specific knowledge that there are kids on your site, you're generally pretty safe. (again with the IANAL disclaimer) Slapping an 18+ notice on the terms of service helps too.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Privacy in gaming:

"We are looking into it and trying to handle it, let us know if it happens again" will get you a lot further than radio silence, in terms of player patience.

Absolutely, but that's targeted to the person making the complaint. There's a HUGE difference between that and public shaming of a bbpost saying "Faraday screwed up and has been warned." If I saw a game doing that for every infraction, it would be a huge red flag to me. But that's just me personally.

@Ganymede said in Privacy in gaming:

And, let's face it, we're not talking about people who just "don't understand how to MUSH." The problem players we are talking about are legitimate problems on a game, and need removal rather than coddling.

I wasn't aware that we were talking about any specific kind problem players. I thought this was a discussion about discipline in general.

There are certainly players who are behaving so egregiously that they need to be removed.

But I would say MOST of the incidents I've dealt with as staff are otherwise-decent players who lose their temper, say something inappropriate, make a poor decision, cross a boundary, etc. As staff, you have to make the call as to whether they're worth the effort to try to help, or if you're better off without them. That decision is made considerably more difficult if 10 people are having issues with a person but only 1 of them will come to you to say there's a problem.

Either way, I don't think that "punishment" (short of banning) is particularly effective as a deterrent.

@Arkandel said in Punishments in MU*:

Sometimes not just the best but the only deterrent is publicly pointing a finger at someone and telling them they are assholes.

I have to disagree. I want players on my games to be constructively contributing to the game's community. They are very unlikely to do so if I point a finger at them - especially publicly - and call them an asshole.

Someone said it in the other thread - staff are managers. An effective manager doesn't publicly name-and-shame employees who screw up. That erodes trust. It creates an adversarial environment. You either steer them toward a path toward redemption (if you think they're redeemable) or you let them go.

@Thenomain said in Staff’s Job?:

what is staff's job in general? What is it to staff? What is it to not-staff?

Each game is going to have a different definition for this, so I don't think there is an "in general".

In the broadest sense, staff manages the game, but there's still no consistent definition of what that means exactly. Is the system admin who keeps the server operational 'staff'? Are the builders, even if they have no other duties? What if anyone can build? I remember back in the day there were volunteer "Judges" who could mediate RP scenes - were they staff? Or were they just helpers? What about faction head or FC roles that have some measure of responsibilities attached? Each game is going to answer these questions differently.

So for me, staff is what an individual game says it is. I do think @Pyrephox's list is a great starting point for games trying to figure that out for themselves.

@Pandora said in Staff’s Job?:

The job of staff as a whole in any text-based game is to maintain the code, theme, and community standards through all of the back-end tasks that players do not have access to,

It's as decent a generalization as any, but it's still not quite accurate. We can generally divide MUSH activities into roleplaying your PC, and everything else (administrivia, coding, building, etc.). But there's a huge amount of overlap among player/staff roles even on a single game.

On many games, both players and staff can build, run plots, code (less so these days), or do any number of other things. Sometimes they even do community review/approval of character apps.

On the flip side, players can't access the server, but most games don't consider their server admin to be a member of staff. Even builders often don't show up on the staff list.

It just varies a lot. There's no other way to put it.

@Derp said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Can you imagine what sort of hobby this would be if all of us were judged OOC based on the actions of our PCs? (Moreso than we already are.)
Every Daeva would be a secret rapist. Every werewolf would be a violent psychopath. Every superhero would be dangerously delusional.

So I generally agree with what you're saying.

But.

The hobby doesn't generally have a problem with players acting on their delusions of grandeur or psychopathic murder rampages. We do have a problem with players tromping over boundaries, harassing other players and just generally being creepy sometimes when it comes to IC relationships. So I don't think it's quite the same.

It's not unreasonable to be alert for these things, and potentially reach out if you're comfortable and willing to do so. It might be received poorly, but that's your choice to make.

But the white-knight with a harem of six different women? If it's all among consenting adults, no rules are being broken, and nobody's being made OOCly uncomfortable? It's not my business.

@Pandora IMHO the red card command will be met with the exact same reaction as a FTB request, because in practice it’s exactly the same as saying ‘hey wait’ just with a different command instead of ooc. The code isn’t actually providing a resolution in the same way that a combat roll is. Humans still need to be involved to sort out the resulting mess.

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

I don't know why this thread is devolving into 'What we're doing already works' when it so obviously doesn't work for everyone.

Because in my experience I don’t see the “so obviously” part. Maybe it’s because my games have had a “you can always request a FTB and please call staff if there’s a problem” policy for ages. Nobody’s ever come to me with “Bob gave me grief when I asked to FTB.” or anything like that. Not once in the decades I’ve been staffing. Nor have I ever encountered it in all my time RPing.

And frankly if there are people unwilling to speak up despite such a policy, I don’t think a coded command will help them. I’m not telling you or anyone else not to do it in your game if you think it will help. I just don’t see the value personally.

@Pandora My policy is simple: Work it out amongst yourselves. If you can't or aren't comfortable doing so, contact staff to help mediate.

This applies to FTB, to disagreements about skill rolls, to harassment issues, to whatever. It's simple, it's effective (*) and I don't see how having a coded command to say "Hey I'm not comfortable" will aid that in any way whatsoever.

You're obviously entitled to disagree - I'm not trying to convince you, merely to express my opinion since the topic opened with an open solicitation of feedback about the idea.

(*) I'm speaking of cases where people came to me about problems they were experiencing. If someone won't come to me, or will only come to me about second-hand complaints that I am unable to corroborate (I did try), then that's outside of my control. I genuinely don't see a coded command helping with those situations. YMMV.

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Hopefully you can appreciate that this thread is about the people that don't generally come to you or staff on other games with their problems though

If someone is not willing to take advantage of my open-door pledge and policy to help them resolve problems on my game, then I am not interested in expending my free time writing extra code to let them do things they can already do with existing tools.

If you are, and you genuinely feel that it will help, then go for it.

@Sunny said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

I think she's interested in discussing solutions to the problem; your contribution seems to boil down to, 'it's not a problem for me'.

No, I'm discussing a solution to the problem of people establishing personal boundaries. It's just a solution that doesn't involve a new coded tool. But fine, folks don't want to discuss that avenue further. I'm done.

@Ominous said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

The latter option for me; though, I would have it tied to age.

I don't favor age-based chargen. An older person is more likely to have breadth of experience, because they've just lived longer and experienced more in life, but they aren't necessarily going to be better at the core skills of their profession. Particularly if those skills are athletic or reaction-oriented in nature (e.g. most fighting skills) which can peak in young adulthood. Even with technical skills, I've seen no link between age and skill in my career. There are young, eager talented guys and older, useless "veterans". Also I can't help but recall TTRPGs where everyone would just min-max "how old can I be to get the max skill points without suffering a decrease in physical stats". They were designing a sheet not a character.

Do you want to make a young, talented, top-of-the-class ace? Old, grizzled veteran ace? Past their prime "I'm too old for this" person treading water till retirement? Fresh-faced newbie learning the ropes? Go for it. They're all potentially good characters. It just comes down to what story you want to tell.

As others have said, you just need to make sure your story/systems support the power levels you allow.

@Sunny said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

I don't remember which game it was that put a brake on all PCs lower than 25 earning X or Y level of title. Suddenly we had 30somethings getting played.

You see that a lot on the military games as well. We had a slew of older characters on the BSG games. I didn't do a scientific analysis, but off-hand I'd say the median age was 30-something, and we've even had some fifty and sixty year olds being played.

@mietze said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

I admit, I'm not edgy enough to want to play average joe PCs, so I guess I kind of assumed that PCs were going to be exceptional regardless of age.

That's my philosophy as well. All characters get the same number of starting points, so you can be exceptional regardless of age. I even see a lot of younger characters deliberately not spend all their available points because they want to play the younger more inexperienced newbie. The system has brakes that prevent someone from being good at everything anyway, stopping the 18 year old Doogie Howser who's also a top gun fighter pilot and sharpshooter types. If they want to make a top gun rookie pilot OR the talented young surgeon, though, I really don't care.

@Ghost said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

MU Story RPG=Free form. Statless super hero games. Universal dice systems like FS3.

I generally agree, and would just add to that list “stripped down or lightweight versions of TTrPGs that are clearly identified as such”. Th is is not a unique idea even in TT circles. Some games expressly make light versions for new players, cons, or a more narrative feel.

We once did a TT Dark Sun campaign using Shadowrun rules. We shouldn’t feel boxed in. The most important thing is to pick a system (or lack of system) that supports your vision and goals for the game.