@Seraphim73 Yes, I meant the movie/TV universe. I haven't read the comics. As for the rest - we can agree to disagree. What you see as the (possible) problem I see as the sole reason I play (and run) MUSHes - to enable people to tell their individual stories in a collaborative environment where the sum is greater than the parts.
Best posts made by faraday
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RE: Space Lords and Ladies
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RE: Space Lords and Ladies
@mietze said:
I've found that most people with some ooc encouragement and knowledge that even if they don't know you/you don't know them that you're wanting to share the stage are far more common than people think. But too many people exclude/don't bother to get to know strangers or are afraid of taking that first step because of course everyone else must be selfish unless they're a friend, and when you come into it with that viewpoint, that's exactly what you're going to get most times.
That's been my experience too. And I think staff can help encourage this cooperative sort of environment with thw world setup and plots that give different people chances to shine.
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RE: What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?
@Seraphim73 said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:
But I'm one of those people who thinks that you can change a PC's body if you've got the stats (it may be FTBed), but you should never be able to change the PC's thoughts unless the player chooses to allow it. I realize it's an odd line to draw, and I think it comes from the point of view of a writer.
It's not an odd line to draw for me at all. For performance/artistic skills, there are two facets: the objective quality and the emotional impact. Quality is something you can measure with dice. Wow, that was a really rousing speech. Man, that was a slick sales pitch. Whoa, worst pickup line ever.
But the emotional impact? That's for the receiving player to decide. Just because it's the best sales pitch ever doesn't mean you're going to buy it. Not everyone likes the Mona Lisa. Not everyone appreciates Shakespeare, even though these things are objectively speaking considered amazing works of art by millions.
Sure it's jarring if you've got someone who can't RP their way out of a paper bag trying to play a highly successful social animal. But that's not unique to social skills. You can get the same effect if someone's playing a doctor and knows zilch about medicine, or playing a tactical genius and knows zilch about tactics. Social skills are just more noticeable because they get used more often.
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RE: What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?
@Kanye-Qwest said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:
If you are in favor of being able to ignore social dice rolls at will, what's the point of having them at all?
Well I tried to explain why - because a social "contest" if you will depends a great deal on the person's personality, morality, personal preferences, etc. most of which are not reflected by stats. This is very different than the situation with combat rolls, which are very well modeled in most systems.
Someone who has deliberately chosen to have "gullible" as part of their personality would react very differently to a mediocre con roll than a cop who is suspicious of everyone or a character who just doesn't like your PC. Someone who is married or highly religious or interested in members of a different sex or only into redheads would react very differently to a seduction roll - even a very good one - than someone who isn't.
So the roll is just half the story. You should still RP "appropriately" to the roll, but what that appropriateness means is not a one-size-fits-all answer that can be reflected by "Joe rolls seduction - Good Success".
I don't expect everyone to agree with this. As someone said earlier in the thread, the debate about how to handle social skills has been raging since the beginning of MUSHdom. Just explaining my position.
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RE: Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems
@Ganymede said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:
I'd amend my statement to: no form of role-playing requires an increase in total XP spent on the PC.
I disagree strongly there. Just because I go to dance classes and get a dot in dancing or take some introductory German... why in the world does that mean I lose a dot in something else? That's just nonsensical from an IC perspective IMHO.
Skills atrophy if not used, absolutely. I haven't done martial arts in almost 10 years, so I certainly suck now compared to what I used to be able to do. But I don't buy into any system that asserts that they atrophy just because you learned something new.
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RE: Faction-Based Villain Policy Idea
Where in the world does this concept that "protagonists must risk death or it doesn't matter" come from???
I think MUSHes are most like book/TV series, because of their longevity/multiple storylines. Character death in this sort of series is infrequent and mostly played for shock value. Series like Game of Thrones / Walking Dead made a name for themselves for their body count precisely because it was rare.
We can enjoy Firefly and Star Trek knowing that the crew will almost certainly get out of whatever peril they're currently in. Why do folks rail so much against the same standard being applied to MUSHes?
(Side note: I don't mind if you have a preference for one way or the other. Everyone has their own style. It's the rather vehement statements that death is necessary or lack of death is "couch warming" that I'm reacting to.)
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Better Places Code
Before the other thread veered off into places code (especially since @ixokai and @Thenomain deleted their posts before I could quote them :)), this is something I've been contemplating for awhile.
I hate the old-school places code, and I know I'm not alone because I've literally not seen anyone use it since the late 90's. Things I hate:
- Using 'tt' to pose everything just pisses me off (and half the time I forget to do it)
- Two people are having a fierce argument at the other table but you can't see it because they're all using table-talk. So something that you should be reacting to ICly is either missed, or requires them to double-pose "Bob and Joe argue" to the main room.
- Having "Round Table" "Small Table" and "Square Table" with arbitrary space limits and nonsense like that is a pain to configure when you're building.
- Don't even get me started on the clunkiness of moving chairs from one table to another.
- Phantom people left behind when they log off / leave. The auto-clear code never worked right on any MUSH I was on.
But the idea of being able to have smaller scenes in a big room is a useful one. It's just the execution that kinda sucks.
For AresMUSH I basically have a clean slate, so it makes me wonder... how can we do this better? Make it more useful and dynamic? I have some ideas but I'd like to hear from the gallery.
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RE: Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
Everyone in a room is expected to involve everyone there, and you cannot really move your character around without ending the RP taking place.
That's not entirely accurate. There are many situations in MUSHing where you have sub-scenes in a room (as discussed in the now-split places code thread) and often a scene that starts in one location will continue in another as players walk from point A to point B.
I think more specifically though, if you ask to join folks in a room, the implication is that you want to play with them, not start your own separate scene. If your characters want to go to the bar ICly, and the bar is OOCly taken up by another scene that can't accept more, there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking your scene to a "RP Room" and pretending it's the bar at a different time than the other scene is happening. MUSH time is fluid. As others have said, it's also not a cardinal sin to just go to the bar and take your chances. They are public rooms for a reason. It's not black and white.
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RE: Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
So this got me to thinking - how could A -ever- murder B and make it look like an accident if C is apparently omnipresent?
I wish people would stop taking things to extremes I never said. All I said was that when the people involved were actively seeking C in a life-or-death situation on the ship that there was no logical reason why they wouldn't find her. That's vastly different from saying that C is some kind of all-seeing ever-present beast. Goodness.
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RE: How does a Mu* become successful?
@ThatGuyThere said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
I will freely admit a new influx could usher in a golden age must neither side has any sort of hard evidence to back up a positive or a negative outlook so I will stick with desiring small growth over large.
Yeah it could go either way really. I mean, nothing says that a game has to accept all 26 apps at once. And if platforms like Evennia or Ares reduced the barrier for running your own game, you'd have more of them. Granted, it doesn't help you staff said games, but one might speculate that's also a problem that would be helped by having more people in your "talent pool" as it were.
It would definitely change the hobby - of that there is no doubt.
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RE: Telnet is Poop
@Griatch said in Telnet is Poop:
I would suggest that it's at least a higher chance that a new player is a web developer than them being a telnet affectionado ...
Oh absolutely. But I think this is where the goals of Ares and Evennia differ a bit. You're designing a framework that's readily extensible - and that includes extensible via javascript for folks who want a spiffy custom GUI.
I'm going a different direction for more of a "MUSH in a box" where you don't need to find a web developer in order to customize your game effectively. The reliance on coders and sysadmins to get a game up and running is, IMHO, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) obstacle preventing there from being more MUSHes out there.
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RE: Attributes or No?
@ThatGuyThere said in Attributes or No?:
@Coin
Conversly the well trained but not talented is less likely to produce the maximum result. 1 time out of 64 compared to the 1 time out of 12 of the talented person, but does have the bell curve so his results will settle into the median ranges most of the time, showing a base competency but a lot of true gift.It kinda depends on whether you think that's appropriate or not, I guess. Should someone with barely any training but natural talent really be 8 times more likely to score an A+ / hit a home run / hit the bullseye / whatever the max result is than the guy with a lot of training who's not especially gifted? Eh... doesn't seem quite right to me. It reminds me of the WoD problem, where the Mind5+Medicine1 guy (smart guy who took a first aid class once) was better than the Mind2+Medicine3 guy (average medical doctor). I also think you'll get some weird effects at higher skill levels, because the bell curves will become so concentrated around average that you might as well not even bother rolling at all because there's so little variation.
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RE: 7th Sea 2nd Edition
@bored said in 7th Sea 2nd Edition:
@faraday
For either of you, I'm not entirely sure why it's unsolvable.See this thread. If you can do better, knock yourself out. I'm sure @Thenomain will have some kind of prize or something Probably
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RE: How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts
@Thenomain said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:
This happens quite, quite often on WoD games, and I was wondering your secret.
I've never played WoD games so it's hard to contrast. But from what I've gathered, there's a lot more politicking and subtle or even overt PvP than tend to occur in my genres.
I mean... so you want to play a Lieutenant AND a Private in the BSG marine company? Is there really a huge potential for abuse there? Even if your Lieutenant tried to pull some shenanigans by letting your Private get away with something he shouldn't have, there are always other officers further up the chain of command to review the AAR and say "Hey wait a minute..." And honestly I get way more problems with that sort of thing from people who aren't alts but are just OOC friends.
So just generally, I give people the benefit of the doubt and deal with problems when they arise. Really hasn't been a problem for me.
What HAS been a problem with alts for me? Say you get a problem player. OK, he's got one alt. Irritating but not the end of the world. You let him have four alts? OMG such a headache.
Also when people leave the game. I'm just going to pull a number out of my butt and say that the average character has 4 really deep meaningful relationships with other characters. If that player leaves the game and has 2 chars, that's 8 people affected. The more alts you allow, the wider the ripple effect is. MU players are notoriously fickle with games, so this is a big problem for me.
I've also personally observed that alts get 'shelved' when you allow a bunch, just because most people don't have the time to play that many. While that's great for the AltPlayer, it's not so great for the people with those meaningful relationships with them. So in part the limit is trying to manage the monkeysphere effect of people getting left high and dry when their boss/friend/SO/nemesis is never around to interact with.
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RE: How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts
@Sunny It doesn't have to happen often for it to be a big disruption. I've seen just one person leave and abandon 6 characters and have it completely derail a whole bunch of plots and leave a whole bunch of other players hanging because their boss/BFF/SO/frenemy/whatever is no longer there. It's a legitimate problem that can strike at any time without warning. And it's very easily prevented with an alt limit.
If folks don't think it's a big enough deal to have a policy? Fine. Your game, your headache. But I reject the assertion that someone quitting due to RL issues or getting bored or finding a new game is somehow the result of bad staffing, or the blanket statement that alt policies solve nothing. This particular problem? They solve.
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RE: Game Concept: Paying for rare things
@Arkandel said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
There are two issues with paying for rare things.
- Enough people want to be unique snowflakes so the things you'd like to be rare might end up not really being that...
- It's really hard to find the sweet spot between having the special thing people pay for being so good it makes up for the cost ...
Yeah, this. I mean, it comes down to what you're trying to accomplish with the system.
Is it game balance? If so you've gotta ask yourself whether what you're limiting really needs to be balanced. Is a X really more powerful than a Y with equal stats? If not, why make them pay extra?
Is it trying to get around a quota by actively discouraging people from being something unusual? If so, don't underestimate players' determination to be cool. You'll most likely just end up with a bunch of underpowered X's grumping about the extra points they had to spend.
Making people pay for advantages makes sense. But rarity is not the same as advantage. Like... are all women in your western game who want to be something other than a wife/schoolmarm/etc. now going to be charged a point tax for being uncommon? Do you have to pay extra on a war game to be a Lieutenant instead of a Ensign just because there are fewer of them, even though being a Lieutenant doesn't really come with any inherent advantages? What's the point?
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RE: Game Concept: Paying for rare things
@ThatGuyThere said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
Do you have to pay extra on a war game to be a Lieutenant instead of a Ensign just because there are fewer of them, even though being a Lieutenant doesn't really come with any inherent advantages? What's the point?
I agree with your general point but wouldn't a higher rank in a military setting be an inherent advantage? After all the high ranks can order the lower ranks around, that is one of the basic tenets of military discipline.
Yes and no. A squadron leader would order people around for instance but a Lt or LtJg doesn't really have an appreciable amount of authority over other junior officers. And fachead type positions usually come with added responsibilities, so making them pay for the dubious privilege of having more work is.. dubious.
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RE: NO-GO IPs for MU*
@ixokai said in NO-GO IPs for MU*:
@bladesurfer said in NO-GO IPs for MU*:
I think one of the biggest reasons that they say 'no' is because they have to 'defend their copyright' or else it can be lost. So if you ask, they have to say no.
Except.. this isn't how copyright works. You can't lose copyright. You are under no obligation to defend copyright. If you don't defend copyright you in no way shape or form lose it.Except except.... many copyrighted RPGs/TV shows/universes/etc. are also trademarked. If you want to make a Shadowrun game, for instance, you're butting up against not only the copyrighted material in the rulebooks, but also Shadowrun itself, which is a registered trademark of... someone. I lost track. Now Shadowrun happens to encourage fan contributions but the example stands in principle.
So yeah, people get the rules confused a lot, but there's also significant overlap in the situations where they need to be enforced. It's messy. I don't blame authors for not wanting to deal with the legal minefield.
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RE: Where's your RP at?
@Arkandel said in Where's your RP at?:
@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:
If the world is post-apoc, it really needs to have actual danger of death, dismemberment, getting your shit jacked, etc. or it just turns into sci-fi L&L.
I can't prove this, but my impression is that games with high turnover rates (i.e. lots of character deaths) don't draw that many players.
I love post-apoc, but I wouldn't play on a game where you could lose your character due to fickle dice or staff whim. It's just too much investment to lose in an instant. I don't think I'm alone. I mean, not only is it not the norm in MU-land, but there aren't a lot of MMO's or video games with permadeath either. It just kills the fun.
Now I'm perfectly happy to RP the gritty ins and outs of survival (short of death) to keep it from being Little House on the Post-Apoc Prairie, but I don't know how you do that without a ton of code and/or micro-managing. I want to RP and tell stories, not log on so I can +hunt for an hour so I can +eat.
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RE: Where's your RP at?
@Arkandel said in Where's your RP at?:
Well, technically speaking you could lose your character in almost all games' plots to bad dice rolls. I just don't think many people would play where it's practically expected (or even systematized) that this would happen.
Not the games I've played on (and run), but obviously YMMV.
@Lithium said:
If it's /easy/ to get on the game, then Character Loss can (and should imho) be an important part of a post apocalyptic setting.
Not IMHO. it's the investment in the character development or story after joining the game that matters to me.
But that's a matter of taste and I don't want to derail the thread with the same debate about PC death and agency vs stakes that have graced 724 other threads on these boards. Just rendering my opinion.