@Thenomain The context of my phone number question was in regards to @ThatGuyThere giving reasons not to trust people on a new game. By "to each their own" I meant that if the concern over people knowing who you are is reason enough to approach each game with deflector shields at maximum... okay? I mean that's a personal choice, I can't really fault anyone for it. But I confess that degree of defense baffles me more than a little.
@kitteh I don't think it's pointless. I mean, frustrated is frustrated, regardless of what the numbers say. And there may be situations where the PCs are facing a true Big Bad (the scene on 100 MUSH against Sonja at the dropship battle comes to mind), so those types of situations can come up.
At the end of the day, combat is a balancing act. Too easy and it's not fun. Too hard and it's not fun. Finding the right balance is tricky. It doesn't always work out as intended.
@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
And it still boggles my mind that the same people who would never go without providing a spoiler warning about content out of consideration for others would not think it even more important to allow people to avoid viewing content that wouldn't just spoil the mystery of a happy fun story thing, but could do them personal emotional harm.
I think it's less a question of malice and more about cultural expectations.
When you see a movie trailer, it's considered poor form to put in too many spoilers, but you'd never expect to see a disclaimer (beyond the general movie rating) about there being particular themes that might upset people. Even on TV, an episode has to be pretty freaking graphic to warrant a special "Viewer discretion is advised" notice on HBO because the general bar for content is "mature".
And I know someone brought up the interactive/non-interactive point a few pages ago, but the same standards apply to video games. I can know that Mass Effect Andromeda is rated 'M' for mature audiences, but if I want to know more about the specific reasons why it's rated M because I'm sensitive to something, it's my responsibility to seek out that information.
I like to consider myself a pretty sympathetic and caring person, but it would never occur to me to apply more stringent standards to a MUSH than apply to every other form of entertainment I'm aware of.
@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
Almost nobody is telling you to not play on a game because there's a 1% chance for you getting triggered. They--and I am joining them--are saying that there is no way to reasonably expect adequate coverage. The best we can do is try, and if that's not good enough for you then I don't know what else anyone can say.
This. If @surreality came on my game and said: "Look, I'm triggered by people clubbing baby seals..." I would bend over backwards to accommodate. I would make sure not to bring them within ten feet of any plots involving harm to baby seals. If I knew of someone else plotting a baby seal plot I would warn them away. What I would not do is expect anyone to implement an elaborate system of warnings or preferences - the help file for which is longer than all the other policies on my game combined - just on the off chance that .01% of the scenes on the game might involve clubbing a baby seal.
@WTFE If it works for you, awesome. Personally though I prefer the element of chance when the circumstances are challenging. Even people who qualify as Expert Marksmen on the target range miss in combat. A lot. Pro musicians sometimes hit wrong notes in the pressure of an important concert. Your sheet tells you what you're baseline capabilities are. Rolls tell how you perform under pressure. FS3 dice stats are slanted compared to many other systems so that people succeed a lot. Competent people can and do feel competent the vast majority of the time. But they can also fail occasionally.
@Seraphim73 said in FS3:
I really, really don't think anyone is saying that (maybe @WTFE is, but I don't think that even he is).
It wasn't specifically about this thread, but "I'm supposed to be awesome and I suck all the time" is the #1 criticism I have heard about the system over the years. Frankly it just baffles me a bit because yeah, dice are random. That's kinda the point of dice. (The #2 criticism is the CG/XP/min-max balance issue, which I at least understand even though I disagree with.)
@Seraphim73 Yeah, and when you only roll once in a blue moon, the effects are amplified. Nobody playing tabletop bats an eye when their awesome archer misses a shot. It's expected. But do the same on a MU* and ZOMG it's the end of the world. I've often wondered if a radically different system would fit MU*s better - something like Amber's diceless system or a point-based system where you get to choose how to spend your luck or whatnot.
Random side note: the "I suck so the system sucks" griping was even worse in first edition because nobody understood the way the roll resolution worked. It wasn't until I changed the system over to a familiar die mechanic and then changed the system to show the actual die rolls that people finally started to trust that the system wasn't just broken. But as some of the comments in this thread show, there are still a lot of folks who are not thrilled about it.
@Seraphim73 You know for a moment I was like: "Dude you COUNTED them?!?!" Because it was plausible that you might have. 
But actually - yeah, having played a metric ton of FS3 myself (both on my own games and on others'), maybe I've also generated enough of a sample size to see the wider curve.
You can browse AresMUSH games here: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games
The stars give an indication of activity, and you can click on a game to see a more detailed breakdown of activity across different days/times. (Obviously activity alone isn't the sole or best measure of a game, but the OP specifically asked for active games.)
@Ganymede said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:
If there’s a recent dip in activity, it is likely due to the stress ...
This. RP is down everywhere - even on other platforms, like Storium. I don't think that's a sign for this hobby in specific.
@RDC said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:
There have been no drama free games. Not since the very inception of this hobby. Not at its height.
There are only games who deal with drama (mostly) well and games that don't.
Also this. Some games are drama tornados, but there's no drama-free game anywhere. Because humans.
@L-B-Heuschkel said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:
@Darren Except it literally didn't for us. I can only speak from personal experience. We got no traffic from there, ever.
Same. And I'm not just talking about recently - this has been my experience running games since the early 90's.
@Darren - your experience may well be different. I'm guessing it probably depends on the game. Something like Arx or Firan has more in common with RPI MUDs than something like a consent-based Western, and would likely get more recruits through MUDConnector. But for myself and the games I've been on? It's been a non-starter. Nevertheless, as LB and I said, nothing stops someone from still listing there.
@Brunocerous said in Ares in Mexico:
You appear to be able to browse the IPv6 Internet only. You have no access to IPv4. That's pretty bold!
Yeah, as others have said, that's very uncommon and undoubtedly the root of the issue. Many websites support v4 only. (hence the "pretty bold" comment above). Ares can support either v4 or v6, but not both due to a limitation in the underlying telnet library it's using. So Ares games run on v4 for maximal compatibility.
@Ganymede Because players throw fits and cry foul when their McAwesomePants character fails at something if they can't "see" the actual die results.
(They sometimes throw fits anyway, but slightly less often.)
@Jeshin Lots of dice code has that baked in though. It might say "Jeshin rolls Athletics - Great Success" or "Jeshin rolls Melee and gets 2 successes" or something like that based on the system. You don't have to provide the raw dice results to provide meaningful output. But many players still want to see the dice.
@Carma Not really interested in debating it. There are plenty of articles on best practices in command-line interface development if you care to read more about it. Also, yes, this is off-topic but the mods are always free to migrate the posts to a different thread if they care to.
It's absolutely reasonable to clarify expectations, and that sort of thing is the intended purpose of the scene notes field.
I've played Storium a bit, which is entirely async, and i've noticed that the most successful games are ones where they post and enforce expectations of regular activity. (By enforce I mean moving the scene on without them if someone doesn't make a move.)
@squirreltalk That is a game-configurable option. Some folks like the pose breaks; others prefer the unbroken flow and find the breaks distracting.
Most games, I've found, leave it off. I don't know if that's a conscious mirror of the old wiki style, a widespread preference, or simply an unawareness that the feature even exists.
@carma said in A healthy game culture:
That depends entirely on the community that gets fostered. If you remove people who express poor sportsmanship, then you'll have a game with close to 100% good sportsmanship.
When "sportsmanship" is exhibited outwardly in terms of penalties, rules, etc, then I agree.
But unfortunately most of the "poor sportsmanship" equivalent on MUs is more subtle than that, and is nearly impossible to police in the same way you can in other venues.
@mietze said in Battling FOMO (any game):
Which means that I'm not sure you can really truly eliminate that through policies.
You can never eliminate fear. And as Gany points out, you can never eliminate the inevitability of missing out on some percentage of Things.
You can only do your best to ensure that people have a chance of being involved, so they are not actually missing out on everything.
It depends. Do you care about tracking wounds and healing? How complex is the game system you're trying to model? How often are combats likely to come up and what will the scale/scope be?
A big dogfight on a BSG game or an assault on TGG? You'd be insane NOT to have a full-fledged combat system. It'd take all day to resolve one scene and it would be a tremendous burden on your GMs and players.
A duel on a low-stakes swashbuckling game? Who needs stats at all?
So I don't think this should be up to player preference of vanilla vs. chocolate. Different games have different needs.
@Arkandel, I think the strict dictionary definition certainly applies in many cases (emphasis mine):
a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons; especially : one held together by common interests, views, or purposes
This is distinct from what I presume @Thenomain was referring to as "play groups", which would be a non-exclusive circle or group of persons.
Having a lot of cliques can be very detrimental to a game, since new players just throw up their hands and leave when they can't break into RP.
At the same time, I think cliques are a natural part of any social endeavor. And frankly, if I choose to log into a game just to play with Bob and Harry, who are my best buds from elseMU and we've got our own little plotline going on that doesn't readily open itself to strangers, that's my prerogative. It may be a DUMB prerogative because eventually we'll get bored playing with just each other or Bob will idle out and then our story will be up a creek, but it's still my prerogative.