Best posts made by faraday

@Seraphim73 said in FS3:

You end up with not-quite-satisfactory solutions such as a Defense skill (@faraday hates this one in particular, I know) or having your weapon skill count as your ability to defend against that weapon as well as to attack with it (which is clumsy and hard for people to wrap their heads around), or just having a single melee skill for all weapons (nice and simple, but... really simple).

Actually in 3rd Ed melee combat defends with the melee weapon skill of the defender.

So if Bob(Sword) is attacking Harvey(Axe), Bob attacks with his Sword skill and Harvey defends with his Axe skill.

Personally I still favor just having a Melee skill because of the "lean skill list" thing... and it really bugs me when a master swordsman can't fight worth a darn with a knife. Or at least have broad categories like "Blades". Anyway, YMMV but the options aren't as weird in 3rd Ed.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

People telling her that she's wrong want her to leave.

Appreciate the support. Though I don't mind being told I'm wrong. I'm wrong a lot. I don't mind if people don't like my system. There are lots of RPG systems out there I don't like. (Though it irks me a little when they hate the toolkit for the way people chose to use the tools. If you played on my game and still hate it, though - fair play.) What I do mind is hostility and insults. I just don't need that crap in my pretendy funtime games.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

So you're saying that 6 to 12 is relatively equal in overall performance. I believe that people are so used to min-maxing while trusting the rule-set that sure, Person A will take something at 12, and sure Person B will look at Person A as the epitome of that ability.

Actually I said 9 to 12. Though I probably should have more correctly said 10-12. FS3 2nd Ed breaks the ratings up into four brackets:

1-3 = Novice
4-6 = Proficient/Professional
7-9 = Veteran
10-12 = Master

The idea was that really only the "bracket" matters. Either you're Novice/Prof/Vet/Master. That's it. Pretty simple right? Pick what description best fits your character.

But there were three sub-ratings in each bracket, so you could be a really beginner Novice, or a pretty advanced student Novice, or a junior professional or a pretty senior professional on the cusp of veteran, etc.

In practice it got muddled. People saw some huge difference between 10 and 12 even though stat-wise there isn't one. The bracket idea was either never made clear, or so obtuse that people didn't get it... dang if I know. Some games refused to let you start above 9 at all ever. One BSG game refused to let you have a piloting skill below 4 or above 9, so instead of a 1-12 system, it became a 4-8 system, and then they wondered why there was so little differentiation between the characters.

So I changed it. 3rd ed now has a simplified ratings system that people tend to grok much more easily.

@Tinuviel Yeah, I mean, why on earth would you want characters to be useless? What the heck kind of game is that? But everyone has a different definition of "useless", so - there will always be min/maxing to stay ahead. I'm not a fan of respecs because it's like a form of retcon. But if somebody made a goof in chargen and wants to adjust something a couple weeks after they get used to the game, I'm fine with that.

@Ganymede said in FS3:

Or me, where I shoved too many points into my Sciences, and was politely told that my PC was probably too good at them, based on her background.

Heh, that actually happens a lot and makes me wonder sometimes if I'm being overly pedantic about it or if the BG skill levels are either wickedly unclear or out of whack. I think it's probably one of the things I've written most on apps: "Sooooo you've got Math at Expertise. Did you really mean to be a PhD? If so fine but... I'm guessing not."

@Thenomain As usual, we come from different worlds with different experiences. There's no 'bureaucracy' involved. It's literally: go, have fun, don't break the game for others. You want to go into the swamp and shoot some Cylons or (in the case of Sweetwater, some outlaws), go for it. There are no IC rewards or loot to worry about balancing because that's just not how the game's set up.

And there are staff-run plots too, so it's not like it's trying to foist off running the game. The reward - both for a staff-run plot and for a PrP is the same: the enjoyment of the story.

And still, only a minority of players are willing to do anything other than the military equivalent of BarRP between staff-run events.

Now if that's what they want to do, that's totally fine. Lots of players are happy with that and that's not a problem. It's the ones who complain about there being "nothing to do" while neither following up on plot breadcrumbs nor doing their own stuff that irk me.

ETA:

Quelling the willingness of people to do things on their own didn't happen overnight, either. You can't expect people to trust you personally when the experience has been quite different elsewhere.

Frankly I don't care if they trust me or not. But if you're not going to trust me enough to do your own events when I've bent over backwards to make it easy, then don't complain when you're bored.

@Thenomain said in Identifying Major Issues:

It is not a little ironic when people are also complaining that a game based on telnet is a barrier to entry. I believe that we are projecting our own capabilities and understanding, and ignoring others as they are convenient or not convenient to us.

I have to respectfully disagree there. Using an email to register for a site is ubiquitous. It's something any entry-level internet user in the modern era is familiar with. Either they don't care about their privacy, or they've learned to create a dummy email they use for untrusworthy sites.

That's very different from a barrier that involves downloading a special app with a non-intuitive GUI that you use to connect to a game with no GUI and command-line text prompts.

@Thenomain said in Identifying Major Issues:

Find some and ask, and a very mild shame on you for thinking this is about Millennials. This is about barrier to entry and, apparently, being a single person to answer any other person's moving the goalpost. I'm being talked down by a lot of people, but so far nobody else has attempted even a tacit nod toward information gathering. How can we identify issues without escaping--to put it crudely for effect--this echo chamber?

Uh, I didn't bring up Millennials? I was replying to your poll. I did do a lot of info gathering when building Ares about player accounts, registration, etc, which is why I told @HelloProject that the number of MU*ers hyper-concerned about privacy is not a minority at all. (You can basically see the distribution in the thread here.) But as for the internet at large? I stand by my point. But hey, I only do this stuff for a living - what do I know about login best practices?

I'm out. Y'all have fun. Feel free to start a betting pool about how long I can stay away this time.

@Sparks For me it would be super awesome if there was an option to make the CMD-# "switch window" shortcuts ignore spawns. So that way CMD-1 would be world 1, CMD-2 world 2, etc. The main thing keeping me from using more spawns is my reliance on those hotkeys and the awkwardness of having to do CMD-8 and whatnot to switch windows. I just use one for channel chat on my OOC alt.

@SG said in Lords of the Expanse:

@Lotherio I had a little line battle just now. If I statted things correctly, british majors driving Regular Line Infantry are much better than French lieutenants driving Green line infantry. I don't think I had the hit locations right, it was returning blank spaces.

You'd need to set up a hit location table for "Company" . There are some instructions here.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the system doesn't handle a weapon skill like "Command-1". It's just expecting that to be an ability name.

ETA: The way to make the different vehicles superior/inferior to one another is to adjust their toughness and dodge ratings. You can also give them different armor types.

Oh....also 'Armor' in the vehicle stat needs to be an armor type. Right now you have it looking for armor type '1', which doesn't exist.

@Tinuviel said in Most active scifi games right now?:

@Lithium BSG:U is less 'sci fi' as it is WWI in space with robots.

Yes, although I'd say more WWII than WWI.

Three people is about my limit for a normal scene. Any more than that and I mentally check out. It's just too long between poses or too hard to follow all the threads of conversation. Especially since most players will pose a paragraph replying to multiple people at once. It's like having six different conversations going at a dinner table and you're never sure which ones you need to pay attention to. (name highlighting helps but not enough)

@ganymede said in Too Much:

And then DWOPP got with my PC, and we TS'd, and I found out later, and I was, like --

But I mean, my PC was dating his, so I can relate - even if it was solely FTB. To wit, my comment in the other thread:

Setting a shared expectation up front can help, but there are some who will push things even if you're super clear about no TS, no OOC bleed. It's annoying.

@ganymede said in Too Much:

BSGU was one of the best experiences I've had in 20+ years. I wish it was still around.

@lotherio said in Too Much:

As you suggest, its part of the culture and learning that one doesn't need to respond to all prior 10 people that poses is essential to getting into the flow of 3pr and such.

I agree with you, but I think it goes beyond everyone thinking they need to respond to all 10 people, and more into everyone just paying attention to what's already going on and responding accordingly. Conversations are woven together in a really bizarre fashion, and that's definitely a cultural thing.

@lotherio said in Too Much:

Is there a better design to help filter the groups conversing/interacting between their friends to do so in a less distracting manner?

This was something I spent a lot of time on when designing Ares, seeing if it was possible to design a better 'places' system. To be honest, I came up empty. When you consider that the scene needs to feed into a single text log at the end, and that people might flit between places and be at least peripherally aware of what's going on at the others (i.e., those guys are laughing in the corner, that table is having some raised voices, etc.)... it becomes difficult to truly isolate things.

@zombiegenesis said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

It's not that nobody is special but the baseline average has now been raised considerably. If you're at an Oscar party and someone asks "Who's the best actor here?" you're going to get a lot of different answers. It's more difficult for a single person to stand out in that room because they all have high "acting skills".

Sure, but my point was that objectively speaking, they're still all Oscar winners. The Oscar equivalent of the MUSH behavior would be like Oscar Winner A throwing a fit because they were invited to a party where they're not the only Oscar winner in the room.

(Saw the edit and realize we're on the same page, but already posted.)

@Devrex said in Highlights of Ares?:

I start losing all my enthusiasm if it takes more than a month to do one scene.

Oh, me too. That would drive me insane.

All I mean is that what you're describing is a facet of Asynchronous RP in general, not Ares in particular.

MUs have a fairly solid baseline of community expectations for synchronous RP (more or less). People deviate from those expectations all the flipping time (slow work RP, backscenes, to-be-continued scenes, etc.) but they communicate when it happens.

The MU community doesn't have that shared set of baseline expectations for async RP. Not because it never happened (heck, I was doing async MUSH scenes via email circa 1995; LiveJournal; Google Docs; RP/TP Rooms; etc), but because it happened 1-on-1. Maybe we'll calibrate that baseline eventually, but in the mean time all it takes is communication.

@Derp said in Observation:

We still get plenty of traffic to the site, and we normally just post about less stressful things.

Have I somehow muted a board or something? This is the first post I've seen in a month. The last actual MU-centric convo (apart from the occasional ad or game request) was back in August.

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

I don't have an issue with TS, but constructively I think some people pass on players who don't TS; I've actually had players suddenly get electrical storms when I turned down TS.

I don't doubt there are some people who might pass, but for many years now I've make it clear to anyone potentially engaging in relationship RP that I'm a strictly FTB girl, and I've never had any shortage of RP.

I do have an issue with TS - not out of moral judgment (hey, whatever floats your boat) but because it seems to be the root of NO END of drama and toxic behavior on these games - including some of the things you've described here. But I agree banning it is all kinds of impractical and ill-advised. Also beside the point here.

I also have an issue with Midjourney. Though I am not an artist, I have friends who are, and I support them being up in arms about the unlicensed use of their work for-profit on a massive scale. That just goes to show that everyone has their own ethical lines in the sand. I don't think yours re: PBs is any more or less valid than mine re: MJ.

@reimesu said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Frankly, the entire argument against PBs isn't an argument against PBs, it's an argument against unethical players who are being manipulative.

To be fair, that wasn't the entire argument, though it was the one that got the most attention. Others have raised valid points for and against that have nothing to do with players being manipulative.

@Derp said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Nobody gave it a pass. It was called out and acted upon. By two different admins.

It is your right to moderate the forum as you see fit. It is our right to point out when we feel it's not being effective.

Calling something out is not actually solving the problem. It's like if there's a kid on the playground who goes around hitting other kids, and the only thing the teacher does is say "Hey stop hitting". It doesn't actually change the behavior, and other kids will see that there are no real consequences for hitting.

That's what's happened on the MU forums, where for years the only tangible consequence for being un-constructive was getting the thread pushed to the hog pit (where those of us who wish to stay constructive can no longer participate.)

The only way to keep the mildly constructive forum actually constructive is to stop the hitting. There are various forum moderation strategies and tools for doing so.

@reimesu said in The Case Against Real PBs:

What more would you suggest?

• Clearer community guidelines. (I like the Discourse rules of civil discourse myself, but YMMV). Were Ghost's graphic posts out of bounds? I dunno. They bugged me and a few others, but the current guidelines aren't clear enough for me to know. There's also a lot of snark tolerated in "mildly constructive" that I personally don't find constructive, but I've always been in the minority there.
• Removing posts that violate community guidelines. Leaving them around just invites escalated responses, harms those who were personally attacked, and muddies the waters about what can and can't be said.
• An escalating punishment strategy; for example: 1 warning, timeout, longer timeout, permanent ban.
• Being consistent about the enforcement of the rules. I called Gany out for being out of bounds (and they agreed!) but no mod did.

If you look at this thread and genuinely believe that it has on the whole stayed "civil", "constructive", and "on topic" (per the rules of engagement), then we are on very different pages about what that means. I count at least two, maybe three people who have bounced or blocked based on the convo here.

Also I'm not suggesting Ghost (or anyone else) be banned here. I'm suggesting that more active and consistent moderation can keep it from getting to that point in the first place.