@Gilette I honestly have no idea what I said that implied that staff should never run plots, or that I take it personally if people don't take advantage of the opportunity to run PrPs. If a game where players are expected (and allowed!) to entertain themselves in-between staff run plots doesn't interest you, then just don't play there. Easy enough. I love playing on such places, myself, even when I'm not running them.
@il-volpe said in RL-Friendly Game Design:
It's really a pity about MUDstats no longer adding new games, because its charts showed you when a game's prime time was.
AresCentral shows it for Ares games. For example: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/game/5e5966e2bbdbe407682b05a2/detail
Though I think what you'll see overall is that activity is a lot flatter than it used to be. With web players popping on throughout the day and people staying logged in to hang out or wait for someone, you don't see the big peaks and valleys that I remember seeing in things like MUDStats ages ago.
Any more than five or six players and it just gets too much for me. When I did big scenes on BSGU, I would set it up so there were natural ways for folks to break up. So for instance we did a big awards party, and there were a couple different locations - the beach, the bar... I forget the others. Or if there were a big battle, there'd be separate angles. Air wing and marines, or two groups of marines, or whatnot. So it was really like multiple interconnected scenes under the same umbrella.
@arkandel said in Don't Join Discord Servers!!!:
@faraday Yeah and that's the thing, too. Some of us do have friends who send weird messages, start playing new games, join different guilds etc... and from whom randomness like that wouldn't be completely out of place.
I get that, but that's just indisputably risky behavior in this day and age of phishing scams.
Friends can help each other out by not just sending random "hey check this out" type messages, but instead providing context.
You can help yourself by turning on your "sus" radar even when the random link is from a friend. Examine the link to see where it's actually taking you (wary of typos or google.somewherelse.com type scams), double-check the lock icon in the browser and security certificate, be extra suspicious of anything asking you to provide login creds or click on a "trust me" popup.
There are no guarantees of course, but there are good practices.
ETA: I don't mean to trivialize, because this crap is hard. Scammers are expert at manipulating human behavior. Even security professionals fall victim. All we can do is take steps reduce our risk.
@rnmissionrun said in Star Trek?:
Usually, the person in charge is the game owner, and the only important players are himself, his harem and a few friends (all high ranking officers). Everyone else is basically an NPC whose RP consists of filing reports with his CO. If you're lucky you might get invited to some of the captain's big scenes. But you'll never be the hero. As Ensign Blueshirt down in Stellar Cartography, the toughest decision you'll have to make all day is whether you're going to dust underneath the consoles, or just the tops.
That has absolutely nothing to do with it being a single ship and everything to do with it being a crappily run MUSH. Who wants to play a NPC filing reports? For that matter, who actually thinks that Ensign Blueshirt down in Stellar Cartography is ever going to have anything interesting to do on a routine basis?
You can have a single ship and still make it interesting. You could also do a single space station - I'm surprised nobody's done a DS9 game honestly, as I think that's the Trek setting most conducive to being a MUSH setting (and similar in vein to Babylon 5, which was a successful MU way back when).
Trek according to the starship model has a problem of expectations, because the show basically shows the senior staff doing everything and everyone else doing nothing. That's fine for a TV show with a limited cast, but abominably stupid from a military standpoint. All you have to do is make it work more like a normal navy would, and suddenly a much broader swath of crew members have opportunities to go on away missions and get involved in adventures.
@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:
But, as I said... anecdotal.
There's actually been quite a lot of effort lately put into studying this phenomenon. Various studies (here's one, and another) have examined the impact of stereotypes and culture in tacitly discouraging women from pursuing fields in computer science. There's also some research into the interesting effect that the introduction of the PC (which was initially marketed primarily towards men/boys) had on the gender distribution of the computer industry. The issue you're describing is very real: I can say from experience that it's sometimes hard being the only woman in the room.
So it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: How do you motivate more girls when they know that's how the workplace will be - especially given the high-profile reports of misogyny, harassment and discrimination all over the headlines? It's an interesting problem.
@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
What do you mean by "sustain"?
@reimesu said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
Which means there are more out there that we just don't know about. Which means the MU community very much IS able to sustain two separate discussion forums and possibly more.
I obviously can't speak about other hypothetical communities I just don't know about.
My personal experience is that a discussion board, like a MUSH itself, requires a certain amount of critical mass to keep afloat. Without sufficient activity to maintain interest, people stop checking in. When they stop checking in, the activity drops even further. Eventually you end up with something like the Ares forums, which yes technically still exists, but sees maybe 1 or 2 posts per month.
Aside from that, diversity of viewpoints is important to any vibrant discussion. If you've just got the same 5 people talking about the same topics over and over again, it gets old.
A forum existing is not sufficient for my definition of "being sustained". YMMV.
To be clear, I'm not proposing shutting down any of the sites in question. I'm just sad.
@surreality Okay. I guess I haven't heard a lot from either camp - neither "we need innovation" (I've actually heard the opposite mostly) nor "no one should try something" (though I have heard a lot of warnings that this or that didn't work in the past, which is a legitimate and true observation).
Anyway, I think people arguing "original themes can't ever work" have about as much credence as people arguing "the Earth is flat", so I wouldn't really get worked up about it.
@ghost said in Original Sci-Fi?:
While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.
I don't get it? It would be like FS3 where the slow people only got to act once every 3 rounds. It would suck to be slow, obviously (been there - I'm looking at you Shadowrun) but I don't see how it's a dealbreaker.
Of course if you're not automating combat... then yes. Run away, run far away.
@Rinel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
The drugs for OCD and ADHD do not slow the brain down.
Exactly. In fact, the drugs for ADHD are primarily stimulants. One way I've heard it described is like the ADHD brain needs extra stimulus to focus. So instead of focusing on the boring homework, the brain is like: "oh but what about this? or this over here? or that?" The medication helps to combat that by giving the brain's neurotransmitters what they're looking for, thereby helping you focus.
These are issues with the way a brain works on a chemical and organic level. It can be measured with MRIs and stuff. Some people need meds, some people can cope without them. Just as not all diabetics need insulin. But for the ones that do, telling them it's all a big pharma conspiracy theory is nonsense.
@zombiegenesis said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:
Don't let failure stop forward momentum. It might redirect it but momentum should always be moving forward.
I agree with this.
While certainly there are some computer RPGs with permadeath, permaloss, or entire storylines/areas cut off by failure, that's generally not the case because most players don't find it particularly fun.
Even if you view MUs more like stories then games, temporary setbacks are a key part of fiction, but abject failure is something you don't generally see happening to the protagonists.
Failing forward is a good model in both cases.
Storium has an interesting system. There are no dice; instead characters have cards that represent strengths, weaknesses, and subplots (goals). They play them explicitly on obstacles to steer the outcome within the boundaries established by the GM. For example:
I like that there are consequences for a weak outcome, but it's not "you all die; story over". It's failing forward.
Where it gets messy is that each card can only be played a limited number of times. Sounds good in principle right? Forcing you to use your weaknesses? Incentivizing failure?
In practice it's just frustrating. I don't mind playing weakness cards where it makes sense for the story, but sometimes it just doesn't. Sometimes there's a challenge where one of your character's strengths makes perfect sense, but you're out of strength cards. Sometimes there's a challenge where you really want a weak outcome to make the story more interesting, but you can't.
Bottom line - I don't think you can systemize good storytelling. You can only encourage it by making failures not be the end of the world.
We have a hard enough time already getting people to come forward with complaints. I envision even fewer if people know their complaint is going to be plastered all over a bbs.
@enoch said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):
What say you, people? It sounds strange to me, but I have warmed up about it. Need opinions!
Cheers for being open to feedback. FWIW, maintaining the IC continuity of relationships during a player transition has been the norm on every game I've ever played. Sure, there can be issues, but that's true of anything. It works pretty well for the most part.
As for taking the RP in a different direction (breakup, falling out, whatever)... that can happen even with an existing player. I don't think anyone should ever be forced to RP their character in a specific way or be shackled into an IC relationship.
That said, apping Cyclops when you know full well that he's ICly married to Jean and then on day 1 saying: "I want a divorce" just to go hook up with Rogue... that seems like a pretty craptastic thing to do. The kind of thing that can screw up other characters pretty badly.
The new player knew what they were getting into when they apped the character. If they didn't want to be married, there are other characters they could have taken. Encouraging new players to take a wrecking ball to existing relationships on a whim just seems... kinda cheesy to me. But it's not the red flag that retcon was, for sure.
@friarzen said in A new platform?:
Only the most intrepid newbies are willing to go through that learning curve.
It's kind of a catch-22 really. Only the most intrepid newbies are willing to suffer through the learning curve to use the old syntax. Only the most intrepid veterans are willing to try a new syntax - or so they say. When push comes to shove, if more games start using new platforms, will they go where their friends are? Time will tell I guess. Otherwise we're pretty stuck with the status quo.
What it comes down to, though, is looking at what makes a MUSH. As @bored mentioned, it's the combination of RPG elements and social elements, which makes it pretty unique. There's also the real-time aspect, which is both a blessing (the faster pace and ability to be entertained for a block of hours is what a lot of us love about MUSHes) and a curse (it's daunting to new players and those who can't make that kind of time commitment.)
@Derp said in Getting into Writing:
I mean, given that there are no small number of criticisms about our distinct lack of ability to do this, I sometimes wonder. You'd think that it would be a way to learn, but many of us seem to be lacking in some essential element.
RP, like many writing exercises, is a way to practice. Practice is geared towards refining skills you already know. It's generally not the best way to learn new skills or advance to the next level.
It's like playing softball in a bar league. Sure you'll probably get slightly better over time just by showing up and having a few at-bats every week, but it's a far cry from actually training seriously in a sport.
Writing is a craft, and doing it well is going to require some kind of learning. Different people learn in different ways, though, so I wouldn't place value on one style over another.
You also want to train for the sport you want to play. As others have mentioned, RP and prose are different. They're both forms of creative writing with certain skills in common, but like baseball and softball they have different styles and different rules. You can become good at both, but you want to make sure you're conscious of the differences as you practice and 'play'.
@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:
What DO you do about games and RP systems where "dinosaur characters" are able to simply continue to amass XP with over-the-top RP and zero fear of death/repercussions
Easy - have a system that doesn't allow for dino characters. FS3 does that. There really isn't that much of a gap between what you can walk out of chargen with and the max.
@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:
he PROBLEM was that it was a "consent" game, so unless a character consented to being investigated/hunted/killed for their behavior, the LAW sphere really couldn't DO anything about laws being broken by PCs unless staff intervened.
Also easy - don't try to do PVP in a consent game. That's just destined to end up in cops-and-robbers playground nonsense.
Of course these decisions (max power level / no PVP) have other effects. Some players are motivated by XP. They get bored if they can no longer advance. Some players want PVP. I'm not saying these things are bad or wrong, just that they're not the only option.
@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:
I know a lot of my posts come back to "is it an RPG game with writing OR a writing group that uses light RPG elements", but I feel that it applies to this topic.
Exactly. If your goal while MUSHing is to play a game where you're looking for immersion or the suspense of not knowing at any moment what might happen - even if that means your own character's death - hey, more power to you. Again, not saying any of that is bad or wrong.
For me, though? None of that is why I'm here. I want to tell a story with some light RPG tools. I think MUs are closest to ensemble TV series in execution. It's generally pretty lame when one of the ensemble just randomly dies to a henchman, accident, etc. halfway through the season. If you're going to kill off an ensemble character, you want to do it in a way that has meaning--that propels the story forward.
And ultimately, only the players can decide when that's appropriate. Not an arbitrary system.
@Thenomain said in Adapting FATE for MU*s:
I think the takeaway here is that the more a game system is geared toward storytelling, the harder it will be to adapt to Mu*.
That seems like a particularly ironic statement for a hobby built around storytelling 
I would say it's more about subjectivity than storytelling, but they're definitely related. The more subjective a system is, the harder it's going to be to achieve consensus and balance among strangers.
Example: FS3 is also geared toward storytelling. It gets criticized because chargen is subject to the whims of the approval staff and can be min-maxed. Those same problems are magnified like 1000x when you not only are debating whether Joe Viper Pilot should have "Good" or "Great" in Piloting, but also debating what sorts of aspects and stunts he has.
@bobotron said in ROGUE: It is coming...:
At what point is it really IMPOSSIBLE for certain types of characters to reasonably RP with each other and stay within theme?
This. I have played on a lot of different games, but I have never had a harder time finding RP than I did on the few Star Wars games I tried. And given that I'm a pretty motivated self-starter when it comes to finding RP, that's saying a lot.
@thenomain said in A new platform?:
What were you talking about?
I was talking about how Ares provides all the cornerstones of a basic MUSH setup ready to go out of the box. Of course if you dislike the forum page, for example, you could re-design it. (That's what I thought you were talking about.) But that redesign is not necessary and thus I don't consider it to be generating any kind of "development spike". On the contrary, I think removing the need to code up all that stuff just to get a MUSH off the ground reduces the overall development time.