Best posts made by faraday

@derp said in Pandemic Era Issues:

This is actively endangering other people

That isn’t supposed to matter in medicine either. I’m a paramedic not a doctor so the whole Hippocratic oath thing doesn’t apply, but our medical ethics are to treat all patients the same devoid of moral judgment. The drunk driver gets the same standard of care as his victims, even if we have to grit our teeth while doing it.

Now when the system is overwhelmed and you have to triage who can be saved, there’s an argument to be made that maybe the vaccinated would have better outcomes, all else being equal. But that’s debatable and complicated (vaccinated old person with a laundry list of medical conditions vs a young otherwise healthy unvaccinated person for instance).

It just sucks that this has to be such a divisive issue

@arkandel said in Social Systems:

Obviously no one thinks changing someone's beliefs in one roll, even for a single encounter, is appropriate.

Unfortunately I think a lot of players do think that's appropriate. That said, I do like the incremental approach. Not only does it encourage RP by requiring multiple scenes, but it acknowledges that changing someone's opinion on something doesn't happen overnight.

I still think there needs to be some sort of boundaries though. Princess Leia is never going to willingly betray the resistance no matter how much time and effort you put into influencing her and moving that needle.

It also doesn't address the rolls that really are cold one-shots. Talking your way past the guard. Schmoozing the receptionist into giving out a room number she shouldn't. Lying to the cop asking you where you were that night. Convincing someone to put their gun down in a standoff. With NPCs it's really easy (and appropriate) to boil that down to a single roll. But as @Ghost and others have mentioned, many players get really, really, really bent out of shape if they lose a roll like that -- FAR more than if they lose a dodge roll and get decked.

@thatguythere said in Player buy-in:

Post-Apocalyptic can mean a lot of things.

I think this is a lot of the problem right here.

On a Western game, you can end up with people expecting everything from "Into the West" to "Little House on the Prairie" to "Pick a Spaghetti Western" to "Deadwood". These people will each have vastly different expectations on how the game "should" be.

They're all playing westerns, but they're essentially playing completely different games. How do you decide who's right and who's wrong? Or more aptly - who's contributing to the game and who's disrupting it? It's not always black and white.

I think most MUs default to "heroic soap opera" where the plots have holes like swiss cheese, the good guys save the day, and impossibly beautiful people hook up while doing it. If you're building anything else, you're pretty much going to have to be a tyrant about stamping out any RP that doesn't fit your vision. Otherwise people will do what they've been doing on game after game after game.

I don't know why we're talking about this in this thread, but since we are...

@insomniac7809 said in Tyche Banned:

It's not mean. It's not shit-flinging. It's not anything that needs to be in the HogPit. But that's where the Arx megathread is so that's where I went.

Yeah, totally.

You also have the Facebook Problem. In any social endeavor, people gravitate to where the people are. Even if somebody opened another no-holds-barred MU discussion forum, it would have a hard time competing with the established community here. It's no wonder that the constructive-only alternatives, which inherently have a narrower audience, had trouble competing.

It's true that drama and dumpster fires will always have an audience. I mean, how many reality shows are based around that concept? And I agree with those who find it necessary to have a 'the truth hurts' section for outing bad behavior. It's still disappointing to know that any given discussion thread is prone to being pulled down into the mud at any moment just because people can't be bothered to be civil even in the Mildly Constructive section. It's also no wonder that most folks would rather tolerate the mudslinging than be cut out of half of the discussions.

@derp said in Pandemic Era Issues:

And people aren't supposed to refuse safe treatments to save their lives, either, but this is the world we live in now.

That's always been the world we lived in. You have medical autonomy to refuse any and all treatments for any and all reasons, no matter how idiotic. Can't count the number of times someone has signed a refusal form to avoid being taken to the hospital in our ambulance despite us pleading with them that they're at risk of death.

Believe me, I'm as frustrated as you are. And I'm all for using every weapon in the arsenal to persuade these people, from vaccine mandates to bribery to education... whatever it takes to end this nightmare.

But I'm not in favor of doctors deciding who lives and who dies based on their own moral judgment of someone's behavior. That is a horrific idea.

@arkandel said in Social Systems:

As a disclaimer please let me know if I'm over-arguing with you because while I find this debate interesting, I realize it can also get annoying.
Having said that, what makes sense is a matter of narrative and we're all fallible when it comes to how we interpret what we're doing. So in a in a traditional 'physical' stated system it might make perfect sense for my combatant's personal journey at that point to result in victory

It's okay, I think it's been a good debate so far!

I think we have different definition of 'makes sense' though. Your ace sniper missing a shot makes sense. Everyone's fallible - even Navy SEALs. Your ace sniper missing ten shots in a row for no darn reason other than you kept rolling a 1? Nope, sorry, that doesn't make any more sense than a (insert political hot button topic here) advocate suddenly changing her mind just because somebody rolled a 20 on their persuasion roll.

So yes - I'm all for randomness and unexpected victories/defeats as long as those results are bounded by rails of plausibility. That's really all I'm asking for. (And I freely admit that's not everyone's jam. I'm not knocking people who prefer it another way, just responding to the "I don't get why anybody would want it that way" type of arguments.)

@mr-johnson said in Fallout: Montreal:

I mean for me personally it was NEVER about scarcity. Scarcity aint fun.

Yeah, I think it's important to realize that the post-apocalyptic genre means different things to different people. For some it's about the adventure - the wild west-ish atmosphere fighting bandits in the desert. For some it's about scarcity - making do without modern-day conveniences. For some it's about rebuilding society from the ashes and bringing order to the chaos. And for some it's just a backdrop for the everyday soap opera drama.

I don't know that you can really limit people to just one view of the world. And I'm not sure you should even try. Though to @Thenomain's point - if you establish that the vault has limited supplies and that's an important part of the game, people should respect that and not constantly fight you trying to discover hidden mother lodes of gear.

@groth said in Autism and The MU* Community:

Who says you can't? I hate finding new clothes to wear so whenever I have to buy new clothes, I just buy lots of them in different colors and just switch color throughout the week.

:raises hand: Same. All my clothes are strikingly similar. Just different colors, slight variations.

I'm also a "loose clothes" person. Just thinking about wearing leggings or a turtleneck makes me squirm. Or anything scratchy. I always had to wear a t-shirt underneath my polyester uniform shirts for sports or medic shifts. Even in the summer in the south playing softball.

Random aside - I have a real obsession with numbers and patterns. Logic puzzles, die roll statistics, that kind of thing.

@ganymede said in Charging for MU* Code?:

@faraday said in Charging for MU* Code?:
Still, it's up to the professional to figure out what he or she will or will not do, so I'm not going to second guess Theno-pricing. He's a big boy; he can charge whatever the market will bear.

Oh I agree. My direct advice to Theno was to charge whatever his time was worth. I was just supporting Tinuviel’s quite-warranted advice to be cautious about “scope creep” and the potentially thorny implications once you start taking money for something.

“Hey Fara, can you do X for me? I need it to do A, B and C.”

“Sure np that’ll be $50.”

After the first draft...

“Oh. Well. That’s not really how I wanted it to work.”

“But that’s what you asked for. “

“But it’s not correct.”

“Well this other thing you actually wanted is 5x as complicated so that’s going to cost you more.”

“Wtf man you said $50.”

This is how 90% of software projects go and anyone going into it for money needs to accept and be prepared to deal with exactly that.

@Misadventure @magee101 AresMUSH is a server, like PennMUSH/TinyMUX/Rhost/Evennia. It doesn't care about skill system.

Ares comes with my FS3 skills and combat system installed by default, but that is just a plugin, easily disabled.

Alternate plugins are already available for Fate, Cortex, FFG Genesys/Star Wars, and a simple comic-like traits system. These can be easily installed.

The effort to implement another RPG system is largely dependent upon the complexity of said system (which is true in pretty much any codebase). Fate was pretty easy to code. FFG was a pain. With systems like WoD and D20, it's not the die roller that's the kicker, it's all the rules about the feats/powers/spells/etc. A wide array of Ares coding tutorials and support is available of anyone wishing to implement such a thing.

@derp said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

But at best, one out of five people actually manage to maintain weight loss for more than a year, and fewer than that for more than five. Many others never manage the weight loss in the first place.

I don't disagree that there are harmful stereotypes, both in everyday society and in particular in the medical community. That's most assuredly a problem and anyone who struggles with it has my sympathy.

But I don't really understand what alternative you propose. Only 1 in 10 people who try to quit smoking actually succeed. Relapse stats on heroin addiction are equally dismal. Yet we don't just throw up our hands and pretend like either of those behaviors is good for you just because they're very hard to beat.

It's true that there is no equivalence between weight and health, but there are correlations between obesity and all kinds of other health problems. Some overweight people may be healthy; the majority are not.

I think there's a middle ground of compassion and assistance that's somewhere between the extremes of 1) stigma/shaming and 2) asking doctors to ignore a very real public health problem.

@lithium said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

There's a lot of things that make a successful game, but I don't personally believe that being 'niche' is one of them on general principle.

I agree. I was making the opposite point - that being niche is an additional challenge to a game's success. Not that it makes it impossible, just harder. Because as @Arkandel pointed out in another thread...

@arkandel said in Activity and Aid:

What it comes down to is... if I see a post like this then I might log on tonight (for example). If it happens to be when you're busy IRL taking care of perfectly important stuff, things no one can possibly blame you for prioritizing, it could still mean there are no plots being ran or things happening, and I'd just spend a few minutes bored before logging out. Well, you lost me. It's not your fault, it's not mine either... it just happened.

Lots of MUSHers are like this. A lack of RP when you want it is a major turn-off, and most people won't give a game many chances before they just bail completely. Wider appeal gives you the chance for more players. Then it's up to you to keep them, which gets into the other factors you mentioned.

Theoretically, a niche game could generate more enthusiasm, even though the audience was limited. In my experience, that's still not enough to overcome the lack of people.

If you or someone you know plays MUSHes with a screen reader or other accessibility device, I would love to get feedback about how to make AresMUSH more accessible to everyone. Feel free to PM me or post here or on the Ares forums.

If you haven't played Ares, you can log onto the test server (formerly BSGU, now a sandbox) or check out Chontio, @skew's new Star Wars game running on Ares.

@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I'm quite pro-vaccine but I have to agree with this Oxford scientist's opinion that we can't vaccinate the planet every six months.

I would agree that's not sustainable, but there's also absolutely zero reason to believe it's necessary.

Historically and biologically, all pandemics end eventually. The 1918 pandemic? That virus never went away. We (as a species) just got used to it and now it's part of the seasonal flu. The same will happen to covid-19 as well in time. Early indications are that Omicron is probably moving us in that direction.

The only question is how many people have to die along the way. That is what the vaccines are for--preventing serious outcomes, not for eradicating the disease. And they're working very well. Most likely we'll fall into a pattern of annual boosters for awhile, which is really what the flu shot is.

@surreality said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

That high social score should inform female seductress 'this isn't going to work due to improper equipment, I need the right tool for this job to get what I want' just like high firearms is going to inform ace sniper that a twig and the word 'bang' isn't going to blow a hole in someone; they also need the right tool for that job.

I don't agree with that analogy. High firearms people can see the target and pick the appropriate weapon for the job. A squirrel (that you want to eat afterwards), a human wearing kevlar 100m distant and a tank all require different weapons. This is obvious at a glance.

A female seductress can't read @ixokai's character's mind to know that he's gay, or read my character's mind to know that she was traumatized by something in her childhood that makes her particularly receptive or resistant to a particular sort of manipulation.

Also - we accept that a high degree of randomness in physical combat. "Yes, you shot him, but you hit him in the leg and only grazed him." That same degree of randomness is nonsensical in social conflict because people (generally) do not behave in a completely random manner. They behave in ways that are informed by their personality, their experiences and their values - none of which is reflected meaningfully on a character sheet.

So I agree with @ixokai - people are way more complex than physics.

I favor an approach similar to what @Sparks mentioned awhile back: Social skills are a form of performance art. You roll for the performance. How someone reacts to that performance is based on a host of other factors out of your control. Just as two people can react to the same painting in completely different ways, two people can react to the same social roll in completely different ways.

Take the example of the lady getting caught robbing a place and trying to convince the cop to let her go with a sob story about her kids at home. She rolls well. That means her act was convincing.

• Officer McOrderly might believe her but still say: "Well you should've thought of them before you decided to break the law. I'll make sure CPS goes and takes care of them."
• Officer McBleedingHeart or Officer McRaisedByASingleMom might be swayed into giving her a pass outright.
• Officer McReformedDelinquent might take pity on her and make her a reformation project.

All of these are viable reactions to the situation that still respect the roll and the XP the social character spent on the dice. In fact, the only invalid reaction IMHO would be something like: "Save your fake tears for the judge, lady!"

@Sparks That's the same general advice I give folks considering Ares vs. Evennia. If you like the way Ares does things and just want to tweak/extend it, it's a good choice. If you hate what comes out of the box and want to do something very different - use Evennia. Evennia is a perfectly good codebase; it just has different ambitions: MU*-building toolkit vs. MUSH-in-a-box.

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

Haven't we as a society moved towards encouraging people to use their days? Where does this policy sit in relationship to that movement?

Given that hospital staff are being told to come to work even when covid-positive, and people in other fields are being given ultimatums like "you get 5 days of quarantine, better be back in the office on day 6 or you're fired", I think we're so far past that movement you can't even see it from here.

I really don't get it. Hospitals everywhere are swamped. My kid had HALF their teachers out sick last week. More than 2000 --- TWO THOUSAND -- people are dying each day from covid. And yet half the dang country wants to pretend like the pandemic is over. It utterly baffles me.

@apos said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

I think it just helps to take any personal strength as also a potential vulnerability, and make that implicit into the characters as a tradeoff.

I agree completely. The 'Death Wish' RP hook might make you immune to being intimidated by physical violence (hello, Martin Riggs) but make you more vulnerable to being manipulated into doing something by being told how dangerous it is. It works both ways.

(Not directed at Apos...)
All these "you're not playing by the rules" comments... come on. All skill systems allow for situational modifiers. And all skill systems make allowances that some things just aren't possible no matter how well you roll. You can't jump the Grand Canyon no matter your athletics, and you can't resuscitate someone who's been dead for an hour no matter how well you roll your Medicine.

All we're fundamentally disagreeing about is whether "convince Bernie Sanders to give up Medicare for All" should be a -3, -30, or just not possible no matter what you roll. Any social conflict system needs to give better guidance than just "roll manipulation vs wits" for what should/shouldn't be possible in social combat and what appropriate modifiers should be.

@Jaded said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

I had more fun on that character than on my other Reach characters precisely because people could not be 100% certain whom or what they were dealing with. I think in this case the whole keeping up with wikis and adding PBs was more harmful to creating RP than facilitating it.

That's totally legit, and I'm not trying to downplay your fun in that instance. Everybody's playstyle is different.

But just to offer the counter-example... on BSG:U I had a character whose backstory included being from a moon with an ongoing insurrection, and being a part of this dramatic siege/evacuation incident earlier in the war. While I'm sure I could have milked some drama doling this out as a surprise, I had at least a half-dozen deep character relationships sparked because other players had read that info in my character wiki and hooked into it somehow. Both in terms of "Oh we should have these guys butt heads - it'll be awesome" and in terms of "Let's make up a shared backstory since we were both part of The Incident/both from Insurrection Moon." That was awesome, and couldn't have happened on a closed-OOC-info game.

@Sparks said in Forum Factions:

I'm not sure if I should be proud to be in such company, or take this as a message that we're all doing this forum wrong.

LOL. You and me both. Either way, that made my day @Meg. Smiling happy construction workers unite.