Best posts made by faraday

@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

It's not coming up with the concept that's the blocker. Most people can cook up a "my dog was kidnapped by a goblin, get her back!" questline, WoW-style.

Indeed, I've tried this on several games where there were plot banks of ready-to-go plot ideas. I can count on one hand the number of people who took one and ran with it. (And I'm very grateful to those people, they're just in the minority.)

There are also umpteen random plot generators you can find in 60 seconds of googling. Ideas are not the limiting factor.

@Lotherio said in Finding roleplay:

Once managed/restricted/scheduled its no longer player run, if it needs approval its out of the hands of the players.

We will have to agree to disagree on that point. I understand your position, but if a player came up with the idea and a player is scheduling it and a player is running it, then in my book it's a player-run plot.

Tangential note: I understand why sometimes staff wants to require approvals on PrPs - I used to be that way myself. Trust is hard when you're worried about players doing crazy things. But in time I've realized that strict PrP policies will discourage even the most enthusiastic players from running anything. Or they'll just ignore them and run it anyway. These days my policy is just "run what you want, just don't wreck the theme."

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

What constitutes sensitive/private IC information on a MUSH other than TS?

The same sorts of secrets you might want to keep to yourself in RL. Confessing a crush on someone, plotting revenge, committing a crime, revealing you're a Vampire or a member of a secret organization, planning a surprise party, or - yes - TS. I've heard the phrase "OOC Masquerade" as @Lotherio mentioned, but the idea is pretty common even on games that don't have heavy PvP aspects.

I had my character react a certain way to something they found off-putting, for very IC reasons (though I found it great) — and received an OOC apology for the off-putting behaviour, with a clarification that it wasn't intended to be off-putting. Is this normal?

It's quite common. There are those out there who will assume "if you're playing a jerk, you must be a jerk", or "if you're being a jerk to me, you must not like me". I wouldn't say they're the majority, but they're common enough that folks will often make the sort of clarification you're alluding to - just in case.

So I ask, 'How widespread is kilt-wearing in Scotland? Will I be looked at funny there if I don't wear a kilt?'

Except I think it's more like "How widespread is kilt-wearing in Europe?" To which the answer is: "You'll probably be okay in Scotland, not be too out of place in the rest of the UK, and get really strange looks in Germany..."

MUSHes are astonishingly diverse. For instance, a lot of the players on this board mostly play WoD games. I've never played one, and routinely feel "Is that really a thing?!?" type culture shock when participating in discussions here. And I've been MUSHing for 20 years.

@surreality said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

The code of MUX focuses strongly on the Socializer player type.

Yeah, with a bare-bones grid and a lack of immersive code and PK-ing, In many cases it's an almost exclusive focus.

I agree with @Arkandel though. Success is in the eye of the beholder.

My most successful game was Battlestar Pacifica, which even at its peak never had more than 20 players logged in. I count it as a success because people still talk about it (mostly) fondly 10 years later. Hey... actually it was almost exactly 10 years later. Heh. Didn't realize that May was the 10-year anniversary. ANYWAY...

We told a good story. We established some paradigms that have been carried forward in several BSG games since. We built a community that (mostly) got along, and many of us still keep in touch now.

Those are not the same things that will define success for many other people.

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Wait, are you talking about the code? Oh, momentum mostly. Evennia is the closest thing to a Mush replacement we have these days, and even it has a development barrier too high to just pick it up and run with it.

That's basically the same problem I've had with Ares. Making something nifty and modern imposes a huge barrier to entry when you're dealing with folks who are already intimidated by runningmake install from a Linux shell. Modern code = many moving parts = difficult to manage. That's why DevOps is A Thing in the real software world.

I'm also not convinced that you'd be able to get a critical mass of players for a modern web-based MUSHing app. We talk about these hypothetical masses who might give MUSHing a try, but who's going to build games for them? Who's going to play with them? I talked about this a bit in my most recent Ares blog post:

In a community where people boycott games based on what channel commands they use and fight holy wars over which MUSH client is better, is it reasonable to expect that they’ll welcome a web-based MUSH platform that works very differently? Color me dubious.

Sure you can say "screw the dinosaurs" and build something completely new and different, like Storium. But then it's not really a MUSH any more. And you're potentially losing out on your most enthusiastic and experienced players. It's a big gamble.

@Ganymede said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

These sound like good reasons to implement a system that allows you to check over PCs before they hit the Grid.

Yes. While I agree with @Arkandel's general suggestion of reducing human intervention, I tried post-grid approvals on Martian Dreams and it was a mess. Never again. The hassle of dealing with retcon was far greater than the hassle of dealing with apps.

But there's a lot you can do to make apps painless. @Thenomain mentioned his chargen that does all the system checking for you. I did the same with FS3, and could turn around an app in 10 minutes most times. XP spends and plots can be done with audits rather than pre-approvals as long as you don't have a consistent problem with players doing crazy things.

When it comes to scale, I worry more about the people problem. More people = more drama = more things for staff to mediate. Plus the hand-holding that Arkandel mentioned.

@ghost has good points, but I think that you can have micro-level survival and macro-level survival.

Walking Dead (though I've never seen it) is a micro-level survival game. A tiny group where it's like "OMG we don't have a doctor."

Battlestar Galactica is a macro-level survival game. Something like Jericho could be one too. You have a whole fleet, or a whole town, or whatnot but it's been devastated in some way. Then it's the "we have a fistful of doctors but we're running low on morphine" or "I'm a surgeon but the generator's dead so we have no lifesupport" problem.

Both can be interesting. Just depends on what you're going for.

@bored said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

I think its evidence of people being selfish douches more often than not.

I think it's evidence of people viewing MUSHes as games rather than stories. Very few folks sit down to play a game thinking, "Yeah I think I'm gonna lose today. That sounds like fun." But in contrast, very few authors sit down to write a story thinking, "Oh yeah, my hero is just going to win, win win. ALL THE WINNING." I think MU*s are much more interesting when they're treated as stories and there's a blend of winning and losing, like @Seraphim73 said. But that takes a particular type of players, staff and environment to make work.

@SG said in Logging your activity:

Logging for PrPs to get your xp is cool, or if there's an issue of harassment and you need proof, but the obsessive need to ICly get everything exactly correct is annoying to me.

Like anything, it can be taken to extremes of stupidity. But your character actually experienced this event. I would argue that their ability to remember something that happened to them six months later is infinitely greater than the player's ability. Having logs to jog your memory is helpful.

@Sparks said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

I am rarely super-excited about the dice mechanics of a game, though I admit I love my time/advancement system I used elsewhere. There are systems I think 'oh, well, I already have that in my brain so I can use it easily', but I'm not going to go, "Oh, this game with this random setting is using GURPS, so I'm super stoked!"

I'm the same. There are systems that are a turn-off for me (D20 or Dahan's system for instance) but rarely are they a total deal-breaker, and never are they a big reason for excitement.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Having said that, do you sometimes reword statements to remain diplomatic and avoid getting stuck at the bottom of the dogpile?

Thank you. And sure I have to reword things. Or find myself typing up a post and just deleting it before posting. Nobody's perfect. But I do at least try to stay constructive, just in a general "do unto others" sort of way.

I don't mind a healthy debate, truly. But 'debate' to me implies that both sides have to be at least willing to respect the other side and consider the pros and cons of each argument, even if they ultimately disagree. That's often in short supply on the internet (not just here) and it just devolves into two sides with closed minds telling each other how wrong they are.

@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I think there are plenty of us (people who approach this hobby as a team-based creative hobby) who run into these emotional separation issues and think: "Fuck, I'm sorry, that sucks, but I'm...not a therapist? I wish I could help but I can't and I've got my own RL to put first, and I wish you the best, but please, please, PLEASE don't put the responsibility for that stuff on me.

@mietze said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

But asking me to be prepared to deal with other people's trauma, who I am not close to at all, and making it my as a scene runner responsibility to navigate it for them, when they are incapable or unwilling to communicate beyond very impersonal slotted in advance ways...honestly, that is a fucking trigger for ME...

Jumping back in for a moment to say ... These two statements articulate very well why I am so resistant to the suggestions by @surreality and others to put the onus on the plot/game runners. It's not that I don't care, it's that maybe I care too much. I feel f-ing horrible for what surreality and others have to go through. That sucks on an unbelievable level.

But I can't take responsibility for ensuring their mental health. That's a hot button for me personally. I know what it's like to be responsible for other peoples' health and well-being. I do not want that degree of responsibility in my pretendy-fun-times games. If playing a game with the potential for mature themes has the potential to put you into an emotional tailspin, then maybe those games just aren't good for you. If you want to take the risk, that's fine, you're an adult, but don't put it on me.

On a slightly different note, I liked @Thenomain's suggestion to have sort of a mission statement so I added a note to BSGU's Ratings policy:

The game, like the show, deals with heavy themes including genocide, war and various other traumas. Anything involving sexual abuse/exploitation/etc. of a minor is prohibited. (PC/NPC, IC/OOC, on-camera/off-camera - just don't go there.) Beyond that, if you are sensitive to a particular kind of content, it is your responsibility to communicate your boundaries to those you scene with. Resolving things off-camera is always an option if something makes you uncomfortable. If you are running scenes, be considerate of your fellow players and do your best not to blindside them with things that may be upsetting.

@The-Sands I'm an engineer and a computer programmer. I took stats and a crapton of math in college. I also worked with an actual RPG company as a freelancer. Don't mistake a lack of interest for a lack of ability. Game design is a balancing act. It's not all about the math.

ETA: I'm not offended or anything I just find it funny to hear a comment like: "Oh, if only someone with more math background worked on it..."

@ThatGuyThere said in Identifying Major Issues:

For example if @faraday and @rook both are running games with open PrP polices, I am a hell of a lot more likely to trust Faraday's and run a PrP mostly because of thier reputation with people I trust and my admittedly brief history on some games Fara has run/been involved in. No offense to @rook meant at all but I know nothing about him/her. So regardless of written policy on the game I would not have any trust in it so would not run a plot until that level of trust had been built.

Thanks. Though I think the hobby as a whole could do with a little more slant toward giving people the benefit of the doubt. We've all been burned before, but at some point it comes down to what kind of community you want to build and be a part of. I don't think I could have kept playing MU*s this long if I went around looking at each new game like the players and staff there were about to bash me in the face with a shovel at any moment -- even though I've certainly experienced my share of bashing.

@ghost said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

within those technologies is the answer to taking THIS hobby and moving it into the 21st century.

It depends on what you're looking for really. I'm not interested in "online tabletop" or heavily-tooled games that have integrated battle maps, graphics, etc.

I'm a writer. I want a collaborative writing system with some rules attached.

I know you've said you've been out of MUSHes for awhile so I dunno how much you've seen about the Ares web portal, but it already does things like "chat interfaces that recognize the difference between OOC chatter and IC action". I could add real-time "Faraday is typing..." indicators if I chose to (I just chose not to).

The limiting factor to the next step, in my mind, is the native clients. There's nothing stopping the hobby as a whole from moving toward a Discord/Slack-like client that is a lot more usable than raw text in, raw text out. But that would require a collaboration between the client developers and the server developers that does not yet exist.

@derp said in Don't Join Discord Servers!!!:

There's no whisking off to other sites and such, which would be a fairly obvious red flag

There kind of is, though, it's just subtle enough that it fools people.

Here's a good video explaining what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JL8O-9IkcQ

Basically you get invited to a server (normal, no problem), but upon joining a bot asks you to scan a QR code (which is just a link in another form) to verify yourself. The QR code/link then takes you to a confirmation prompt/page that says "do you trust this?" The hack happens when you click "yes I trust this" because it gives the bot access to your login credentials.

So there are actually two red flags here: One is the QR code (again, essentially a link) from an untrusted source, and two is the "do you trust this" warning prompt from discord itself.

Now I realize that often these things come from a hacked friend's account, so you might not see it as an untrusted source. That's the nefarious part of so many phishing schemes. I'm not faulting people for falling victim. I'm just saying, "don't join discord servers" is the wrong message. "Don't use Discord's QR scanning login" might be a better one, or "be wary of scammers trying to phish you by inviting you to servers". But let's be clear about what the actual problem is.

Incidentally this isn't new. The exploit has existed ever since Discord added the 'login with QR code' feature.

@devrex said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

I think it boils down to how that is balanced against other aspects of the RP and how considerate you are of other players.

I agree with this. If your wish is to be the a badass fighter jock, that's fine, but just be kind to the other players who also want to be a badass fighter jock. You don't have some kind of exclusivity to the idea.

Also since we're making it a separate thread, I should probably clarify my original flippant comment.

I think wish fulfillment imbues a lot of RPG players (both TT and MU) but by no means does that mean it's universal. People RP for all kinds of reasons - escapism, writing challenges, TS, engaging with their favorite fictional world. And even if there is some element of wish fulfillment in your RP, that doesn't mean it affects everything you do. The badass fighter jock player might have no problem with said fighter jock getting their butt kicked on the volleyball field.

@Misadventure said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Or are you saying that my feeling that my imagination is overwritten and I don't like it is something I do wrong and should change my experience?

It seems like just a clash of preferences?

For you, seeing a PB overwrites your imagination in a way you don't like.

For me, NOT seeing a PB leaves a void in my imagination in a way I don't like.

Nobody (that I saw?) is saying that either of our likes are intrinsically more valid than the other. It's just that allowing PBs or not is kind of a game-wide decision.

Allowing PBs for those who want them seems like a reasonable middle ground between requiring them for everybody (to cater to my preference) or denying them to everybody (to cater to yours).

@rnmissionrun said in AresMUSH Updates:

I had pretty much the same experience. After spending most of the day just getting it running, I poked at it a bit before my eyes glazed over, I said "Uhhhh yeah..." and went running back to Evennia. I'll take another look when it gets an official release.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but without feedback there's no way for me to improve it.

What took a whole day to get running? Were there errors during the installation? Were the configuration tutorials unclear?

Did you try the coding tutorials? Did they suck?

Not trying to be difficult here, but without knowing where the stumbling blocks were, the official release will look 100% like the current release.

@insomniac7809 said in General Video Game Thread:

I'm just of the apparently outdated opinion that the game should be finished, not "finished*". Like, if there's some bugs that slipped past QA and the magic of a series of tubes can fix it after launch, fine.

The thing is, no software project on the planet ever is "finished". There's always something else you can add, low-priority bugs that you ignore because the cost/benefit ratio isn't there, and things you just flat-out miss because your team is human and users will always find a way to do things you never imagined, especially at scale.

So at some point the company just has to draw a line in the sand and say "this is what we're going with".

Smart companies, however, will not draw that line while there are still massively impactful known bugs, as seems to be the case that happened with CP2077. That's just treating your customers like crap, and they're rightfully paying for it.

Tangent - I'm irritated now that I put down $20 for a pre-order deposit for a game that will not run on my console. I can't get a refund from CP because I never completed the purchase. I can't get a refund from GameStop without going into the store, which I can't do because covid. Grumble.