Best posts made by faraday

@Darinelle said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

Ribald jokes are the least of your worries. I can brush off a ridiculous joke or a smarmy attitude (that doesn't involve touching, don't fucking touch me at work). But being ignored and talked over in meetings and having to wait for a man to repeat my ideas will destroy my enjoyment of what should be a good job, and honestly it's doing a disservice to the team because you've now hired someone and then forced her to underperform because you won't let her. Don't do that thing.

I just wanted to echo this. Occasionally the jokes or topics go overboard ("Guys, can we not talk about picking up hookers in Vegas while out at lunch with our new summer intern?" -- true story), but the general dismissal is the most pervasive day-to-day problem I've seen in tech.

TGG has a grid system tied into its coded combat. It did things like:

 ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  
 ~   @   +   +   +   +   +   +   +  
 ~   @   =   =  >=<  _   #   #   #  
 ~   #   _   _   _   _   #   #   #  
 ~   @   #   _   _   _   #   #   #  
 ~   ~   #   _   #   _   #   #   #  
 @   ~   @   #   #   #   #   #   # 

Your coordinates are : 6 12

<<Ground Combat>> You hear the sound of Machine Guns from Beach (7 12)!

<<Ground Combat>> Woods fires his Reising SMG at Yoshi but misses!

<<Ground Combat>> Jenkins fires his Garand at Aoi and hits!

Aoi suffers 8 wound damage to his right leg.    

When in combat, you couldn't just move freely through rooms, your movement was tied to combat actions and done in a grid fashion move 12, 1 or something like that. There was no magic, it being WWI/WWII, but there were plenty of advanced mechanics for range, artillery, planes, flares, covering fire, melee, trenches, obstacles, and more.

So yes, it can be done. It's clunky, but it works. A web UI might help some, but the system would need to still be capable of interfacing with players on a traditional MU client. That limits how fancy you can get.

Also, building a real-time interface between web and game for FS3 combat was a ton of work, and D&D combat is orders of magnitude more complex. I have to question the value of the endeavor versus just using something more geared to it like Roll20.

@Ghost - Yeah I think we’re more in sync than not.

I think it helps to break conflict into two categories.

There's Minor stuff, like -- Do you believe the employee who’s telling you he needs off Sunday because his grandmother died? Do you pay a little more than you wanted because the salesman sold you some ‘extras’ that you don’t really need? Do you bend the rules to let in that cute girl who “just forgot her purse and will only be a second”? Do you open the email that looks like it’s from your mom sending you a video of your niece’s birthday party (which is actually a virus)?

Unless you have some really darn good reason, trying to pull “my character would never fall for that” is just being a poor sport.

But then there's also Major stuff - like the Leia/Pope examples. The fact that Leia wouldn’t give up the rebels - even with a gun to the figurative head of her entire planet - is a core facet of her character. Indiana Jones would never give up on a quest. John McClane would never cower in the attic waiting for help to arrive.

For our MUSH characters, these are the answers to those character study questions like “Would he ever cheat on his spouse?” “Would she sooner die than betray her cause?” “Would he kill to protect his family?” These are things that define who the character is, not things that you figure out by throwing a few dice.

But I think in part that comes down to how you view MUSHes on the simulation--> narration spectrum. Obviously I favor a more narrative approach with some simulation for spice and fairness.

@arkandel said in Armageddon MUD:

By nature newcomers to games don't know much about what's going on, but unless you only roll newcomer characters as well then the latter's IC experience will be greater than their players. For instance if I rolled a peasant on Arx, knowing nothing about Arx OOC, my character will still know way more than I do about the world. You can't escape that fact, even though a well documented friendly web site for your MU* can certainly help.

Yes, exactly. The Armageddon spokespeople seem to be making a false equivalence between "I want accommodations given for the things my character would logically know, given the sum total of their experience living their life in this world" and "I want to be super-awesome at everything without having earned it". These sentiments are light-years apart. One is just rational, like an actor wanting to know their character's backstory. The other is just a silly strawman.

@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Given the economy right now, telling a child that they are lucky for having a stable home and amenities is not far from the truth.

Presentation matters.

I tell my kids often how fortunate we are compared to some families, as a way of teaching gratitude. Not gratitude to me specifically, but just gratitude for our blessings.

I think that's very different from guilt tripping your kids into thinking they owe you something for raising them.

@Mr-Johnson said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:

I've been perfectly fine using it in the past but the bandwith that Ares requires is insane

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, it does require more resources than Penn/Rhost/Tiny (when used in conjunction with an external wiki like wikidot). Even so, all but the biggest Ares games run perfectly fine on the "Tiny" size VMs, such as the $5/month Digital Ocean plan. These are the same resource requirements and pricing you'd need for a small, self-hosted blog (ETA: Or running MediaWiki locally). By modern web standards, that's hardly "insane". Cost-wise it's actually on par with most MU hosting plans, like GenesisMUDs.

Not trying to convince you to do one thing or the other. $5/month is still not free, and if you're trying to live off a fixed income you've got to make every dollar count. Ares isn't right for everyone, and you should do what works for you. I just don't want folks coming away from the conversation thinking that the resource requirements of Ares are insanely expensive or anything.

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

Those resistance stats are what should be determining how much of a badass this person is in their backstory. Not the other way around.

That's where we inherently and fundamentally disagree.

And that's okay.

I feel that a simple stat like "Willpower" is a woefully inefficient way of modeling something like: "Space Cowboy has a death wish, but is super afraid of losing people close to him, has a soft spot for puppies, and a weakness for gambling and redheads." Even merits/flaws don't come close to reflecting that sort of nuance.

Everyone keeps talking about Consent/Non-Consent like it's a boolean, but in reality it's a spectrum.

There are plenty of games that are "Consent, but... staff can overrule you if you do something insane." or "Non-Consent, but... you won't die without consent unless you do something insane."

All that some of us are talking about here is "Non-Consent, but... players have agency in their character's feelings and decisions." That doesn't mean they have unlimited agency. If a building falls on them or they get shot on the battlefield, that's something outside of the character's control. But whether they buy a car - that's a decision the character is making.

These are just different play-styles. Neither is right or wrong - they're just different.

The arguments (not you personally Derp - I mean in general) that people who like to play a different way are inferior, wrong or cheating are ridiculous, insulting, and frankly really annoying.

@sunnyj said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@Demiurge Do your thing, or don't, dude. Defending yourself here won't help zilch.

This.

But also..

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Please don't transmit anything obnoxious, because if it gets bad enough, banning you might become necessary. While we are in favor of a laissez faire culture, there are limits. Try not to push them too far.

That is really not conveying the same stance you're putting forth in this thread. In virtually every other MU game out there, pushing unwanted romantic fantasies or bigoted attitudes ICly - the types of things you've expressly said you're OK with - would in fact be considered "obnoxious". So players are going to expect you to deal with that unless you clearly state otherwise up front.

A lot of folks don't want to come onto a game and be assailed with hatred and harassment - even ICly. If you want an unfiltered environment, that's your prerogative. But what you've posted vs. what you're saying you'd tolerate is virtually guaranteed to result in dramatic meltdowns.

Create the type of environment you want to see. We're all just trying to help you stave off drama based on A TON of experience with this sort of issue.

@ortallus Everyone’s different. We have a running poll at work and it ranges from “my arm was sore” to “I felt like I had the flu and didn’t want to get out of bed for a day.” Of course it’s all still better than getting covid itself.

I’d get some pizza just to cover all the bases.

@Roz Seeing as how the exact same issues would affect any web portal scene system designed for evennia, it seems on topic to me?

@auspice said in Make it fun for Me!:

We play games that are, by their very base concept and nature, cooperative. Yes, you should be enjoying yourself, but you come here to enjoy yourself with other people. Not at the expense of other people.

That's where the line is for me too. Of course everyone wants to have fun - I mean, that's why we play games, right? The issues arise when someone selfishly insists that their fun is the only fun that matters.

It's no different, fundamentally, from playground rules. Don't hog the ball. Take turns playing what everyone likes so they'll take a turn playing what you like. Don't go into crazy-competitive-cutthroat mode if everyone else just wants to play casually. Stuff like that. It's really not hard, it just requires being considerate of other people.

Nice job. And thanks for the shout-out.

@wretched And then people don't understand why you don't know off the top of your head how old you are.

@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

@Derp said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

How? FS3 doesn't handle magic at all.

How not? I need to hammer out the details but as far as I can tell, rolling attribute Personal Magicalness + action skill Spellcasting tells you if it worked, and a bunch of different other skills tell if it's within your power, without them you fail without a roll.

FS3 has nothing built in for magic at all. This is mostly a problem if you want to use the combat system, because then you have to handle magic manually and lose a lot of the benefits of the automated combat resolutions.

Now if you aren't planning to use the combat system, or if you can fit your magic system into what's already built in (e.g., magic is a skill like any other and spells work just like weapons), or you want to extend it with custom code (e.g. what Spirit Lake has done) then it may work. It just comes down to what you need.

@three-eyed-crow said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

I feel like that's gone out of fashion as the hobby's become older and more insular but, through the foggy mists of time, I remember it being quite helpful.

Yeah, my suggestion was hardly an original idea. Twenty years ago it wasn't uncommon for folks to just wander in from MUDs or from BBS RP or whatnot, so I think we as a community were better at bringing those people on board.

The technical issues we can solve. The cultural ones are harder.

@skew said in Welcome to Chontio! A Star Wars MUSH:

Also, AresMUSH has a very handy feature that parses your entire wiki (including character pages and logs) into HTML (thank you @faraday , you're awesome), which I've used.

If you want to dropbox/box.net/whatever that to me, I can add it to the AresCentral Archive.

I offer this for all closed Ares games.

People around me: "So how do you explain then why the kids are able to do the things they like to do but don't have the discipline to do the things that are hard/distasteful for them."

ADHD. Brain chemistry.

It's like asking why a kid with dyslexia is having trouble reading. Grr.

I love time travel stories, but how would you plan to manage the ripples and parallel universes from PC shenanigans on any scale? Everyone off in time doing their own things? Seems like it would rapidly devolve into an 'infinite worlds' type of setting where there are no real stakes because anything goes. (Which is not necessarily bad if that's the goal - but it's more comic book feel than scifi.)

@Derp said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

Always have an actual plan when it comes to RP, and don't make others pick the venue/purpose. Offer concrete examples. Be flexible to negotiation. You'll find that this isn't nearly as hard as it seems.

One thing I haven't seen much of, but wonder how it would fly, is something like... "Anybody want to RP? If you're interested I'll pitch something specific to our chars and we can figure something out." That at least shows that you're willing to meet them halfway on doing the pitch work, but allows you to do something more targeted than "random scene in random public place."

@arkandel said in Dare I ask...:

The second is the very purpose of having justification requirements in the first place isn't consistent in general. If it's to promote IC plausibility then no character on the grid should ever raise their Medicine over 3 unless they start high; that stuff takes years!

Exactly. On my BSG game I wouldn't just let someone randomly raise Medicine to doctor levels or pick up Demolitions or become a Viper Pilot on a whim because there's no path there for IC progression. I don't care how much XP they have; it doesn't make any sense.(*)

The rules were clear and consistent. If you just don't like it that's cool - everyone has their preferences. We all have different levels at which our suspension of disbelief becomes tweaked. But I don't see how you can say that such policies are universally unfair or inconsistent.

(*) ETA: Unless of course you do a plotline where your character applies for a transfer, GETS the Viper training or whatever, and then it might.