Best posts made by faraday

IMHO - nothing.

I've been a professional programmer for over 20 years, and it's no harder than any other language I've ever seen, and easier than most.

I actually started Ares in Python and had a hard time getting it off the ground. Python is way more finnicky about little things like indentation that can throw off folks who aren't used to programming. It also didn't support the dynamic loading properties that I needed for Ares. It's a fine language overall - I've got nothing against it. It just wasn't the right tool for the job.

The only genuine criticism I've seen about Ruby is that it has many ways of doing the same thing, whereas other languages (including Python) are more opinionated and force you to do things a certain way. I mean... I guess I can see where that might throw some people off? But personally I find that as a selling point, not a down side.

@Ghost said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Just in case anyone is yet to vote and is looking for input...

Is it too late to change a vote?

@derp said in The Work Thread:

The teachers in question probably aren't acting with malice, sure. But that doesn't mean that harm isn't being done, either.

Right. @Too-Old-For-This's kid is suffering as a direct result of the decisions made by that school administration. So is my kid, though different situation / different decisions.

I have immense respect and sympathy for teachers having to operate under these conditions. They were overworked and underappreciated even before all this. It must be a nightmare now. I know that the vast majority of teachers are kind, caring, and well-meaning individuals just doing their best under extreme situations.

But sometimes even the best-intentioned efforts fall short, especially for kids who learn differently, and that can cause real actual harm. I don't think it's "unkind" to call that out as a problem.

@reason said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands.

Yes, that aptly describes the historical significance of the different prefixes. However, my experience tells me that the average player doesn't actually care whether something is implemented as a global, local, or character-specific command, and find the prefixes confusing and non-intuitive.

So while everyone is certainly entitled to their personal preferences on the matter, the feedback I've received is overwhelmingly in favor of removing the prefixes - to the point where players complain when they have to go back to other codebases that still use them. So from a usability perspective, I respectfully disagree that they it is advantageous to include it as a game-specific option.

Side note - Ares also doesn't have the necessity of differentiating between the built-in @desc and the game's custom +desc. There's just one "desc" global, which you can override with custom code if you need to.

Like you said, though, there are other platforms that do this if it's really important to your game vision.

I've been beta-testing some third edition changes to FS3 on a small sandbox game. The feedback so far has been good, but I wanted to open it up to a wider audience.

Here's a summary of what's new in FS3 3rd Edition.

• Ratings go from 1-5 instead of 1-12.
• Attributes have been replaced by Aptitudes, which give you bonuses when rolling related skills.
• Background Skills have been split into Expertise (for things you're good at) and Interests (for things you dabble in). Both are unrated, like Languages.
• Advantages are new, to reflect special things the game wants you to spend points on, like powers or, well, advantages.
• Quirks are gone, replaced by RP Hooks and Goals.
• The dice have also undergone an overhaul, but it’s still fundamentally a roll-and-count-successes system.

Read more here.

I'm mostly interested in feedback on the changes that were added in 3rd edition, or things that maybe you wish had been added but weren't.

For those who don't know, the "S3" stands for "Simple Skill System". It's designed to get you into RP with minimal hassle in Chargen and very minimal review time required from the app staff. So if you're looking for a complex system that accounts fur subtle variations among characters, this is not it!

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

I still wouldn't go back remote.

That's the thing, though. "Shut everything back down and go remote" and "pretend the pandemic is over while 2k people are dying each day" are not the only two options that exist. Yet our polarized society acts as though they are. It drives me freaking insane.

Not saying you were doing that specifically, it's just a general rant.

@cobalt That gets to what I was saying about how to learn the entire package, not just the language. Getting an attribute out of a room has very little to do with ruby itself, because the core language knows nothing about MUSH rooms or Database attributes. You'd have a similar challenge with coding in any modern full-stack application, regardless of language.

For the record, it's usually just enactor.room.some_attr or Room.named("Bob's Cantina").some_attr. You do also have to define attributes ahead of time - you can't just wing it with set(). So yeah, there are some moving parts and there's a learning curve.

Ares has an extensive set of tutorials starting from 'hello world' and building up to adding a new field to the web portal. And of course you can always ask on the forums or discord. or page me on the test game or PM me here or send a carrier pigeon... I mean really, there's a lot of avenues for helping people to figure things out.

I strongly dislike places code. If you're going to do places, you might as well just be in separate MUSH rooms. Less obtrusive. But I haven't seen a lot of trouble with people making and managing their own sub-groups naturally, even when they're in the same room.

But yes, in general I agree with the rest of it and would add:

Skip the fluff. Summarize boring parts in a "moving right along..." type pose. Weddings are a prime example of this (OMG how I hate wedding scenes). One round of poses can summarize most - if not all - of the ceremony.

Start poses with your name instead of an emit. It makes it a lot easier to see who's doing what and keep track of the smaller sub-groups. Setting up a client-side highlighter for your character name can also help you avoid missing people talking to you.

Keep it moving. If you're the organizer and someone's holding things up, take charge. Pose around them. Don't let things stall or you'll have a lot of bored and frustrated players on your hands.

@ganymede said in The Work Thread:

It is far more equitable to make employees salaried without accrued leave. We live in at an age where going to the workplace is getting obsolete. You can use technology to simulate a workplace meeting room, for example. And production is a matter of results, rather than process, in a virtual economy.

Or we could just, y'know, acknowledge that human beings get sick and NEITHER penalize them (expecting them to either take a financial hit or somehow magically achieve their same performance expectations while ill) NOR incentivize them to come in and infect everyone else. Just tell them to STAY HOME, rest, and get well. Yes it's annoying for the employer who has to find someone to fill in or redistribute the work, but I think that should just be considered part of doing business.

There are workplaces that do this. Heck, there are entire countries that do this. It's not a revolutionary concept.

@nessa Ares already has code that gives things out (luck points, achievements) when scenes are completed. They're currently based on scene participation, not sharing, but you could change that with custom code. It would take some effort, but nothing compared to all the other work that would be entailed in making a SR game.

@ThatGuyThere said:

Trust me I have written background for modern games where the player was from a major city with extensive public transportation just so I did not have to buy drive one.

Heh. It's a rare game that truly needs "Drive" as an action skill. Unless you're routinely doing James Bond style car chases or whatnot. Swimming is another one I see sometimes. Forcing people to buy points in pointless "action" skills they don't need or want just dilutes the focus from the important ones and exacerbates the difficulty of balancing the number of points available to folks.

@silverfox said in RL Anger:

Deliberate exclusion IS bullying by every accepted school definition.

Only to a point. As an example defnition: "Social Exclusion is now recognized as a sub group of bullying. This means that idea of excluding someone repeatedly, aggressively and on purpose with the intent to cause emotional harm to them, is right up there with verbal, physical and cyber bullying." (source)

That seems miles away from "if you let one kid join an activity you must let any kid join".

Certainly "you can't play with us because you're (insert protected class here - gender, religion, skin color, etc.)" is problematic. But that's very different from "you can't play with us because last time you kept stealing the ball". Context matters.

@misadventure said in New Project: Cyberpunk:Chrome Is The New Black:

A way ways back a game did this by season and I didn't hear any complaints.

It's certainly been done, but FWIW I've complained (and heard others complain) about games with fluid timelines.

For those of us who maintain an internal continuity for our characters, it's maddening. It's like playing Sudoku for each scene trying to figure out where it can fit into everyone's individual timelines for the week. Or if you don't, you can end up with continuity glitches where people are referencing events that technically shouldn't have happened yet, or ending up in contradictory places at the same time.

I've found it far easier to have a consistent default of "This scene takes place on 1/6 unless otherwise specified" and deal with the occasional scheduling snafus and backscenes as they happen.

@Lisse24 said:

I would rather this rule be called, "Look for and respond to hooks," because right now, the phrase "be proactive" is my pet peeve. It seems like I've recently seen a spade of people criticizing players who are reactive. Players are told to "make their own fun" and then criticized when a game seems to be overwhelmed with bar rp.

Yeah, I think there's some mis-matched terminology going on here. When I see "RP Hooks" and "proactive" I usually see it in the context of plot hooks.

What I think @Halicron is talking about is more like conversational/action cues in a given RP scene, like:

(A) Jane walks through the park, her nose buried in a book.
(B) Jane walks through the park, her nose buried in a book. She appears to be on a collision course with (a tree / a street busker / your character / whatever ).

With (B) there's a cue/hook that the other player can react to easily. Of course you don't have to grab the bait on every hook. Maybe you just sit back and get some popcorn to watch Jane crash into the tree and then tease her about it. But in general RP works better when it's more of a give and take.

As far as plot hooks - I agree, "proactive" is vague. It can mean anything from "follow the hooks if you want to be involved" to literally "if you want a plot, run it yourself." It's important to provide further clarification to set expectations.

I haven't criticized players if a game devolves into just bar RP. But I have criticized them for complaining that there's nothing but bar RP when they're not showing up to events, responding to plot breadcrumbs, or making any attempt to run their own plots. That's just obnoxious.

I'm just disappointed that it wasn't in the news about mushing. Because I would have loved to see a journalist try to describe this hobby, lol.

@Thenomain @Coin OK, I get it. I think we just have different terminology, possibly because of different MU sub-cultures or something. Dunno. To me, a player-run plot is just that - a plot (i.e. something more than bar/social RP) done by a non-staff player. The degree to which PrPs are managed/restricted/scheduled varies wildly from game to game, though. And I agree - it's really annoying when you have to file forms in triplicate and schedule things 2 weeks out just to fight some Cylons. Spontaneous shenanigans are fun. If you don't want the potential for interruption, grab a TP room.

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

I love the dismissiveness inherent in "a white guy from the 1930's".

I'm not really clear on how that is dismissive. It was not meant to be - I believe it is an accurate descriptor of Tolkein. I am not saying that makes him a bad guy, but he is a product of the day and age he grew up in. Just as we all are. I have biases of my own having grown up a white girl in the 1980's, as previously acknowledged.

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

But anyway, not getting into this tedious discussion again. I am not changing my mind, which is don't screw with the canon for any reason.

Great. I am not changing my mind either, which is that the impact on real people is more important than canon. So I guess there is no need for further debate.

@Lithium said in Finding roleplay:

One of the things I have considered is just dropping plots on IC gatherings. Like, if I (or other staff) see a group RP'ing in public then boom, I drop a 1 shot on them and depending on what happens it could lead to more plot.

I do that, but these days I ask first. Some people appreciate having something more interesting than Bar RP to do; others get irritated if you disrupt what they're already in the middle of.

@Arkandel said in MUers in the news?:

If that is not an ongoing thing then neither should be skin pigmentation.

Granted my knowledge of genetics ends at about the high school biology level, but as I understand it - the things that make up our physical appearance are not as simple as folks think. Recessive genes can be carried through many generations, and it's often multiple genes at play (124 for hair color, 16 for skin color, 150 for skin pigmentation according to a quick google). There have been documented cases of "throwback" genetics where you have things like a white baby born to black parents, or a black baby born to white parents.

All of that is rare, sure, but so? Lots of MUSH characters are rare in some way or another. Throw in adoptions, IVF, surrogates, fantasy lands where you can literally change the rules of genetics or involve magic in the equation... it's really not that hard to explain away families with differing skin tones.

Is this really something we need to expend our energy caring about or policing?

+jobs are like tech support. Some places have great customer service, and you get a sensible answer right away. With other places you sit on hold for 6 hours and send 17 emails and still don't have your dang problem fixed. +jobs are just a tool, and ignored jobs are just a symptom of lazy/uncaring staffers.