Best posts made by faraday

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

It does answer my specific question, tho, about the conditions that Not All Men is a problem, so I won't complain. Well, not about that. I appreciate the candor.

To be clear... I wasn't taking issue with anything in particular you said, but just trying to answer your question about why it can be a problem.

And in response to some of the other sundry comments from the gallery, I will just add...

If someone says "All X do Y" and the response is "No, not all X do Y, stop making sweeping generalizations" then I think that's a totally appropriate way to re-frame the conversation.

But if someone says "There's a prevalent problem with X's doing Y" and the first thought is "But not all X do Y" or "But I'm an X and I don't do Y" then it's just missing the point, and it can make the other person feel even more marginalized than they already do.

@Roz said in What's your nerd origin story?:

I WAS JUST BORN TO IT.

Mutants represent. For me it was my dad. He's a retired soldier/physicist and was a wargamer before I was even born. I painted my first mini when I was about 2, and he took me to see Star Wars several times in the theater. SW, Trek, Dr. Who - I was hooked.

I got into gaming by playing wargames with him and his friends. Dad eventually picked up on my penchant for assigning names and backstories to my figures and tracking their exploits, and bought my first RPG (Traveller 2300) for Christmas one year. He'd GM adventures for me, my brother, and my BFF.

Now my daughter is making her own video game in Scratch and my son is going through the campaign in Starcraft2.

So yeah... the geek is strong in our family.

@reason said in Games:

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

No. Ares commands have no prefix by design (because as @Derp pointed out, it's kinda silly to have multiple versions of the same command.) The parser just ignores it if you type + or @.

@reason said in Games:

It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay.

A is correct, B is not. Ares is a MUSH, and has a grid and client-based commands same as Penn/Tiny. It just ALSO has a web portal, temproom RP, and asynchronous RP support. Ares just gives people options. What seems to bother people the most is that players are using those options to play in different ways than they want to.

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

Why shouldn't someone be allowed to write a story set in an isolationist, monoethnic culture?

I don't recall anybody saying they shouldn't be allowed. In fact, I said:

@faraday said in MUers in the news?:

If you're making your own personal novel/story/etc. and want to do some kind of discrimination allegory - I can respect that.

So to reiterate - having a mono-ethnic culture is not intrinsically a bad thing. One just should ask why you're making it mono-ethnic, especially if that mono is all white. Is it really central to the story/world? Or is it just lazy storytelling (like sci-fi mono-climate planets) or implicit biases at work?

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

If you're using an existing setting, the roots are defined already. I dislike tearing them up.

Skin color is rarely an essential, defining quality of those roots.

For instance, my son (an avid LoTR fan) recently did an essay on diversity in LoTR. He acknowledged that Tolkein's original lore did define the kingdoms with certain skin colors (loosely based on real Earth geography, with the region of focus being European and predominately white). However, he argues that people of color like to watch these shows too and "they deserve to have fantasy heroes that look like them." He also noted the benefits for white people seeing people of color not always being the bad guys (as Tolkein originally defined them). It would make no difference to the story if the kingdom of Rohan were patterned more after the steppe peoples of Asia, for instance, or if some of the dwarves in the Hobbit movies had different skin tones.

If an 11-year-old can see that the impact on actual modern-day humans matters more than the beloved lore of a white guy from the 1930's, I think more adults could stand to come to that realization.

Yes, but I often get burned out - not by the work, but by the negativity. That's why there tend to be long breaks between the games that I run. I walk away for awhile and do other things, but I keep coming back.

@rnmissionrun said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

What changed to suddenly make ditching MUSH in favor of Ares (or Evennia), a good idea?

Whatever success Ares has actually has zip to do with the programming language. It could have been Ruby, Python, or even been written entirely in MUSHcode. It doesn't matter.

Ares appeals to people because of its usability and web portal. It's not ditching MUSH; it's extending it. And it's not designed for coders; it's designed so you don't need a coder.

Now, as a coder designing a complex chargen system or whatever, I'd much rather work in a more modern language with all the conveniences of a full development environment, rather than trying to do 17-level nested parens and brackets stuffed onto a single line on my live game. But that is a wholly tertiary concern for why Ares is what it is.

@Arkandel said in X-Cards:

TLDR; if you don't like something to the point where it's a roleplay deal breaker for yourself, the onus is on you to make these requirements known ahead of time or to remove yourself as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible without requiring anyone to cater to you.

Absolutely not. I can't imagine many things less savory than people - who already feel bad and who're obligated to stand out for themselves and say "ahem, sorry guys, this feels awkward" to have to either hide the fact or broadcast their vulnerabilities somehow (what, their wiki?) just in case they come up.

Why is saying "sorry, awkward" so unsavory? Let's say the theme of your game is "gritty post-apocalyptic drama, rated M for mature", and you decide to run a plot where a kid gets sick and dies. Six other players are involved. I should not derail everybody else's RP just because I have a trigger point of "kids in peril", when that's something that's clearly in bounds of the game's theme and rating. I can politely write my character out of the scene or (if it's 1-on-1) fade to black. We already do that all the time when people have to leave for RL reasons.

We should be sensitive to peoples' triggers, yes, but it's a two-way street. The person with sensitive subjects needs to be willing to communicate that with other players in some fashion and work with them to figure out the best solution. That's why I don't like the idea of X-Cards because there's no cooperation; no compromise.

Evennia is awesome too, and I've pointed folks that way when the kind of game they wanted to build seemed better suited for Evennia than Ares. As @gryphter says, you can do anything you want on either platform with enough code work, but it's a question of what gets you there faster.

@Griatch said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

This is an interesting point of view. Using the command line is generally an important skill to have when doing anything programming- related though.

That's the thing, though -- running a game, ideally, shouldn't require programming. It shouldn't require you to be a server admin. I can spin up a whole website in 10 minutes with Wix or Wordpress or whatever. I can set up a Discord voice chat server or forum or Storium game with a few clicks.

I've made Ares as easy as I can imagine given the tech requirements. You don't need to do any code to set up a game, but it still requires you to ssh onto a server and mess around with the command line occasionally. That is freaking intimidating to a large number of people, and it's an obstacle to having more games. Having (comparatively) few games, in turn, is an obstacle to having more people.

@Arkandel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Sometimes it can be as easy as paging someone with a simple "hey, it came to my attention Bob has been flirting with your character pretty heavily. I'm just checking if that's okay with you".

I have a problem with the idea that ICly flirting (even coming on strong) is a red flag worthy of staff concern and/or intervention. Most MUs have as much IC relationship drama as the average Shondaland soap opera. If it's IC, deal with it IC. Tell them to go away, throw a drink in their face, call over a bouncer, etc.

There's only reason to be concerned if there's an OOC component. Like if the target of their affections can't get any public RP without being harassed by this person, or has asked them to leave them alone and they won't, OOCly creepy chat remarks, etc. In those cases, I agree with @Derp that the onus is on the player to speak up. I'm not going to get involved, as a player or a staffer, unless they've given me some indication that there's a problem.

(Side note - I think it's fine for a concerned friend to complain on their behalf, but that complaint needs to be substantiated either by logs or by the target confirming that something is amiss. I can talk to them, but I'm not going to white-knight for someone who's denying that anything's wrong.)

@krmbm said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

BUT LYNN YOU ARE NO ASHEN

I can definitely confirm, I am not Ashen (No doubt Ashen is greatly relieved by this as well.)

I'm glad to see the community banding together against this guy.

<PM> (to Faraday) Guest-1 says, "<My RL Name> multiple games? It was one game I bypassed the ban on. And even with your fix, I can still access all three games that decided to remove me over nothing that actually violated their stated policies. I hadn't bothered trying to access them but got curious given your statement so figured I would check. <My RL Job> really needs better programmers and software architects if you miss such small things like the /glitch/ that allowed me to message you on the forums."

<PM> (to Faraday) Guest-1 says, "I have no qualms with you, Just figured I would point out that the /bug/ is still there. as you put it."

<PM> (to Faraday) Guest-1 says, "Hope those storms up there aren't too rough on you. Enjoy your evening."

I mean, it's not like the guy is a detective genius - you can find out the info with 5 minutes searching on my GitHub profile. Dropping the info is just a sad attempt at being creepy.

At the risk of being nitpicky, y'all are referring to FS3, not Ares. FS3 is a skill system with the free background skills, slow XP burn, etc. Ares can use any skill system - I've built Cortex, FFG and Fate for Ares, and there's somebody making Pathfinder and WoD games. Ares != FS3.

But yes, the FS3 XP and luck systems were consciously designed to eliminate some common grinds and make FS3 games more palatable for casual players.

However, this point from the article is one of the reasons why some folks hate FS3:

a single, dominant strategy actually takes away choice from a game because all other options are provably sub-optimal

If you want to optimize your character in FS3, you start off with the "important" skills maxxed and don't bother with anything else you can raise later more cheaply. It comes up so often I made a whole article about it.

Personally I don't really care if you want to start out with expert in piloting and gunnery, as long as you have minimal points spread around the other skills your character should have according to the theme. (for instance, my BSG games required all military personnel to have minimal dots in things like first aid and athletics because that's part of basic training).

But some players do mind. Some players hate that they feel like they have to bend the system to be competitive. Some players feel cheated if they try to make a more balanced character while someone else min-maxxed. Or "messed up" their point/xp spends in a sub-optimal way.

So even numbers-light, co-op PVE games are still subject to the issues described in the article.

It's tough to be casual-friendly (not having Stuff happen at such a breakneck pace that the casuals can't keep up) while at the same time providing enough Stuff to entertain the folks who are super-engaged and online every other night. Maybe impossible.

This is not a new or unique problem; video game companies face the same basic issue with casuals and die-hards.

It just gets a bit more complicated on MUs for a couple reasons. First, there's a critical mass of People Online required to sustain a game. Without access to on-demand RP, folks will wander off to do other things and the game quickly crumples. Also, MUs are largely relationship driven. (not just romance) It's hard when your character's friends are doing things daily and you can only touch base with them once every week or two.

@derp said in Who Holds the Reigns:

Never again. I know players will hate it, they want to aspire to the pinnacles of everything, but it's my solid and firm belief that PCs being in positions to actually control other PCs with nobody above them to oversee those actions leads to misery all around...

That's pretty much where I've landed. I've seen mostly badness from having PCs at the top of spheres:

• They disappear, resulting in a revolving door of leadership.
• They don't do the job (often because it's no fun). You may have to "fire" them, leading to strife.
• They don't handle power well, leading to strife.
• Other players get jealous, leading to strife.

There are, of course, exceptions. I've seen some gems of PC facheads through the years. But it's a rare player who can handle the responsibility well and stick around. Most often, it ends badly.

I think it's good to clarify the difference between an antagonist PC and an antagonistic PC.

An antagonistic PC is just a jerk. They tend to be self-regulating. Either the player does it in such an annoying fashion that people start avoiding that PC, or they do it well enough that it's not a big deal.

An antagonist PC, on the other hand, by the strict narrative definition, is one working against the protagonist. They're actively getting in the way of other PCs, messing up their plans, being the challenge that needs to be overcome. This is whole other level than someone who's just a jerk ICly.

It'd be nice if people could handle it better and realize that a Sherlock-Moriarity give and take, victories and defeats can be awesome. In a TTRPG or sandbox among friends, you'd have a better chance. On a public game? Decades of experience tell us otherwise.

@arkandel There are those who have claimed that I shouldn't have called it AresMUSH because it's "not a MUSH". It doesn't have softcode, doesn't require a grid (though it allows one), allows asynchronous RP, has a web portal built in, etc.

At the end of the day, it's a MUSH because I created it and I named it a MUSH. Why? Because I personally felt that it had its roots in the same playstyle you'd commonly find in Penn/Tiny games.

@pyrephox said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@carma In Ares, I really wish there was more cultural acceptance of, "Joey filled in Susan on the events of <link to log>last night," instead of having to do direct dialogue.

The expectation of direct dialogue has been a thing since I started playing in the 1990s - it really has nothing to do with Ares.

That said - yeah, MU conversations are pretty absurd. That's partly why I can't do big scenes any more (even more than 3 people). Everyone is putting so much into their individual poses that by the time it comes round to me there are like 27 conversation threads to keep up with and my brain cries uncle.

@roz said in GMs and Players:

If someone is stalking you, you are absolutely not supposed to make contact with them.

But you can say that, right? "Hey I'm not comfortable contacting them, can you please just tell them to leave me alone?" I wouldn't have a problem doing that on a player's behalf, even though I'm otherwise with @Derp that I'm not likely to ban someone based solely on an unsubstantiated report. I think there's a middle ground where you can express sympathy and concern and take a report like this seriously without jumping automatically to the banhammer over an off-game dispute between two people you don't know.

Violating a DNC request IS a bannable offense on my games, regardless of what else they may or may not have done (on game or off).

@derp said in GMs and Players:

But should that be the baseline? Should we expect that every GM on every game is going to be the personal friend of every player? Or should we establish as a baseline idea that this is just another service, and you all are strangers that have accepted certain terms related to services rendered?

As others have said, I don't think "living room" implies "become besties with everyone". Plenty of people run book clubs, etc. where they invite people to their homes that aren't necessarily personal friends. For me it's about the respect due the staff --because you're in their home -- and the overall atmosphere of community.

You can get a similar vibe from some public gathering venues. My friends run a comic shop. Players can come in to play at their tables, and some are pick-up games where strangers can join too. It may not be their living room, but it's definitely a level of connection and investment that you wouldn't find from the hosts in a convention center.

Sad for all the struggles folks have gone through.

Like many adults, I didn't realize I had ADHD until my kids were diagnosed, then I realized that they were struggling with the same things I have my whole life. My parents still don't believe that I have it ("But you were such a good student!") but I'm pretty much the poster girl for adult ADD symptoms, and they've been there for as long as I can remember.

Some coping mechanisms:

• Timers. We have an alexa at home and 90% of my use is to set timers. "Remind me in 60 minutes to change the laundry." "Set a 20 minute timer" (for my kids to stop playing video games). etc.
• Fidgets. I spent my life drumming on tables and destroying straw wrappers. One year I was so bored in meetings I started practicing writing the alphabet left-handed. Nowadays though there are some really cool fidget gizmos. I keep this one in my purse.
• Background Noise. I have a hard time maintaining focus in silence. There has to be some kind of background noise for part of my brain to focus on. Music without words works best, or a movie I've seen 78 times before.
• Visual Cues. I assemble things and put them by the door the night before so I remember them. I'm the queen of post-it notes, all over the house.

Getting accommodations for kids in schools is a PITA.

As part of the AresMUSH mission of being more approachable to folks who are new to MUSHing, I created a MUSH 101 Tutorial. Other than the web portal section (which is obviously Ares-specific) I tried to keep it generic enough that it'll apply to other MU servers. Feel free to share it with your new players.

(The "Playing from the Web Portal" screencast is also a nice overview of what the portal can do, incidentally, for those who haven't really checked out Ares before.)

It's impossible to cover every aspect and variation of MU culture in a brief tutorial, but constructive suggestions of things that are missing/unclear are welcome.