Best posts made by faraday

@Tinuviel From whom? If the reports are anonymous, who are you going to ask?

@Tinuviel said in Historical MUSHes:

Most of us folks that have more than a passing interest in history mostly grit our teeth when people insist on being "historically accurate" but aren't. Fictional takes on history are fine and are done often enough. We just get people trying time and again to be "historically accurate" rather than just using history as a story tool.

The problem with that is that "Historically Accurate" is a scale, not a yes/no checkbox. I don't think anybody would want to play a western that was 100% historically accurate because it would be bleak and boring. Your PC would be be more likely to die of dysentery than to have an interesting adventure or drama.

Hollywood westerns, for example, range in accuracy from Tarantino westerns (crazily over-the-top but entertaining) to Into the West (reasonably realistic but still over-dramatized). Your MUSH can draw the line anywhere along that scale. Where we have difficulty is defining that scale so people can come into the game with a common set of expectations.

@Tinuviel said in Historical MUSHes:

Well, one can have various levels of accuracy but if it's not accurate it's not accurate. So saying that something is "historically accurate" is the wrong term to use. "Inspired by a historical setting" or "set in the backdrop of the XYZ," would be better. Nobody gets to be the historical pendant, then.

I think that's being a little nitpicky about the terminology. Short of a documentary/non-fiction, nothing in fiction is 100% accurate, yet "accuracy" is the term people use in common parlance to describe Into the West as being "more accurate" than Hateful Eight.

That said, I've played on a number of historical games and I've never seen one say "We expect people to be historically accurate." Usually the gripes about accuracy come from individual players complaining that something is outside their personal bounds of what is "accurate enough" for their suspension of disbelief.

@Lotherio said in Historical MUSHes:

@Cupcake said in Historical MUSHes:

female Indian medical doctor

Susan "Bright Eyes" La Flesche Picotte

That's actually a perfect example of the possible/plausible debate. Mary Walker (Army doctor), Kate Warne (Pinkerton detective and Union spy) and Bass Reeves (former slave turned lawman) are other examples of ground-breaking people that did things that were generally prohibited to people like them in their day.

Should everyone on the game be allowed to be that unique though? Or waltz through their story without facing any of the challenges that those real people faced? What about something that just flat-out didn't exist, such as a female soldier serving openly (i.e. without disguising herself as a man) in a front-line regular unit of the Union Army? And what happens when you now have a whole town full of these exceptional people? At what point are we no longer playing any semblance of history and just playing costume dress-up with modern sensibilities?

Ultimately it's up to an individual game-runner to make those decisions, but we're being disingenuous if we think drawing those lines is easy.

@surreality said in Historical MUSHes:

I suppose anyone could have! ...but it's also relevant that no one did. It's pretty strong evidence that the 'anyone who wants to play in a setting where these things exist just wants to get their *ism on' hypothesis is absurd on its face.

At the same time, though, if someone had decided to give those characters IC grief, I don't think that should reflect poorly on them any more than the decision to play a monstrous slave-owning a-hole should reflect on Leonardo DiCaprio.

If (generic) you don't want that in your games - by all means make it a policy. But in absence of such a policy, people reacting in historically-appropriate ways to historically-oppressed characters should not be taken as a reflection on their OOC feelings nor the compassion or quality of the game community.

@Ghost said in X-Cards:

This, I feel, is where the X-card doesn't pass the test. @faraday hit the nail on the head when she mentioned that the point of the X-card is "no questions asked". This is a key point to the X-card because the method believes that one should not have to justify why they pushed the X-card, and that an immediate detour needs to be made to be inclusive to their wishes.

Yeah. In the same vein, I don't think that "modify the X-Cards system if you don't like it being no-questions-asked" passes the bullet test either. If you're among reasonable adults and are willing to communicate your boundaries, then you don't need the X-Cards in the first place. The entire point of the system is to get around those limitations for environments where people are uncomfortable speaking up and/or might get pressured to cave if they do.

Sure, you could create a wholly different system (like the tag thing @Auspice mentioned) but that really wasn't what we're talking about here.

@surreality said in X-Cards:

I know I was looking at a general RP-prefs setup on-wiki. It wasn't meant just for 'I hate this, don't go there', but with general categories where people could write whatever was relevant to them on any given subject. (Subjects were fairly broad and would have been customizable for any given setting -- ex: 'law enforcement', 'crime', 'romance', 'horror', etc.)

Ares has an optional RP Preferences plugin that lets staff define areas relevant to their game so players can register their preferences and view each others'. I think folks can mention those in their scene/plot/event descriptions if they were so inclined. I personally would have to see that catching on broadly before I would find it worth the effort to codify prefs/tags in a dedicated field in a scene/plot/event description, but that's just mean. Other games could certainly do that with custom code.

@Sparks said in X-Cards:

not wanting to be the one who ruined the game

The thing is - that's a valid concern. (Generic) you might be the one that derails the game for everyone else. I once noped out of a plot that a good friend of mine was running (and in fact, had put together in large part for me). They were a good sport about it, but they were understandably bummed.

That's why communication is key. Sometimes players need to bend. Sometimes the GM/game/story needs to bend. Sometimes both can bend a little to meet in the middle.

Maybe tools can help communication, but I'm leery of trying to use code to solve social problems. I think GMs/storytellers/game policies being more up-front that this kind of communication is not only acceptable but encouraged would go a long way.

Couple misc thoughts:

• I don't feel the need to ask for permission to roll their skills for them. Sure, you can sometimes lose the nuance of the back-and-forth negotiation of what modifiers apply, etc., but I just don't care Keeping things moving in a scene is more important to me. Doubly so when there are lengthy delays between each query/response.

• I've done a bunch of async RP through storium and have found that scene/move deadlines definitely help set expectations and keep things from stalling. It's just like stating the 15-minute pose rules in combat scenes, only on a longer timeframe.

• I really don't think I'd be comfortable doing significant async RP in a mush environment unless it was a backscene where the bare sketches of the outcome were already pre-determined. Otherwise it's almost like being in a really weird time stop. How can you RP a scene on Tuesday evening with your buddies when you don't know if you died/got seriously injured/lost a friend/got captured/whatever in that adventure that ICly took place Monday night? I just have trouble wrapping my brain around how that would work, practically speaking.

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

That is super niche. It doesn't surprise me that people who find that lacking will lean more into other stuff. Or that people who do enjoy it also enjoy other things and will divide their time further because there's more options for pastimes.

I don't see any evidence that it has to remain "super niche" though. People who enjoy video games will sit down and play them for hours on end, so we know there are people with blocks of free time on their hands. MUDs are still pretty huge. Play by post forum sites boast thousands of members and hundreds of games, so we know there are people who enjoy text-based RP. Storium had almost 7000 backers, but if you follow the community you'll see common complaints about the slow pacing and games fizzling out because one person dropped out, things that MU's dynamic/revolving-door nature do help to address.

I find it impossible to believe that there aren't a decent number of potential MU players out there.

But to snag them, we need more approachable tech, better tutorials/welcome wagons, and people willing to bend a little to accommodate them in actual RP. It's the latter that I see as the biggest challenge.

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

In all the Ares talk of their web scenes and stuff that is one thing I have wondered. How do they keep that zest going when it can be a while between poses? Or is that just a me problem?

The browser notifies you when there's new activity, just like a MUSH client does. It's conceptually no different than using Discord or Slack's web client. Some folks prefer a desktop client for understandable reasons, but any expectation that "web scene = slow scene" is being driven by the people, not the technology.

You can do a regular "real-time poses every 10 minutes" scene in Potato or you can do one in the browser.

You can do a "I'm gonna pose at you once every couple hours while I do chores" scene in Potato or you can do one in the browser.

You can even mix and match some people on the browser and some logged in with traditional MU clients.

The only thing that Ares lets you do that you can't easily do on a regular MU server is an async scene where folks pose at each other here and there in their own respective timezones / work schedules without both of them needing to be online at the same time. That kind of scene has always happened in MUSHes too; folks just had to go off-game to Google Docs/email/livejournal/etc. to do it. Now you can do it within the game itself.

Folks can side-eye it all they want, but it's not doing anything that MUSHers haven't been doing for years.

@Derp I assume you're asking about Ares. And yes, that's correct. Though I've done my best to mimic wikidot syntax pretty closely, along with the common extensions folks tend to use for MU wikis.

Nothing's stopping you from setting up a mediawiki and just not using the internal wiki, of course. But Ares is designed to be easy for non-techy people to set up and use. Installing and managing a separate mediawiki install is a PITA and getting it to interface with a MUSH doubly so. So Ares internally has everything you need to set up a typical game built in. One stop shopping.

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

For example, everyone understands what "3PR" means or the concept of "ICA=ICC."

That's kind of my point though... there are consent-based MUs where "ICA=ICC" is just not a thing. And I had gone much of my MU career without ever encountering "3PR" pose style. (When I did I was so so happy.) There are games where people are all like: "Pose order? What's that? Lol what a weird concept."

Absolutely there are some behaviors that are common to some clusters of MUs. If you want to call the conglomeration of stuff "MU Culture" I can accept that, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many things that are universal.

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

THAT SAID. I play both on Gray Harbor and Spirit Lake, both on Ares, with similarity in themes and shared players and I find the cultures completely different.

And both are wildly different from the old TGG (heavy code war game focus) and Maddock (pure consent Western sandbox), which were also MUSHes.

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

@faraday may have hit it on the head: a MUSH is a game that emphasizes RP over code.

It's more than just that though. Storium and forum games and Discord also emphasize RP over code. What is the common thread that defines MUSHes?

One could argue it's the grid room concept + text-based command interfaces. But then does that mean someone playing Gray Harbor solely from the Ares web portal isn't MUSHing? What about a game on PennMUSH where everything was done in temprooms via some custom scene code and had no real "grid" to speak of?

I still think it's the persistent 24/7 world with mostly-live scenes that is the principal defining quality of MUSHes compared to other online RP, but that's just me.

By no means do I think that terminology is our biggest problem, but it is kinda interesting to talk about. I also think it's relevant. Being able to coherently describe what it is that we do, and how it differs from Play By Forum/Tumbler/Storium/MUDs/etc. is useful when describing the hobby to new folks. Imagine a conversation with a friend that starts with: "Hey, you should try out MUSHing." "What's MUSHing?" "Welllllllll....."

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

is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

I talk about technology because that's something I can control. Changing social behavior is more of an individual effort. We can't control how crappy staffers run their games, but we can certainly control whether we play on them.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

I think it is healthier to expect players to set their own limits and be comfortable in doing so. To do that, pointing out that someone is not a wet
blanket for setting limits and encouraging players to do so is a better policy than expecting players to somehow know where a limit is.

This is where I'm at. The "wet blanket" worry is a thing in ANY social endeavor. Sometimes, yes, you suck it up even though you're a little uncomfortable for the sake of other peoples' fun. Sometimes it's a big enough deal that you need to say something and 'nope' out. That's a judgment call only YOU can make, and doing so is just part of adulting.

I used to think "FTB if you're not comfortable" was a pretty well-understood unwritten rule, but lately I've taken to spelling it out in game policies outright. Beyond that, it's up to the players to set those boundaries. It's not fair to expect others to guess what they are.

@Ghost said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

Because for these games to function properly all players need a clear vision of what the game is and how it is to be played.

Yes, all players on THAT GAME need a consistent vision. But not all MUs need to share that same vision. That's what I meant by global.

Also a missed reply...

@Ghost said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

Using systems like WoD/StarWars/etc and then not fully utilizing these systems is confusing to half of the playerbase.

I agree that you need to pick the best system for your game; many TTRPGs are not well-suited to MUs. But I also think that you can use any die-roller you want for lightweight conflict resolution without using all of a RPG system. We did that on Babylon 5 by using just the dice and basic stats part of Storyteller. It works just fine.

Can it cause some confusion? Sure. But it can also provide a common frame of reference for folks already used to how those dice work. You just need to be clear up front what you're doing.

@Darren said in Learning Ruby for Ares:

Basically she means that Ares doesn't have anything like MUSH attributes which allow you to store random data on any object. Persistent data needs to be stored in a database model and the model will have to be designed specifically to hold the data that you want to store.

In case anyone's curious... here's a couple quick examples of how this works.

Say you want to just add a simple field to all characters for their favorite color.

Penn/Tiny Version:

&favcolor *Bob=Blue      # Sets Bob's favorite color
get(*Bob,favcolor)     # Returns "Blue"

Ares Version:

class Character
    attribute :favcolor
end

Character.named("Bob").update(favcolor: "Blue")      # sets Bob's favorite color
Character.named("Bob").favcolor    # returns 'Blue'

The main difference is that we need to define the attribute ahead of time via code before we can use it. As Darren said, we can't just wing it and and set any random attribute from within the client.

ETA: Oh, and the other big difference being that Ares code is generally edited server-side and not typed raw into the client.

Now let's say you wanted to have weapon objects so Bob can have a gun:

Penn/Tiny Version:

@create Weapon Parent
(some other code on the weapon parent to control what the weapon does)

@create Bob's Gun
@parent Bob's Gun=Weapon Parent
&ammo Bob's Gun=10
&type Bob's Gun=Blaster

give Bob's Gun=*Bob

Ares Version:

class Weapon
   attribute :name
   attribute :type
   attribute :ammo
   reference :character, "AresMUSH::Character"
   (some other code on the weapon parent to control what the weapon does)
end

gun = Weapon.new(
      name: "Bob's Gun", 
      type: "Blaster", 
      ammo: 10, 
      character: Character.named("Bob"))

The main difference here is that in Ares the 'shoot' command would live in a separate command class. It would utilize properties of the weapon class; the commands are just not tied to individual database objects.

The syntax is different obviously, but the core ideas are still the same.

@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

I know that as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I feel upset when I encounter people who don't know the facts about it, most especially if they actively dismiss, minimise or deny it. And I feel sympathy for the people on this thread who feel gaslighted by the treatment of a similar atrocity against their own people.

I'll just echo this and add that I sincerely hope my attempt to explain American cultural bias is not taken as an attempt to gaslight or to justify said bias. What happened in Asia during WWII was abominable. (specifically directed to @marsmrsmars and @juneko)

I do think we have to be careful about demonizing with too broad a brush though, because that's a slippery slope to racism. And certainly no side has its hands entirely clean (firebombing Dresden and dropping the a-bomb on civilian cities was pretty abominable too).

The leader-admiring thing? That's a subtlety and I can see both sides. Personally I would not be bothered by a character who had been convinced by propaganda that their country's leader was a good guy, even if that leader were Stalin or Hirohito. Especially if it were coming from a place of wanting to explore that character learning the truth and coming to grips with the reality that their beloved leader was partaking in war crimes. Admittedly, though, that might be too subtle for most MU stories and I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to nope out of it on principle.

All things considered, I think the game has good policies in place.

@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

Like, upfront, just gonna say, I don't want to do it and will probably leave a scene if that happens.

I probably would too, but my point was that there's a difference between saying "I don't personally want to interact with this concept" and "Nobody should be allowed to play that concept". Both approaches are completely understandable, but ultimately the latter is a call only the game admin can make.