Best posts made by faraday

@Seamus said in Image Attribution & Creative Commons:

However, it sounds like someone is going through the trouble to make it known.

Indeed. I have been CCed on several emails to talent agencies, such as the following:

To whom it may concern,

There is an use of the image of one of your talent pool on the website (https://savageskies.aresmush.com/char/<CHAR> ) which may paint them in a less than favorable manner. As per the the digital media rights, may be seen as a violation of their copyright, as outlined in (http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another)

There are may be other of your talents located on this website or on other similar sites which you can find a reference for here. (https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games) If you have any questions, please direct them to the people whom created the game this is ran on as well as the people who are listed as Members of the staff.

It all seems rather petty to me to single out one specific game, since this is fairly common practice across RP/blog/fanfic/tumblr sites across the internet, but that's their prerogative.

I just wish they'd stop CCing me on it, since I have nothing to do with the content of individual games. (Any more than Wordpress has control of self-hosted blogs using their software.)

To @Auspice's point about attribution - that's up to the page using the image. Ares' file upload system is basically the same as wordpress or any wiki software.

@Wizz said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

It's also an ableist relic, imo.

Perhaps in part. It was also an important game balance mechanic though in Shadowrun, to keep people from just chroming themselves with everything under the sun and becoming an unstoppable cyborg. (Or worse, an unstoppable magician cyborg.) At least for awhile until they started breaking their own rules with cyberzombies and otaku and other silliness.

@surreality said in Preference for IC Time On A Modern(ish) Game:

this isn't a major events going down sort of period IC, so this week represents all of August 1902, pick and choose your timey-wimey focus for that period and figure it out'

See, I don't mind that occasionally for fast-forward type stuff, but when I have to deal with that "figure it out" every single RP session, it gets draining.

I know there are plenty of folks who don't get bothered by continuity glitches, so admittedly that's just a "me" thing.

@Groth said in Evennia (Arx) webclient feedback:

you could add a special case for web-sessions where you keep them alive for even longer (maybe 5 minutes?) unless quit is used.

Unless my phone is in rest mode or alt-tabbed for more than 5 minutes, then I start missing things.

I get why it works the way it does. My point (and krmbm/bear's as well, I believe) is that from a player's perspective it's disruptive to miss information.

The only ways to solve that are either:

a) Don't let the connection drop. This requires an app AFAIK.
b) Make a way for the game to let you retrieve information (poses, pages, etc.) that transpired while you were offline. This requires a paradigm shift in how people expect to interact with the game.

@Derp Well the combat system is a different animal because it's still opaque. (a lot of the mechanics are complex so it's not really possible to "show the dice" in a meaningful way in the main display.) I was referring to plain rolls.

I agree with @Derp that you have to start with your basic goal. Not just a setting (though that's important too), but a vision.

I think that a TV series is a good analogy for a MUSH. Start with the elevator pitch that you would use to "sell" the game to execs - only in this case it's selling to prospective players.

Then make decisions about your cast. Not specific characters (unless it's going to be a roster game), but general roles and focus. Think about things like factions, PVP, organization.

Then make decisions about the story. Unless you're going for a full-sandbox mode, you probably want to have at least a "season" worth of ideas sketched out. Think about what the characters are going to do between events, and what systems/structures you need in place to support those things.

Then think about the OOC atmosphere. How will the players interact with each other? This is where things like consent, PVP, plot guidelines, etc. come in. Also, are you looking for a more narrative free-form feel, or a more crunchy immersive feel.

Only when you've answered all of the above should you make any decisions on server tech and code. Ares has a lot out of the box and is easy to set up, but it's not a good fit for every game. Nor is FS3. So you should pick the tech that fits your vision. It might make a lot more work for you getting the place started, but you'll save yourselves headaches in the long run.

@mietze said in Sensitivity in gaming:

There is a difference between "Private Jass takes a bullet to the head and falls, obviously dead" and describing who gets splattered, flailing, gore, ect. I know when I ask about graphic preferences, it is fleshed out detail that I am referencing, not the basic stuff with the rest left up to the player's imagination.

For sure. Just like there's a difference between Star Wars stormtrooper violence and Saving Private Ryan. But even Hollywood isn't consistent about its ratings, and it's arguably easier to objectify gore when it's on-screen versus when it's being described in text. It's highly subjective.

My main point, though, was that if I say "warning: graphic violence and grim post-apocalyptic themes" on the door, I don't feel the need to have that content warning duplicated on every scene where someone's writhing in pain with their leg blown off, or where a village is getting wiped out by a disaster. I think you get into warning fatigue when 90% of your scenes are being warned about just by the nature of the overall game theme. Whereas on some other game with different expectations, those scenes may very well warrant warnings.

Context matters.

@ganymede said in A healthy game culture:

I’m sorry, but whereas the majority of gamers may not be dicks I can tell you from almost 25 years of experience that Vampire, as a game, seems to tease out the worst of them.

I don't see how that contradicts my point? Vampire brings out the worst in people. Battlestar games, on the whole, tend to be pretty laid back, friendly communities where most people aren't jerks. One could try to make subtle inferences about the differences between the two fanbases, but I think the correlation is more obvious: Battlestar games are PVE and cooperative, and Vampire is PVP and backstabby. Historical games are another area where they're not generally regarded as cesspools of toxicity. Why? Is it something about the types of players who are drawn to that kind of game? Maybe. But I think it has more to do with the lack of OOC competition.

@tinuviel said in A healthy game culture:

"Brings out the worst in people" is an excuse. It is putting all the blame on the game, and not on the people. If that's not what you mean, don't say it like that.

No, it is not putting all the blame on the game. That's just not what that phrase means in common parlance. If you choose to continue to use that narrow interpretation despite numerous attempts to clarify the intent, that's on you.

@carma said in A healthy game culture:

I understand the nuances of the problem now.

Cool. Also as far as what is driving the "poor sportsmanship" - it's usually about "losing" in some form, real or imagined. In PVP games it's more overt, but PVE games aren't immune either.

Jane stole my kill in the last battle scene. Bob made me look bad. Harry got promoted and I didn't. Mary's always getting the spotlight. Jake got a medal and I didn't.

I'm using the first-person pronouns there deliberately because that's the real root of the issue IMHO. Bob didn't make them look bad, he made their character look bad, and there's a difference. But most players can't step back enough to internalize the distinction. Or to realize that Bob's player isn't necessarily out to get them. Or to realize that this kind of conflict, kept IC, can make for some of the best stories.

I don't think that makes them all a-holes, just fallible humans prone to being over-invested in their characters. (And frankly if you are going to ban people over this sort of thing, you're not gonna have any players left.)

@seraphim73 said in Battling FOMO (any game):

I think is incredibly important is that Staff PCs be inclusive

For me, it's staff NPCs who should be inclusive, if you're trying to include people. My PC is there for my enjoyment, and I think that mingling staff responsibilities with your pretendy fun-times can lead to rapid burnout and unwelcome IC/OOC bleed. (People thinking that getting buddybuddy with staff PCs is the way to Plot or Stuff, etc.)

That's not to say you shouldn't be inclusive with your PCs, but I think it should be for fun not out of obligation.

Of course this is different if games are letting staff PCs = FCs, but I generally think that's ill-advised for other reasons.

@three-eyed-crow said in Criticism: X-Men Divergence:

It's kinda shocking how much a one-sentence 'application' mitigates this

Oh, sure, I'm not at all against requiring apps for rosters. I was just pointing out that it's a system option. You can require apps for a single character, all characters, or none of them.

But if you ARE going to require apps, then you need a way to talk to the person applying. That means either getting their email or letting them make up a player bit. Either way, it requires communication on the part of staff to let the player know what's up. No amount of code can substitute for that

@greenflashlight said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The web client is too likely to lose connection and/or stop sending me notifications.

The connection will drop on mobile when the device goes to sleep - that’s a general limitation of mobile web apps. A mobile client is really the right thing there but it’s complicated because of game variations.

There are also connection limitations by some work or school firewalls, but nothing widespread that I’m aware of.

If folks are having issues please reach out via PM or on the Ares forum or discord with more details so I can look into the problem.

@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I would say stop using them as a scapegoat for not trying or when you fail

Seriously? You only have to look at the numerous threads here on MSB--including this one--to see that a crap-ton of people still prefer their MU clients over web. To say nothing of the polls, usage metrics, and umpteen bazillion conversations I've conducted over the fourteen years I've been working on AresMUSH.

Ares is successful because it innovates without alienating its core playerbase. That doesn't change the fact that backwards compatibility comes with a cost.

But if somebody wants to prove me wrong and make a web-only MU server, go for it.

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.

That looks more like a MUD? But yes, certainly there are other types of online text RP. Storium and Rollgate are also web-only and have thousands of players.

The question isn't whether anyone would play a web-only MU, but whether enough of the existing MU community would do so to achieve critical mass for a game. My research and experience tells me no.

Storium and Forum RP is nice and all, but I still prefer the MUSH-style RP, and I want to play with my friends.

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

It's designed to be as user-friendly as possible for people with no experience coding etc., so the tradeoff is limitations in customisation. If you need to create custom commands and novel systems it won't suit your needs unless you can convince the person who made it to add that in, but if you're a builder who just wants to punch in your rooms, quests, combat and NPCs, it fits the bill.

You're basically describing Ares though, too. (minus the quests/mobs) You can have a game up and running with no coding experience whatsoever, as long as you're willing to accept the limitations in customization.

Even so, I'd say more than 50% of Ares games do end up with some degree of custom coding. That's the MUSH status quo.

So, yes, I agree with your general conclusion that steps are being taken in that direction - since I'm coding some of those steps myself

What @Lotherio describes in terms of being able to make the MUSH level of custom coding without actually learning code? There are systems with some degree of customization built in (Fate, FS3, TinyD6), but the idea that you could drag and drop some building blocks and make any arbitrary RPG system without touching code is just not feasible IMHO. It'd be nice, but the systems are just too complex and varied.

@ganymede said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I think you underestimate how wonderful Ares is. Your product is excellent, but backwards compatibility is an added bonus, not, in my opinion, a requirement.

I appreciate the compliment but I think you underestimate the chicken and egg problem.

Yes, a sufficiently cool game might get players to give a radically unfamiliar system a try. But first you have to get the game runners to give it a try. With most MU runners already (rightfully) worried about getting enough critical mass to make their game succeed, that's a very hard sell.

If I had gone straight from PennMUSH to Ares with a web-only Play screen with player-handle logins back in 2007, Ares never would have even gotten off the ground. Gradual evolution is IMHO the only way we're going to make progress.

@derp said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I mean, don't get me wrong, the interface or whatever looks cool on this one. But. I think you may be underestimating that same gulf.

Given current technology, the gulf isn't very wide. That's why you can play a MUD with Atlantis just as easily as you can a MUSH. It's text-in, text-out, maybe a few triggers and bells and whistles. It's extremely similar.

As we start to move away to other platforms, though, I think the gulf widens. For example, MUDs are centered around grid exploration. Ares is centered around scene narratives. This can drive very different modes of user interaction. While that's just one prime example, that same difference in philosophy ripples through the entire interface.

That said, I think @Kestrel has a point that we should not be blind to what other game styles have done. In designing Ares, I looked at some of the nifty web MUDs (Iron Realms, Achea, etc.), some elaborate play by forum systems, Storium... there's a lot of different ways to do online text-based RP that we can draw inspiration from.

@lotherio said in What is a MU*?:

I do consider it progression. Something newer, something fresher (to quote Jack Skellington); next gen.

Yeah but at the end of the day, a name is just a marketing tool. It's telling the consumers what to expect.

The very first version of Ares - which had no web portal - was virtually indistinguishable from PennMUSH to a player (on purpose). Some players thought it was PennMUSH. They don't care how the code is loaded behind the scenes. They care how they play the game.

You could use a PennMUSH server to make a MUD. You could run a MUSH-style game on TinyMUD. For me the game types are more about the player experience than the underlying tech. And since no two MUSHes (or MUDs or MMOs or video games in general) have exactly the same player experience anyway, there's some inherent variation.

But again, that's just me. There's no universal definition.

@ominous said in What is a MU*?:

What about Asheron's Call where the actions of players did affect the story on minor levels?

You're still not writing the story, you're participating in it. The story is already written by the game designers. It's the difference between writing a novel and reading through a choose-your-own-adventure story.

@songtress said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

Honestly i am torn. I miss 'Firan' in that context, but I also hated Firan's rigidity (I love the pretty custom clothing), but omg, I hated being charged 1000 stenis to go to the bath house so I didn't suffer social score loss).

Let's look at crafting for example. Your PC is a carpenter.

In the old-school MUSH paradigm, like Firan - you might need to go out into the forest room and +chop some wood for awhile. Then you go back to your workhop where you +craft table. Then you go to the marketplace and +list table=100 to put your table up for sale, or maybe you just RP a sale and use some kind of sell code to exchange it for Bob's silver.

That's all hard to model with Ares' scene/web focus, but that doesn't mean you can't do a crafting/economy system. It just means you need to do it differently. For example, resource gathering could be done with some kind of "action point" allocation that got you wood periodically. Then you could interact with a craft global command and crafting web dashboard that let you manage your resources and inventory. And instead of a marketplace room you could have a market global command and web dashboard that lets you buy things from other players.

It's not the same experience. It's more strategic than immersive, and for that reason I completely understand why it's not what every game will be looking for. Rhost and Evennia are great options if you're looking for something that's more old-school immersive.

@runescryer said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

My only issue, and this is just my opinion, is that while FS3 is perfect for a rules light narrative setting, it breaks down in settings where there's a great deal of emphasis on special abilities (supers, high fantasy).

Yes, you're right - FS3 is not geared for that. But as I said before, Ares and FS3 are completely independent. There are already plugins for several other skill systems (Fate, FFG, Cortex, Traits, and even a generic TTRPG freeform die roller), and you can build your own. The issue isn't which dice system you use to resolve your conflicts; it's whether you want other systems for the players to interact with outside the confines of scene-centric roleplay.