@sunny said in Alternative Formats to MU:
I don't think anyone here except you is calling not-mushes mushes.
Ares is AresMUSH. It's a MUSH because from a player's POV it has all the same basic functionality as PennMUSH and I didn't want to scare people off because "ZOMG IT'S NOT A MUSH". Also, I like the name.
@icanbeyourmuse said in GMs and Players:
@faraday Isn't a character, PC or NPC, suppose to have depth when it is 'named'? Why shouldn't they have IC bias and do something extra for a character they have some sort of relationship? Even if the character is an NPC King.
Which is why I said it wasn't inherently unethical. Nevertheless, I think that a majority of players would infer a degree of OOC connection from a romantic NPC-PC relationship that they would not from your usual political gamesmanship.
Some games attempt to avoid this in a number of ways, from maintaining top-tier staff-run NPCs as aloof guest stars to having them run collectively by staff for greater impartiality. Others don't, and just lean into the idea that staff NPCs are really more like quasi PCs. As long as you're transparent about what you're doing, players can vote with their feet about what's intolerable to them.
@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Was just pointing out the futility of doing the same things over and over but expecting different results.
Are they really doing the same things though? Smashing the do you have a coder flowchart that has hindered the creation of games for 25 years. Making it orders of magnitude easier to learn to code, as @Tat mentioned. Creating a seamless web/wiki/game integration. These are things that, to the best of my knowledge, haven't been done before.
Naturally, any new product challenging the status quo faces an uphill battle. And yes, others have tried and failed. Does that make it futile? I don't think so, but everyone here knows my penchant for tilting at windmills 
@ThatGuyThere said:
Actually I think Don't be a Dick is a horrible game policy. No two people have the same idea of what being a dick constitutes. Therefore if you have more then one staffer it will by unevenly applied.
So? All policies have the potential to be unevenly applied. Everything comes down to staff judgement, from approvals to determining whether to nuke an idle player, and people are rarely - if ever - on the exact same page. That doesn't make the policies themselves inherently bad.
And what's the alternative? To try and enumerate all possible ways someone can be a jerk? That's even less practical.
I feel kinda bad that the thread has derailed off @tragedyjones' original question. Maybe the last few pages about Evennia/Ares should be split off into a different thread about "New MU Platforms in Development" or something? @Auspice @Ganymede @Arkandel ?
@Ghost said:
The gotcha really is interpretation of theme. ... This is where the staff/player slapboxing starts every time.
Totally agree. For instance, I ran a Western game. But what constitutes a "Western" theme? Deadwood? Hateful Eight? Little House on the Prairie? A Ken Burns documentary? The true answer is: All of the above.
"Just pick one and be clear about what you expect," you might say. Great idea, but it's hard to pin down a theme with that specificity, especially when every player is coming to it with a different expectation.
I had a similar problem with the Battlestar theme. Some folks came to it expecting Galactica, where Starbuck punches out the XO and gets a wrist slap. Others came expecting something more like Pegasus, where regulations are enforced with a iron fist. Both are part of the established Battlestar canon, so neither is really "right" or "wrong". It just gets messy when these worldviews collide.
Once you get beyond the obvious "don't bring your vampire to a Battlestar game" silliness, setting appropriate theme expectations and then enforcing them gets really tricky.
@apos said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Could probably change how people enter a scene to accompany a set, to formalize the culture for whether someone is 'in' or not, compared to the whole, 'I'm here but I'm not here because I haven't made a set' thing that I find vaguely ridiculous and awkward.
That's again one of those things that I think becomes much easier in a web-only game. The scene is a web page. You can access it if it's public, or if you've been invited to. You join a scene when you pose into it, and you can do so from any of your alts. The lurking state is still there - it's what you do when you're reading the existing poses on the page to see what's going on. But it's invisible to the other participants.
But alas, telnet.
@Tez said:
- How are advantages dealt with in +rolls? Like action skills?
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, they're just like skills.
- Do ruling attributes (aptitudes, in this case!) still figure in for action skillls, expertise and interests.
Yes, the basic mechanics are the same. Staff sets a "related aptitude" for each action skill, you can custom-set one for each expertise/interest, and you can always override the default by specifying it in a roll (Creative+Firearms, for whatever weird reason).
- I'm curious why you dropped the rating scale / how this impacts XP & XP costs.
Conceptually FS3 always had 4 main skill brackets - novice, proficient, veteran, master. You could think of them almost like 4 skill levels. The in-between levels were just "fluff" to give folks some intermediate advancement steps.
What I observed on countless FS3 games was that folks would agonize/argue over those intermediate steps - like whether someone should have a 4 or a 5 - when it didn't really matter.
Likewise, several games seemed to be okay with the idea of restricting levels 1-3 (because they felt it sucked too much) and 9-12 (because they thought it was too overpowering). So instead of a 1-12 rating system, you ended up with a 4-8 rating system... not really what was intended.
Simplifying/streamlining the ratings was intended to resolve these issues and just generally make the system easier to use and review.
The XP works basically the same, but it's kinda like you're buying 2 levels at a time so the costs are higher. The intermediate levels are combined in one purchase.
Some of the things that I'd like to see...
I'll add the combat suggestions to the wish list, except for the idea of making lethality/mod things public. Those are meant as GM "hacks", as it were, to tune combat as befits the story. They're the equivalent of rolling behind the GM screen, so by their nature they're intended to be private.
(dice) making it difficult to create an NPC that is a real challenge for players...
@Three-Eyed-Crow said the same - This is really what those lethality/mod commands are for. By its simplistic nature, FS3 is not designed to accommodate ratings beyond the PC-equivalent range. But with creative use of armor, lethality and GM mods, you can usually do a pretty decent job at making things tougher for the PCs.
I never advocate using it to gang up on players meanly or be underhanded, but sometimes it's more fun for everyone if you can tune things on the fly.
Code should never replace story. Unless of course you want it to.
@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Hence the phone example. For most, 'it can make calls, send text based messages, and use little widgets, and you need to recharge it every so often, is breakable especially if dropped in liquid' is all someone needs to know about 'phone' to get by day to day, really.
I think the important distinction is that people need to know what it can and cannot do for RP. How it works is a different question. What kind of radio tech or battery tech the thing uses is not important... until of course the one day the players make it important by trying to "hack" the tech to do (this crazy thing). Which is absolutely a thing that sci-fi game players like to do.
@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
What, you can't sit at a table and have your own scene? Do people not use "places" code anymore?
I haven't seen a single soul use places code since, like, Y2K.
@thenomain But players aren't usually playing the 'average person of his day'. They're playing the Scotty's and Baltar's of the world, who want to reverse the polarity of the dilithuim crystals to save the day, or design a Cylon detector, or a Cylon-disabling computer virus, or hack the Cylon software so they can understand their tactics or take over a Centurion, or fly a Raider, or, or, or, or...
@Kestrel I see a big difference between "We 
you but half of us would have to bail then because the scene's just about its limit for our available attention right now." and "Scene too full." though. I can't help but wonder if your friend would have reacted the same if he'd gotten the full answer. Or if the A-F players had gone the extra mile and said: "But a couple of us are dropping out soon if you'd like to come in soon..." or "Happy to give you a raincheck though when it's not so late..." or whatnot.
On an unrelated aside, having a scene segue into "Let's go talk to Bob..." when Bob isn't available is a pretty common problem in MUSHing that you can learn to work around with practice. Then the scene doesn't have to come to an abrupt end, which also probably improves the overall outcome of a situation like that.
@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Some folks -- myself included -- are far more interested in telling the human (or not human!) stories of how people are affected by the danger and isolation of being in space, of how to handle matters of scarcity (The 100 is a great example of this)
That's where the problem comes in, I think. Because yeah, The 100 tells some great human stories. But the science/tech in them is COMPLETELY F-ING RIDICULOUS. That show is practically unwatchable for me because the writers don't even bother with the most rudimentary levels of plausibility.
So to take that and go play on a game where the theme basically says: "Abandon all laws of physics and common sense, ye who enter here..." That is not fun for me.
Note: I'm not saying it can't be fun for other people. Go for it. Just illustrating how "handwavium" can result in a massive disconnect between different players and their expectations.
@ixokai said in Better Places Code:
Yeah, that's not so bad. But does it actually improve anything? The scene will still be spammy and hard to follow if its got a bunch of people in it.
Personally I find it less hard to follow when I can pick out things that apply to me. I can skim the other conversations to make sure nobody's on fire, but pay more attention to the stuff in my corner of the room to respond to it.
Currently the only way I have to do that is setting up a client-side trigger to highlight stuff with my name in it. Which is great until someone says, "Joe nods back to the annoying girl..." and I totally miss his response. 
I'm still betting on: you can't make it better. You're reinventing rooms.
I'll take the bet, but hey - I could be wrong
Unrelated aside, I share @Thenomain's hatred of phone code. WHY?
@seraphim73 said in Original Sci-Fi?:
I think that that tipping point is further out with culture/entertainment than it is with tech, but that may well just be me.
I don't think it's just you at all, but I do think it's different for different people.
We shouldn't be crying 'wrongfun' just because you'd prefer knowing the details of gravball (to some extent) and I am content with "football-ish".
We shouldn't be crying 'wrongfun' just because I'd prefer knowing how the teleporter works (to some extent) and you're content with "it's a teleporter".
We shouldn't be coming down like a ton of bricks on people who make a theme mistake: "OMG don't you know anything? Gravball is only played with 5 people."
We shouldn't be treating people like they're evil just for politely asking people to RP the theme. "Oh, actually... gravball teams usually have 5 people."
@Groth said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
The basic principle is that most MUSH players are uncomfortable with the idea of their OOC circumstances having IC consequences for their character. They don't want their character to be considered a bad doctor because they happened to be unavailable when someone got hurt...
That's not the "basic principle" for me though. It's not about consequences, it's about continuity. I have no problem RPing that my character was ICly unavailable at that particular moment as long as it makes sense ICly. If you're on a small, isolated ship in deep space it doesn't make sense. Even if it's not isolated, it would be kinda weird if the doctor didn't return to the ship for three days without being in contact with anyone, yeah? (Unless they're in the IC habit of doing such a thing, or they went on vacation or whatnot...) MUSHes run 24/7 but nobody can be online 24/7. OOC comunication helps bridge that gap to maintain IC continuity.
@lithium said in Mass Effect MU*?:
Then I would tweak the combat code to hit that /first/ before affecting health.
Yeah I have no idea how ME shields work, but assuming "generic energy shield" sort of behavior, I'd do something similar. Start with a number of shield points, tracked like ammo. Recharge value would add back so many shield points each turn. Damage would subtract shield points based on damage level. When the shield reached 0, the shield would go down and the damage would go through.
Or something like that. You'd have to touch a couple code functions but it wouldn't be too bad.
@tat said in Mass Effect MU*?:
Wait wait. 3rd edition has SHIELDS? Is there a place where I can read more.
It's not quite done yet, but there's this new thing called "armor specials" which work like the new 3rd edition "weapon specials". They can augment protection or (in the next patch) defense. So a shield special could give you a bonus to defense rolls and some extra armor on your arm. A helmet special could give you armor on your head. You can also, of course, code in whatever special coded effects you want.
@seraphim73 said in Mass Effect MU*?:
I would say that -combat- magic works fine. I would even say that non-combat magic outside of combat works fine too
Depends on your definition of 'fine' really. If you treat them as skills and/or custom weapons, then yeah. But there are so many different ways to represent magic and/or superpowers: skills/powers/gear, learned/innate, leveled/unleveled, etc.
@Gingerlily said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
Here was my culture shock. In my first scene ever seeing a line of text that read 'Eve enters from the hallway', greeting Eve in my pose, and having it explained to me that Eve was not there yet because she had not posed. At the time it made very little sense. We ignore the text emitted by the game here? Why? Now of course setting ones entrance into a scene is a crucial storytelling tool I love.
Heh, yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine too. In AresMUSH those exit messages are emitted as OOC notifications, not IC ones. They're a useful tool, but they shouldn't be read into ICly. "Faraday walks in from the Garden..." Actually, no, Faraday just parachuted in; I just happened to have RPed in the garden last time I logged off
@apos Yeah Ares does that too, but like you said - ALL command-line interfaces suffer from that basic problem, which is why they went the way of the dino in mainstream computing ages ago. As long as MUSHers cling to playing through the old MU clients, it's not a fully solvable problem. Offering alternatives, like dedicated mobile apps or a web interface, can address some of it.
@YHWH said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
"Hmm, let's see here. Your concept is 'larcenous saboteur.' So does it make sense for a 'larcenous saboteur' to have a handgun, lockpicks, and the complete Twilight?" The answer is yes to the first two and no to the last one.
But that's the exact sort of example of where I find backgrounds critically important as an apps staffer. Your concept is "Doctor" -- why on Earth do you have Demolitions? -reads bg- Oh, it's because your dad was a terrorist and taught you a few things. OK, carry on then. Wait, you're an artist with Marksmanship 12? WTF? -reads bg- Oh, you were on the Olympics team. Cool.
Now as @Warma-Sheen said, you run the risk of staffers who then get silly about what they require you to justify. Personally I tend to limit folks to 1 "special snowflake" implausibility. It's fine to be a former Olympian. It's fine if your dad was a terrorist. It's not fine if your dad was a terrorist AND you're a former Olympian AND you were top of your class at Viper Pilot school AND single-handedly rescued the princess...etc. etc. YMMV.
Anyway, to the original topic... I like "Defining Moments" as a way to structure your background. I personally have a hard time with those touchy-feely type questions like the Breaking Points.