@ixokai said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
Plus, hey, Ares! Without FS3. I mean I like FS3 don't get me wrong. Its just fun seeing someone take Ares another way.
Yes! I kept trying to tell folks that they weren't joined at the hip but it's nice to see somebody demonstrate that! Also kudos to @Demiurge for how quickly and cleanly this got put together.
@Tinuviel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:
@faraday On the flip side to that, if we the general player base know about the complaint (and if it's complaint worthy, gossip has already started about the behaviour) and then see staff do... nothing about it. Why would we complain if it happens to us?
Well firstly, how would you know that staff did nothing about it? You wouldn't know if, as @Three-Eyed-Crow said, every complaint gets put into a file. You wouldn't know whether staff talked to the player in question or not. You wouldn't know if staff had talked to Susie or not. You wouldn't know if staff had started watching what the player says more critically. All you know is whether the person had been banned or publicly flogged or something.
As @Seraphim73 mentioned, there's a big scale between "nothing" and "banned". If folks are going to assume that anything short of "banned" is no action at all and refrain from complaining because of that? I can't help them, and that's on them, not me.
@golgoth said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
I was under the impression that the IC shared connection channel could be used as this central hub. What more would be needed?
From the game wiki, it sounds like in order for two characters to RP with each other, one of them has to: a) create a sympathetic connection, b) build a bridge, and c) pay lucidity to go through that bridge. That means that three characters can't just randomly decide to do a scene together. They all have to be connected first to someplace they can all get to (or spend the points/tokens to do so now).
That's not a criticism; just an observation. The dreamscape mechanic is what makes the game unique. It also may be off-putting to some players.
If there's another way to RP then @Wizz is right - that probably should be clarified in the wiki.
@Saulot FWIW, I'm not upset if someone doesn't trust me enough to come forward with a concern, but I do think it's a bad decision.
If I see a problem in my workplace but don't raise my concerns to my manager, how do I know they're even aware of the problem?
I get that people are sometimes afraid to come forward for fear of repercussions, and that's their choice to make. But don't expect problems to magically get resolved if people aren't willing to step forward and say "this is a problem". Managers (including game staff) aren't psychic.
@auspice @Demiurge - I would humbly suggest this split point: http://musoapbox.net/topic/2397/dreamwalk-mush/52?page=3#
I think the “I’m conflicted” bit invited more game dev-y discussion (intentionally or not) and the subject matter hit a lot of peopes’ hot button.
@WildBaboons said in SerenityMUSH - Discussion:
Being split into crews isn't necessarily a bad thing. When I played on Serenity and it was active that's how it was. 3-5 ships with crews of half a dozen ore more that ran PRPs internally, but also interacted with each other frequently.
It depends on your point of view obviously. (And maybe this deserves its own thread, since it's tangential to SerenityMUSH specifically, but I'll leave that up to the thread owner/mods.)
A crew-based game makes it very difficult for new players to get involved. Because you have to find and join a crew to get any RP, and that's not always easy (especially for introverted players). And heaven help you if you fall in with a crew that includes a bad player. It's hard to avoid them when you're on the same ship all the time.
Even once you're established, If your ship is out in the Black or on a different planet and nobody from your crew happens to be online at that time, you're SOL for RP. It's the same problem a lot of Star Wars games have by splitting their players among different planets.
If that's your thing, groovy - I'm not trying to detract from anyone else's fun. Just saying that I love Firefly as a setting/show but I've never had a good experience on any FF game.
@derp said in I want to code for a V5 MU*:
Even for professionals it can be kind of a nightmare.
Yeah, the usual response from professional devs who see MUSH code is either hysterical laughter or a disbelieving “WTF?!!?”. It was a wonderful solution for a particular tech problem in the 1980's but today? Not so much.
I'm sure folks would love a vampire plugin for Evennia or Ares though.
If you're interested in learning Ares code, check out the coding tutorials and feel free to ask questions on the Ares forum.
Evennia, likewise, has many tutorials and an IRC support channel.
@Arkandel said in Incentives for RP:
That's often because their systems are derived from table-top systems which don't require any other progression ladders, but for MU* there are so many possibilities.
The TTRPG analogy is interesting, because I think when you look at the reason XP systems exist in TTRPGs, it's not to "incentivize people to play". Hopefully you're showing up at the table because you're having fun with your friends and the GM is telling a good story.
I'd argue that XP systems are more about the OOC learning curve (i.e. don't overwhelm the newbies with too many rules to learn, spells to memorize, etc.) and a reflection of the Hero's Journey (start off small and go epic) and have very little to do with providing motivation for the players to keep playing.
If your players are only showing up for the XP, your game has issues.
ETA: MMOs are more about the level grind than TTRPGs, but that's a different animal. The leveling/loot/etc. is baked into the way you unlock additional game content and such, and keeps you on the treadmill of spending money in their ecosystem.
@observer3000 In case you hadn't seen it, I have a program where I will install an Ares game for you. The install scripts are also pretty copy/paste automated if you choose to do a self-install.
There aren't many experienced Ares coders out there at this point, but if anyone is interested in learning there is a whole host of tutorials to get started.
@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:
Bar RP is not now nor has it ever been bad. I’m going to offer a pair of middle digits to anyone and everyone who pisses on Bar RP for being Bar RP.
Bar RP is not inherently bad.
I personally find Bar RP painfully boring, for the same reasons I don't like just going to the bar or a party and hanging out in RL.
If it's fun for you - great. Go forth and Bar RP. But it's not fun for everyone, and that's OK too.
@Derp said in Armageddon MUD:
If I want to run a Dark Sun game where everyone starts as an Arena Slave and then gets to fight their way to freedom, that isn't going to appeal to some people. It doesn't have to. It shouldn't. If you're fresh off of a MLP Mu, it's probably going to seem like the most hideous and abusive thing in the world to you, and a toxic environment that you don't want to be a part of.
While I agree with you that it's ultimately subjective, I think your example misses the mark a bit. As @L-B-Heuschkel points out, you're describing an ICly harsh environment. That says nothing about the OOC atmosphere.
In college I played in a couple PvP type games where everybody was plotting against everyone, even killing them in some cases. But there was no OOC toxicity at all. Everyone was friendly (even if not all of us were "friends"), and when Bob's PC killed Sam's we'd all have a good chuckle about it afterward (including Sam). It's called good sportsmanship, and as @surreality said in the other thread, it's something we all should have learned as children on the playground. That so many adults engaging in what amounts to community theater with virtual dice can't manage it is sad.
@Tinuviel @juke I'm not saying that any of the people in any of those examples is doing anything objectively wrong.
What I'm saying is that when you take that (fairly typical) assemblage of "people who don't want to play together most of the time" and try to make a cohesive game out of it, it doesn't work all that great.
Yes, TTRPG groups disintegrate due to OOC drama. But the difference is that the players recognize this and move on. They don't (generally? hopefully?) continue to show up to session after session demanding that the GM somehow figure out how to entertain them despite the fact that they can't stand most of the other players at the table.
Yet that's basically what MU players ask for.
Yeah, a botched AresCentral server upgrade exposed a bug in the game code that caused significant lag upon connection if the entire aresmush.com server was down (not just AresCentral itself, which I'd previously tested). It affected all Ares games but everything's back to normal now.
Will fix the bug in the next patch so it doesn't happen again - AresCentral is meant to be an accessory, it's not supposed to cripple the games if it's not there LOL.
@SquirrelTalk said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:
Really it kinda sounds like we just need to find a way to direct people towards Aresmush; though there's still the problem of CREATING games seeming like a bit of an impenetrable pain in the ass.
Full disclosure: Ares is still in beta, so anyone wanting to run a game in it should go in with eyes open. It's generally stable, but bugs happen. I just messed up achievements in the last upgrade, for instance 
That said, setting up a game in Ares with the stock codebase is extremely easy. Yes, you need a server to host it on - which currently is $5/month - but there's an installer to set everything up for you, or I have a program where I'll do the initial install (conditions apply).
If you want custom code - of course that's a lot more work. Potentially a crap-ton of more work depending on what you want to do. But that's true of any codebase.
Which reminds me -- I think that the compulsion to have to have custom code on virtually every game is what's keeping us (as a hobby) from moving to a sort of shared hosting model like Wordpress/Storium/PlayByPost/Tumblr/etc. Which would not only make setting up a game super trivial and accessible, but it would also provide a common platform for folks to find said games. And to play said games, because they'd all be using the same commands/conventions. Of course, the immersive/interactive bit with custom code is what draws some people to MUs, so YMMV.
For Ares, you can technically spin up a local game on your Mac, or on a Windows PC using a virtual machine, but it's really a PITA. Save yourself the headaches and just take digital ocean's free month to try it out.
@Thenomain said:
The Great War (WW3, I suppose) started October 2077. Yet radios, televisions, population density, all of these are at 1950s levels. Reasons: None. Yet we're stuck on this stupid wired/wireless debate for Shadowrun.
Huh, I always thought Fallout was based on an alternate-history 1950's theme. Shows how much I paid attention 
For the record, I did like SR3 a lot. That was the era when I was one of FASA's freelancers, so I'll always have a special fondness for it.
If they had stuck to their guns and left the setting alone, that would be one thing. But they didn't. 4th edition upped the tech level, and all I'm saying is that I like that version better for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that it mucks less with my suspension of disbelief. Yes, I can accept elves and trolls but find a cyberpunk setting without wireless jarring. It's just a personal preference. I'm a nerd!
Yeah I mean really - it doesn't matter what generation they're from. I was just being flip. A single MUSH running on current infrastructure with current levels of tutorials/expectations/gameplay models getting overrun by hundreds of any kind of player would be pretty crushed.
@Griatch said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:
Empowering people to create is something every engine dev wants I think. Thing is, unless you want exactly the game mechanic as someone already did that you can then just add a world to, you will at some point have to get down to programming. All we can do is try to make that step easier, but the step will have to be made eventually.
I think you're underestimating the number of folks who are willing to use exactly the same game mechanics though.
Ares isn't just a MU in a box for a single game/genre. I mean look at the games that have been made / are being made with it so far. We've got pirates, modern horror, modern soap opera, modern post-apocalyptic, anime robots, Battlestar, Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, fantasy -- almost all of them done without a lick of custom code.
Storium has a wide breath of games that are done just with their simple card mechanics. PlayByForum/Discord/Tumbler RP uses virtually no mechanics at all.
There is a vast market out there for code-light or pre-made mechanics games.
Where I think we still fall short though is making it easy for the game administrators. Ares goes a long way compared to Penn/Tiny (where you basically need a server admin / coder just to get started) but it's still a long way from Wordpress/Storium point-and-click game building.
@surreality said in The 100: The Mush:
Edit: This really, really goes back to a 'playground rules' thing again. It's been a while for all of us but we learned 'em all a ways back, y'know?
I dunno. To go with your playground analogy - yeah, playing nothing but basketball 24/7/365 can get tiresome. But that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with somebody who only likes playing basketball. They shouldn't feel obliged to go over and join the baseball game, so long as their love of basketball isn't so overpowering that it's preventing everyone else from ever playing baseball.
An antagonistic character isn't going to be in every scene anyway (especially if people start avoiding them ICly/OOCly), so their behavior would have to be pretty egregious to outright prevent people from doing their own things.
So yeah... there are sensible reasons to provide a balance, but that's not gonna fit every character.
@surreality Yeah but creators don't need to know every nitty gritty thing that goes on under the hood of the game server. Sometimes highly-technical questions require highly-technical answers. One can argue this thread isn't the right place for it, but somewhere at some point those types of conversations need to happen.
Both Evennia and Ares offer tutorials that describe what game creators need to know to make a game. That, it seems, is your primary concern and I agree 100% that it's important.