Best posts made by faraday

@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I agree with you entirely, of course, but I thought the complexity of implementing something this simple needed singling out. How many people here have lost trust in staff, players, or even an entire game because the line you expected turned out to be argued or even outright told was wrong?

A lot of people stop engaging rather than causing trouble for themselves.

I think for me this comes down to the same old adage: You can't use code to fix social problems.

Either people trust staff to take their concerns seriously or they don't. If they don't trust you to deal with a problem, they'll let things fester or they'll just leave. I don't think you earn trust by having an anonymous complaint system that tries to track creepers. You earn their trust by dealing with issues quickly and conscientiously, so people feel comfortable coming to you when there's a problem.

I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to think I've done a good job of having an open-door policy and taking player concerns seriously. It's particularly important when someone has an issue with somebody perceived as being a friend of staff. It's hard, but sometimes you've just got to have those: "Hey I love you but you're being a jerk" conversations with your buddies.

@Arkandel The thing you see with downvotes you see just about everywhere is that people use them willy-nilly and some people use them capriciously. Serial downvoting is a thing. Does that mean downvotes are evil? No of course not. It just means you need to be judicious in what you use them for.

I think your proposal isn't too different from a forum where there's a "flag/report" button to bring something to the moderator's attention. Low fuss low muss. I just don't think it works well with transient content that the moderator can't refer back to, or that it will really help if people don't have faith in the moderators to actually do something about it.

@WTFE said in FS3:

2. The fact that there are multiple versions isn't all that clear. Pick a game, any game, that uses some version of FS3. Look for the mentioning of versions in the various +help/+whatever commands.

You mean like BSGU where it has blurbs like this in the in-game help and the wiki?

This game uses the FS3 skills system, Third Edition. The complete rulebook can be found online: FS3 Player's Guide.

Or perhaps WiWi?

Witchcraft & Wizardry uses a modified version of the FS3 system (Second Edition), developed by Faraday.

BSG:Orion didn't link to the docs or reference a specific version, but it contained the complete docs on their wiki. So did The 100 and Game of Bones and BSG: Cerberus and Star Wars Omens.

First Ed was short-lived and Third Ed is still in beta and exists on exactly one game at the moment. For the past seven or so years, Second Ed has been the only version out there, so fixating on whether games call out the version number explicitly feels a bit pedantic.

It's like when Windows was technically "Windows 2" but nobody cared until people began switching over and it was important to distinguish Windows from Windows 3.

It also leads to disorientation when moving from one "FS3" game to another "FS3" game and having ... an entirely different experience.

Like, say, playing Shadowrun 2nd Edition is very different from playing Shadowrun 4th Edition? Or oWoD is very different from nWoD? I don't know what your point is here. RPG systems change over time. Hopefully for the better, though that's a matter of opinion.

But as I said, pretty much every game in recent memory (except BSGU) was running 2nd Ed. So I think the variances are due to customization, not mechanics.

3. Even if the fact that there are multiple versions is made clear in a game, and the version identified is also made clear, the documentation that can be found is for the latest version.

The documentation has always been available. It is not the system's fault if people running games with FS3 do not link to or utilize it. Though as we saw from the links above, a lot of games actually do.

First Ed had a PDF Player's Guide. People didn't like that format, so for for Second Ed I created wikidot docs that people could copy to their game wikis and customize (which many games did). All the versions come with in-game help that give you info on the commands and the basics of the system.

Could this documentation have been better? Absolutely, and that's one of the things I've tried to improve with Third Ed by creating centralized online docs.

Now buried in your diatribe was a valid point that the old edition documents were probably too hard to find on the aresmush website. That took me about 5 minutes to fix by making a more prominent link to the archive page.

1. The name FS3 already looks like it has a version number in it.

Seriously? You're going to nitpick the name of my ten-year-old RPG system?

If you don't like the system, if the very mention of a game running FS3 is a turn-off to you, that's fine. I don't mind. But if you hate it so much and you're not willing to give it another chance, then why are you here ranting about it? Is it just cathartic? Are you trying to warn people off? Have I somehow offended you by letting other people use the system I designed for my own game? Or are you just, as @Thenomain suggested, trying to be a jerk? Seriously, I would like to know.

@Ganymede said in FS3:

I still like it. But what I'm working on is simpler still, and I'm happy for that.

That's cool. The FS3 skill mechanic is pretty simple. You could make it simpler by ditching attributes (like FATE, basically), but I like the way they add another dimension to characters.

The FS3 Combat system is more complex because it's designed for a war game. It's designed to do the sorts of epic battle scenes @Seraphim73 is talking about, and to do them quickly. It's also designed to give players options so it's not just "attack Cylon1" all the time. That requires a lot of automation and a fair amount of complexity.

All that isn't necessary, though, on a lot of games. Technically I did use +combat on Sweetwater (my western) for a few big gunfights, but that was only once in a blue moon. Most stuff was resolved with simple opposed rolls.

@The-Sands While I appreciate the effort on the detailed analysis, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. FS3 deliberately uses a familiar dice mechanic because people didn't trust a system they didn't understand, not because of any technical obstacle. In fact, first edition used computer generated probabilities exactly as you described and the feedback was universally negative. I'm perfectly fine if there are small statistical aberrations like what you describe, because they're exactly what you'd find in a tabletop RPG. People can relate to what +3 dice means, even if it doesn't give them as much of a boost against an opponent who also spends luck (which, incidentally, doesn't happen in the sort of PvE combat hat FS3 is designed for.)

@Tinuviel We can agree to disagree. Many of the scenarios are lifted straight out of WWII movies, hence my perspective. At any rate, I agree that it's more of a war MU than a sci-fi MU, even though yes, technically, it does have robots and space ships.

@derp said in Places Code Pros and Cons:

I bet there's a way to make it happen. Coders are smart.

I mean, we may be smart but we can't do much with data that isn't there. A client log is only as complete as the messages that come to the client. If you're filtering out places talk on the server side and never sending it to the clients, client-side logs can never be complete. You would need some kind of server-side auto-logger. Ares has that, obviously, but many other servers don't as a matter of course.

Even with Ares, so many of the scene commands are tied into the scene and not your version of the scene that it would require a huge rearchitecting to try to do per-player filtering. Especially given the alt/GM factors. I just don't see places code being used enough to make it worth the effort, honestly.

@derp said in Places Code Pros and Cons:

I was more thinking like the MUX logger object things that just capture the poses in the room in sequentially numbered attributes and then spits out a formatted log at the end.

Right, that's what I meant by "server-side auto logger." It could be baked into the server hardcode (as in Ares), but it could also be softcode on the other systems. It's just that some (many? most? I don't even know any more) games don't have that, so it's an academic exercise at best.

@hobos said in Places Code Pros and Cons:

Pulling out her hair-tie, the shoopy shoop at a table in the corner says, "... stinky... de... Pie hole..."

Those kinds of algorithms have never worked well in my experience. You end up with nonsensical bits highlighted, like:

At the bar, Bob looks at John with narrowed eyes. "You looking at me, punk?" He yelled, "GET OUT! Now, while you have the chance."

comes through as

At the bar, Bob .... with ... He ... at ... while ...

If you wanted any sort of reasonable context, people had to double pose. But they wouldn't, so it was just lost.

At the end of the day, there are a number of potential rationales behind having places code:

• (Organizational) Defining the location to a more granular degree.
• (Organizational) Telling who's where to aid people in breaking up into smaller groups.
• (Focus) Highlighting talk in your place so you can react more easily to stuff that concerns you.
• (Focus) Reducing spam by hiding chatter at other places around the room.
• (Immersion) Obscuring chatter that you probably wouldn't ICly be able to hear.
• (Story) Highlighting where chatter is happening so someone reading the log later can identify the flow of different conversations.

How much you value these aspects will drive what kind of system you prefer. I care nothing about immersion and a lot about story, so that explains my hatred of the automatic "..." systems. Everyone's going to have a different take.

@gremlinsarevil said in Don't Join Discord Servers!!!:

Things can come from a friend that is still out of the blue.

Yeah that's how most phishing attacks get you. It's a weird message from a trusted friend/coworker/contact with just an obscure: "Hey check this out!", usually without any context (or with minimal context like "It's hilarious")

You just gotta be paranoid. It sucks. It's hard. Scammers suck.

@Devrex said in Highlights of Ares?:

It's like the culture of Ares has shifted from MUSH to forum-based RP... It's not like there on every Ares game,

The fact that it's not like that on every Ares game kinda proves that it's not an Ares culture thing.

Ares supports multiple modes of RP. How you choose to use that comes down to expectations set by the game runner and communication between the players.

It's really no different in principle than the divide that used to happen on old-school MUSHes between people expecting 5 minutes between poses and people who were OK with "slow work" style RP with ages between poses, that may or may not actually finish before everyone goes home for the day. All it takes is some OOC chatter to make sure everyone's on the same page.

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

I would be (f-ing) amazed if someone could prove to me they'd never seen this behavior; it's that common.

I have no idea how to "prove" it to you, but I have never witnessed or personally experienced this behavior outside debates like these. Does that mean it's less common than you think? More prevalent on certain games / kinds of games than others? Am I just sheltered? Who knows. We don't exactly have a robust data set, only anecdotes.

And I don't doubt your anecdotes; I just don’t reach the same conclusion you do from them.

Yes, some people are creepers about PBs. But is it any less creepy if somebody makes up a "honey trap" PC tailor-made to seduce another, then commits obsessively to doing so? Or if somebody asks you to make up a tall, hunky Viking type because that’s their “thing”? Or if they stalk whoever’s playing Batman? I think not. Problematic behavior is problematic behavior, irrespective of PBs.

I also can’t help but wonder if you have the same vehement objections to fanfic? I wouldn't be keen to rush up to William Shatner to tell him about the existence of Kirk/McCoy slash, but I don't think that means the writers/readers of said fic are horrible humans for imagining those characters (and by extension the actors) in different relationships.

I certainly agree that our culture's obsession with celebrities is kind of weird and in many ways problematic. I just don't see MUs as being exceptional compared to everything else. Certainly not a point where I feel we need to ban the practice.

Side note - personally I don't think any of this gets better with people asking Midjourney to "make someone who looks like Christian Bale in a Battlestar Galactica uniform" (because c'mon you know that's what a lot of people are going to do.) If anything, the fact that it might accidentally be using some regular non-celebrity person's face (because of the way the training data is harvested) makes it even more problematic to me. But that's probably a separate debate.

ETA - Believe it or not, there are players who don't RP TS. What if a whole game banned it (and hypothetically had a way to enforce it, like no private scenes)? Would that somehow make PBs okay? Not advocating for that, mind you, just a thought experiment.

@Ganymede said in The Case Against Real PBs:

What I'm saying is that you're one of us. If that's a personal attack that is against the rules, so be it.

I think that calling somebody a "creepy weirdo" can justifiably be considered a personal attack, even if it is followed by "like the rest of us."

I agree with the overall substance of your points, but c'mon - that last paragraph was throwing some gasoline (even if you didn't start the fire).

(I don't consider myself a creepy weirdo, for the record. A weird weirdo, for sure, but not a creepy one.)

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Even at its most realistic it's still art instead of an actual person's likeness, which avoids other issues

That's not strictly true given the current slate of AI tools. Most of them are ripping off existing stock photos, copyrighted images, or even just regular social media posts from actual people. You just can't tell where it came from or how like someone else it is. Check out some of the examples in the copyright cases.

Maybe someday when the tools are more ethically sourced I'd be on board with it, but not now.

It completely eliminates the "...I refuse to roleplay with Charlie Sheen PBs because of this one experience in 2003" drama, and also protects unwitting players who choose that PB from being related in any way to the 2003 weirdo

I get where you're coming from, but I don't see this as a problem that needs solving. If somebody's going to refuse to roleplay with me because they don't like my PB, good riddance.

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

There will never be a forum for this hobby that isn't toxic

https://forum.aresmush.com/. It is not toxic. It also has no real traffic, because you're right - a large chunk of the community wants the hog pit (or the other place's equivalent) and the rest (understandably) just go where the people are.

Electric Soup back in the day wasn't toxic either. It had very little traffic compared to WORA, but we were happy in our little peaceful corner of the world. I was sad when it closed, because then I was left with "WORA or nothing" and I chose nothing. MSB gave me hope for something better because it at least tried to have a constructive section.

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

This, I feel, is constructive.

What I advocate for is a forum that is both constructive AND civil. I don't think you can truly have one without the other.

Your points are often valid, but are presented in such an antagonistic manner that they get lost. People just end up reacting to the flames. So no, I don't feel that's constructive from a forum standpoint - and I say that as a friend who genuinely enjoys chatting with you 1-on-1.

Using famous people for PBs is kind of meh, for reasons previously outlined.

Using AI to generate PBs (many of whom, let's be honest, are just going to be: "put Chris Pratt into a Starfleet uniform" kind of stuff) is kind of meh.

Not having PBs at all is kind of meh (for me anyway - which I now realize is partly due to my visual imagination being poor on the aphantasia scale, so descs just go in one ear and out the other.)

I see no good answer.

@puzzlebox The places I've seen it used, it was able to play/pause, yes.

@Tributary said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:

I have read a lot of other McKinley books, but that one may forever be my favorite.

Yeah I liked Hero and the Crown too, and the Robin Hood one she did. Blue Sword was the first I found, though, and my favorite.

@Quinn's comment about Lloyd Alexander reminded me of another series I liked: The Illyrian Adventure and its sequels, also by Alexander.

@apu My earliest WWI logs were from November 2005, but the game had been around for some time before that.

@Ghost Here is a nice tutorial that explains how to utilize a REST API through Ruby. Wondering wtf a REST API is? It's just a reasonably standard way of letting one program talk to another. There's a general overview here.

For example if AresMUSH offered a REST API you could do something like have your ruby script issue a "GET" request to http://mush.aresmush.com:8081/api/chars and get a list of all the characters' data in JSON form. Or you could issue a "POST" request to http://mush.aresmush.com:8081/api/char/1 to update character #1 with some new data.

Side note: Ares currently doesn't offer an API because the website is built in and I haven't come up with any reasonable use cases for an API beyond a website. If I find one, I'll probably build an API for it.

I don't know jack about the specifics of the Rhost API - you'll need to get more info from @Ashen-Shugar for that.