I got nothing personally but there are a few sites on the ads thread. HorrorMu, Arx, Shadowrun Denver, a couple WoD places, etc. I suppose if you're desperate you might find something on MUDConnector, if you don't mind the fact that tons of the sites listed there have been closed for a decade and most of the rest don't even have a website. (I'm picky in my old age.)
@auspice Maybe I'm just being dense and not understanding where the hangup is...
The script does stuff like:
echo -e "${ARES_INSTALL_TEXT} Create an ares user"
adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" ares
I assumed that as you walked through the script to see what needed to be installed for a custom environment, you'd just remove/change those bits, just as you would for any other custom server environment quirk.
Is it just because the /home/ares path shows up in a couple of places? If that's the issue then I could probably make that a variable in the shell script so you only have to change it in a single place, at least.
What I really don't want to do, though, is add all kinds of "Do you want to do this? What username do you want?" type of if/else questions to the super-simple automatic installer, because that kinda goes away from the goal of making it super-simple 
A system admin is going to know the answers to those questions easily enough, but Ares is intended to be installable by folks without admin experience. Extra questions make the installation more intimidating.
@Thenomain Having never played on Pern or WoD it's hard for me to really answer that question. But I can speculate.
The key question is what do the characters do, but you have to answer that in the context of all the characters. Shadowrun answers that question for a runner team, which works great in a tabletop setting but doesn't translate so well when you now have 30 players. The same thing is true for a western setting. Westerns are great stories, but they're great stories that typically involve one or two people. They don't translate well to a larger setting. BSG, on the other hand, can answer that question for an entire Viper squadron in one fell swoop.
I'm going to guess that the clan aspect of WoD and the ... what are they, tribes? ... thing in Pern allow you to extend adventures to larger groups of players.
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
I don't mean for my tone to come across as accusatory as it did. I'll keep an eye on that, especially with you since you're awfully nice.
Thanks - I think we were largely just talking past each other. All good.
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
Whatever next state the hobby takes will probably include someone either improving the insecure transmission issue through some new client/interface to cover that problem, or improvements to client/web interfaces using TLS to allow for more of the customization that MuClients provide.
That would be nice, but moving away from the old MU clients - even if you could pry old unsupported ones out of peoples' fingers - presents a whole other set of hurdles. Probably for a different thread, tho.
Mass Effect is cool and all (as Jar Jar is if you're a little kid) but could we maybe take that tangent over to the Video Games thread?
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
It's not quite at what I consider wiki-replacement level yet, but I could see it getting there in a few years, and that's exciting to me.
I'm working on adding a wiki feature right now, which will be in the first release. It won't have all the bells and whistles of something like mediawiki/wikidot, of course, but hopefully the fact that it's fully integrated with the game makes up for whatever's missing.
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
I wasn't saying "request Ares handle" as if there was some way they could get through the https authentication with Ares, but merely as live data to tie an actual user to ip address.
Your Ares handle is public. So anyone with access to your IP address on ANY game (e.g., staffers, coders, etc.) can already tie your identity to your IP -- even if you connected via HTTPs/SSH.
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
Then you would find yourself in opposition to the entire information security industry, OWASP, etc.
Woo! Me against the entire information security industry!
Seriously, come on. The security industry is based around formalized risk assessment processes. Literally nobody is going to equate the risks of general internet browsing (often with financial implications) - which is what those info security guidelines are geared towards - with the risks of roleplaying on some niche game server. Plus, most of the threat scenarios you've described (like IP snooping or social engineering) can happen even if you use a secure connection.
But you're right - folks can make their own decisions as to which risk assessment they choose to believe.
Coding the FFG system is a real PITA -- not only because the dice are weird, but chargen is full of special cases and rules that are not very machine-friendly.
But here's some MUSHCode for the most basic FFG roll stuff. I did it as a demo for someone way back. It's incomplete and unsupported, but it might get you started: GitHub
It uses a syntax of +ffgroll <proficiency>+<ability>+<boost> vs <challenge>+<difficulty>+<setback>.
AresMUSH has a more comprehensive FFG plugin that lets you set your skills in chargen and just do roll Firearms+2C or whatever, but the code is a lot more complicated: GitHub
The Ares FFG plugin was used on Chontio. It's not a pure representation of the Star Wars FFG system, taking cues from FFG's generic Genesys system, but it's something.
Both of those implementations operate on the same basic idea: You program in a fixed set of possible results for each type of die. For instance, the Ability die can come up as either nothing, 1/2 successes, 1/2 advantages, or one of each. So to roll an Ability die in code, you just roll 1d8 and map it to one of those eight possible outcomes.
@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:
@Salty-Secrets I thought about that. The problem then is I would need to sell the traits at a steep discount, which seems to undervalue them, since they would be less bang for your buck than other skills.
But wouldn't that be true for a lot of skills? I mean, charging skills based on utility is a perfectly fine system, but I would think you'd want to use it across the board and not just for social skills. Punch is way more useful than Computers in most MU*s, for instance.
ETA... @ThatOneDude said :
But couldn't you /deprive agency/ with physical stats? IE: I grapple you and force you to stay when you want to leave.
It depends on how you define agency. If you define it as the ability to choose your character's thoughts and actions then nothing short of literal mind control can deprive a player of agency. Even if you tie my character down, I still have control over how they react to that event. If your dice say I believe your lie, though, I no longer have control over my character's thoughts and actions.
Other people will have different definitions, of course, which is why there have been approximately 250 billion pages of arguments here about "social combat".
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
AN EASY SCENARIO THAT IS 100% POSSIBLE AND REQUIRES NO TALENT TO PULL OFF
Absolutely everything in your nightmare scenario can be done if the game is running SSH/HTTPS. You're blaming the technology for a people problem.
@Ghost said in Telnet Safety:
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
And I've said it before and will say it again:
@faraday said in Telnet Safety:
I don't disagree with your fundamental message to be careful what you share online. That's good advice no matter what, and I echo it in the Ares data privacy guides.
@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
"But Theno, Battletech is all about the arena battles!" And yet the 90s top-down game managed to make it more, much more.
Yeah the early Battletech stuff was anything but arena battles. Quasi-feudal politics, urban warfare, epic battles with dropships and aerospace fighters... the family drama of the Crescent Hawks story, the hardscrabble mercs of the original Mechwarrior. Ah, nostalgia.
Dunno if this helps any but here's something I wrote awhile ago. http://aresmush.com/articles/practical-mush-coding
@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:
I can't just abstract all that with the Persuasion skill because at some point my PC is gonna have to open his mouth and actually say things, things that you are going to have to read. There will be non-persuasive words involved. It will make you sigh.
I gotcha. And I agree - some skills are easier to fake than others. All I meant was that the problem you're describing is not unique to social skills. We don't do persuasion rolls on the sorts of games I play on, but I've seen just as many sigh-worthy medical or military poses. I think it's just more pronounced with social skills because they apply literally all the time.
@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
(Which, to speak, I do feel a touch offended, @faraday, that you say the whole team supports the existence of the Pit. I'm on record that I don't. But it's not my call alone to end or limit it.)
Apologies. I meant the admin team collectively, not meaning to imply that it was unanimous. Ark had been pretty emphatic about there being absolutely no intention ever of taking away the Hog Pit. So I may still whine about it, but I consider it a fait accompli.
@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
What degrees of separation exist between a simple, private warning and a permanent ban?
Certainly there are degrees, but in the case of a persistent public forum, I think that private warnings are a bad idea. If somebody on my game posted an inappropriate BBS post, I would make them edit it or take it down. Not doing so leaves the impression that the post is appropriate because it's still there and nobody's done or said anything about it. It's even more of a strong impression if I, the game admin, reply to said post, lending it even more credence and taking away any possible doubt of 'well maybe they didn't see it...'.
@misadventure Those are all good things, but I was speaking more in general about the workforce, not about a specific company's strategy. The root of the problem is in the pipeline -- getting more women to even consider computer science as a field of study and then career. You can't hire people who aren't applying in the first place. Given the groundswell of "girls who code" organizations and the increased interest in kids programs, I think we'll see the numbers start to creep up in the next generation.
@Rook said in +poseorder and +repose:
What is wrong with just a simple OOC request that someone do a little paged playback? That was always the way it was done before...
There's nothing wrong with that, but having an automated system just cuts down on the number of times you need to ask and page. Many people find it convenient. YMMV.
@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:
So if you can suspend disbelief for factual inaccuracy, why not for low interpersonal skill?
Various folks have tried several times to explain why, but since it was buried in other walls of text, I will pull them out for emphasis:
Because social ability comes up in literally every pose, whereas those other skills are not "in your face" as often.
Because what (most of us) are griping about is not the borderline "I can suspend my disbelief" zone, but the "OMG really?" cringe-worthy stuff like in @Arkandel's recent example.
ETA a recently-made point:
@lithium said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@ganymede So change it so downvotes don't touch popularity? The whole 'popularity' metric needs to get tossed on it's ear to begin with, it's complete bullshit.
I don't think you can, at least not without writing your own custom nodebb plugin code.
But I think it's a tradeoff. No downvotes = no serial downvoting bullying. BUT with downvotes there's a way to register disagreement with a post without 10 people feeling the need to post saying: "Dude, you're an idiot". Dunno which is the lesser of two evils there. There is a nodebb plugin that has some interesting rules like minimum rep-levels for downvotes and max number of votes per thread and even an option where a downvote costs you a rep point, which I think might tone down serial downvoting a bit. But who knows.