@Auspice said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
tho honestly until looking at this I've been like haha maybe I don't have adhd because I'm not hyper at all
but I do all of these.
Yeah, same. I never thought of myself as hyperactive, until I realized that all of these inward hyperactive behaviors still count.
@arkandel said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
Yes, and when it's worked well it was exceptional.
Sure, but I asked if anyone had seen it work in general. But the responses so far mirror my experience: It's rare. It's the exception not the rule. When it goes wrong it's a dang train wreck.
We as a hobby spend so much time fussing over activity requirements, tryouts, contingency policies for the inevitable failure... why do we keep torturing ourselves with something that has proven time and time again to fail waaaaaaaaay more often than it ever works? Instead of just embracing the fact that this isn't a very good way to do things and exploring alternatives?
@auspice said in Original Sci-Fi?:
But yeah, the technobabble thing is an issue and I think it's on both Staff and players of any game to foster an environment where handwavium is the norm.
To a point, but handwavium can be an obstacle too. Like, yeah, you shouldn't need to know detailed cardiology to RP a doctor, but knowing what's possible with the tech is important. And often that means knowing a bit about how things work so you can fill in the blanks between the things that are explicitly spelled out. Having one group of folks "handwaving" modern level tech while another group "handwaves" skin weaves and nanobots gets to be pretty darn immersion-breaking. At some point you have to stop handwaving and ground your tech in something players can sink their teeth into.
@silverfox said in The Work Thread:
All the kids I've tested have fallen a full grade level, if not more.
:offers virtual teddy bear basket:
It sucks so much for teachers and students right now.
But if it's any consolation, remember that almost every schoolkid in America is "behind" where they would have been without covid. Some more than others, of course, but our old measures are not meaningful yardsticks in this environment.
@surreality said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
I honestly think 'gatekeeping' positions IC are bad news for a game, period.
+100 for this. The only reason we're having this discussion about an "appropriate" level of IC/OOC responsibility is because games persist in giving players IC/OOC responsibilities that prevent other players from playing without their permission. This is not at all necessary, and IMHO it's very detrimental to the game.
In a Wild West setting, the sheriff is a gatekeeper. Make them a NPC and let the players be deputies.
In a military setting, the CO is a gatekeeper. Make them a NPC and keep everyone on an even playing field rank-wise. (TGG was the first to do that, and I've done it on BSGU with good results.)
Players in my experience are far more willing to "beg forgiveness rather than ask permission" if they're dealing with a NPC leader rather than a PC one, as long as staff doesn't bash them with a micromanaging hammer.
Yes, it's super dooper amazing when you get a player who's able and willing to be a great IC/OOC leader. But I really think it's time we stopped designing our core game concepts around ideas that only work when you're lucky enough to get a rare unicorn to play them. Then people can just relax and play without worrying about devoting X hours a week to administrivia (IC or OOC). Then this idea of "responsibility" falls away for everyone who's not staff.
(You can't get around the IC relationship issues when people stop playing, but that's a different beast. Unless you're a roster game forcing marriages on people, they chose to be in that situation. They can sort out how to extricate themselves from it.)
@surreality It was not my intention to make anyone feel stupid and I'm sorry if it came across that way.
Editing the rest because the first stab was poorly written.
To many people, science is an integral part of science fiction, and sci-fi that ignores basic science/tech facts is viewed just as poorly as a historical movie that tromps all over history or a medical drama that gets all the medicine wrong.
Suspension of disbelief is always a thing, but there's a difference between swallowing basic tenets of "what if" that make the theme possible (e.g. space travel or AI) and something obviously impossible (like bullets shooting around corners or radiation melting people). The latter just seems like lazy/silly writing, unless there's some explanation to why the basic laws of physics don't apply here.
None of this means that people are stupid for liking things that "get it wrong". It just means that different people have different tolerances for when it's acceptable to suspend their disbelief versus when something takes their disbelief into a back alley and beats it senseless.
HowToADHD just did a video on finances: How to Fix Your Credit (and How ADHD Gets in the Way
@kanye-qwest said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
Then the deputies are gatekeepers. The problems people describe with PCs in leadership positions are always going to exist, even with NPC leaders, because those NPCS will not (and probably should not) be around to make all the decisions the playerbase will face.
Not really. If the deputy isn't available, then the staff can have the sheriff do the thing instead. It's a fallback, that's all. It doesn't in any way stop people from RPing with the deputies about crime stuff. Deputies are RP enablers without being gatekeepers.
@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:
The difference is that I've not seen people call it out as elitist or 'theme dictator'ing in sci-fi.
For someone who was getting bent out of shape that I indirectly made you feel stupid for liking something, you seem awfully eager to call people out directly as "elitist theme dictators... (you) want to hit ... the enemies of fun" for liking the opposite thing.
@cassite said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
At least know what you're doing should invoke guilt and judgement. Because it does.
Nope. And this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that this meme brings out the worst in people being judgey without knowing all the facts.
@sunny said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
You need a staffer for every 10-50 players, depending on how your game is set up, right?
There are a number of easy solutions to this. As @Moonman said - you can just limit how many people you allow. You could have invite-only games.
You'd be able to make niche concepts and be able to expect more than three people to show up. You could have more freeform or coded games where you reduce the staff overhead.
And the growth wouldn't happen like a lightswitch. I think first you'd see a rise in the number of games, which will spread the load considerably.
But really, I don't see a giant flood happening ever. As @Auspice said back in the start of the thread, MUSHing sits at a particular niche of the RP spectrum. It's hyper real-time, super fast-paced and very "game-y". It's just not going to appeal to the vast majority of RPers.
Storium, for instance, is super accessible and even got mainstream media attention, yet the community is still rather small and easily managed.
@seraphim73 Also agreed.
I think for techie types, telling how something works helps to answer a lot of 'what can it do' questions in one fell swoop. It's the same sort of shorthand that you might get if you said, for instance, "gravball is football with (this change)."
@cassite said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
That's like pissing on the wall because the janitor will clean it up for you. It's their job to clean the bathroom.
Or maybe it's more like an elderly person with a hip issue not getting down on hands and knees to clean up a spill in a store and instead calling the store's janitor to clean up the mess they accidentally made. Since, y'know, that is their job.
@sunny Uh, I didn't say that? Was there anywhere in my response where I put my foot down and was like: "ZOMG DON'T TALK ABOUT THIS!"? Seriously, why the snark? I gave my opinion about why I don't think it's an issue. That doesn't stop anybody else from discussing it or worrying about it.
@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Baseline info would cover the things that are egregiously unthematic or deeply absurd for the setting
I agree in broad strokes. The only place I think that breaks down is when you start talking about science. How do you make a "baseline shorthand" on your wiki for physics? Or biology? This is not a problem unique to sci-fi games, but I do think you get a bit more disparity on the "commonly accepted baseline" on those games. And wikis don't normally address it at all.
@nyctophiliac Yes. Sensory processing issues commonly occur alongside ADHD. There's some debate as to whether it's a separate condition (SPD) or just another facet of ADHD itself, but nevertheless, it is common to have both.
@bored Sorry, the trivializing comment wasn't directed at you personally. Just a generalized response to the theme of "just do both" I see every time this is discussed. Yes, we can do both (more or less). I believe it to be a short-term necessity, but long-term maybe not the best idea due to the weight of complexity it induces.
As for scenes - Ares currently only shows completed scenes on the web page, to avoid the thorny issues we've both mentioned. It's my intention to allow folks to play both ways eventually, but I'm still working through all the details. For instance - you mentioned grid rooms vs. flexible locations. Well, the telnet version of the scene system already allows you to create a temproom for the scene and change its IC location on the fly. There's no reason that can't play nice with a web version too.
@surreality yeah I’m obviously not getting my point across clearly and I’m giving up. My experience with sci fi games has been very different than yours it seems. I’ve seen waaay more nitpicking on historical games than on any sci fi one.
Holderness Family: ADHD - "Under The Sea" Parody
@moonman Not that I know of. Looking towards the future, both Evennia and Ares have built-in games directories. Both are auto-updated from within the game itself, so there's no need for manual intervention.