Best posts made by faraday

@tributary Yes, sometimes that can work. In general though? Often not. Not everyone is a high-energy frenetic person who isn't paying attention to their surroundings. (Most in fact aren't.) So it bugs me a little. It's not the end of the world.

@tinuviel said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:

haven't found a compelling argument or benefit to change what I know to something entirely new.

That wasn't what I was asking though. I was asking, specifically, if I (or someone) opened up a new MUSH that looked cool but you couldn't use your usual client, you could only use a web browser or some other new-fangled client - would you try it?

The overwhelming response to that question in polls is "no". That pretty much dooms any attempts to do something radically new unless you want to say "screw you veterans". But if you do that... who exactly is going to run and play on these hypothetical newfangled games?

@zombiegenesis said in Back in my day....:

The problem with this generation is that there is social media to make sure EVERY kid is aware of the latest dumb fuck thing to try.

Yeah I think it's just getting more attention because now the kids are doing the SAME dumb thing instead of each coming up with dumb things on their own. But kids have always done dumb, sometimes dangerous things.

In the grand scheme of things some doofuses eating soap is maybe not so bad compared to an entire generation doing crazy stunts without bike helmets.

@arkandel said in The trappings of posing:

Yeah, I agree with that. We're really used to the way we do things - but I'm not so sure we're not in the minority, and that we're not just holding our arbitrary way of doing things as the golden standard others should be conforming to.

To be clear - I don't think there's any real problem with the way we do things. Tabletop is usually present tense ("I say..." "I hit the ork with my sword..."), and MUSHing has a lot of roots there. But I think it's pretty obviously a quirk of the genre, rare in writing, and I can't really fault anyone who slips up sometimes or has a hard time adjusting. Now someone who's been doing it for awhile and just refuses to adjust? That's different.

@derp said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:

I guess this depends on what you mean by 'nicely'.

From talking to several SimpleMU users, the definition of "nicely" is "How SimpleMU does it" Which is not the same way Potato does it, apparently.

And to @Tat and the other SimpleMU users, because when I had a Windows machine I held onto my precious SimpleMU.exe long after onlineroleplay.com went away. So I get it.

My main point is - Developers ignore backwards compatibility at their own peril. (Speaking of which, I'm gonna make the smartquotes thingy we talked about a configurable option.)

@Auspice Substitute times and dinner instead of lunch, and that was me yesterday.

@apos I think you're understating the impact of different societies on everyday RP.

For example - when I played on 100 there was this one scene where some of the Arkers were visiting the city and it's like... wait, how does the economy work? Are there restaurants or is it a like a tribal common meal? Can I just go and say "These are my guests, give them food" or do I pay for it or what? Is it some grand faux-pas to bring outsiders to the marketplace? IS there even a marketplace if there's no free economy?

This crap is not easy, and yet it's vital if you want to do scenes beyond: "okay we get food somewhere somehow... handwave handwave handwave"

The same can be said for leisure time, sports, popular media, etc. To say nothing of the complexities if you introduce aliens.

In a fantasy setting everyone pretty much has a shorthand of "DND economy / feudal politics" and you're off to the races. People don't travel as much and it's not like they have the internet, so ignorance is easy to handwave ICly without your character looking like an uneducated bumpkin.

This kind of stuff is way more impactful than someone demanding "tell me all about how a phaser works".

@thenomain said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:

this “telnet is antiquated” talk should stop. People use SSH daily

I agree with everything else you said, but this one thing...

Highly technical people use SSH daily. Your average consumer/gamer simply doesn't use anything like that on a regular basis. Command-line interfaces are already a barrier. When you consider that there's an entire generation of kids growing up now who are frustrated when a screen isn't a touchscreen, this problem is only going to get worse over time.

Obviously text is still going to be the focal point of play because it's a writing game, but chaining our games to a CLI is a bad long-term plan IMHO. People say 'telnet' as a shortcut, which is bad, but it's not the protocol it's the human interface. You could switch it over to JSON HTTPS on the back-end and that doesn't solve the fundamental problem.

@Ganymede said in The Art of Lawyering:

All I can say is that you should believe nothing you read on the internet about cases. Most of the articles are written by non-lawyers.

Are there even any good sources for laypeople? Something like Legal Eagle - though I know you didn't seem to thrilled with his stuff specifically earlier in the thread. I find that kind of thing fascinating but it's hard to know the pedigree of the information.

@ganymede said in Social Systems:

But, as for agency, I think the best way to encourage people to use a social system is to put player agency on both sides. For the aggressor, the option to use a social mechanism should always be available; for the target, the option to opt-out of the result should always be available.

Sorry for double post but I missed this before... What you describe is the norm on the consent games I've played. You can always TRY to manipulate me, but I have to give my consent to BE manipulated.

Sounds like RfK was just putting some carrot incentives around it so everybody comes away with something (either what they wanted, or a 'beat'). Nothing wrong with that, but did it really help? Was the beat-carrot enough incentive for someone to take a social dive when they otherwise wouldn't?

This probably speaks to how basic my MU client use is, because I've been on Mojave for awhile now and everything I care about is still working great. (I did notice the MUSH editor broke a couple of OS versions back, but I rarely used it so no biggie.)

Thanks for keeping it alive though @Sparks!

@Ganymede said in The Art of Lawyering:

But if you are in a legal dispute of any kind, you are best served by going to see an actual lawyer.

Oh it's not for any useful purpose. I just think it's interesting. Some people watch the travel channel. I like legal and writing analysis vlogs. :helpless shrug:

@three-eyed-crow said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

You've just 'granted,' as if it were a side note, the main utility of +events.

Right, events are, well... events. Using the event system for an ongoing plotline is using the wrong tool for the job.

I considered adding private events to Ares but it just didn't seem like there was a lot of utility for that. It struck me as the difference between using Outlook to schedule an important work meeting (i.e. +events) and just sending a text (aka page or +mail) to your two buddies coordinating movie night.

@Sparks said in Hosting and codebase recs:

last I checked, if you pulled out FS3.3 to replace it with a custom dice system, you lose a lot of the web integration (web-based character creation, web-based combat management, etc.).

Not a lot, no. I've worked very hard to not make Ares tied to FS3, so that people who want to use other skills systems will be able to easily.

If you don't use FS3 then it's true you don't get the FS3-specific web components, but that's a very small piece of the web portal functionality. You still get scenes, wiki pages, character profiles, web chat, help, etc. etc. You can even do part of chargen - just not setting skills unless your game has custom web code for their skills module. (But you'd need that anyway even if you used another codebase.)

@Sparks said in Hosting and codebase recs:

However, the tradeoff is that Ares is a fully-coded game, and while it's not terribly difficult to add to it, it is—with a few exceptions—far, far harder to rip out and replace chunks of it.

This part I agree with, but just to clarify...

There are several plugins that are designed to be optional in Ares -- FS3, weather, ranks, etc. These can be turned on or off with a mouse-click in the web config. Ares is also designed with a ton of config options to tweak how the systems behave.

It is certainly more difficult to replace core plugins, because many of them depend on each other. The plugin system will let you replace anything, but it does require custom code and I wouldn't say it's easy.

If you don't like the way Ares does things and are going to want to make extensive changes to core plugins, then yeah - starting from scratch might be the better option.

@Auspice said in Good TV:

But I gotta say, I feel like some of these teams were chosen less for ability and more for, uhh.... quirkiness? factor?

Well, I mean - it's reality TV. They're going to choose contestants that they think are going to get people to watch. But judging from the final builds in the first episode, they all are at least "good" builders, some moreso than others.

@roz I think we're just miscommunicating. Let me try my thesis again from the top with hopefully more clarity...

• The event calendar system (aka +events) IMHO is for scheduling "events" (in the lowercase-e sense of 'a pre-arranged gathering of some description').
• There's no implication that "events" would be momentous in nature.
• There's no implication that "events" would be open to everyone. I think that all events should say who they're geared towards - whether that's "pilots only" "everyone in Westeros" or "just people who have been participating in the Foobar plot".
• There's no implication that "events" are staff-only. They can be for PRPs or even a couple friends gathering. I haven't personally seen events used for smaller gatherings any more than I send Google calendar invites to my buddies for movie night, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't use it for that.
• I think that expecting the events system to provide any other plot management functionality (coordination, follow-up, tracking what happened, etc.) is using the wrong tool for the job.

The only thing I'm mildly opposed to is making a bunch of code/commands for marking events as "private" and limiting who can see them. Firstly because it feels a bit exclusionary, and secondly because it would just add a whole bunch of complexity to a system that I don't personally feel is necessary or valuable enough to be worth the effort.

@ZombieGenesis said in Bad Moon Rising MUSH(Buffy FS3):

The stats have limits(up to 8 I think?) so I was curious about how they handled stats that went beyond that.

I have no idea what Bad Moon did, but your concern is quite valid. FS3 does not scale well to superhuman ability levels because of the way the dice mechanic works. It's just not designed for that.

Once you get above 9 dice you're already at 99% success on a base roll, so adding more dice doesn't really get you much. More dice do insulate you against modifiers and give you more of an edge in opposed rolls, but the effects are not as dramatic as you might think. It's certainly not going to turn somebody into a super-powered badass.

FS3 also has no coded powers system, so you'd either have to wing it (using advantages or whatever) or code up something yourself.

But as @Bad-at-Lurking pointed out, Ares supports other skills systems that would probably be more suitable.

@silverfox Like GreenFlashlight said, the diagnostic criteria is a bit complex. Gets into how many behaviors, how severe, did it start in childhood, etc. But in general with any mental challenge, I think the border between personality quirk and disorder comes when the behavior starts having significant negative impacts on your life.

So a kid stimming, walking on tiptoes, or liking clothes without tags isn't in and of itself a problem. But if that same kid is ALSO having a lot of trouble communicating with others, or is so bothered by their shoes being too tight that they can't function... that's the time to maybe look into further evaluation.

@apos said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

All it takes is staff tolerating a single negative, whiny player that shows up to stories and makes unreasonable demands. If they tolerate Negative Nancy or Whining William, that proactive player's drive is dead. And staff not saying, 'Sorry, you don't fit in here, best of luck to you, William' means that you are saying, 'We are keeping William, and it's okay if he drives off Driven Dave or Proactive Paula'. So all the tools in the world are worthless if staff and players are unwilling to enforce an environment that keeps a high standard of behavior.

It would be nice if everyone were positive and enthusiastic, but that's really just not realistic. People are people, and if we start banning folks for simply not being proactive enough, you're going to quickly find yourself with an empty game.

If Driven Dave is going to be discouraged by a bit of negativity, then he's really not that driven after all.

@Seraphim73 It all depends on what they're trying to model. I'm not a big Buffy expert or anything, but I seem to recall the 'supers' having such strength that they can throw humans across the room effortlessly, take wounds that would kill a normal human, etc. etc. You just can't model that effectively in FS3. It's designed for humans. Sure you could make it so the vampires always go first in initiative or the werewolves have claws that do the same damage as a knife or whatever, but that's not really modeling "superpowers".