Best posts made by faraday

@surreality said in Firefly - Still Flyin':

The one issue I have with the suspect flag is that it's a double-edged sword.

That's quite true - SUSPECT is not a great tool because you only see half the conversation. Many comments are innocent enough out of context (though it can also work the other way around too).

I'm actually surprised that more MUs don't do what pretty much every public platform does: Log everything, and only review to verify a complaint.

If I report Bob for abuse on Discord or WoW or Gmail or Facebook (etc. etc.), they're going to check the thing I reported, decide whether Bob did something wrong, and act accordingly. They're not going to henceforth monitor all of Bob's conversations - tromping on the privacy of everyone he's chatting with - just to try to catch him in the act or see if he's also abusing someone else too shy to come forward. And I think we'd all be pretty pissed if they did.

The issue with most MUSHes is that a lot of stuff isn't logged to begin with, and client logs can be easily doctored. So instead of just being able to check a chat log and see: "Oh yeah, Bob was being a total creeper", everything devolves into they-said/they-said.

Ares' solution to this is to let people forward abusive conversations from within the game. That way there are no client logs involved, and reporting abuse is as easily as clicking a button (or typing a command).

There is some privacy cost to this, because more things are stored in the database than on a server like Penn/Tiny/Rhost. But the bottom line is that when you're communicating with a private server, every byte of data you send is able to be logged and/or monitored. You're entirely reliant on the game staff to be up-front about what they intend to do with that data, and then to follow through on their promises.

ETA: A lot of this thread should probably be moved to a separate one. It's not really Firefly specific.

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

but most of the time (in Mu) a scene isnt something you go into with a point, but more to "see what might happen and it keeps going until someone gets bored or has to sleep".

I think that depends on the game, and on the games I've played, that just isn't the case. There are story arcs, on an individual level, a game level and in-between ('seasons' or 'arcs' or what have you). The story thread on BSG:Pacifica was pretty cool, IMHO, and it even had a nice big finale and an epilogue and everything.

I think MUs have more in common with episodic TV show screenplays than they do with novels. Right down to the "crap, Michael O’Hare quit and now we have to write out a big character" type of comings and goings.

Still writing to me. So yeah, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

There is already a tool where you can convey expectations for a scene, whether it's "Only Viper pilots" or "Super-slow work scene" or whatever.

The real issue is that if folks come into it with "Oh well everybody knows that the expectations are <blank>, I don't need to say anything." So that's where having a game-wide expectation can help.

If people bother to read and remember it. Which a lot won't. So yeah... social contracts are hard to manage with technology.

@bear_necessities said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:

The hobby is not dying.

I think part of the problem is we all have a different definition of "dying".

What metric is being used? Total number of players playing any game? Total number of public games? Average number of players per game? Activity (measured in scenes/logs maybe) on different games? Average age of player?

Over what time period are we comparing? The past year? 3 years? 30 years?

There are probably a dozen different ways to potentially measure this, and we don't have solid historical numbers for most of them. All we have are subjective memories and opinions.

But let's talk about the numbers we do have. Bear in mind this is just for the Ares community.

Games

• 64 total games
• 14 games open to public, plus another 9 that were open/active but have since closed
• 5 games in public dev
• 18 private games (in dev or sandbox)
• 18 games closed without ever going public (probably never got off the ground)

Players

• 594 unique player handles

Scenes (for the top few most active games)

• Spirit Lake: 6900+ scenes in 2 years
• Gray Harbor: 6000+ scenes in a little under 2 years
• Savage Skies: 1700+ scenes in 1 year
• The Network: 1000+ scenes in 6 months

(*) Scenes counts total scenes started, some of which were certainly aborted midstream, but that's still a crap-ton of RP.

I mean... everyone's entitled to their own opinions and definitions, but that certainly doesn't seem like a dead hobby to me. ETA: Sure, it's no Fortnite or WoW with multiple millions of people, but do we really want to be?

I played in two PVP campaigns with my gaming group in college - one WoD, one Amber. In both cases we fought against each other - my chars were captured, thwarted, even killed - but it was fine because we were already friends.

PVP games among strangers on the internet is a recipe for toxic behavior, plain and simple. The players are in direct opposition to each other, without the buffer of friendship to mitigate the hard feelings. You can see this in everything from first person shooters to MUs. I don't think you can avoid it, you can only try to manage it when it inevitably arises.

I've played on tons of games through the years. Sure there were occasional toxic players, and how you deal with those are important. But the only ones that had a toxic culture were either run by psycho staff (no amount of policy or code can save you from that) or were strongly PVP focused.

Aww you guys are too kind. Thanks.

@carma said in What is a MU*?:

Evennia even comes with accessibility options built in to its code.

So does Ares. Penn/Tiny/Rhost are effectively accessible because they're text-only without a web component built in.

So I'm not really sure there's any actual controversy here - we're just talking about what some potential future hypothetical game server that may or may not be a "MUSH" might include.

@il-volpe said in What is a MU*?:

I'm kinda puzzled as to what one needs to do to make it accessible for blind players. My first 'MUD' was LambdaMOO, and one of my first MU* friends is blind. He uses a screen-reader, the MOO didn't do anything about it.

Accessibility for the vision-impaired isn't a yes/no but more of a grading scale.

It's unlikely (but I guess not impossible) that a text-based game would be so inaccessible as to get an "F", but that doesn't mean there's nothing more we can do.

For instance, Ares has a 'screenreader' mode which, when activated, strips off the border lines before and after commands. This prevents the screen reader from having to read out "equals equals equals dash..." a bazillion times. It also condenses combat output so you aren't spammed quite so much. Things like that.

I've also done my best to make the web portal compatible with screen readers through aria markings and such. It's still a bit lacking because that's not my field of expertise and accessibility is hard, but I did at least try.

Dice mechanics are HARD. You have to have something that is:

• Intuitive enough for people to understand (FS3v1's custom dice curves did NOT go over well)
• Have enough variation that the dice feel meaningful, but... not TOO much, because it's frustrating when your character's performance is wildly unpredictable (I'm looking at you D20).
• Have enough ability for modifiers that you can account for difficulty/wounds/etc., but not SO much that a +2 mod changes you from a complete noob to a professional (I'm looking at you FUDGE).

Sometimes it feels like an impossible balancing act and at some point you just have to say "screw it, roll some dice and have some fun".

Everything @ghost points out is spot on.

For the record, the license agreements for both FS3 and Ares come with express prohibitions against commercial purposes. Tip jar to cover hosting fees is not what I'd consider "commercial" though - basically it just means don't try to make money off my work.

Huh. I don't discount your experiences, but I can't help but wonder if they're emblematic of a particular type of game or set of games rather than MUSHing as a whole. Where I play, almost nobody cares in the slightest if you want your character to be pretty. Most of them do too. The characters (both male and female) are almost universally represented by "hot" PBs. So much so that it's almost a cliche in the other direction (the Battlestar full of famous hotties).

Stalkers are awful. Obviously nobody wants them on their game. The fact that so many shenanigans go unreported is tragic.

Nonetheless there is a wide gulf between "ban immediately with no evidence" and "oh well not my problem". If someone came to me saying they think Bob is their stalker, I would go to great lengths to see what I could do to make them feel more comfortable. DNC, making sure they understand the reporting tools, promising to keep an eye out for IC shenanigans, etc.

What I won't do, though, is just blindly ban based on accusation alone. Short of instances where a legit restraining order or conviction is involved, I can think of no other venue - online or in RL - where "I think Bob is a creeper because he did xyz on some other platform" would be likely to result in them getting kicked out. Unless, as @Roz says, you know and trust the accuser.

@roz said in GMs and Players:

any bad actor can easily avoid putting their efforts into places that can been directly reported on the games that are on Ares. If these are the only methods of evidence that are acceptable, you will be leaving countless openings for bad actors to exploit.

Channels, mails, pages, and scenes can all be reported in Ares, so I think you're pretty covered? If someone is aware of a gap in the reporting defense I'd love to know about it.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

Come on now, you know and I know that this isn't at all what we're saying here.

I'm really confused because that is exactly what I see people saying?

I have repeatedly seen people saying they would ban even if they weren't sure it was a stalker, that it's better to accidentally ban an innocent person than to leave a stalker on the game, that "issue a DNC and if they bother you I'll ban them" is an unacceptable and callous response, and so on.

I'm not saying that's what everyone is saying (or you specifically), but it sure seems like a pretty clear message.

@kanye-qwest said in GMs and Players:

I think there's a few things being discussed here? Having a sexual or romantic rp relationship with a character doesn't necessarily mean frequent or hours of TS.

Yeah it also seems like we're not making any distinction between types of NPCs or motivation of the parties involved.

A staffer pressuring a player for TS? Abusive no matter whether they're doing it with a PC or NPC.

A staffer making up a NPC at a player's behest to portray their IC significant other? Who cares?

A staffer romancing another PC with the Staff-Run NPC King? That's a little unusual, and certainly has potential for bias (i.e. if the king does special favors for the PC, it gets a bit sus), but I don't think it's inherently unethical. Just tread carefully.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Note, I'm not really interested in the 'be yourself, all roleplay is subjective' attitude, because it can be very easy to offend, or worse, bore people if you don't engage them according to their expectations.

While it's certainly true that you can put people off if you don't conform to their expectations, in my experience you won't find a consistent set of expectations. To put it another way, there isn't "Rome" of MUSHing - there's the US and Russia and Germany and France and they each have their own unique set of expectations. And even within a given "country" if you will (or sub-culture), you'll get widely differing preferences based solely on taste.

The Glossary on this tutorial might be helpful to you, but it sounds like you're probably beyond the rest of it already.

Here are the etiquette suggestions from one of my games, but they are by no means universal:

• Ask before joining a scene in progress.
• If someone asks to join a scene, try to find a way to work them in if you can.
• If you really want a private scene, use a TP room.
• Avoid 'lurking' to watch a scene that you are not a part of unless you know the people pretty well. It sometimes creeps folks out.
• If you are speedwalking through a room with other players, a simple OOC "Just passing through!" is polite.
• Ask before posing logs containing sensitive/private IC information.

@HelloProject said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

I certainly think that there are better ways to gain the same feeling of sheet advancement as XP offers, I just think that since so far a lot of the alternatives to XP haven't really caught on or necessarily given a lot of people the same feeling of achievement as XP, it's seen as a permanent standard.

And while I don't claim that my solution will work or even necessarily be considered all that great, I do think that there is value in trying and discussing.

+1 for the attempt. But having gone down this road before (outside of WoD circles), I can share this perspective:

There are a great many players who are easily motivated by sheet advancement. XP rewards for running scenes, rapid skill advancement, etc. etc. It's popular and common for a reason. It's the tabletop RPG norm.

There are some players who will get frustrated and grumpy if their sheet advancement does not allow them to progress in a way that suits them.

However, there are also players -- even some of the same ones mentioned above -- who will stick around on a game with no XP whatsoever or XP advancement that is so slow as to be nigh-insignificant, if the game is fun in other nothing-to-do-with-advancement ways. I have run games like this. I have seen it work.

I find it kind of refreshing not to have to deal with much of the drama that XP brings, personally.

It's not for everyone, but who says any game can be, or even should try to be?

@Kanye-Qwest said in NeverwinterMUSH:

Someone explain to me what is so wrong with FS3 that it ruins rp?

Now that I have a minute to reply, I figured I'd save you the trouble of mining the old threads for my own TL;DR; answer:

• Characters don't start on a level playing field. For instance, Bob could come out of chargen with 4 skills at level 3 and Harry with 2 skills at 6. Bob will never be able to catch up to Harry. Some people see that as unfair because they think characters should be evenly balanced.

• Many games limit the number of starting points for "balance", leading people to min-max. Example: On 100, I wanted to make a badass archer. I didn't have enough points. I deliberately upped her combat stats because they mattered more, figuring I'd buy up the less important "fluff" skills with XP later - even though it was a bit weird for a veteran archer to be lacking in basic things like Riding and Warfare. Some people again see that as unfair, because someone who spreads out their points more realistically / less min-max-y will be at a disadvantage. The intention was to curb this through app review, but of course it's all highly subjective.

• Outside of combat, which is automated, the mechanics are very 'soft'. The Shadowrun rulebook is 489 pages long, with rules for everything from hacking to climbing. FS3, in contrast, is more like 30 pages if you printed it all out. Everything is resolved as a generic ability roll. While the lightweight rules are a plus for some people, the subjective nature makes them a big turn-off for others.

• People change the system in weird ways. Like, I wouldn't expect to log onto a WoD game and find that someone had completely re-defined what the dot levels mean, or onto a D20 game where they said "actually you can't start with any attribute higher than 12" for some reason, yet people do this kind of stuff all the time with FS3. I'm not mad about it - the system is open so people are free to adapt it however they want. But this strange variance leads to sort of a "FS3 is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you're going to get" mentality.

At the end of the day, no system is going to please everyone. I made FS3 for myself, for my games. Most of the issues people take exception to are either by design (I like it that way) or outside of my control (like how people use it on other games). But some things were genuinely bad, which I've tried to make better in 3rd edition.

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

Just remember - the constructive section basically means we can say an idea is dumb, but not that the person is dumb.

That, though, is the basic problem I have with MSB. Every single discussion boils down to people telling each other "your idea is dumb" (which is a very short trip to "you're dumb for not realizing that your idea is dumb") when most of it is actually just different perspectives/preferences/opinions. It's the vitriol. The vehemence. The "this is what's wrong with MUSHing" or "this is what's ruining our hobby" of "these players are the worst". People are entitled to those opinions, of course, but I fail to see how it resembles anything approximating "Constructive".

@arkandel said in Make MSB great again!:

It's impossible to objectively separate the two, that's the thing. Someone has to make the call whether an idea is being criticized properly or if the poster is going too far, which can be shortform for censorship.

Yep. And I'm okay with that. I'd prefer censorship to every single thread turning into a flame war. It's exhausting. It's not fun. It's the reason I have "quit" this place several times. (Obviously I keep coming back like an idiot because it's the only game in town but that's a separate issue.)

Discourse is the forum software I used for the AresMUSH forums. It has very robust tools for community moderation, including fine-grained trust levels, etc. It also has great guidelines for what constitutes "Civil Discourse" including things like always trying to improve the conversation and be agreable even when you disagree.

I realize I am in a decided minority in this opinion, and that you don't want to play moderator. Both of those things are fine. But you asked what I would do differently and I answered.

@apos said in Make MSB great again!:

I dunno why you wanna make it harder for people to find games tho.

The idea is to make it easier to find actual, playable games. Right now looking at the first page of the 'Ads' thread I see 2 games that are closed, several that are in development, a couple I'm not sure about, and one Evennia release note.

@mietze Locked threads still show up in the list, requiring more paging through to find games that are still open. Having separate sections for "Ads" "Games In Dev" and "Closed Games" doesn't delete anything, it just organizes it a bit better IMHO and makes things easier to find. But whatever folks want. It was just a suggestion.