Interesting idea, though I think some of the terminology runs contrary to what MUs already use so I'm not sure how the various pieces correspond to MUSHes - what's a hub, what's a repository, etc.
MUSHes notably don't have an overarching "account" concept. Even the Ares player handle accounts are linked to your characters; you don't use it when logging into individual games.
@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:
It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?
It really does, and I'm not meaning to tunnel vision on this particular analogy. But I think it's useful, because it deals with the aspect of having realistic expectations.
Let's say that 12 people show up for the Death Star battle MU scene. I think it's utterly impractical to give all of them Luke levels of impact. But if only one of them gets the killing blow on the Big Bad, does that really mean that everyone else is just window dressing? I don't think so. And how many Epic Big Bads can you really expect a game to have, if you expect staff to spread the Hero Time around?
Nobody wants to feel like window dressing. But not everybody can have Luke levels of Hero Time either. I think MUSHers need to accept the middle ground in there more than they typically do.
@Jennkryst said in Old Republic Star Wars Game - FFG System Poll:
I am torn on this vote, because modifications are obviously needed. But not to the degree of the Ares Pyramid.
Just to clarify for those who are not familiar - this wasn't something designed specifically for Ares. The talent pyramid system comes from FFG's own Genesys RPG, which is the generic RPG that grew out of their Star Wars games.
The prevailing sentiment in the FFG forums seems to be that folks prefer the talent pyramid because it offers more flexibility, and folks don't do as much cherry-picking to get just the talents necessary to "unlock" whatever high one they really want. I presume this is why FFG went that route for Genesys.
@ZombieGenesis - one other thing to consider in this is something that Chontio ran into. Players familiar with FFG often expect the whole system, not just chargen and rolls. I think this is largely true of many Star Wars players as well, since most of the existing SW MUs have had coded ships, economies, combat, etc. While you certainly could code all of that up for Ares, it would certainly be a sizeable task.
@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:
I think we watched an entirely different version of A New Hope...
No, we're just looking at it differently. You're looking at what actually happened in the movie script, which yes - everybody but Luke and Han were pretty much useless and completely ignored. I was trying to get people to picture it as a MU plot where there was no pre-ordained hero of the story. Everybody had a chance to complete the trench run, but only one would be the person who actually did it.
Edit: to get away from the trench run in particular since not everyone can be the hero all the time. Even if you include EU stuff the only non-Luke non-Han pilots that get any sort of glory that were at the first Death Star fight are Biggs and Wedge who I would say do get big moments. The rest barely count as named characters.
The "since" you're pushing aside there was the entire point of my original post. Not everybody can be the hero in every scene. It's just simple logistics.
And yet, a lot of MUSHers seem to feel that if they're not the hero, then they're just as much window-dressing as you seem to find the other Rebel pilots.
Just how many "big moments" can you reasonably expect a Star Wars MUSH to have?
@Derp said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
Right, that's what I was getting it. It then doubles as a quiet room.
Yes, if you leave or mute the lounge channel (when enabled on a game), it effectively becomes a quiet room for you. It's just a channel you can talk on using regular poses/says when you're in the lounge room.
Ares also has an actual quiet room built in, which mutes talking and arrival/departure/connection messages.
@thenomain said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:
What is "Social RP"?
By my definition: Any scene that does not involve plot events or move a plot forward in any way. Usually it's characters just sitting around chit-chatting. Getting to know you RP, "BarRP" in its many forms (the bar, the commons, the hangar deck, the restaurant, the mess hall, the gym, the coffee pot in the doctor's lounge, ...), courtship RP, bringing someone flowers in the hospital, etc.
Note: I'm not saying any of this is bad. It's the glue that holds characters together. Without social RP, when the zombies attack it's just you and a bunch of strangers you have no connection to. And after the zombies are gone you just go your separate ways until the next attack. Social RP is essential, IMHO, which is why I don't really understand the assertion that it damages some settings.
Looks neat. Always nice to see original sci-fi.
FWIW, FS3 probably wouldn't be a good fit (being high-tech with psionics and aliens doesn't really fit within the parameters of what FS3 works well for), but there are other systems you could use with Ares if you did decide to use it. Evennia's cool too, especially if you want more simulationist code. Good luck!
@lotherio said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:
Newer games are cutting down on the boring grinding parts by offering other things to occupy the gamer, as mentioned, like mini-games.
Yeah, you don't have to look far on the internet to find tons of people complaining about "the grind" in various games, finding ways around it - including exploits or automation - and whatnot. Minecraft has creative mode and a gazillion articles out there about how to farm/grind resources most efficiently because a significant number of people hate to do it. Also, Minecraft and MMOs are hellishly addictive, so proving that you can get somebody to do something repetitive and boring if you make the game addictive enough is maybe not the best treatise.
So yes, games with grinds still become popular. My assertion is that they become popular in spite of the grind, not because of it.
@Cobaltasaurus said in Welcome to the Euphoria!:
I cannot figure out how to set up starting attributes for people.
Everyone starts with average (2) in all attributes. If you need to tweak that for some reason, you can add attributes to starting_skills in fs3skills_chargen.yml (even though they're not skills). option here
I cannot figure out why ranks is screaming at me.
Not sure what error you're getting - the web page ranks lists looks ok.
I want to set it so that the psionic skills don't default to 1 pt.
First you have to allow skills at "Incapable", which is off by default. option here. Then you can use the starting skills, as above, to start folks with it at 0 instead of 1.
Hit me up here or on the forum/discord if you have any other questions.
@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:
Of someone show up to a scene and for whatever reason has all the impact on it as third extra on the left, I would not begrudge them complaining or just saying fuck it. Why should anyone spend 3 to 5 hours doing essentially nothing?
If that's your POV then hey - that's cool. I'm not saying you (or they) are wrong to spend your time elsewhere.
But for me? I don't give a crap if my character has a Big Hero Moment or not. I mean, sure, it's kinda neat when it happens but it doesn't drive my RP. I had immense fun being the lone Grounder PC in the 20-person scene in 100, making wisecracks to a NPC I was emitting. It's roleplay. It's a story. I didn't feel like the "third extra on the left" even though my character didn't really accomplish anything, ended up on the losing side, and got shot in the head and mostly incapacitated by some random NPC extra.
Different people like different things. All I'm saying is when you have a significant number of people feeling like "I've got a 66% chance of wasting my time if I don't get to do something awesome", you've got a serious logistical problem that I don't think is solvable.
@Mr-Johnson said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:
@Wizz I don't see what you're getting at with what is different between consistent theme and what I'm talking about.
Most alt-history settings start from a common point and THEN diverge. For instance, in TSS that divergence point is 1917 (I think? Something like that.) Everything up to that point has a common frame of reference with the history and culture we all know from the real world, and everything after that point is DIFFERENT. Sure there may be similarities in how things evolve, but the farther you go from that divergence point, the more different things become.
What you described above is very different. It's modern but 1950's styled? I don't even know what that means. Beyonce exists but she's singing 1950's rock and roll? Would the MCU movies be a thing? Are there even movies? Is there an internet? My brain can't even.
"Microchips were never invented" is not just one change, because history and technology are SUPER intertwined. The world we live in would be ridiculously different if technology had taken a different path from the 1950's onward.
@Mr-Johnson I wouldn't say 'wrong' - maybe you can make it work somehow with some more detailed theme files. The first thing that comes to mind is something like the modernized Romeo + Juliet (the Leo one). Some folks dig that kind of mashup. My brain just has a million questions.
@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:
I don't think the focus is diluted, that's all. If WoW is too different then surely D&D isn't, and it's been incorporating both story and loot for thirty some years; sure, different campaigns (which I can argue is a similar concept to 'different MUSHes') can definitely focus on one over the other, but the default case is to have both.
Yes, for a tabletop RPG I agree. But I don't think MUSHes work well under the tabletop model. This has been mentioned ad nauseam on various threads here. It doesn't scale to larger groups and it doesn't do as well with strangers. I think that the hobby is poorer for trying to stick to that model. But you're right - this is probably veering off topic so I'll shut up now 
@Jennkryst You can build whatever you want with custom code, but there's nothing like that built in. If it works as an embedded iframe (which is kinda like the PDF) or a link to an external site (like roll20 or google sketch or whatever) then it would be fairly straightforward. Doing your own from scratch would be a tremendous amount of work.
@thenomain said in Favorite Minigames:
Thinking of RPGs as MMOs puts a lot of clarification on Mu* design.
Y'all are just kind of reinforcing the point here that these minigames are more of a MUD/MMO/RPI thing Which is not to say MUSHes can't have them too, of course, just touches on why some folks feel it's out of place.
If I want to do a farm sim, I'll go play Farmville. If I want to grind mobs, I'll go play a MMO. MUSHes offer something different, and I don't think they can really compete. Anything we do would feel like a pale knockoff of what else is out there. (And the cynic in me says: probably also be horribly broken/unbalanced.)
@Pyrephox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I pose while I'm on, but as soon as I log off, I forget it exists. I'm so sorry to everyone I've let down on those, but...yeah.
That's how I was with google doc scenes.
@jennkryst said in Favorite Minigames:
Do we need to have Farmville AND an MMO AND a MUSH if we want to roleplay the results of killing a mob that interfered with our farm sim?
If that's what (generic) you wants, you should make it. I'm just expressing my preference. I think we've seen that a dilution of focus makes for a worse experience because game designers and coders can't reasonably be expected to be great at everything. They could add mob AI to FarmVille, sure, but it probably would be poor compared to the experience in a MMO. People do try to "RP" in WoW, but it's not really what most MUSHers would consider RP. And so on.
ETA: Also I think it becomes a culture issue. How many folks want to do farm sim stuff, AND don't mind if zombies invade their vegetable garden while they're planting potatoes, AND want to roleplay about it? Hey, if you can pull off a game like that, more power to you. But I'm skeptical.
@L-B-Heuschkel Yes that's similar to what I was prototyping.
It's still not quite ideal though. There are two "axes" of pacing...
I really don't want to have TWO different settings for each scene - that's too complicated.
There's also the consideration of whether people would use and respect the settings in the first place. For instance, Storium has a 'pacing' indicator that's roundly ignored. I've been in several games marked as "Normal" (one SCENE per week) and it's lucky if you get one POSE per week.
So yeah... culture is complicated. More code may not be the right answer.
@roz said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:
I imagine there are plenty of lawyers who are like "you should say no just so we can all avoid the potential for a possible headache down the line."
Right. "I don't feel like dealing with any potential headaches, however unlikely" is a completely reasonable position to take. "I really don't mind but my lawyer says I can't/shouldn't" is a cop-out IMHO because the actual risk of losing a court case against a derivative fanfic writer is ludicrously small.