@HelloProject said in Computer Science:
edit: What's a good resource for learning MUSH code?
Don't. Learn Python for Evennia or Ruby for Ares instead. 
But if you're a glutton for punishment, there's the classic Ambery's MUSH Manual, my journeyman level guide, or the tutorials on mushcode.com.
@Auspice said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
Won't lie. I go with Easy. Sometimes Normal, but I play to relax. Like video games are where I go to kick back, shut my brain off, and just forget work/school. I don't ant no goddamn difficulty.
Ditto. I'll play Normal if the game is inherently easy. Otherwise, Easy.
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
... I thought it worked well for small group combat on X-Factor, even if the mutant powers still had to be +roll'd and up to some GM discretion.
Yeah I mean... the whole point of it is to automate the combat resolutions to make combat scenes go quickly. If you're having to resort to manual +rolls for a lot of stuff, I honestly don't know what real benefit you're getting from it. FS3 can be used without +combat, though. It's an optional add-on.
@WTFE Thank you for pointing out that the main combat intro has no section on vehicles. That was just an oversight, which I'll fix. 3rd edition and its documentation are still in beta. The feedback is appreciated.
And yes, although the +roll system is simple, the combat system is robust. It is designed for big combats in war games like Battlestar to give players some flexibility in their actions so it's not just 'shoot shoot shoot' over and over. There is indeed a learning curve, absolutely.
I'm sorry to hear you've had poor experiences with it, though. My experience has been quite different. On BSGU last night we just ran through a massive combat with 12 PCs and dozens of NPCs and got through it all in three hours. In only one round did anybody do anything that required a manual pass/roll. There were several players who had never been in a combat before and they picked it up pretty quickly. This is what FS3 +combat is for. Even I don't use it for 1-on-1 sparring sessions or simple crap like that. A simple +roll will suffice.
I don't want to derail the thread further, so anyone with any specific feedback about improving FS3 is welcome to PM me.
@WTFE said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
Every time I've been on a game that uses FS3 (that's about a half-dozen by now), people have tried the system, right down to in one case staff having a set of LESSONS in how to use it. And in every case--no exceptions--it was deemed so unusable by most of the players that when staff wasn't running scenes (and thus forcing the issue) the players fell back to some variant on "roll a die, whoever rolls highest determines outcome" and then just posed accordingly. I would not call this a resounding success for the system.
The basic mechanic is a pretty simple +roll system where you get results like "Good Success" or "Great Success" so I'm honestly baffled as to what would be so confounding that people would resort to just rolling a random die.
But seriously, if you don't like it, that's cool. It's not a system that's suited for every game. It's not intended to be. That's why at @Thenomain's suggestion I wrote a new guide for 3rd edition that goes more into why you should (or shouldn't) choose FS3 for a game and how game runners can tweak it without horribly unbalancing things. Various games have used it successfully. If it turns you away, no biggie. I feel the same about D20, so - everyone's mileage will vary.
@WTFE said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@Bobotron said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@fatefan
I recall hearing that FS3 doesn't really do anything but scifi and modern very well without serious tweaking.And it doesn't do those particularly well either.
Gee thanks. 
At any rate, yes I agree that FS3 is not the best fit for a gritty fantasy game. You can do it, but it was designed for a specific type of game - cooperative, near-modern, lightly-coded.
@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?
@surreality said in Course Corrections:
As staff, what do you tell this player?
"Sorry, no. <and here's why>" usually works pretty well for me
If it's not too crazy of an idea, you can also try the "No, but..." angle. Turn their idea into something that isn't game-breaking. No, you cannot win the war by inventing a Cylon-killing computer virus, BUT you can influence a major battle by messing with them for a time.
Either way, a game has constraints. It is not unreasonable to expect players to stay within them.
Aw thanks, @Ganymede. I worked really hard on AresMUSH and the wiki, so it's nice to hear when folks like it. But beyond that, I have to give credit to the players. We've got a good bunch of folks who go out and do stuff. Lots of IC drama while keeping OOC drama to a minimum. I also have to give a shout out to @EUBanana, @Three-Eyed-Crow and the rest of the TGG crew, since my vision for the game was basically "TGG in Space" (minus the permadeath) The way the PCs are clumped together in a flat organization and the regular mission structure is basically inspired from TGG.
@Ganymede said in Course Corrections:
<OOC> Lord McFarty says, "ive never watched GoT!!! i don't plan to so don't tell me what i can't pose!!! i don't plan to change"
That's obnoxious, yes. But....
It's the unwillingness to put even the slightest effort into what they are doing, so that they aren't negatively affecting what you're doing. That's what I have a problem with: the lack of respect for others.
Really? Them using an innocuous phrase like "gunmetal gray" or "okay" is impacting your enjoyment of the game? Really? I mean, if so okay, I'll take your word for it. It just seems strange to me, that's all.
To channel @Thenomain
"What is this... gunmetal you speak of, m'Lord?"
<OOC> Faraday says, "Oh come on...you know what I meant."
@Auspice said in Course Corrections:
The issue wasn't the concept of Legos. It was her need to use the brand name (in IC dialogue) and have everyone else warp theme to do so as well (for them and other such items), for her.
OK, yeah, that sounds obnoxious now that I have more info.
But still, back to the more generic point... LEGO is a particularly glaring use (like iPod would be), but it still seems a weird thing for folks to get upset over. I mean, where do you draw the line? Like @ThatGuyThere said -- what about 'tennis shoes' or 'aspirin' or 'kleenex' or 'okay', or 'getting to third base' or calling someone a 'casanova' or saying you're going to 'go postal'?
There are a bazillion common everyday items/expressions that have their roots in specific RL historical events or brand names. Trying to be the Theme Police for all of that just sounds exhausting.
@ThatGuyThere said in Course Corrections:
@faraday said in Course Corrections:
I agree my issue would be with her reaction not her use of Lego. Her over-reaction to the FYI would cause me to avoid her, her use of Lego wouldn't even make me blink.
After all we are stuck playing these games with a language that is filled with cultural references even ones we do not think about such as calling soft soled athletic shoes, tennis shoes when the IC game culture likely never developed a sport of whacking a ball over a net on a lawn (and then having that sport evolve to being played on clay and hard courts as well as grass) let alone calling that sport tennis.
Yeah, exactly. And I agree about her reaction. To @Ganymede's point - as staff I'd have more problem with her attitude than her use of lego bricks. (..."actually it's a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system...")
@Cupcake - I think someone has to be pretty oblivious not to notice that everyone else around them is posing in present tense. I don't think that would be something that needed to be pointed out. If they're still doing it after a scene or two, it's most likely a stubborn or passive-aggressive thing going on.
@ThatGuyThere said in Course Corrections:
...unless they also want to police all such things like say Aspirin (also a brand name though one that has lost trademark protection) instead of whatever the hell drug would be to proper name for Aspirin.
Yeah having played a lot of BSG that's my take on it, both as player and staff. There are thousands of names for everyday things that would make absolutely no sense in a different universe like Star Wars or BSG -- everything from tylenol to kleenex to legos. If we got hung up on all of them we'd go insane.
But setting aside Lego Girl, I'd say in general that a polite "Oh, just a friendly FYI..." would be all right if something were really bothering you. Otherwise I'd just let it go. Involving staff seems like overkill.
@Arkandel said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
The way I like to think of it as an example is this: Imagine CGen where you see a character sheet not much unlike (or even identical) to the one at the back of the RPG book, and you fill it up in exactly the same way.
Yep. The chargen on the web prototype lets you go through the motions so you don't have to imagine quite so much BSGU has online chargen that's not as fancy (due to ugly technical limitations of trying to munge together a web app AND a telnet app into the same architecture) but is actually fully functional.
@Seraphim73 said in What MU*s do right:
Yeah, I've always been intensely curious as to how things worked behind the scenes (only having read a couple of logs). Looked like there was a whole lot going on (and maybe like FS3 was a 'simpler' version of this system?).
Yeah, there was a lot going on. It was real-time. You had to wait a number of RL seconds before you could move or act again. Poses had to be very short because if you took long to pose you'd miss your chance to act and probably die. Pose order? Pfft. You snooze, you lose - and probably die. The NPCs were real characters, which meant if you wanted to have a battle with 7 Turkish badguys against your PCs, you needed to have 7 MU* windows open.
And yeah like @Jim-Nanban says, the code is just.... WOW.
As an aside, I wouldn't say FS3 is a 'simpler version'. FS3's combat can trace its lineage back to Battlestar Pacifica and Babylon 5 MUSH before that - long before I'd ever played on TGG. That said, I'm sure TGG's system influenced later editions of FS3, at least sub-consciously.
TGG's combat system, designed by @EUBanana, was amazing. The whole "high death toll" and "short campaigns with new chars each time" thing wasn't quite my cup of tea in many ways, but I loved it anyway. It was a unique game with a unique atmosphere that I haven't seen before or since.
@ThatGuyThere said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
For the purposes of MUSHing I would not consider a 16 minute wait to be real time. I know it is a personal preference thing but if a sixteen minute wait was the norm for a scene with someone I would not be in a scene with that person often.
Everyone has different expectations for pose times - that's not really my point. This is a reply 4 minutes later. The next reply might come in 30 seconds after this or 3 days later. That's not a limitation of the forum software, it's a cultural expectation. Like Theno said, technology is not application.
@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
I'm complaining that "web-based" is poorly defined and a poor metric.
We can do better.
Sorry for the double post, but our posts crossed and I think this is a great point that warrants a separate response.
I focused on the web-based aspect to respond to Arkandel, but you're right - that alone is not what makes it an improvement.
What makes it an improvement is having a better user experience. You don't have to learn a set of command-line commands and remember obscure syntax (is it bbpost title/message or title=message?). You can have images to prompt the story appear seamlessly in poses. You can use hyperlinks and bold text and other formatting things that telnet MU*s don't let you do. You don't have the game over here and the wiki over there and have to worry about integrating the two (often times manually). You don't have to clean logs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
And yes, you could do all of this with a new specialized client application. But again that's the beauty of having something on the web - you don't have to download and install a special app. You don't have to develop 7 different versions of that app for all the different OSes.
The barrier to entry would be significantly lower and I think there would be a lot less friction in many day-to-day MU* tasks. But that's just me. I freely admit to being in the minority here.
@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
So someone will create another client for real-time communications with the server, one that might not be web-based. I actually think "web based" right now to be still pretty limiting; look at the number of people who use Skype as their game-enhancing system of choice.
I don't understand why you're equating "web based" with "not real time". I just responded to your forum post 16 minutes later. Is that not "real time"? Is Slack or Skype somehow more real-time even though responses could come back hours later? It's eminently possible to have real-time chat on a web-only MUSH - just look at the Slack web client or some of the Rails 5 cable examples.
But yes, someone could conceivably make a separate client to talk to the game, if there were a public API. Again, to use Slack as an example - there's the web client, the Mac/Win desktop clients, the various mobile clients, etc. If the perceived value was there, it could be done. But I think it would be onerous to implement.
@Thenomain said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):
What the hell does "web-based game" mean?
Doesn't the "... instead of relying on telnet" part give you a pretty good idea though? I mean, what would you call it? Web-centric? Web-only?
I agree that the terminology is imperfect but I lack anything better without diving into specific technical details: "A game that provides a MUSH-like playing experience(*) but with only an integrated web client/wiki and no telnet connection to support existing MU* client software."
(*) And even that gets into philosophical territory of the fundamental differences between a MUSH, a PBP game, and something like Storium. What makes a "MUSH-like playing experience"? Is it the grid? Posing in real time? The fact that IC time passes in constant progression with RL time? You can see where I ended up on that question, but I think everyone is going to have a different answer.