@Misadventure said:
You don't HAVE to keep building mini grids. You CAN. You aren't doing a tactical setup as grid/places though.
Well I said mini grid. I wasn't expecting you'd want to build an entire giant area every time they moved. But for me the real work isn't in the MUSH building, it's in the world building of defining each new area that they've come to.
@secretfire said:
Have the setting be a -caravan moving across North America-. Let everyone have a vehicle of some sort.
I had that same thought for a different game idea, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it would be a nightmare to run. You'd constantly be building new mini-grids and - more importantly - coming up with ideas for where the caravan would go and what they'd encounter along the way. Players would constantly have to adapt to changing venues (where are we this week?) and that might make folks less comfortable with the theme as a whole. Very interesting idea - not so sure how well it would work in execution.
@mietze said:
I've found that most people with some ooc encouragement and knowledge that even if they don't know you/you don't know them that you're wanting to share the stage are far more common than people think. But too many people exclude/don't bother to get to know strangers or are afraid of taking that first step because of course everyone else must be selfish unless they're a friend, and when you come into it with that viewpoint, that's exactly what you're going to get most times.
That's been my experience too. And I think staff can help encourage this cooperative sort of environment with thw world setup and plots that give different people chances to shine.
@Ghost said:
So, how do you write a character, your character, as the main character in your story, while extending time and energy to make your character a supporting cast member in someone else's story where their character is the main character?
It's all good... we can have a mutal admiration society and still disagree on some things 
But to answer your question... for me it's easy because they're different stories. Peggy Carter can be a star in her own story AND a supporting char in Cap's. These things aren't mutually exclusive, in fiction or in MUSHing.
I just haven't seen this awful dog eat dog epidemic y'all are describing. Frankly I wouldn't want to play in that kind of environment, non-consent death or no.
@Seraphim73 Yes, I meant the movie/TV universe. I haven't read the comics. As for the rest - we can agree to disagree. What you see as the (possible) problem I see as the sole reason I play (and run) MUSHes - to enable people to tell their individual stories in a collaborative environment where the sum is greater than the parts.
@Ghost said:
Some players will get uppity on an OOC level about it, but the ones that stay will be your good roleplayers who care about things like metaplot, art, and story over whether or not they're getting their super sekret quasi-cheating romance escape.
I think that's an gross mis-characterization. I am against involuntary character death, but it has nothing to do with romance. I care about metaplot, art, and story. But when I'm playing a MUSH, I'm writing my character's story.
You don't read a novel expecting the protagonist to get killed off halfway through. Yeah, sometimes it happens (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones), but it's the exception not the rule and often times it's not done for "story" but just for shock value.
This is not in contradiction with the idea of telling an overarching story, as @Seraphim73 described. Just look at the expanded Marvel Universe for an example of how to tell individual stories that allow their separate protagonists to shine while still tying into the larger metaplot.
That said, run your game however you want. But understand you'll be potentially depriving your game of a large pool of otherwise good RPers.
@Misadventure said:
I am curious, is there a true benefit to having the IC head of a faction act as an OOC head of a faction?
I see a few downsides, but no real upside.
Well for me it's a simple fact that most of the OOC leadership stuff ties to things that the IC leader would be doing ICly. Hiring, firing, dealing with IC discipline issues, organizing IC events (which ultimately become OOC events), making decisions, etc. That doesn't mean only the faction head can do storyteller stuff, but I do think it's a natural fit.
@Ghost said:
You see, it is my opinion that on most MUs, TS>Plot for most players.
With the exception that I would say 'romance' rather than limiting it to TS, I tend to agree. Even on the Battlestar games, which had a heavy action-adventure bent and plots constantly, the vast majority of RP was around relationship drama. Nothing wrong with that, but I think you ignore that status quo at your game's peril.
@Admiral That's horrible. Don't know what state you live in or whether you care to pursue it, but around here that sort of behavior would be grounds for filing assault charges with the police. Don't know how long you can wait to file a complaint, but something to bear in mind in case there's a next time.
Tutorials would fall squarely under the "Tutorials" section, but if Wikis are a common-enough headache for folks it doesn't seem to do any harm to create a Wiki board (ala the MU Code one). Might prompt some discussions that folks might not otherwise think were a good fit for the forum. Dunno. I'm pretty indifferent.
@Taika said:
I've never really gotten along with PennMUSH. Plus there are some interesting security leaks if you use channels at all. I mean, someone can just @chan/recall staff=200 or whatever and view what staff talks about, without even being on the channel - unless there's been a way to fix it found. (I was told it was a hardcode issue with the channels themselves.)
That particular issue is easily fixed by not enabling channel recall (either on the admin channel or on any channel). I'm not aware of any other general security issues regarding channels.
@skew said:
Alternatively, you could always "draw" up a picture of the screen in an ASCII art maker (http://asciiflow.com/) and then just @em it into the game. You'd have to do it every so often, and it would scroll the screen, but it wouldn't require players to do anything but MU.
That's what I always did. Google Draw looks way cooler though - I think I'll use that from now on.
@Thenomain Well that's why I stopped at "silly" and didn't go further in condemnation. I'd have to actually play it to have a better handle on it - at first blush it just strikes me as unnecessarily goofy.
@Thenomain said:
edit: I thought of a potential for why a situation would be to bring more villain points to the ST, if it's rarer for them to get these points and therefore harder to challenge the players.
Relying on completely random chance, or the player's inability to min/max their dice sums is a silly way to bring challenge to a game IMHO.
@Arkandel said:
The only real problem with this is that most players would need to know the ins and out of the bureaucratic system itself to do the concept justice. And most wouldn't.
It'd be kinda sorta like having an E.R. MUSH set at a hospital - if most characters need to know at least some basic things about medical practices but most players don't, it'll hit a wall really fast.
Military games manage okay despite most players not having the faintest idea about how the military really works. As long as your suspension of disbelief is set at an appropriate Hollywood type level, and you manage the purists who want to go around correcting everyone (guilty, your honor, but I've learned), it can be done.
@Lithium said:
If left over dice are bad, why wouldn't it make a raise out of 5, 3, 1, and 1 with 6 left over?
I wasn't trying to min/max the number of dice left over, but merely to make the combination of dice legit. 6+3+1+1 was not legit. Your dice can exceed 10 (6+5, for instance) but you can't hit 10 with 6+3+1 and then just keep chucking additional dice on it.
Whether you do 6+3+1 or 5+3+1+1, though, seems largely to be a matter of personal preference. Leftover dice are a two-edged sword. The GM gets danger points, but you get hero points.
I'm with @Thenomain though - this system sounds fairly annoying and needlessly complicated even in tabletop. In a MUSH, it's insanity. If I were going to do a 7th Sea game on a MUSH, I would just take SumOfDice/10 and be done with it.
