@Roz Heh. It actually creates fixed commands though. So after you customize and install it, it ends up being like:
CMD-PUB: $pub *:cemit code
CMD-=PUB: $=pub *:cemit code
You could conceivably have a command that did something like the channel alias +setup, only it created an individualized command on the player himself. (But that would require them being set !no_command). Always seemed like too much of a pain to manage, which is why I settled for my hacktastic alias system instead 
@Roz I don't have anything that does the addcom stuff, but using cemit() instead of an @force will probably fix your semicolon problem. You can look at my channel alias system for inspiration. (it basically lets you set up mux-style channel aliases like =pub or pub for public).
@Seraphim73 said:
So far as I know (and please, @faraday, correct me if I'm wrong)...
I think you're pretty spot on, and thanks.
But I'm still not quite sure what it would take to make it "a system" like @Thenomain is describing. Like, are we talking something like the FUDGE or FATE core rulebooks? I'm not super-familiar with FATE but FUDGE I know has no inherent "balance" across genres. Or are we talking a specific implementation like Spirit of the Century?
Yeah, TGG got around the ramp-up problem in large part by throwing people directly into the action and having a ton of plot scenes. So the mix of "hi where are you from" scenes to "plot/fighting/death" was much higher than on a typical MUSH. I don't think that would translate so well to other settings.
This is essentially the model used by The Greatest Generation rather successfully for war campaigns. It did various battles of WWI, WWII, the Spanish Civil War, the Finnish Winter War... it was very interesting. Knowing that the theme would recycle in a few months made it easier to swallow when your cannon fodder soldier inevitably got killed by the brutal combat system 
And it was nice that every campaign told a full story with a beginning, middle and end. But yeah, it was tough for me at first because I'm the sort to get attached to my characters and their ongoing storyline. I got over it.
@Thenomain said:
d20 SRD
I'm not really familiar with that. Haven't played D20 since D20 Star Wars first came out. Glancing at it online though it would appear to be just the generic DnD style fantasy D20 rules?
And it's not so much that I don't want to, it's just that I'm afraid of doing it and having it collect dust on a website
@bored said:
I made it before, in fact! But you know, she keeps saying she'll stop, and she doesn't.
Besides, the whole 'there are these 3 kinds of players, and while its cool if you want to be one of these other two, I prefer the one I am not-so-obliquely suggesting is more RP-focused and less powergamey' shtick really gets to me. It's a nasty, negative attitude (shaming anyone who does the slightest bit of math in a game full of numbers) wrapped up in nice words. I think it deserves to be called out as smug and nasty.
Perhaps you missed the part where I specifically said "And, btw, I'm not saying the people who do #1 or #2 are "ZOMG evil min-maxers" or anything. It's just a different approach, totally valid on some games. But that's not what I want on mine." I don't want automated bots or character classes/levels on my game either. That doesn't mean I look down on people who play MMOs. In fact, I quite enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies and WoW. It's just a different style of play.
And I'm sorry, I didn't realize that saying I was done arguing about it with YOU meant that I couldn't respond to anyone else on my own thread. I'll bear that in mind next time. Or not. Or maybe I'll just change my mind. Unless of course that's not allowed either.
@Thenomain Why, though? I mean even if I made a full "Faraday's Battlestar RPG" (for example) with everything spelled out as a cohesive rulebook, would that really be any more useful than the FS3 codebase that comes pre-configured with a stock BSG setup and a set of help files?
@Thenomain said:
Couple of things. Firstly: Systems don't care about your personal preference.
Oh, absolutely. But as you said earlier, FS3 is a toolkit. As the system designer, I can say (and have said) "Here's how it's intended to be used", "Here's how I think it works best" and "Here's an example of how I use it." How you choose to use it is your job as a game admin. I have no control over that. But I could do a better job of writing up my guidance. As I mentioned, I had all that written up for 1st ed and it was largely ignored so I let it lapse. I'm not opposed to resurrecting it.
@Thenomain said:
I thought it did so, considering the Fudge/Fate Skill Pyramid going on there, but the way you were talking about it if 'drive' were on that list you couldn't drive if you didn't take points in the skill.
No, sorry, I think I wasn't clear there. You can make a defaulting roll for Driving even if you don't have it. That's a storyteller's situational call.
What I meant was... my personal philosophy is that if something appears on the Action Skill list, then I expect your rating in it to match your background. This is how I perform app reviews and how I do my level best to discourage people from "gaming" the system. Incidentally, this is also how I approach chargen for my own characters.
So if I were to put Drive on my Action Skill list for some silly reason, and you don't take a point in it, I'm gonna ask you during chargen review... "So... you don't have any points in driving. Was it really your intent to not know how to drive?"
For this reason, I would never put Drive on the Action Skill list. It's silly. Driving is common knowledge and not likely to come up in conflict situations. If you want to be a stock car racer, you can take it as an Expertise.
@Alzie said:
If you're suggesting however, which you seem be, that two people with the same amount of points spending them the same way can still be different..
Umm, no, what I'm saying is that two people with the same amount of points spending them differently can end up being very different in terms of effectiveness in conflict situations. Which seems to be kind of... obvious? If you dump all your points in basketweaving you're not going to be as combat-effective as someone who dumped them into firearms. That's true in any system.
@Alzie said:
@Faraday I mean, I don't really care about FS3 one way or another, but you built an RPG system and your premise was to make it inherently imbalanced? Are you high motherfucker?
Apparently that's the general consensus.
:shrugs: Worked just fine on my Battlestar games. Some folks come wanting to be top-of-my-class-badass-Viper-pilot. Some come wanting to play a civilian "nugget" fumbling their way through on-the-job-training. Some want to be cooks, or paper pushers. I've seen tons of well-rounded characters of very disparate power levels having oodles of fun fighting Cylons together.
It's up to you to pick the game system that's best for your game. If FS3 isn't it, no skin off my nose. It works for me.
@Thenomain said:
A lot of games are very specific about what happens if you try to do Skill-Thing without having Skill.
FS3 is too. Or I try to make it so - I would be happy to have feedback about the quality of the docs. You can default as long as there's a "reasonable chance" of success. Again see the footrace / brain surgery example.
As far as assuming average... Basically: If it's an Action Skill, it's likely to come up in the course of the game so you're expected to take it at the appropriate level based on your char's experience. Background Skills (now split into Interests and Expertise in 3rd edition) cover everything else and they're more "take what's important to your char". You're not expected to take Baseball just because you played catch in the backyard as a kid.
Also, they're probing questions. I don't think any of them are meant to incite or harsh. You're taking it well, but it could look like a dog-pile.
Well it's hard not to take it harshly when words like "bad design", "terrible idea" and "broken system" are thrown around, but I did ask for feedback so I can't really complain too much.
But I do think there's a strong cultural component at play here.
I run PvE games with PCs united against a common enemy. That's also where I've primarily seen FS3 used. So I don't really care if Andy the SEAL has an advantage over Nate the Grunt. So Andy kills more Cylons than Nate. So what? They shouldn't be equal. One's a Navy SEAL for goodness sake.
There's also this persistent perception that people sacrifice being well-rounded to min/max their useful skills. I still don't understand this complaint when 3rd ed forces you to take fluffy background skills and gives you up to four for free. Games are also free to configure position-based skill packages. For instance, all my military characters are required to buy First Aid/Firearms/Melee 1 just because of basic training. You can't skimp on that to max out other skills. z
@Packrat - Assuming you're making a generic modern setting and not PoliceMUSH, only Firearms and Melee strike me as action skills. Maybe Intimidate if you think that'll come up a lot. So there won't be a huge disparity - RangerCop might even have an edge due to more combat training. It all depends on how you set up your skill list. FS3 recommends a very narrow list 10-12 skills total, centered around what the primary conflict is on your game.
@Misadventure said:
It's about being equal as a player, having equal opportunity to succeed in game situations and so on.
How is that not equal power? Do you really think that the Navy SEAL should have the same chances to succeed in wartime situations as the marine fresh out of boot? Or are you saying that nobody should be allowed to be Navy SEALs because it's "unfair" to the people who choose to be marine privates?
@Packrat said:
That is the problem, people do not end up subject to the same rules and they do not get the same opportunity
No system with an integral app review can defend against capricious or inconsistent staff. That's a policy/people problem.
@Alzie - FS3's stance on defaulting is that it's tied to the task not the skill: "you can’t do brain surgery without training, but you could default to your Athletics aptitude to run a footrace."
One last point on the chargen balance thing. Consider three characters (using the new 1-5 FS3 stat levels):
All three also have up to 4 fluffy interest skills free of charge.
In a flat chargen system, the costs of these characters is 5, 8, 11. Giving 11 points to all accommodates everyone pretty well. Nate has some points left over to carry forward as XP or spend on fluff, but Andy can still make it through Chargen without making hard sacrifices. You can't do that sort of balancing with a geometric system. Andy needs TONS more points than Nate.
"Exactly!" you might say. "Andy got an unfair advantage!"
FS3 is not designed to build equally-powered characters. End of story.
If you view that as some kind of hideous design flaw, nobody's forcing you to use it for your games. If you're stuck on a game that uses it.. well.. understand its limitations.
@Thenomain said:
If someone doesn't have the skill, aren't they still capable if the associated attribute is above 1?
Sure, to some degree.
But here's the thing... there are a couple ways to approach character creation. (This is true in ANY system, IMHO.)
You've got X points. You can ask yourself...
What skills are likely to come up in the game? I'll take as many points as I can in those.
Woohoo, I can afford Firearms 10! Screw Drive; it probably won't come up. I better take a point in First Aid though, just in case.
How do the dice work? I'll try to spend my points most efficiently to maximize my success chance.
Oh, hey... the success chance difference between Firearms 9 and Firearms 10 is, like, 10%. I'll just take 9 so I can have a point to spend elsewhere. Even without Drive, I still have a 30% chance defaulting to reaction... that's good enough for me. I can buy First Aid with XP later cheaply; skip it for now.
What should my character have, assuming that the names of the levels are accurate reflections of reality?
Well, he's a marine with several tours in combat, and he knows how to drive, and he took a combat lifesaver course. That sounds like Firearms:Veteran(7), Drive:Proficient(4), First Aid:Novice(1).
None of these ways is "right" or "wrong" in the absolute sense of the word, but #3 is what I would call closest to the "spirit" of FS3. There's very little thought involved in chargen. You just go through the very short action skill list and pick the descriptive name that best fits your character in each one. Then you pick a couple interests to round them out with hobbies.
And, btw, I'm not saying the people who do #1 or #2 are "ZOMG evil min-maxers" or anything. It's just a different approach, totally valid on some games. But that's not what I want on mine.
Incidentally, in my ideal world there would be no point limits; you would just pick what fits your character and staff would decide if that concept was too unbalancing. But I've tried that before and it kinda freaks people out. So the points are a necessary evil IMHO. I try to give enough cg points to accommodate 90% of the concepts, and I work with people if they fall into the extreme edge cases.
I'm not trying to "punish" anyone with this system, @packrat, though I understand why some people see it that way. Not all characters are created equal, and that's OK with me because everyone has the same opportunity and is subject to the same rules.
Wow that turned out longer than I thought. Sorry. That's what I get for rambling at 4am 
@ThatGuyThere said:
Thing is I don't mind being the pilot/Driver and quite frequently make that.
What i hate is being not that guy but having folks trying to guilt me into blowing points on a skill I will never use for the nebulous reason of "you should have that."
For me it's not a question of guilt it's just a question of consistency. When I review character sheets, it is mainly with an eye of "do you have all the skills that a character with that background should have". For me, it's not a nebulous reason - it's 90% of the review process.
Why? Because for me the primary purpose of character sheets is to reflect your character. If they don't do that... if they're just "hey this might be useful someday so I'll take it", it bothers me.
Not saying it has to bother anyone else; we all have our pet peeves. But that's what I do on my games.
Side note: Even if Drive isn't an action skill you can still take it if you want to be the wheelman.
@Alzie LOL! My main issue with Drive is that if you do have it as an action skill then I feel obliged to get it at rating 3 at least, unless of course my character is still a student driver.
But then I'm obsessive in my literal interpretation of the skill rating descriptions. Novice means novice, blast it! </rant>