Posts made by faraday

@roz said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I would actually say that Discord's not a great comparison here, because Discord servers absolutely make use of channels, which are, from my perspective, the same exact thing as spawns.

But that's exactly my point. There is a natural visual separation of the data that makes "spawns" in the sense of separate tabbed windows irrelevant.

The Ares web play screen works the same way. (I'm not saying it has 100% feature parity with Discord or that it's perfectly designed in its current form, just that philosophically it's closer than the old MU client model.)

@sunny said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

ALSO
blinky blinky flashy flashy is super important to remind me I'm RPing.

Yeah. I can't use the web play screen for the same reason I can't use the web versions of discord or slack or verizon tech support. The notifications just aren't attention-grabbing enough in a browser so I'll forget it's there.

We should also keep in mind that the need for some kind of desktop client doesn't mean that we should be stuck with telnet-driven plain text blobs forever. It's just all we have currently.

In terms of features not being available on web, I think a lot of it is just habit/tradition.

For example, consider spawns. Without them on a regular client, everything is jumbled up in one thread. That makes spawns essential, which trains our brains to interact with the game in a certain way. But we don't have spawns in discord, and nobody(*) cares because they're not necessary. Everything is already separated enough.

(*) - I'm sure somebody somewhere cares, but generally it's not a thing people worry about.

Auto-logging is similar. A browser app will never log the same as a desktop app. For somebody who's used to logging every piece of screen text every time they log in, that could bug them But for someone who starts out with Ares... they know they can report a conversation/scene for abuse easily, can download any scene when it's done, and can get an archive of the entire portal on demand. Do they really need live-to-disk-pose-by-pose logging? Probably not.

Challenging the status quo requires looking beyond what current features are available (spawns, logging) to what need those features are meeting. If you can meet that need in a different way, it may not be enough to convince people who have been doing things a certain way for 30 years, but it can begin to shift the paradigm.

Relevant to what @Kestrel mentioned, How to ADHD did a video on ADHD in Women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMpt40zNK-w

@kestrel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

The psychiatrist I saw indicated that I needed to fit the criteria for all 3 in order to be diagnosed.

With the "I am not a doctor" disclaimer, from what I understand from my kids' diagnoses, that is flat out incorrect. I would seek a second opinion. Ideally someone who specializes in ADHD. There are unfortunately entirely too many psychiatrists who either don't have up to date understanding of the condition (particularly the inattentive subtype), or are flat out ignorant/denying. I hope you're able to find someone who can help you properly!

@ganymede My cat got out once and got scared and found a place to hide right around the house. Apparently that's pretty common, especially with indoor cats, so check for hideyholes around your/your neighbors' houses. (Mine was under the deck.) You could also put out some food to lure them back. Hope they come home soon!

I think it's good to clarify the difference between an antagonist PC and an antagonistic PC.

An antagonistic PC is just a jerk. They tend to be self-regulating. Either the player does it in such an annoying fashion that people start avoiding that PC, or they do it well enough that it's not a big deal.

An antagonist PC, on the other hand, by the strict narrative definition, is one working against the protagonist. They're actively getting in the way of other PCs, messing up their plans, being the challenge that needs to be overcome. This is whole other level than someone who's just a jerk ICly.

It'd be nice if people could handle it better and realize that a Sherlock-Moriarity give and take, victories and defeats can be awesome. In a TTRPG or sandbox among friends, you'd have a better chance. On a public game? Decades of experience tell us otherwise.

How to handle them? Don't

Most games with some element of character-vs-character set up antagonists as a zero-sum game. Cops vs. robbers, Imperial vs. Rebel, superhero vs supervillain - one side's success comes at the direct expense of the other side. Most MU players can't handle that maturely.

Even if you find a rare RPer who can, the problem is that 90% of MU RP is social. It's hard to RP antagonists in social scenes. So there's this natural tendency to mute the antagonism to avoid cutting off your own RP avenues. (TV shows do this too when they reform a villain enough to join the good guys).

Certainly it _can_work - I've seen it done a handful of times. But most of the time it just leads to drama and headaches. Antagonism + strangers on the internet + players overly-invested in their characters' successes is just a recipe for disaster. This is why all my games are PVE.

@devrex The whole point is that people don't maintain solid control of a character.

And yeah, that's a pretty 'out there' concept for most of us, but that doesn't mean that it's an inherently terrible idea.

I mean, TGG managed to have a game where your characters were killed off like the WWI cannon fodder they were. It was niche, but people still played. You never know.

There are also other online RP forums where there's more community control over characters (though probably not quite to this degree). Storium lets players have far more control over storyteller-run NPCs and other PCs to a degree that still makes me feel weird.

@derp said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

I don't even think this would be the first big fire that you'd have to put out. The first big fire that you'd have to put out is figuring out how every single job that a player puts in is going to be resolved before that player logs out.

I mean... just use Ares, have everybody make up a playerbit character for the OOC stuff, set all the 'cast' characters to NPCs, give everyone the control_npc power, and code up some kind of 'today I claim Bob' queue to say who can pose who. (Or don't, if you want a true collaborative novel approach, and just let anybody pose anybody at any time).

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but from a purely technical standpoint it's not all that difficult to execute.

@ghost I don't really see what SSL has to do with keeping out creepers.

Even if you used a third party identity system backed by SSL - say, MSB logins, for instance - I can always just use a VPN, create a new account on MSB, and be somebody else.

And even invite-only games can get someone in who ends up being a jerk under the right set of circumstances. You can't expect a walled garden in this kind of hobby, IMHO, you just have to be prepared to deal with issues as they arise.

There are some with some snazzy web pages if you look around, but I can't speak to the quality of the games themselves. For example:

https://www.achaea.com/

https://www.ironrealms.com/

@tinuviel I mean, roster games have been around since the early 2000's, so I'm not sure what is new and different? Have they never been tried on WoD before?

I think part of the problem is that roster systems have several potential applications. Each application has pros and cons. The net benefit of those pros and cons will vary depending both on the game and your personal values.

One application is having pre-made characters so you don't have to deal with chargen. On games with lengthy, complex chargen systems (e.g., WoD), this may be more of a benefit than ones with simpler chargen (e.g., FS3). But there will always be some players who like to try out a game with minimal personal investment.

Another application is having existing relationships with other characters. Some players may see this as a net benefit (they don't have to be "the new guy") while others see this as unwelcome baggage. A game that lets stuff be retconned easily can undermine this potential benefit.

A third application is controlling the pool of characters. A game with noble houses may prefer to keep the family members consistent as players come and go. A game set on a deserted island may need a static character pool since there's just no easy way for characters to come and go.

These variations mean that you're not going to achieve universal consensus. You just have to look at how the pros/cons of rosters map to the goals of your game and the preferences of that game's specific playerbase.

Aww you guys are too kind. Thanks.

@ganymede You are awesome. Here's a cute kitty to relax by.

@derp said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

You've got one of the good ones then.

Maybe it varies by industry? Or maybe you've just had very bad luck? I dunno. I'm not discounting your experience, but mine is very different.

I've worked in the software industry for decades. Sure there are some new kids who have only ever done theoretical stuff in school, some folks who are so divorced from their actual users that they build things that nobody actually wants to use, and some out and out nitwits who should be fired, but they are all the exception not the rule.

I also worked in embedded software for a long time, and the same can be said for the mechanical and electrical engineers I worked with. They were right there in the lab working alongside the techs to transform their CAD drawings into reality, and right there alongside the service and test folks solving the inevitable "bugs" in the designs.

I mean that's ultimately what engineering literally is... practical application of science to solve real-world problems.

@cobalt said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):

I just need to go in an make a note of "No Unentangled PCs".

You can do that with custom code easily FYI. https://aresmush.com/tutorials/code/hooks/app-review.html

@derp said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Engineers only have to make it work in theory. Not in practice.

Huh? That's literally the opposite of any engineer I've ever interacted with. Electrical, mechanical, software... we have to make actual tangible things that work in practice.

@ganymede said in Player Omsbudsman?:

So? If staff recognizes that problem, why is an ombudsman not a solution?

It depends on what the original problem was and how you expect the ombuds to solve it.

For example, one of the things mentioned by OP was the idea that players were too afraid to come to staff. How does having an ombuds fix this? They're still staff. Putting a different colored staff hat on somebody and saying "you can trust this person to help you" doesn't make it so.

Another thing mentioned was the idea that staff would self-sabotage their own game. Again, how does the ombuds keep them from doing so? If their natural response is not to take players into account and dismiss their requests out of hand, then the ombuds is going to face that same problem.

Now, if your only problem is that your staff is well-intentioned but sucks at communicating, then maybe a public relations officer to put a nice spin on things IS what you need. I'm not saying it can never work, just that it usually doesn't.

I held this role once too.

I had absolutely zero authority to do anything. All I did was act as a friendly face to relay issues to the "real" staff who could resolve them. That's a recipe for frustration for both the ombudsman and the players.

If your game is in need of a friendly face because staff is too unhelpful, unapproachable, or ineffectual to advocate for players themselves, I think you've got bigger issues that having an ombudsman won't help.