@Sunny @Lotherio We were talking about booting asynchronous scenes off the active list and suddenly there was a shift to complaining about private ones. Private scenes are already sorted differently than open ones, so I was trying to shift back to the original point (asynchronous). There's no insult intended here, so I'm sorry if it came across that way.
@L-B-Heuschkel said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I have quit games that had this problem -- that you just can't get into stuff, synchronous or asynchronous, because you're not part of the old boys' club. But that is indeed not a codebase issue.
Indeed.
@Lotherio said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
@faraday This just further alienates me by saying I'm wrong in feeling put off by seeing lots of private scenes.
Private is not the same as asynchronous.
I could log into a TinyMUX game and get put off because there's never any RP to be had because everybody's off in their private apartments or RP rooms.
Nobody's being treated as second class there.
@Lotherio said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
This is already how it feels on Ares games for synchronous players when they see a place that is heavy on private scenes, scenes that have been playing for weeks and such. It feels like traditional synchronous play is 2nd class citizen.
There is a world of difference between a codebase that gives equal weight to both styles of RP and PLAYERS preferring one over the other...
versus folks suggesting that the codebase itself somehow relegate one style of RP to the back burner because it doesn't count as their definition of "active".
@deathbird said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
Currently 'where' has the grid listed under 'other' which gives secondary importance to it. Plus the 'scene' command already exists
Grid and Scenes are different things. You can have an open scene on the grid, in which case it will appear in the "Scenes" section. The default +where display is actually designed to highlight places where RP can be found. If you're on grid, start a scene there and mark it 'open' to show people you're available for RP. Give it a description so folks know what to expect. There's a lot more flexibility with the scenes system than with "Oh look, Deathbird is hanging out in Sharkey's Bar" while still having you be physically present on the grid.
@Ganymede said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I see it cropping up on Ares games more and more as the key to involvement in plots. I could be wrong but this is the impression I ge
You may be right as to it becoming more common, but I think you're putting the cart before the horse. IF it is indeed becoming more common, it's because the PLAYERS need and want the flexibility of asynch RP. If they were playing on Arx, that need and want wouldn't go away. Those plots just wouldn't exist, or they would be being done in google docs or TP rooms or whatnot.
Which, hey, some people may prefer. That's fine. I don't object to peoples' preferences. What I object to is the assertion (not yours directly) that Ares is somehow the cause of the culture.
Ares just gives people the tools to play their way. If their way isn't in line with your way, then maybe that's not the game for you. There's nothing wrong with that.
@Lotherio said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
Would could help Ares is removing these from that list, so synchronous players get a picture of what is actually synchronous activity?
Then you're relegating asynch RP to a second-class citizen, implying that those kinds of scenes don't "count" because they're not "active".
That said, I realize that competing expectations about pacing is a legit concern and I've been working on tools to make that expectation more clear. It's not as simple as adding a "speed" preference to the scenes because one person's "slow" or "fast" may mean something entirely different to someone else.
@L-B-Heuschkel said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I for one always sit in a public room on grid when available to play, on Ares games, and I have never, ever had someone walk in on one without paging first. Not once. Never ever.
I've sat on public rooms on Penn games too and had the same experience. This isn't an Ares thing.
@bear_necessities said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
the only thing I can say is that the "big complaint" I've heard about Ares is that it doesn't work for people who passively seek RP and that some people have honest difficulties with opening up a scene that might not get used, or asking on RP request. Which... I honestly don't know how to fix for those people and it might just be that Ares games are not for them and that's OK.
That's the big complaint I've heard too and it just honestly, genuinely baffles me.
How do you find RP on NON Ares games? Well most folks find it by:
All three of those things work in Ares too. Additionally you have the scene/start tool that lets you not just plop down in a grid room but actively advertise "hey! RP here!" And when joining a scene you have additional information at your disposal like "This scene is marked OPEN so you're welcome to join" or "This scene is only for Viper pilots" or whatever.
There may be some additional cultural issues with the introduction of asynchronous RP, but but let's be honest - there were always some pitfalls in joining a scene. Unspoken, often game-specific rules about when it's cool to wander in and when you should ask first. Scenes stall, people go idle, sometimes an extra person isn't welcome, and so on. It's never been as simple as "see scene - join scene".
@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
If someone is on the portal in a scene, but not logged into the game, they don't show up on +where.
I mean if that's a big deal, I can add a "In Web Scene" section to +where, but most of the non-grid scenes are typically private anyway. I don't really understand how that "actively discourages" people from using the grid? You can still wander to the grid and start your own scene?
You can remove 'meetme', but you can't force people to engage with your grid. Speedwalking has been a thing since I started playing in the 90's, that' s why tools like meetme came about in the first place.
You can remove the scene system, but people have always found a way around the grid. TP rooms, private apartments substituting as some alternate location, google docs RP.
Obviously you should not have tools that run contrary to your culture (e.g. having an elaborate set of PVP code & rewards if you don't want PVP in your game), but code doesn't create culture. People do.
@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
Is that... not a thing for most people?
It is not. I learned that sensory processing issues are common in ADHD (one of the overlaps with autism spectrum). I have the same feelings Auspice described, as well as a general aversion to anything tight-fitting or itchy. Actually 'aversion' feels like too mild of a word. More like: "AAAAAAAH GET IT OFFF!!!!" I loved softball, but the uniforms (those stiff itchy poly ones) were sheer torture.
@Auspice said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
But at least it helps, y'know? Knowing you aren't alone.
Totally.
@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
Adult diagnosis of ADHD continues to be an adventure in "Oh, that's not just me being weird?"
Yep. My life as well.
@Wizz said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:
what place would your typical shadowrunner have in a world where even as a team they are frankly outclassed by even a single lowest tier super? Why would you play as anything else?
Yeah it seems like an odd mix. What made SR unique over generic CP was the existence of the metahumans and magic. When you've got Dr. Strange doing his thing and The Thing knocking down walls... your Troll Street Sam becomes nothing more than cannon fodder. And dystopian all-powerful megacorps doesn't seem to jive very well with Superman.
Now OC supers in a near-future cyberpunk (non-Shadowrun) world? That would be something different without the problematic genre clashes.
@Jennkryst said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
Vassal
Yeah I'm not really familiar. FS3 combat is deliberately more narrative/freeform, so tracking positions on maps is not really a thing I've needed or wanted.
Yeah, a botched AresCentral server upgrade exposed a bug in the game code that caused significant lag upon connection if the entire aresmush.com server was down (not just AresCentral itself, which I'd previously tested). It affected all Ares games but everything's back to normal now.
Will fix the bug in the next patch so it doesn't happen again - AresCentral is meant to be an accessory, it's not supposed to cripple the games if it's not there LOL.
@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.
@WildBaboons said in The Work Thread:
What silverfox described is more or less what happens up here in the frozen too. I don't think any kids around here get actual text books until maybe 4th grade. I'm thinking more like 6th though.
Same here (Northeast). No real textbooks until 6th, and even then it was almost all on their ipads. Varies by district, I'm sure but it's hardly unheard of.
@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.
@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 Totally understandable. Unfortunately MUs don't really generate enough traffic to make something like an ad-sponsored Squarespace/Wikidot free tier feasible as a business model. If a free shared MUD host is all you have available, you've got to work within your constraints. Rhost is a fine choice.
@Mr-Johnson said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:
I've been perfectly fine using it in the past but the bandwith that Ares requires is insane
I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, it does require more resources than Penn/Rhost/Tiny (when used in conjunction with an external wiki like wikidot). Even so, all but the biggest Ares games run perfectly fine on the "Tiny" size VMs, such as the $5/month Digital Ocean plan. These are the same resource requirements and pricing you'd need for a small, self-hosted blog (ETA: Or running MediaWiki locally). By modern web standards, that's hardly "insane". Cost-wise it's actually on par with most MU hosting plans, like GenesisMUDs.
Not trying to convince you to do one thing or the other. $5/month is still not free, and if you're trying to live off a fixed income you've got to make every dollar count. Ares isn't right for everyone, and you should do what works for you. I just don't want folks coming away from the conversation thinking that the resource requirements of Ares are insanely expensive or anything.
@Wretched Wait... that's not a thing everyone does? :shiftyeyes:
@Wretched Yeah I've been in enough interviews to know how to plan some BS answer ahead of time, but if it weren't for that? Complete blank stare.