Posts made by faraday

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

I don't have an issue with TS, but constructively I think some people pass on players who don't TS; I've actually had players suddenly get electrical storms when I turned down TS.

I don't doubt there are some people who might pass, but for many years now I've make it clear to anyone potentially engaging in relationship RP that I'm a strictly FTB girl, and I've never had any shortage of RP.

I do have an issue with TS - not out of moral judgment (hey, whatever floats your boat) but because it seems to be the root of NO END of drama and toxic behavior on these games - including some of the things you've described here. But I agree banning it is all kinds of impractical and ill-advised. Also beside the point here.

I also have an issue with Midjourney. Though I am not an artist, I have friends who are, and I support them being up in arms about the unlicensed use of their work for-profit on a massive scale. That just goes to show that everyone has their own ethical lines in the sand. I don't think yours re: PBs is any more or less valid than mine re: MJ.

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

I would be (f-ing) amazed if someone could prove to me they'd never seen this behavior; it's that common.

I have no idea how to "prove" it to you, but I have never witnessed or personally experienced this behavior outside debates like these. Does that mean it's less common than you think? More prevalent on certain games / kinds of games than others? Am I just sheltered? Who knows. We don't exactly have a robust data set, only anecdotes.

And I don't doubt your anecdotes; I just don’t reach the same conclusion you do from them.

Yes, some people are creepers about PBs. But is it any less creepy if somebody makes up a "honey trap" PC tailor-made to seduce another, then commits obsessively to doing so? Or if somebody asks you to make up a tall, hunky Viking type because that’s their “thing”? Or if they stalk whoever’s playing Batman? I think not. Problematic behavior is problematic behavior, irrespective of PBs.

I also can’t help but wonder if you have the same vehement objections to fanfic? I wouldn't be keen to rush up to William Shatner to tell him about the existence of Kirk/McCoy slash, but I don't think that means the writers/readers of said fic are horrible humans for imagining those characters (and by extension the actors) in different relationships.

I certainly agree that our culture's obsession with celebrities is kind of weird and in many ways problematic. I just don't see MUs as being exceptional compared to everything else. Certainly not a point where I feel we need to ban the practice.

Side note - personally I don't think any of this gets better with people asking Midjourney to "make someone who looks like Christian Bale in a Battlestar Galactica uniform" (because c'mon you know that's what a lot of people are going to do.) If anything, the fact that it might accidentally be using some regular non-celebrity person's face (because of the way the training data is harvested) makes it even more problematic to me. But that's probably a separate debate.

ETA - Believe it or not, there are players who don't RP TS. What if a whole game banned it (and hypothetically had a way to enforce it, like no private scenes)? Would that somehow make PBs okay? Not advocating for that, mind you, just a thought experiment.

@Misadventure said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Or are you saying that my feeling that my imagination is overwritten and I don't like it is something I do wrong and should change my experience?

It seems like just a clash of preferences?

For you, seeing a PB overwrites your imagination in a way you don't like.

For me, NOT seeing a PB leaves a void in my imagination in a way I don't like.

Nobody (that I saw?) is saying that either of our likes are intrinsically more valid than the other. It's just that allowing PBs or not is kind of a game-wide decision.

Allowing PBs for those who want them seems like a reasonable middle ground between requiring them for everybody (to cater to my preference) or denying them to everybody (to cater to yours).

@reimesu said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Actually, I have an inability to imagine faces from text. Which is why I like PBs. It's not a failure of imagination, it's that it's not how my imagination works.

Same. One of my early games was Babylon 5 MUSH. I played for YEARS on that game never actually knowing what any of the non-FC characters looked like. A few years ago I did an exercise of asking my old friends from that game which PB they would choose for their characters. Suddenly those characters were enriched for me in a way that they never were before.

Can people use it for creepy ends and/or get weirdly obsessed? Sure. But that's not what everybody is doing, and that doesn't mean the practice has no value.

@Derp said in The Case Against Real PBs:

Point being, calling it a writing hobby and getting mad that people lack the skill to wordsmith something to give you a perfect picture in your head really misses the mark of what skills are actually important for the end result of “being entertained with a collaborative story,”

I still consider it "a writing hobby" because I would argue the core of writing is exactly what you're describing there. Writing fiction is about telling a story, not about the mechanics of florid prose. There are tons of popular books out there with bare-bones or even non-existent descriptions, and even ones regarded as literary classics (ala Hemingway).

@Ghost said in The Case Against Real PBs:

But either way, my litmus test is "is it wrong to use a 'real' person's image (ex: Facebook, your RL girlfriend, or someone's mom) as a PB?" and if the answer is yes, then for the same reasons it's wrong to use celebrities, too.

I have nothing against your personal litmus test and I respect your principles. My issue is you seem to be casting judgment on others for having a different litmus test.

I would never use a regular non-celebrity real person as a PB. But big-name (adult) actors/actresses are putting their likeness out there into the public eye in ways that regular people do not. Their faces are on action figures, posters, video game characters, etc. Hollywood scripts are written with dream casting ("I had Tom Cruise in mind for this character.") Fan fiction utilizes characters from a book/film/series in new ways the author/actors maybe never anticipated. And people have been fantasizing about celebrities for as long as there have been celebrities.

Whether all of that is abhorrent boundary-crossing or just part of the job they chose (or both, maybe?) is something everyone has to decide for themselves.

@Misadventure said in Is MU* RP slanted towards player success?:

My perception is I have played on a lot of MU's where death was the zero HP option for combat, yet that doesn't seem to be the goal, so what else could game designers do with the topic, and would MU* RP work with whatever this new approach was?

I don't know the specific games you speak of, so I can only speculate. But some players/GMs like the illusion of risk. Like how many TV shows want you to believe the characters are in peril even though deep down you know that they're most likely going to win.

Of course, just like some shows are known for killing off main characters at the drop of a hat (ala Game of Thrones), so are some games. There you really can lose your characters, and that risk is a feature. Some players love that level of stakes.

@Misadventure said in Is MU* RP slanted towards player success?:

If saying zeroing out some resource (health, willpower, patience, public support, whatever) is the better choice that death or complete failure, why aren't MU*s explicit about that goal?

MUs (along with most RPGs and media) are often geared towards the main characters being Big Darn Heroes. The goal is that they struggle but eventually win, and in doing so gain something (fame, glory, skill, loot... depends on the game). Zeroing out resources isn't in line with that goal any more than death is.

You could certainly design a game with depleting resources, though, and some have. Shadowrun has an expendable karma pool; WoD has expendable Willpower; etc.

@Misadventure said in Is MU* RP slanted towards player success?:

What happens when you "lose" in FS3?

FS3 is just a system. "Lose" is more of a story effect. The worst the combat system does is a "knockout". What that means is open to interpretation (your fighter plane is disabled, or your PC is unconscious, subdued, or otherwise unable to continue the fight), but it's all in support of the story.

@Ganymede said in Is MU* RP slanted towards player success?:

I think what you mean to say is that FS3 was designed with awesomeness in mind and that is why it is awesome in what it does because it is awesome.

Daww.

@Misadventure said in Is MU* RP slanted towards player success?:

So - the shortest version of this question I can offer is why do we track hit points if we don't want combat to kill player characters?

There are plenty of systems where "0 hit points" doesn't mean death, where combat tracks wounds and not hit points, or where some manner of 'luck/karma/whatever points' exist to save you when things go awry.

The key is to design systems that support your goals. FS3 combat was designed to provide some 'gritty' combat simulations of large scale battles, but it is deliberately slanted towards PC heroics.

@Misadventure said in MU* Mystery RP:

is that unsettling feeling because you can't ask questions and explore the situation and whatever lore you might have access to, or that enough information isn't presented in most challenges or something else?

All of the above, at times, but mostly it's that you know the narrator has some kind of overarching story vision--you just don't know what that is.

So the example challenge above with the plane crash... I could probably safely give my character a cut or concussion, but would I derail the story if I gave them a broken leg and hampered the group's mobility? Who knows.

Or in another game, we came across some completely unfamiliar desert aliens and had to try to communicate with them. All we had to go on, lore-wise, was a brief description of them in the narrator's set pose. I have no idea what the narrator has in mind for these things, yet I have to describe my character interacting with them?

Some folks may like that degree of creative freedom, but for me it's like... FLAIL.

@Misadventure said in MU* Mystery RP:

The GM says there is a cleverly difficult set of tests between the players and their goal. They players then decide that there is a very difficult and trapped, locked door that leads into a set of rooms that goes nowhere.

This style is common on Storium. The storyteller lays out a scene set and some challenges. The challenge cards are bounded with certain outcomes for success or failure, which keep the story from going completely off the rails, but within those bounds the players can make up anything reasonable.

It works, but I've always found it a bit unsettling. Like you're always in this gray zone where you don't know what the storyteller will find reasonable or not before you write your move/pose. I can't even imagine how I'd do that in something like a tomb raider challenge or murder mystery without the larger context of what's going on (which only the storyteller knows).

It's very different from the traditional "The door is locked" style @Ganymede described.

I don't do plots with actual mystery for the players any more. Every single time I've tried - and I'm talking many games, across many years - it's been either:

• Players figure out the mystery in 0.2 seconds even though the characters should logically struggle more to piece the clues together.

• Players cling to red herrings like a dog with a bone, then get frustrated and bored when their investigations don't pan out.

• Players show zero interest in the mystery and just go about their daily lives expecting someone else to solve it.

It's just not worth the effort/frustration for me.

@Derp said in Observation:

We still get plenty of traffic to the site, and we normally just post about less stressful things.

Have I somehow muted a board or something? This is the first post I've seen in a month. The last actual MU-centric convo (apart from the occasional ad or game request) was back in August.

@ZombieGenesis said in Unmakeable Games:

While I think that could also exist on a GI Joe game, I think the knee-jerk response would be, "I'm not interested in an action game like that."

I think there are a fair number of MU players who dig action games. Folks who turn up on BSG and such. It's certainly not as prevalent as some other genres, but we do exist.

I don't know if GI Joe specifically would get much traction. The live action versions never took off with audiences, and the Saturday morning cartoon version maybe doesn't have the same nostalgia and staying power as some comic franchises.

But who knows. No harm in trying. Folks can have fun on a small game. TGG never had more than a dozen players, but we were a dozen passionate players.

MediaWiki requires a bit of tech savvy--setup, themes, maintenance. If you're looking for something that you can just kind of run with out of the box, you might consider wikidot instead. It doesn't have all the same bells and whistles, but it's free, easy to use, and serviceable.

Digital Ocean has a setup guide for MW: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mediawiki-on-ubuntu-14-04

@Ghost said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Take the number of truly active non-sexMu mushers. Ballpark? Let's say less than 100.

There are currently 1080 AresMUSH player handles. Just saying.

I do agree with your general point, though, that there is a massive investment involved in creating and running a game (even with a ready-out-of-the-box server like Ares), and the number of people willing to take that on is a vanishingly small percentage.

@Luna said in ELI5 - Discord RP:

Thinking about it, frankly I don’t see why it couldn’t have the conveniences were used to. Likely the reason why there aren’t bots now for that are likely just that no one thought about it.

Maybe, but it would be clunky as heck. MUs have a lot built into them - especially now with the web support that Ares and Evennia have. You can't do all that with Discord bots.

That's not to say you couldn't adopt a few things to make it more convenient, just that you're not going to replicate a MU interface in discord. And you probably wouldn't want to. They're different mediums.

@Luna said in ELI5 - Discord RP:

So, can someone grown explain Discord rp to me, a lifelong MU person? Is it like playing on AOL Red Dragon Inn with a central meeting and then breakout rooms...

I don't have extensive experience with Discord RP, so it's probable there are many variations. But what you've described above is what I've seen. It's basically just a MUSH with channels and temp rooms. Private scenes can be done via DM. Some have dice plugins for rolls. Haven't seen any extensive bots.

It's functional, but it lacks a lot of the conveniences that MUers are used to. Like ooc chat being separate, logs, etc.

Supernatural isn't really my jam, but it looks really nice. The idea of werewolves and vampires revealing themselves on social media is hilariously imaginable.

I didn't really know Melkir, but sorry for your loss.

@Ghost said in WebMU still in use?:

This is a bit of a stretch as I don't know of any games that have paid for this as an option. SSH is an upgrade from telnet that allows for encryption.

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but most ares games operate over HTTPS so you have more security when playing via the web portal.

Even if games did support SSH, it wouldn't really change the underlying problem that most work/school IT depts will blanketly ban connections to weird ports like 4201. They rarely have a legitimate business use.

But the rest of the advice is spot on. Connecting with a MU is like connecting to a website that's just running HTTP where most browsers will warn you "INSECURE - HERE BE DRAGONS".

I get the desire for folks to connect during the day, but actively attempting to circumvent IT security is a good way to get fired. I wouldn't be surprised if it could also be considered some kind of cyber crime (though most likely they would "just" settle for firing you).

Working fine for me too. http://www.cheesesoftware.com/MUCon/

DuckClient can also work from a browser: http://duckclient.com/

AresMUSH games also have a built in web client, though some work/school firewalls will still block it.

There are several active games currently on AresCentral.

The Mustard list shows a bunch more, though it doesn't distinguish activity.

I would agree though that other venues get more traffic than MUs. Discord, Play By Post, Storium, etc. But MUs certainly still exist.