Posts made by faraday

I view MUSHes as a collaborative story, so keeping elements of the story private runs counter to that general goal. I am transparent by default.

That said, my preference is not everyone's so I can understand those who may wish to not share, or delay sharing logs, hide their backgrounds, etc.

I would challenge the assertion that Ares encourages you to log and share every scene. The server doesn't care if you log (except insofar as you miss out on certain features - like participating via the web scene page or editing poses - if you don't); the server certainly doesn't care if you share. I think the fact that so may people do log and share scenes is more a commentary on the prevailing feeling amongst the players than anything the server is requiring.

@Coin Specifically, they say:

For new projects with higher ratings, there’ll be no smoking or e-cigarettes unless it’s essential to the creative vision of the artist or because it’s character-defining (historically or culturally important).

I don't see the big deal. If the smoking is essential to portraying the time period ambiance (e.g. Mad Men) or the specific character (e.g. The Smoking Man in X-Files) then it'll get a pass. If it isn't essential, then taking it out shouldn't be disruptive.

@Coin said in Good TV:

Man, this is gonna cramp Russian Doll's style hard for the next season, rofl.

Not at all. Russian Doll is TV-MA. Netflix's policy only applies to shows aimed at younger viewers (i.e. TV-14 and under).

@Thenomain said in Good TV:

Also, is it true that Netflix is thinking about removing all the smoking from season 3?

Yes, Netflix has vowed to not depict smoking in its shows geared towards younger audiences.

@Ganymede said in Good TV:

I don't know, but if they do then you would remove half of the scenes.

This only applies to new projects moving forward. Most smoking occurs just casually in the background, so the impact to the story itself should be negligible.

@Seraphim73 It all depends on what they're trying to model. I'm not a big Buffy expert or anything, but I seem to recall the 'supers' having such strength that they can throw humans across the room effortlessly, take wounds that would kill a normal human, etc. etc. You just can't model that effectively in FS3. It's designed for humans. Sure you could make it so the vampires always go first in initiative or the werewolves have claws that do the same damage as a knife or whatever, but that's not really modeling "superpowers".

@ZombieGenesis said in Bad Moon Rising MUSH(Buffy FS3):

The stats have limits(up to 8 I think?) so I was curious about how they handled stats that went beyond that.

I have no idea what Bad Moon did, but your concern is quite valid. FS3 does not scale well to superhuman ability levels because of the way the dice mechanic works. It's just not designed for that.

Once you get above 9 dice you're already at 99% success on a base roll, so adding more dice doesn't really get you much. More dice do insulate you against modifiers and give you more of an edge in opposed rolls, but the effects are not as dramatic as you might think. It's certainly not going to turn somebody into a super-powered badass.

FS3 also has no coded powers system, so you'd either have to wing it (using advantages or whatever) or code up something yourself.

But as @Bad-at-Lurking pointed out, Ares supports other skills systems that would probably be more suitable.

@Arkandel said in A fully OC supers MU:

draw from the established pool of superhero MU* players

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of the established pool of superhero MU* players all about the canon characters? An OC game might inherently be targeting a different audience, and definitely has a different set of constraints because you've got folks defining their own powers instead of having a common shorthand of "It's Iron Man, duh".

Yeah, none of them have gear, combat (except FS3), or other ancillary systems. It's purely chargen and a skill roller. (FS3 is the only one with web chargen; the rest are via MU client commands.)

Like @ZombieGenesis said, it really just comes down to which skills system fits the game you want. They each have pros/cons.

Side note - I coded jedi stuff for the FFG plugin, so I'm not sure what's missing from "jedi chargen". That's off-topic here so if you want to PM me, feel free.

@Kitty-Kat said in Star Trek: Dreadnought Atlas (Name Pending, TOS game):

@Mr-Johnson Lots of great plugins, I've seen fate, the star wars one, and WoD I think (thenomain did it?? or I could be wrong).

No WoD. Just FS3, Fate, Cortex, FFG (technically it's base on their generic Genesys RPG but it fits the Star Wars ones pretty decently), and a generic comic-like traits system.

@Mr-Johnson said in Star Trek: Dreadnought Atlas (Name Pending, TOS game):

Ares FS3 character sheets. Doing a bit of a 'feel test'

Feel obliged to mention that Ares supports more than just FS3. There are a number of skill systems available out of the box. Only FS3 has the web chargen and automated combat, but you'd have to code that on rhost too, so... that part seems kind of a wash. Also feel obliged to mention that Ares is still in beta. It's very stable, overall, but bugs do happen (generally fixed within a week) and things are still evolving.

@Seraphim73 said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Star Wars
MechWarrior/BattleTech (Dark Ages or War of the Clans)
BSG
Crimson Skies

Man, Crimson Skies. Now that's a system I haven't heard mentioned in ages.

But yeah - all the rest of these would be cool.

I think @Arkandel should fork this whole thread off since it has nothing whatsoever to do with Gray Harbor.

But as long as we're off the rails...

@Lotherio said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

What if someone wanted to do a western ranchers Sheep Wars/Cattlemen/homesteader conflict theme/game But everyone was literally apping in ex 10th Cavalry members to be experts in Native Relations?

You see this in western MUs all the time, to a point. Everybody wants to play something that would have been a minority in that location/time period, be it a Calamity Jane gunfighter, or a freed slave who became a doctor, or a rich dilettante on the run, or a Chinese business owner, or a female Pinkerton detective, or a Buffalo soldier, or an openly LGBTQ person, or whatever. Taken individually, each of these concepts did in fact exist somewhere in the west. But when you put all of them in one cattle town, it really doesn't bear much resemblance to historical fiction any more.

Some might say "who cares? it's a game" and some might say "wtf I thought this was supposed to be a historical game". I seriously do not think that the latter group of folks is being bigoted. I'm a pretty ardent feminist myself, but even I could accept that female infantrymen were not historical in TGG's WWI campaign and that my boundary-pushing female cattlewoman was going to face historically-appropriate prejudice in the 1840's Australian outback on Pioneer. If folks don't want to deal with that, cool, but do say that anybody who wants to explore those historical settings is bigoted? I respectfully disagree.

@Sparks said in A fully OC supers MU:

I gather it's somewhat more focused on running a game as well where Evennia's Discord is fairly heavily focused on developing one.

The Ares discord has separate channels for help setting up/running a game and developing one. The admin help gets a bit more traffic, generally, but I think that's because a lot of the folks picking Ares are doing so because they don't have a coder and it's ready to go out of the box.

Ares does not have M&M off the shelf, but there are several other skill/roll systems one could pattern it after if you wanted to make your own. (and a tutorial for making one). If none of the systems have M&M already made, then I think it comes down to what other systems you are looking for in a game. Here is a quick comparison (It was up to date last I knew, but if Evennia has added stuff since then I'm happy to update it.)

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

I think... 2 don't apply to me.
That 'being so bored it hurts' also hits home. Man, the times I've legitimately gotten angry because I can't find or settle on anything to do.

Ditto on both counts.

Some of the ones that were entirely too spot-on for me:

Constantly late even when I have plenty of time... Oh man yes. Don't expect my +events to actually start on time. Sorry. I do my best.

Cleaning the whole house or nothing at all... I call it "cleaning frenzy".

Having a hard time switching what you're doing... I'm like a parent arguing with a young child inside my own head. "It's time to stop now." "But I just need to finish this one thing." "Does NOW mean something else in your language?" "I'm almost done!"

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

Oh hey, a disturbing number of these ring true for me. Probably for you also!

If by 'disturbing number' you mean "almost all of them"? Totally.

@Ghost Yeah, like Rinel said - definitely get a local pro's opinion. (Which I see from your latest that she's already doing, but I already had this typed, so...) Even if it's not currently standard practice to perform such testing ahead of time, there is something to be said for saying it should have been given the severity of the impact of getting it wrong. Or it may be standard practice in a specific hospital. Who knows.

@Ghost Bummer for your mom I have no experience with replacement surgery specifically (IANADoctor), but from what I know of other medical procedures, they generally don't perform tests for allergies ahead of time. I found a few studies like this one saying that routine pre-testing is not indicated in implant surgery since the number of complications is so low and false-positives from skin tests are common (i.e. someone gets a rash from nickel jewelry but does just fine with a nickel-whatever-alloy replacement knee.) Still really sucks when it happens though.

@Coin That's fine. My only point was that the system wasn't really the root of the issue. When a game developer gets rights to make a game for a setting, they're often exclusive rights. So it's more like a studio getting movie rights to a book. It doesn't just apply to that particular movie, it keeps anyone else from making a movie about that book too. Since SJ Games has been notoriously harsh about this in the past, it's good to be cautious.

But if you're not using the setting directly and only doing something "inspired by", or you're in another country and the laws apply differently, that's something you'd know better than me.

@Coin said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

But then again, I'm pretty sure if we really wanted to do it we could just use a different system; the thing that traps me about that game is more the setting/conceit than the system, which is... as complicated as it is simple, depending on how you view it.

If they sold the "RPG Rights" to SJGames then SJ still has the right to cease-and-desist you for a game based in that setting even if it's not using the SJ system. (Based on my understanding anyway. IANAL.)

@Sparks said in Hosting and codebase recs:

last I checked, if you pulled out FS3.3 to replace it with a custom dice system, you lose a lot of the web integration (web-based character creation, web-based combat management, etc.).

Not a lot, no. I've worked very hard to not make Ares tied to FS3, so that people who want to use other skills systems will be able to easily.

If you don't use FS3 then it's true you don't get the FS3-specific web components, but that's a very small piece of the web portal functionality. You still get scenes, wiki pages, character profiles, web chat, help, etc. etc. You can even do part of chargen - just not setting skills unless your game has custom web code for their skills module. (But you'd need that anyway even if you used another codebase.)

@Sparks said in Hosting and codebase recs:

However, the tradeoff is that Ares is a fully-coded game, and while it's not terribly difficult to add to it, it is—with a few exceptions—far, far harder to rip out and replace chunks of it.

This part I agree with, but just to clarify...

There are several plugins that are designed to be optional in Ares -- FS3, weather, ranks, etc. These can be turned on or off with a mouse-click in the web config. Ares is also designed with a ton of config options to tweak how the systems behave.

It is certainly more difficult to replace core plugins, because many of them depend on each other. The plugin system will let you replace anything, but it does require custom code and I wouldn't say it's easy.

If you don't like the way Ares does things and are going to want to make extensive changes to core plugins, then yeah - starting from scratch might be the better option.