Posts made by faraday

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

I'd join these games using WoD, NWoD systems, Star Wars Saga edition, Shadowrun and in my head it was "I'm playing the <system> RPG but there's writing included" and it's really not that, up to and including (Original topic) rules on hitpoints, death, dying, etc.

One thing that's worth noting is that the idea of PC death isn't necessarily a given in TTRPGs either. I've played for entirely too many decades, with numerous groups, across several states and even in Germany, at cons with strangers, etc. - I seriously cannot think off-hand of a single instance where a player lost their character without requesting it. I mean, maybe it happened and I've just forgotten... we are talking a long time span here... but it certainly wasn't pervasive.

Are there groups where it happens? I'm sure there are. My only point is to challenge the underlying idea that just because there's a rule in the game book saying "your PC could die" doesn't mean a given game group is going to play that way.

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

I feel like there's something healthy and logical about understanding the difference between "MUSH that uses a dice system" and "TTRPG", where the general culture, approach to dice, use of system, focus of RP are simply different.

Agree 100%.

In fact, that realization was the ultimate reason why I created FS3. I had spent many years trying to use or adapt various TTRPG systems to MUs, and eventually realized that none of them really fit the MU model that I wanted.

FS3 is not without its flaws, but its core strength is that it was designed for the type of game I wanted to run.

@Arkandel said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

This might just be my perspective but I always believed there were just two major issues with PC death in MU* for most people.

While I do agree that for many players the issues are rooted in those two factors, I will present two others from my own perspective:

1. Story
2. Investment

Random, meaningless death is often viewed as "bad storytelling" by readers/viewers.

Making up a new character and getting them involved in Stuff is not easy for everyone. I'm not talking about the stats, which for a game like FS3 may only take a few minutes, but about the character. Generating a concept that is fun, fits in theme, and will be accessible to RP. Finding their voice and fleshing out their backstory. Building up relationships with other PCs.

That process is a crapton of work/stress, and I don't want to play somewhere where another player or GM can just capriciously come and kick over my sandcastle.

@Ganymede said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

I honestly have never met any player who said, flat-out: "I don't want to be involved in this because my PC might die."

:raises hand:

I generally don't play on games with involuntary permadeath.

I do occasionally break this rule, as with TGG, but even then it was only after they added some kind of extra lives system. Before that, I only ever played medical support PCs who never went into battle.

I also recognize the need for staff-imposed exceptions if you do something insanely out of normal bounds. But that's a weird case that players can easily avoid.

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

What DO you do about games and RP systems where "dinosaur characters" are able to simply continue to amass XP with over-the-top RP and zero fear of death/repercussions

Easy - have a system that doesn't allow for dino characters. FS3 does that. There really isn't that much of a gap between what you can walk out of chargen with and the max.

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

he PROBLEM was that it was a "consent" game, so unless a character consented to being investigated/hunted/killed for their behavior, the LAW sphere really couldn't DO anything about laws being broken by PCs unless staff intervened.

Also easy - don't try to do PVP in a consent game. That's just destined to end up in cops-and-robbers playground nonsense.

Of course these decisions (max power level / no PVP) have other effects. Some players are motivated by XP. They get bored if they can no longer advance. Some players want PVP. I'm not saying these things are bad or wrong, just that they're not the only option.

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

I know a lot of my posts come back to "is it an RPG game with writing OR a writing group that uses light RPG elements", but I feel that it applies to this topic.

Exactly. If your goal while MUSHing is to play a game where you're looking for immersion or the suspense of not knowing at any moment what might happen - even if that means your own character's death - hey, more power to you. Again, not saying any of that is bad or wrong.

For me, though? None of that is why I'm here. I want to tell a story with some light RPG tools. I think MUs are closest to ensemble TV series in execution. It's generally pretty lame when one of the ensemble just randomly dies to a henchman, accident, etc. halfway through the season. If you're going to kill off an ensemble character, you want to do it in a way that has meaning--that propels the story forward.

And ultimately, only the players can decide when that's appropriate. Not an arbitrary system.

@Tirit Do you mean this thread? The "crash/lost everything" comment was speculation, referring to a Half Life mod where that happened. Was there some other info about mudstats?

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Just because documents are produced to your lawyers does not mean those documents are protected by attorney-client privilege.

Perhaps you can shed some light, because the reporting on this seems weird. On the one hand they say the phone copy was provided "accidentally" but on the other hand they say that when the lawyers were informed, they confirmed it wasn't privileged. Does that maybe mean they goofed by turning over more than they needed to, but not necessarily anything privileged?

@Ganymede said in Highlights of Ares?:

You don’t know how much Ares does until you’re not using it any more.

To OP's original question though - the async RP and web portal get the most attention for Ares in a "love it or hate it" kind of way. Obviously I'm biased, but I think that perspective tends to gloss over a lot of what's baked in from a MU client side too.

The automatic scene logs, dispensing with command prefixes, the integrated help/+help system, player handles and friend features, a comsys that supports both MUX and Penn commands, accessibility features for screen readers, unicode support, the editing commands that interface with "/grab"... there's kind of a lot.

Plus a fully out-of-the-box system that you can run with no code or coding experience.

@Devrex said in Highlights of Ares?:

I start losing all my enthusiasm if it takes more than a month to do one scene.

Oh, me too. That would drive me insane.

All I mean is that what you're describing is a facet of Asynchronous RP in general, not Ares in particular.

MUs have a fairly solid baseline of community expectations for synchronous RP (more or less). People deviate from those expectations all the flipping time (slow work RP, backscenes, to-be-continued scenes, etc.) but they communicate when it happens.

The MU community doesn't have that shared set of baseline expectations for async RP. Not because it never happened (heck, I was doing async MUSH scenes via email circa 1995; LiveJournal; Google Docs; RP/TP Rooms; etc), but because it happened 1-on-1. Maybe we'll calibrate that baseline eventually, but in the mean time all it takes is communication.

What is the point of XP?

Until you answer that question, which is going to be different for each game, you can't answer detailed question about how much XP should be awarded / required to progress.

Some games (D20, MMOs) treat character growth like a carrot on a stick. Players expect constant rewards to motivate them to keep playing. ("Gotta make it to level 60!")

Some games are more story-driven, where there is no XP. If you need to adjust your stats due to IC character growth or learning, you submit a request and justification.

Some games use XP as OOC rewards for doing things that the game runners value, like helping newbies or running plots.

Some games use XP to reflect IC character learning. Since people don't learn things overnight, this tends to necessitate a slow-burn progression. (FS3 subscribes to this model.)

There's no right or wrong answer, but there are pros and cons to various options. Carrot-on-stick works best when players start out low. OOC rewards leads to the dino effect, where new players suck compared to veterans. etc. You have to figure out what kind of game you want.

@Devrex said in Highlights of Ares?:

It's like the culture of Ares has shifted from MUSH to forum-based RP... It's not like there on every Ares game,

The fact that it's not like that on every Ares game kinda proves that it's not an Ares culture thing.

Ares supports multiple modes of RP. How you choose to use that comes down to expectations set by the game runner and communication between the players.

It's really no different in principle than the divide that used to happen on old-school MUSHes between people expecting 5 minutes between poses and people who were OK with "slow work" style RP with ages between poses, that may or may not actually finish before everyone goes home for the day. All it takes is some OOC chatter to make sure everyone's on the same page.

@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

What do you mean by "sustain"?

@reimesu said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Which means there are more out there that we just don't know about. Which means the MU community very much IS able to sustain two separate discussion forums and possibly more.

I obviously can't speak about other hypothetical communities I just don't know about.

My personal experience is that a discussion board, like a MUSH itself, requires a certain amount of critical mass to keep afloat. Without sufficient activity to maintain interest, people stop checking in. When they stop checking in, the activity drops even further. Eventually you end up with something like the Ares forums, which yes technically still exists, but sees maybe 1 or 2 posts per month.

Aside from that, diversity of viewpoints is important to any vibrant discussion. If you've just got the same 5 people talking about the same topics over and over again, it gets old.

A forum existing is not sufficient for my definition of "being sustained". YMMV.

To be clear, I'm not proposing shutting down any of the sites in question. I'm just sad.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Really, what would it fucking take to clear the air and make the environment more 'repaired'?

In terms of MSB? I don't think it can be. There's too much animosity, and too many of the active posters are now either unable (due to bans) or unwilling to return. Basically, there's no interest in repair, only in going separate ways.

Which honestly makes me sad, because I don't think the MUSH community is big enough to sustain two separate discussion forums, nor do I have much interest in having the same discussion in two places with two slightly-overlapping groups of people. It's the same reason I didn't try to promote the Ares forums more back when I first made them. I kinda hoped that people might gravitate to a more positive, constructive-only discussion environment, but I didn't honestly expect it.

In terms of MUSHing as a whole? I also don't think it can be either, because there are too many people who just don't like each other, and too many places willing to tolerate negativity.

You can have people who don't get along at the same venue, but you have to have structure that keeps them from getting at each others' throats.

It's like Thanksgiving with a dysfunctional family. You need Grandma to play peacemaker, or to rule with an iron fist (like Mal in Firefly: "Walk away from this table."). If you leave the door open to hot button topics and sniping, it's not gonna end well for anybody.

Individual games and forums can accomplish this by the rules of engagement they set forth.

Here's why FS3 is not a good fit, and it's the same reason why my group ultimately quit playing Street Fighter.

Both FS3 and WoD were designed to accommodate a wide range of damage - fist fights to anti-tank rockets (or werewolf claws, in the case of WoD).

If you think of it like a rainbow, then all unarmed combat is necessarily on the "red" end of the spectrum. You need orange for melee weapons, yellow for small arms, etc.

So for an unarmed-centric system, like Streetfighter, you end up with one of two outcomes:

• All unarmed combat is just varying shades of "red", with very little differentiation between them. (this is the default FS3 configuration, where it doesn't matter if you throw a kick or a jab because they're virtually indistinguishable, mechanics-wise)

• You tweak the knobs too much, so some moves become yellow or even orange, and wickedly overpowered (this is Streetfighter - some moves were just unstoppable, and once you figured that out the min-maxers always won and the game wasn't fun any more)

I believe it would be possible to design a system that used elements of MMA strategy (speed, reach, angles, power) in a fun way, but I wouldn't use either FS3 or WoD systems as its foundation. I think you need something more rock-paper-scissors in nature so no one single strategy dominated.

@Ganymede It wouldn't fit within FS3, but you could definitely make a different card-based combat plugin using the streetfighter rules.

We had a lot of fun with that in college until the min/maxers in the group realized that it had a few game-breaking moves. It kind of devolved after that and ceased being fun.

@zombiegenesis said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

It's not that nobody is special but the baseline average has now been raised considerably. If you're at an Oscar party and someone asks "Who's the best actor here?" you're going to get a lot of different answers. It's more difficult for a single person to stand out in that room because they all have high "acting skills".

Sure, but my point was that objectively speaking, they're still all Oscar winners. The Oscar equivalent of the MUSH behavior would be like Oscar Winner A throwing a fit because they were invited to a party where they're not the only Oscar winner in the room.

(Saw the edit and realize we're on the same page, but already posted.)

@kk said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

The whole if everyone is exceptional, nobody is exceptional on mushing is def a thing

It is, but IMHO it's kind of a petty thing that I have no patience for. Because the people who have a problem with it are (generally) not willing to be the not special person to let others shine. So it's basically just them saying: "Well I want to be special, of course, but I don't want you to be special too because then I won't feel special and I should be the only special one here." That's some nonsense.

It's also a bit illogical - like if you're in a room with Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors and somehow "nobody's special" just because everyone there is outstanding.

@devrex said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

I think it boils down to how that is balanced against other aspects of the RP and how considerate you are of other players.

I agree with this. If your wish is to be the a badass fighter jock, that's fine, but just be kind to the other players who also want to be a badass fighter jock. You don't have some kind of exclusivity to the idea.

Also since we're making it a separate thread, I should probably clarify my original flippant comment.

I think wish fulfillment imbues a lot of RPG players (both TT and MU) but by no means does that mean it's universal. People RP for all kinds of reasons - escapism, writing challenges, TS, engaging with their favorite fictional world. And even if there is some element of wish fulfillment in your RP, that doesn't mean it affects everything you do. The badass fighter jock player might have no problem with said fighter jock getting their butt kicked on the volleyball field.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

I think this is an unfortunate side-effect of accounting for assholes.

Sure, it gives you some a-hole insurance, but not everyone who can't reach a compromise is a jerk.

Yesterday my son wanted to go to the pool and my daughter wanted to stay home. Neither is right or wrong. Neither is being a jerk. In your example from earlier, nobody's a jerk for wanting the one-and-only sheriff position. There are just times when compromise doesn't work.

I still believe MUSHes are better off when staff tries to avoid these zero-sum scenarios, but sometimes they arise despite your best efforts. Heck, even on BSGU I had players pissed over A getting the "killing blow" on Cylon147 instead of B, whether L should've been able to sneak into M's barracks room to prank them, why X got a medal and Y didn't, etc.

But this is just basic human nature in action. It's perfectly natural for B to want the glory of the kill, M to not want to be made a fool of, and Y to want a medal. The majority of players approach MUs as wish-fulfillment fantasy, whether we like it or not. Personally I don't find that a problem, and prefer to focus on the poor sportsmanship aspect. I.e., I don't care if you want a medal, let's find a way to get you one. But you don't get to act like a jerk just because X got a medal and you didn't.