@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:
there are thousands of people actually playing these games
You're clearly including MUDs/RPIs in this tally and "the hobby", and I'm not. The number of self-identified MUSHes on MUDConnector is minuscule compared to the other genres. We're a sub-community within a larger community of "online text-based games".
It's not just a question of different experiences, it's a matter of different definitions.
@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:
What I disagree with is that this data-set can be extrapolated to mean anything about the Bigger Community, because the Bigger Community doesn't care. Those that do know of it (but don't participate in it) often have nasty things to say about it (and often, everyone who participates here BECAUSE they participate here).
I think that we're aligned in principle, and just disagree with how much there IS a "Bigger Community" out there.
On the last few games I've played, the majority of active/engaged players self-identified as being engaged here. If you look at the AresCentral handles, you'll see a large degree of overlap with MSB usernames. Just based on my personal, anecdotal experience, most folks I know who are still active in the MU community are active here. Then there are the numbers Ark has reported about users/visits in the past here compared to activity stats on open MUSHes.
I know you play on Arx and it has a larger and more diverse playerbase - a lot of folks who would probably not identify as traditional MUSH players who come from other online RP communities. But just among what I'd call core MUSH players? I believe MSB captures a wide swath of the audience. We are not a huge community to begin with.
@Arkandel said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:
We don't dictate anything or claim to speak on behalf of anyone (let alone everyone) else.
The kind of influence I'm talking about is different though. This place brings MUSHers together outside of the games we play. It's where we discuss cross-game ideas and issues, share news about games and code and stuff, and just generally chit-chat about everything from knitting to Game of Thrones.
It's the MUSH Community Center.
That necessarily has an influence on peoples' perceptions, in one way or another. Are those perceptions accurate? Not necessarily, but they can still have an impact, encouraging or discouraging.
@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:
ETA: Seriously. MOST mushers haven't even HEARD of this place.
How are you judging that? Most MUSHers I know of have. There are 67 pages of user accounts here (granted many ancient/dup/throwaway) compared to a rather paltry number of MUSHes out there (even granting that page is not a comprehensive list). How many MUSH players do you think there are?
If you're talking general MU* players including MUDs/RPIs/etc. I would agree. But MUSHes? Sorry, not sold on your hypothesis there.
This is the only active MUSH community forum I'm aware of, so like it or not IMHO it is a reflection of "the MUSH community".
@Ghost said in Not even sure what to title this, but here goes..:
Arrrrresssss issss the gooooood offff waaaaaar and weeeeelcomes attaaaaacks.
Lol yes.
But really, keeping yourself anonymous on games has been an uphill battle for 30 years for anyone who does the Social Thing at all on a MU (which is most people). Ares is just trying a different approach of encouraging (but not requiring) transparency instead of whisper-campaigns of "I wonder if that's so and so from such and somewhere."
@juke said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:
On the other far extreme, though, you get people who are so picky they don't get RP, either, and I'd like to think that eventually both groups are self-solving issues because they'll drift off from lack of interest or activity eventually.
I don't disagree with that point, but I think you're looking at it from the player perspective. Which is fine, but I'm looking at it from the staff perspective. Making things that will generate RP when many of your players just don't want to play with each other often feels at best like threading a needle, and at worst like an exercise in futility. This is demoralizing as a staff member. Personally I think it's bad to have demoralized staff members if you want a healthy game, but I guess YMMV.
@Ghost said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:
Just in case anyone is yet to vote and is looking for input...
Is it too late to change a vote? 
@Tinuviel if thatās your experience, great. More power to you. The MUs I play on arenāt that big, and I think the tendency to look for reasons NOT to play with somebody instead of reasons TO give somebody the benefit of the doubt are not healthy for the game as a whole.
Do I think that makes the players terrible people for prioritizing their own fun above āthe health of the gameā? Not at all. It is, after all, a game. But I do think thereās a consequence to it.
@Tinuviel @juke I'm not saying that any of the people in any of those examples is doing anything objectively wrong.
What I'm saying is that when you take that (fairly typical) assemblage of "people who don't want to play together most of the time" and try to make a cohesive game out of it, it doesn't work all that great.
Yes, TTRPG groups disintegrate due to OOC drama. But the difference is that the players recognize this and move on. They don't (generally? hopefully?) continue to show up to session after session demanding that the GM somehow figure out how to entertain them despite the fact that they can't stand most of the other players at the table.
Yet that's basically what MU players ask for.
Yes, but I often get burned out - not by the work, but by the negativity. That's why there tend to be long breaks between the games that I run. I walk away for awhile and do other things, but I keep coming back.
@Roz said in Fandom and entitlement:
But I think the overall answer is somewhere in the middle.
That's how I feel.
Battlestar and Falling Skies are two Moore-involved productions where they (according to interviews and such) basically admit they made big shifts in the show's direction without respecting the foundation that had been laid out previously. While that's certainly their right as artists, it's pretty universally recognized as poor storytelling across the industry. Dismissing the criticism as "oh the fans are just being rabid" is a cop-out.
On the flip side, the fans often are rabid and disrespectful to both the creators and to each other. If somebody likes something that you don't (or vice-versa), it's like they're the enemy in some bitter pop culture war of Everything Wrong With Media. It's pretty disheartening at times, honestly.
@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:
Okay, that makes more sense to me, thank you. I was coming from the perspective of writing off = the shunning thing you're talking about, but 'I will quietly not play with them' is different. Thank you! I feel a little bit better.
Yeah I meant it in the sense of "griping and/or going out of your way to avoid RP with someone", not overtly malicious shenanigans that make hog pit headlines.
Jane is still harboring a grudge against Mary from some game eight years ago / Tom thinks Jane is an idiot and won't RP with them outside of staff-run plot scenes (and then will avoid direct interaction) / Mary thinks Bob is a low-down dirty powergamer who's always trying to make his character shine / Bob turns his nose up at Jane because she only likes relationship RP and doesn't participate in big plots / Harvey is pissed at Tom because Tom's PC said something mean about Harvey's PC / Sam won't RP with Jane because she poses too slow/fast/long/short/pick-a-peeve / ...
I could go on and on and on. These things may not be as directly harmful as some of the harassment/flaming/etc. we hear about, but it's not good either.
Imagine being a GM in a TTRPG where half of your friends can't stand the other half, and everyone is constantly complaining about or avoiding each other. It's just draining.
It's not always like that, but it's common enough that I think @Ghost's perspective is entirely justified.
@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
Does Fred have any barriers to access to this NPC?
Are you the only one that plays this NPC?
Not all PCs get access to all NPCs for various reasons, but 'I don't like the player' is not one of them. Not for a staffer. You don't get to just arbitrarily decide that a player isn't worth your time, and therefore doesn't get access to said NPC, even if you are providing 'other ways to succeed', because that sometimes doesn't work.
"Access to on-camera RP with a NPC" is not some inalienable player 'right'. It just isn't. If being staff on YOUR game means that I would have to provide hours-long scenes to anyone who asked for it, regardless of quality or player contribution, then you wouldn't have to fire me because I wouldn't touch that job with a ten foot pole.
"My character needs to talk to the king" can be resolved off-camera. There's no need for it to take up three hours of my real life. And if that's unsatisfactory? As I said, there's the door; no skin off my nose. I am providing a game as a voluntary service to the community. It is not for the community to dictate to me how I run that game. If my methods are intolerable, people can and should vote with their feet.
ETA after catching up on some of the other back-and-forth: Staffing is not a job, and MUSHes are not employers. Comparisons to the Fair Wage Act or expected behavior for paid customer service staff are absurd. Even unpaid volunteers in RL are only expected to meet the obligations they actually agreed to do.
@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:
I am genuinely curious, now. For the people who are still playing on games, do you feel there's a lot of people either ready to write one another off, or just in general hating each other to the extent that they can't co-exist? ... is it really that bad out there for other people?
Yes.
@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
Like, I've literally been doing this for 20 years and have consistently been able to have sex RP with sane partners who didn't get weird OOC about it
I...definitely don't have that kind of success rate in my RL relationships.
Because damn.
damn.
Like...
god damn
Man. I can't even reliably get non-TS romantic RP with people who don't get OOCly weird about it. Kinda jealous.
@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
That if I do not RP with both Susan and Fred precisely equal amounts, I am being a bad staffer and doing it wrong.... But what's been bothering me on some level is the implication of these rules: that staff are inherently obligated to do certain things, whether or not staff themselves have pledged to do so.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but here goes: Nobody - and I mean nobody - is entitled to my free time. It is for me to spend as I choose. If RPing with Fred is excruciating, then I'm not gonna RP with Fred, as player or as staff. The only thing I am obliged to do is that which I have willingly pledged myself to do, and that does not include providing everyone NPC-RP on demand or in equal measure.
What I do pledge, though, is to "provide a sane, fair and friendly environment for you to tell your stories." Part of that fairness means ensuring that Fred has the same opportunities for success as my BFF Mary. I do not need to RP with him to do this. Off-camera scenes and +rolls are a thing for this very reason.
If that's a dealbreaker for you, don't play on my game. Problem solved.
@Kitty-Kat said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
That said, I think before making any Staff NPC as a character bit, you need to really ask yourself if it could be accomplished by using your staff bit, and some emotes.
I tend to make my recurring NPCs as character objects, mainly because it's easier to pose them that way and I don't have to fix a bunch of logs where I accidentally said: "Faraday steps up to the podium..."
The character object is just a tool. It's how you use it that matters.
@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
I'd also say the other defining trait is that the NPC does not get to be the protagonist. The story you're telling is not their story; they're not the hero who saves the day...the NPC doesn't get to be Luke Skywalker. They could be Obi-Wan Kenobi, however.
I agree with you in theory, but I think on a MUSH it gets murky because the traditional protagonist/antagonist breakdown doesn't really fit.
Even in TTRPGs, having NPCs with major roles helping the PCs can be problematic.
For instance, I could see Ben Kenobi or Gandalf being a super-irritating "GM's Pet PC Masquerading as a NPC" type of character in a TTRPG. They're more powerful, they step in and save the PCs from conflicts at times, etc.
@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
But what does that mean, "like a PC"?
Circling back to this one for a second...
In a TTRPG I think this is much easier to quantify because PCs have one or more other defining characteristics: complete character sheets, presence in every session as a core team member, gaining XP and loot on par with the other PCs, etc. Granted this may not apply everywhere, but it's reasonably universal.
But I think that the biggest defining characteristic for a PC in a TTRPG is that the player is trying to succeed. What "succeed" means may vary - get to level 20, complete the mission, kill the Big Bad, survive, whatever. But generally PCs have an agenda.
Players of NPCs shouldn't have an agenda beyond "play fair and tell a good story". Of course your NPC ICly has an agenda, but the minute the player becomes too invested in that agenda, they're being played like a PC.
(I will refrain from rambling on about my utopian dream that all players would go into the game with no agenda beyond "play fair and tell a good story". While that would sure be nice, even I'm not that naive :))
@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
Should staff NPCs be wandering around, roleplaying random mini-golf games that don't do anything for the story? Setting? Pretty much anything but their own desire to have a mini-golf scene?
It depends on what kind of NPC it is. Nothing says that all "staff-run NPCs" need to be these big quest-givers who only show up to send people off to destroy the One Ring. NPCs come in all shapes and sizes.
Should the King be chilling at the bar every other weekend? Almost certainly not. But could the Admiral show up for karaoke night and cause some lulz? Sure. That can bring richness to the character and make their interactions with other PCs more than just "click on me for a quest".