Posts made by faraday

@Arkandel It's a standard empty file icon.

Like this one: https://fontawesome.com/icons/file?style=light

@Ganymede said in How do you like things GMed?:

Also, she was the medic, and we kept on getting fucking shot apart.

Lol, she was also the medic with the worst luck, who got shot more than anyone.

But I think @Ghost is right - if you're going to put your own char into a scene you're running, you've got to be careful that you don't hog the limelight. Nobody wants to come to a scene just to be window-dressing. That doesn't mean you can't ever do anything cool; but you do have to share the coolness with others.

I think that same philosophy applies to plots too. If the PCs are just there to be window-dressing in whatever story you're trying to force down their throats, that's not fun. But if you present them with a cool challenge and give them a chance to shine and do something cool, most folks can have fun even if the outcome of the challenge was pre-ordained. The journey often matters more than the destination.

@silverfox Far from stupid. This stuff isn't easy.

I agree with what @Tinuviel said about starting with how you're going to draw people in. You could have the best plot idea ever, but if there's no way for players to engage with it, it's not going to go anywhere.

@silverfox said in How do you like things GMed?:

So this was kinda the stuff I was looking for, but didn't want to limit it because I was curious for all the stuff ever being a 100% novice to GMing.

@Ghost has good advice to consider and I presume it's been successful for their groups.

On the flip side, my style is pretty much the polar opposite. I script things to a modest degree (while still allowing player influence), I run scenes involving my PC all the time (though not as the star), I fudge dice rolls to make a better story (though never to screw the PCs), I let PCs make their own perception checks, and I've had reasonably happy players in both TTRPGs and MUs for decades.

I don't mean to imply that I'm right and Ghost is wrong. Not at all. I think it just illustrates that there isn't just one 'right' way to GM. What works well in a TTRPG often doesn't translate to a MU, and what works on one kind of MU often doesn't translate to another. You have to figure out what works for your own personal style and the style of the people you're running for.

@Tinuviel said in How do you like things GMed?:

@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:

to me that is the point of running something for players
. If I were the 'call 911 and leave' person, I'd probably think the scene was a waste of my time.

Yeah that’s where I was coming at it from. Not that calling 911 for an explosion or running away were unreasonable actions, but that it probably doesn’t make for a very interesting experience for the players who do those things. It’s a balance. The GM should give them reasons to be involved and the players should meet the GM halfway and not blow off obvious plot hooks (or if they do, then don’t complain about “there’s nothing to do” afterwards).

I agree with @Tinuviel’s point about catering scenes to the people involved but I’ve found it harder to do that these days. 12 years ago on BSP I would see a bunch of folks in a public area and be like “hey do you guys want to do some drama” and make something for them specifically and it would be cool. These days folks are more into their own agendas and don’t seem to welcome staff dropping things on them outside of scheduled events. Plus on many games the character concepts have so little reason to interact that it becomes hard to orchestrate something for a random group.

@Ominous said in How do you like things GMed?:

The Quantum Ogre is one of the oldest discussions in the OSR. I lean on the "never" side of illusionism, but, if you truly can pull it off and somehow guarantee that the players are never able to discover the illusionism, have at it. I don't trust myself to not screw it up.

Yeah, similarly - if you can consistently entertain groups of 10-12 PCs just by "winging it" and never pre-ordaining anything, more power to you! I can't. I have no philosophical objection to the Quantum Ogre. If they go to the forest, they get to fight an ogre and have fun. If they go to the plains, they get to fight an ogre and have fun. (Presuming that fighting an ogre is fun in the first place). Seems like a win-win to me.

Some flexibility is still required though. To use the example from one of your articles:

Bandits to the east - we go west! ack, bandits here too!

That's railroading, and the players will pick up on it pretty quick. When the players are going to great effort to do (or avoid) something, I think that good GMs will give the players something for their efforts.

But to quote a different part of the article:

If they enter your rioting city, and decide to leave, let them get the hell out of there if they wish. . .

I mean that's fine, but at the same time... players can't go out of their way to avoid the plots handed to them and still expect to be entertained.

"The Starbucks just exploded!"
"OK we leave and call 911."
"Um. OK. Cool. Thanks for coming. Event over."

@Ominous said in How do you like things GMed?:

One of the blogs I linked to in the OSR thread actually has an example of a big bad getting smoked in the first round and the players loving it:

It really depends on the players and the setup. If 12 MU players show up to a +event expecting a scene where they get to fight the Big Bad, and it's over in 5 minutes because Joe got a lucky hit and got all the glory? I think you're gonna have 9 or 10 pretty annoyed "I showed up for this?!" MU players. It's a very different environment than a TTRPG.

If the players felt like they were on rails, you've failed (even if they actually weren't). If they leave fulfilled because they felt like they influenced the outcome, who cares if the GM had a specific outcome in mind? No one will ever know the difference.

@Derp said in How do you like things GMed?:

People can talk about not liking things being 'on rails' or whatever, but sometimes you just gotta use that fiat.

I'll second that. If you leave everything up to player decisions and/or dice you can end up with some really random, nonsensical and lame stories. "So you know that big boss you guys have been working towards for the last six months? Yeah, one-shotted in the first round. The end." or "Yeah this vast conspiracy that was going to drive fun for players for months? Unravelled in the first week." That kind of thing is just unsatisfying, both from a narrative standpoint and from a game standpoint.

I don't think every story with a plan is on rails, though. I think the most effective plots have a balance of flexibility and direction. You're going to end up somewhere in the ballpark, but how you get there and exactly where in the park you end up is where the player actions come into play.

This probably speaks to how basic my MU client use is, because I've been on Mojave for awhile now and everything I care about is still working great. (I did notice the MUSH editor broke a couple of OS versions back, but I rarely used it so no biggie.)

Thanks for keeping it alive though @Sparks!

@gryphter said in Wheel of Time:

Ease of connection while on a VPN for remote work is a huge factor for me also, and Evennia nails this with its web portal client.

Separate post, not really related to this - but Ares also offers both a simple portal client similar to Evennia and a way to play entirely through a web page much in the same way that forum software works. I can use that through a VPN and many other folks are able to RP from school/work, so if something in particular isn't working I'd love to know about it.

@WildBaboons said in Wheel of Time:

political Game then Arx may be the way to go.

Yeah I think you have to look at the sum total of all the coded systems that you intend to make for your game.

Ares comes with a ton of social features out of the box, and a fleshed-out web portal, but it doesn't have much of anything in the way of in-game systems because a) those are highly game-specific and I don't see much point in trying to make a generic econ system, for instance, and b) I hate those type of systems personally so my motivation to make them is nil.

So if you want a lot of in-game immersion/economy/organization/crafting/etc. type code, then an Arx-derivative Evennia platform may well give you a leg up when all's said and done, even if you have to cobble together some of the more MUSH-like features yourself.

@Packrat said in Wheel of Time:

One issue is that FS has each 'attack' keyed against a specific defense roll/skill but there should probably be multiple ways to defend against a lot of stuff.

That's no longer true in 3rd edition. Defense skill is determined by an algorithm, so via custom code you could make that method as complicated as you needed it to be.

The standard version is keyed off weapon type. Melee weapons defend with whatever weapon you're holding (so if you've got a sword in your hand you defend with sword skill), vehicles defend with piloting skill of your vehicle, and ranged weapons defend with whatever ability you configure as your basic defense skill.

You could (with modest effort) make different spells use different defenses depending on the person's magical school, their highest magic skill, their previous round's action, their stance, something they choose via a command, or whatever else you saw fit. Just depends how much effort you want to put into it.

@Seraphim73 said in Wheel of Time:

most FS3 affects take place the turn you do them, save for reloading, from what I've seen

That's just the way the standard actions are coded though. If you're adding custom code (which would be required to do any magic system) then you can make it as complex as you wanted. Subdue, aim and reload are all examples of actions that can span multiple turns.

@Tat has spent a ton of effort coding up SL's magic system, so I don't want to make it sound like this is easy to do. But as long as you stick within the effects provided by the system (damage, knockout, subdue, suppression, etc.) it's possible. New effects are possible too but that requires more in-depth surgery into the guts of the system versus just leveraging existing code with new actions.

@Sparks That's the same general advice I give folks considering Ares vs. Evennia. If you like the way Ares does things and just want to tweak/extend it, it's a good choice. If you hate what comes out of the box and want to do something very different - use Evennia. Evennia is a perfectly good codebase; it just has different ambitions: MU*-building toolkit vs. MUSH-in-a-box.

@Thenomain said in AnomJobs - Trouble With Installation:

So the question becomes: Could you live in an ancient ruin if there’s a society there?

Judging by the number of people still using SimpleMU, survey says "yes".

That's the nice thing about software. As long as it's working tolerably enough for the people using it, nobody has to maintain it.

FWIW I think you could look to the Battlestar games for a less-onerous +report paradigm here. Some folks liked to do a full-fledged IC "After Action Report" detailing a combat scene, but all that was really expected was a brief "Hey there was a fight and Bob died..." bbpost for a plot scene.

@goodstarbuck said in Anomaly TrekMUX:

Though exactly how I'd get a +report system up and running on AresMUSH, I'd have to do further research on.

I've seen other games just use the bbs forum for it, but creating a custom system wouldn't be too bad. You could crib a lot from the bbs code because it's so similar of a concept.

I think that's a great idea.

@kumakun What do you mean by blocking on &, @, +? Those don’t really define blocks; they can exist in the middle of other commands.

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

Psychology Today is a 'popular psychology' magazine, it's not a peer-reviewed journal. And I certainly wouldn't simply take the word of someone that just so happens to be advertising his book on a related subject. ETA: Especially when the author in question is "a Professor of Communication Studies, presenter, private coach, and author," and not a psychiatrist.

Fine, you want an actual study? Here. Or perhaps you'd like to check out the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale or the Sheehan Disability Scale commonly used to grade anxiety disorders, of which OCD is one.

Distress is not the same as disability or a debilitating illness. These are specific medical terms with specific meanings, and mild disorders can be diagnosed when the distress is, as the name implies, only mildly disruptive. (Mildly from a clinical standpoint. It can still be challenging to deal with.)

But what do I know? I've only spent the past year or so working with therapists trying to help a kid with OCD.