Posts made by faraday

@auspice Thanks for the feedback.

The automatic scripts are for a super-easy install when you're using a standalone Ubuntu VPS (Digital Ocean, Linode, or whatever). That is the standard, supported configuration for Ares.

If you're going outside of that configuration, I assume that you (or a buddy) already has some server-admin experience and can follow along the comments in the scripts to make whatever necessary adjustments make sense for your environment.

Your specific use-case was pretty simple (supplying a different username), but there are a million other possible subtle variations like that (changing usernames, directories, apache instead of nginx, yum instead of apt-get, etc. etc.) and it really isn't practical for me to make an installer flexible enough to support them all.

I've toyed with the idea of creating a text version of the script (like "install X then Y" in generic terms), but honestly I think the commands with comments would be more useful to server admins than plain text that's liable to get out of date. If the prevailing sentiment says otherwise, though, I can certainly create that.

@auspice @Demiurge - I would humbly suggest this split point: http://musoapbox.net/topic/2397/dreamwalk-mush/52?page=3#

I think the “I’m conflicted” bit invited more game dev-y discussion (intentionally or not) and the subject matter hit a lot of peopes’ hot button.

@demiurge You can ask the mods to move that stuff to a separate thread.

@demiurge No, I was just saying that I don’t think that policy conveys your intent and you may want to reword it to be more explicit. Or don’t. It’s your game and I was never going to play on it either way because it’s not my jam. I’m just trying to save you some headaches down the road. If you don’t like the suggestion, ignore it.

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

And I fully appreciate your concern. But I'm reluctant to impose ideological restrictions, in particular on IC content. As said before, I'm sorry if that amounts to your disinterest or anybody else's disinterest.

Did you see the part where I wasn’t telling you to change your policy, but merely to add a note making that policy clear in your policy file?

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Yes. And a lot of them are very upsetting to a lot of people. But I've decided I'm not going to forbid the views of large segments of the U.S. population from having an IC presence in my game. I'm sorry.

I'm not telling you to forbid anything, nor am I judging you for allowing IC bigotry. I once ran a Western game that allowed historical attitudes and even subjected my own PC to heaping doses of historically-appropriate sexism. So really, I get it. All some of us are saying is, to quote Wizz:

@wizz said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

For the love of god man, if you don't want a meltdown, then put up a disclaimer.

Because seriously - there are a lot of MUSHers who don't want to deal with that kind of crap in their pretendy-fun-times.

You can yell all you want about how "it's just IC" but that's fooling yourself.

When you're a woman or African American or LGBTQ (or any other marginalized group) in real life and get subjected to hatred and discrimination all day long, the very last thing that a lot of those people want to do is have their avatars (who, quite often, fall into the same demographic as themselves) subjected to the same crap in their interactive fiction. So if you're going to require them to do so or else excuse themselves from the game, then that is the sort of policy that needs to be spelled out up front.
Otherwise I absolutely guarantee you're going to end up with serious drama sooner rather than later.

@sunnyj said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@Demiurge Do your thing, or don't, dude. Defending yourself here won't help zilch.

This.

But also..

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Please don't transmit anything obnoxious, because if it gets bad enough, banning you might become necessary. While we are in favor of a laissez faire culture, there are limits. Try not to push them too far.

That is really not conveying the same stance you're putting forth in this thread. In virtually every other MU game out there, pushing unwanted romantic fantasies or bigoted attitudes ICly - the types of things you've expressly said you're OK with - would in fact be considered "obnoxious". So players are going to expect you to deal with that unless you clearly state otherwise up front.

A lot of folks don't want to come onto a game and be assailed with hatred and harassment - even ICly. If you want an unfiltered environment, that's your prerogative. But what you've posted vs. what you're saying you'd tolerate is virtually guaranteed to result in dramatic meltdowns.

Create the type of environment you want to see. We're all just trying to help you stave off drama based on A TON of experience with this sort of issue.

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

When people say "RP," they seem to refer specifically to scenes. This is entirely fair. However, there are a lot of ways one can project their character into things without having a scene, and I think stressing them is appropriate in the context of this MUSH.

Well, I wasn't limiting it solely to scenes. I've had lovely exchanges of IC mail with both @silentsophia and @GirlCalledBlu on different games that contributed to the characters' stories and relationships. And many people like to write vignettes or flashbacks or diaries. The main thing unifying those is not the "scene" but more of... an attributable narrative, I guess? Versus an anonymous channel of randomness.

My point is not to criticize what you've got, though - not at all. Merely to suggest that you may want to expand the wiki a little bit to talk more about the game philosophy and the ways it's different from traditional MUs.

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

So there is a central place to RP, but it is limited, and that is deliberate.

That's very different from what most people think of when they say "RP".

Which is fine! It's just good to set expectations in the wiki about what the game is about and what limitations there are so everyone's on the same page coming in.

@ixokai said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Is this just me being weird? It might be. If I can't get an introduction to Bob over there I'm just not gonna permanently pay to talk to Bob. I won't. If I can't have even ONE SCENE, just one, or some other mechanism to just figure out if we click in RP at all? I'm NOT going to buy that bridge.

I don't want to speak for @Demiurge since I have no connection to this game (other than being stoked that somebody else is using Ares) but I think this comes down to the philosophy of why you're playing.

For many (most?) of us, RP is the whole point of the game. We log on for the sake of RPing - period, end. When we don't have any better RP on offer (plot, relationship, whatever), we fall back to bar RP because a) some RP is better than no RP and b) it can build up connections to cooler RP.

In an environment like that, obstacles to RP seem completely counter-intuitive and even annoying.

But what if RP were just a means to the end? What if the game had other goals (like exploring the connections between dreamscapes)? Then spending your limited resource to buy connections to strangers is not only desirable, it's necessary to play the game the way it's meant to be played.

That might mean it's not for everyone, but as with @Botulism and HorrorMU - I applaud them for trying something different.

@golgoth said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

I was under the impression that the IC shared connection channel could be used as this central hub. What more would be needed?

From the game wiki, it sounds like in order for two characters to RP with each other, one of them has to: a) create a sympathetic connection, b) build a bridge, and c) pay lucidity to go through that bridge. That means that three characters can't just randomly decide to do a scene together. They all have to be connected first to someplace they can all get to (or spend the points/tokens to do so now).

That's not a criticism; just an observation. The dreamscape mechanic is what makes the game unique. It also may be off-putting to some players.

If there's another way to RP then @Wizz is right - that probably should be clarified in the wiki.

@zombiegenesis said in Fate Accelerated Questions:

I will say that last night we opted to do some Star Wars using FAE and we had THE MOST FUN we have ever had playing Star Wars. Instead of trying to figure out what we can and can't do based on feats or powers we just justified doing "Jedi Stuff" using our aspects and had a freaking blast. It was phenomenal.

Sure, and I've had a complete blast using RP with statless systems. It all comes down to who you have to work with and how able they are to work things out without benefit of dice (or with dice that work... kinda weird :-)).

@ixokai said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Plus, hey, Ares! Without FS3. I mean I like FS3 don't get me wrong. Its just fun seeing someone take Ares another way.

Yes! I kept trying to tell folks that they weren't joined at the hip but it's nice to see somebody demonstrate that! Also kudos to @Demiurge for how quickly and cleanly this got put together.

@zombiegenesis said in Fate Accelerated Questions:

PCs, however, should be on even footing in certain ways regardless of if they are Hulk Hogan or the Incredible Hulk(or Iron Man and Hawkeye or whatever). It is something different to wrap your head around, however.

Right. Most games are all about "who's better" (whether that's PC or NPC). Level 1 vs level 3. Firearms 7 vs Firearms 4. Superman power vs Hawkeye. power. Some degree of competition/comparison is inherent in the core of the system mechanic. FAE has a very different 'feel'. Nobody is objectively better at any particular thing. They each can shine differently in different situations.

Frankly the thing that bugs me most about the system is a mental dissonance about skills. Jane is a doctor. Mary is a hacker. They both have Clever +3. It just makes absolutely no sense to me that they'd both get the same number of dice on a first aid roll. Rationally I know that Jane's aspects will allow her to use her medical knowledge more broadly in the story than Mary can (e.g. Mary can't even try to do surgery because it makes no sense), but the fact that they both roll the same number of dice just breaks my brain at some level. Especially when they're opposing each other. So it's a neat idea, but I would have a hard time buying into that system personally.

@zombiegenesis said in Fate Accelerated Questions:

He also said not to think of the +3 Forceful as they're both equal in strength but instead they both use their strength to exert equal narrative influence on the game.

Another interesting point about the different mentality -- I think that the statement above would ring foul to a lot of MU players. It seems hard on the surface to swallow the idea that Hulk Hogan's strength should be as important to the story as Superman's strength. That right there strikes me as the fundamental piece that folks have to buy into for a FAE game to work.

With friends around a gaming table, it's easier to come to consensus that Bob and Mary should both have equal influence on the story, regardless of the power disparity between their characters. With dozens of strangers on the internet, you tend to fall into more competition, tacit or explicit.

Also this point:

@zombiegenesis said in Fate Accelerated Questions:

What makes Superman invulnerable? His aspect... Mechanically Superman is invulnerable but the game drives fiction not mechanics

We know Superman is invulnerable (except to Kryptonite) from 50 years of comic book history, but more original characters will find a lot of gray area in their aspects. It's not really much different than comic games with freeform "tell me about your powers" trait systems, so it's definitely workable. It just depends on your players and their ability to deal with ambiguity without being jerks about it.

@zombiegenesis That's a good description. And I'm actually not saying it's a bad system at all - it's kind of neat. But it is very different from what MUSHers/TTRPGers are used to, so it just takes a different mentality for resolving conflicts.

@wildbaboons said in Fate Accelerated Questions:

I'm not overly familiar with FAE and how it compares with Fate

The chargen is simplified (you don't go through the whole "how did we meet" group stuff for defining aspects ... which I doubt most MUSHes do anyway) and instead of "Skills" you have "Approaches".

So instead of rolling Athletics to outrun the bad guy, you might say "I'm going to roll my Clever approach because I'm going to try to outsmart him with the path I take..." You could also use that same Clever stat for hacking a system, or convincing the guard to let you past, or whatever other thing your character is conceivably capable of attempting.

All of which is super-simple, because there are only 6 basic stats and not an in-depth skill list. But it doesn't give you any indication of who's better at some skill than someone else (i.e. who's the better Marksman? It depends on what approach they're taking to the shot.) and it requires some mediation to make sure people aren't using approaches that are completely out of whack (i.e. "no, you can't use your Clever approach to perform surgery; you're not a doctor...")

@bad-at-lurking Yeah. And I think FAE exacerbates that issue, because instead of concrete skills like "Athletics" or "Piloting" where it's pretty clear whether somebody knows something, you've got people using their Approaches in ways like "Well naturally I should be able to fly a shuttle, and I'm going to do so using my Careful stat". I see what they were going for, but it's just a very weird approach for me. Particularly for a MU environment where not everyone is on the same page and there's no GM readily available.

@derp Why? Does it use angled quotes or something?

Also... people still use the say command in poses?

@apos Yes, I think "open" is a better criteria than "active". Players can judge for themselves if a game is active enough for their tastes.