Posts made by faraday

@thenomain said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

So if Underworld said 'inspired by World of Darkness by White Wolf Games', they wouldn't've been sued? I have doubts. Deep, pulsating doubts.

Depends on what WW was going for. If they just wanted to milk it for publicity, they might have been content. But if they genuinely thought their IP had been ripped off or just wanted to take a crap shoot at getting some money out of the deal, their lawyers would've had a field day with an explicit "inspired by". (As would Anne Rice's had she been bothered to sue WW.)

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

Most of the games where it happens are large games with a fairly diverse player base. It's not 'staff are just shitty there'.

I never said they were shitty. But if their policy is "don't be a jerk" and people are using that to club other players over the head and they're not doing anything about it to the point where it becomes a disruptive epidemic, then I call that a staffing mistake.

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

Reminders aren't bad.

I also never said they were bad. I said they weren't necessary to have a healthy game.

Though I would point out that there's a finite amount of attention most players are willing to spend reading stuff for a game. Finding the balance in what you choose to document and how deep you dive is a fundamental tension in all written communication.

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

Whether you have explicit rules or "don't be a jerk" policies it always has been and will continue to be up to staff to enforce them.

This, in a nutshell. All the policies in the world won't save a game from bad staffing. If the person enforcing "don't be a jerk" is a jerk, you're doomed from the get-go. But you'd be equally doomed if they had an entire library of policies to enforce because, well ... jerk.

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

It's practically an epidemic on some games.

And yet it doesn't exist at all on many other games with the exact same policy. I argue that the policy is not the cause of the problem.

Getting doxxed or stalked is horrible, but anybody who needs "don't do that" spelled out for them in policies is either willfully obtuse or beyond help.

On the flip side - sure there are some folks who will wander into unlocked rooms or private scenes because they don't know better. But if someone complains, you don't need to come down on them like a ton of bricks. You just make a gentle correction to clarify game expectations. Having a policy might stave off that step IF they bother to read it, but it's not automatically a huge deal if it happens.

If these things result in issues, I see that as staffer problems, not policy problems.

@thatguythere I've really never seen that problem - even across lots of games with 'don't be a jerk' at their core. I'm not even sure how a non-staff player could use a policy as a cudgel, since they have no actual authority. All I can envision there is kids playing: "You're cheating!" "No I'm not!" "I'm getting mom!"

But sure, hypothetically, if somebody's being obnoxious about it, then that's deserving of a talking-to.

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

I understand that plenty of people think 'don't be a dick' or 'behave like an adult' are enough to cover all of that ground, but I simply do not agree, as definitions of unacceptable behavior and adult behavior vary widely enough that I believe these guidelines are nigh useless.

I respect your opinion and your right to be as detailed as you feel necessary on your games, but I disagree strongly that such guidelines are "nigh useless".

The "don't be a jerk" statement isn't trying to educate someone about what proper behavior looks like, it's setting expectations. It's just stating that if I think you're a jerk, you will be disciplined. It doesn't really matter whether you think you were a jerk, or whether Sally thought you were a jerk. What matters is whether I think you were a jerk.

"But that's not fair! How can we be expected to read your mind and know what you may or may not consider jerkish behavior?" someone might ask. But seriously, I think in 90% of the cases, people know. Acting like a decent human being isn't rocket science.

But because there is some gray area, it's important to enforce the policy as a decent human being yourself. You don't rake them over the coals over a first offense (unless it was particularly insane), you just set boundaries: "That wasn't acceptable, please don't do it again."

This the same way that house parties, restaurants and places of employment work. Nobody needs to tell you not to wreck the furniture or shout racial slurs at the other guests. On the flip side, you don't expect someone to jump down your throat for failing to realize that people take their shoes off at the door here. Common sense and courtesy go a long way on both sides.

So tying back to the topic at hand, I have zero problems with staff policies on "earning stuff" being vague if it boils down to a judgment call. The BSGU policy on earning IC medals was: "Staff decides all awards." The end. And sure, there were occasionally some grumblings like "How come Jane got a medal and I didn't?" but I don't think that would have been avoided even if I'd written a book on the awards guidelines. (Heck, it happens in RL and the army does have a book on the award guidelines.)

@apos said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

@faraday I don't think it would stay that way or that it is unlikely that players would adopt whatever is the norm. That is more what I was getting at.

Fair enough. I disagree (that it'll change or catch on), because I think having more control over your environment is one of the key factors distinguishing a MUSH from a RPI/MUD. That said, I realize that it's a spectrum not a switch, and games like Arx and Firan straddle the fence. So I'm not saying it could never work, just that it's not the norm.

@apos said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

This is stylistic and cultural that is specific to MUSHes, not to MUs in general.

Okay? But we don't usually include MUDs and RPIs in our discussions here because they have completely different rules and expectations. My statement was talking about MUSHes, because ignoring that stuff when it suits you is, as you said, stylistic and cultural to MUSHes.

@ominous said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

@faraday For me it depends on the culture of the game. If there are no emits then people can set however they like, changing the time and the weather. If there are emits, the time and weather is what the server says it is. Don't make sets that disagree with it.

That's a fine theory. The reality is that people just don't do that. Time, weather and ambiance emits are at best treated as an inconsistently-applied guideline because it's annoying when your RL schedule only allows you to be on during the IC middle of the night (or middle of the workday), or you can't get people together for a RP scene because the weather isn't cooperating, or it takes 3 RL hours to do a scene that only lasts 30 minutes IC but +time says otherwise, or ... the list goes on and on.

@lithium said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

Communication is key to a shared space.

We will have to just agree to disagree then. Communication is important, sure, but I'd prefer people to get all their context from the scene itself than have some people getting conflicting information from built-in coded systems. :helpless shrug:

@lotherio said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

Just that the coming to a room and posing in without some pretext is more the issue than ambiance/weather/day/night code with the example.

Yes, I agree - I was just using it to illustrate what I see as the inherent confusion of having it in the room desc. If somebody wants a suggestion as to the weather for the scene when starting one, there are any number of ways to get that. But having it there as "here's what the game says the weather is" causes coordination issues.

@lithium said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

It shouldn't be that difficult.

Codewise it isn't, but what do you think about the confusion issue of Bob (who saw the emit) reacting to it while Jane (who opted out) has a completely different expectation?

@thenomain said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

Until someone else starts reacting to it, then it becomes annoying again. It's why the "just gag someone" answer to an annoying person often doesn't work in a group discussion like, e.g., a web forum.

Yes. How many times have we all seen something like this?

Bob and Mary are RPing a scene.
Joe joins, looks at the weather/time in the room and poses in: "Joe comes in, shaking out his umbrella. 'What are you guys doing here so late?'"
Bob says OOC: Uh, actually we're RPing that it's a sunny afternoon.

Like... I'm not at all opposed to an opt-in "plot suggestion" system that will toss you random hooks/emits that you can choose to incorporate into your pose if it makes sense to the scene and is something you'd like to incorporate into the story.

But just tossing out randomized emits that may not make sense in context of the scene, may not be seen consistently by everyone, and may not be acknowledged by everyone just seems... doomed.

@thenomain If there's scene code that folks are already using to start a scene/log, then I wouldn't care, since I use that code automatically when I RP. But if it's an extra non-native step, then I agree with @Three-Eyed-Crow that I'd rather have a one-time "turn this stuff off" toggle.

More practically, though, I don't hang out on the grid unless I'm already RPing. And if I'm already RPing in a scene, then the emits would be disabled by the system you described. So there'd really be no difference between that and just turning them off completely.

@auspice Funny, I would actually find the personal ones even more invasive and annoying because they're butting into my sense of agency over how my character feels and thinks. Everyone's got their own pet peeves. But yeah, the log editing is definitely a major pain. I remember having to strip weather emits out of logs constantly on older games.

RP scene set: It's a terrible storm, people are scurrying indoors.
Ambiance emit: You hear a bird chirping outside.

RP scene set: It's just before closing time. The bar is empty save for the two PCs having a very tense conversation.
Ambiance emit: A drunk knocks over a table in the back.

RP scene set: Wow what a lovely dinner we just had.
Ambiance emit: You feel hungry.

In all cases my reaction is exactly the same: :eyeroll:

The emits lack context to what's actually going on, so they come across as disconnected and invasive. A better thing for RP hooks IMHO would be a sort of mini plot generator that could spit them out on-demand as ideas before a scene started.

But as long as you can turn them off and don't have to be bound by them, I guess I'm "whatever" about them.

I was able to connect to Arx fine just now with DuckClient 5.1 on Chrome/Mac. There really aren't many protocol options to speak of like the kind Sunny was talking about, so I doubt it's that. The only option is for SSL - perhaps try it with SSL set to never. Or delete and re-create your world.

@golgoth said in I made a Python-with-Evennia tutorial (looking for feedback):

@faraday Twisted/Zope/Evennia seems to get confused with Ubuntu.

I'm sorry - I don't understand your point. I was just answering the question "Is DigitalOcean running ubuntu".

@apos said in Earning stuff:

And the trick is reconciling those two, does that sound right?

I think some people are going to perceive themselves as being treated unfairly no matter how detailed your rules are. So for me it's more of a philosophical difference than a matter of goals to be reconciled IMHO. I don't mean this with any disrespect toward @surreality's approach. We just see the problem differently.

If your system does have clear-cut steps to earning something (1 XP per week, here's what it costs to raise things), then by all means spell it out. But if it all boils down to staff judgment calls, I think that trying to spell out how you make those judgment calls is just inviting people to become nitpicky rules-lawyers when a call doesn't go their way.

@golgoth said in I made a Python-with-Evennia tutorial (looking for feedback):

Is DigitalOcean running Ubuntu?

You have a choice of OS but Ubuntu is the default.

@surreality I don't think anybody's saying that it's bad to make a brief mention that players should feel free to contact staff if somebody's being a creeper. Your initial post with five bullet points about what people need to know about contacting staff sounded a LOT more involved than that, which is what I think @Thenomain was responding to. You've openly stated your preference for verbosity in policy files on several threads before, so I don't think anyone's horribly off base or meaning offense in thinking that's what you meant here. At any rate, I think we're veering a bit far off of the original thread into policy discussion.

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

People need to know what they can report.

Yeah I'm gonna have to go with @Thenomain here and fall back to: "Adults need to adult." I'm not going to give somebody a laundry list of what they can/can't talk to me about or can/can't ask for. If they have a concern or a request, my door is always open. Is it a perfect system? No, no system is perfect. But it's worked pretty well for me.

@roz said in Earning stuff:

@ganymede said in Earning stuff:

Poe was really angry when Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo took over the Resistance. Sure, she was a friend of Leia's and had some success in the field, but she didn't earn the command of the Raddus.

She didn't??

There's every reason to believe she did, in fact, based on the whole discussion about her being next-senior and "Wait, that's Admiral Holdo from the Battle of Whatever?" But I agree with @Ganymede's general point that IC resistance toward the incoming leader can make for good storytelling, so long as the players can keep it IC and not get their noses out of joint over who they think "deserved" it more -- or heaven forbid staff giving a position to somebody they're friends with just because that's somebody they can trust not to flake out or be a jerk.

@seraphim73 said in Earning stuff:

I do, however, like to have some mid-level roles available to players/characters who step up and earn trust, both of staff as players and of their superiors as characters.

I'm not horribly opposed to that in principle, but on my games it's just too much of a headache. I've just had too many people in that position go idle or just never do their duties. It's annoying. I'm over dealing with that.