Posts made by faraday

@lotherio said in Too Much:

This caught me, I don't think I've ever seen you throw in a gif. I laughed, good thing its my planning period and no students where in the room (in which case I wouldn't be on-line but still).

Lol. It's rare for sure. Glad to amuse.

@ganymede said in Too Much:

Some day, when I have more time and energy, I want to convince you to help me set up an original space fantasy game.

Sounds fun! When I have more spoons I may run another BSGU spinoff. Continue my battlestar expanded universe. Who knows.

@hobos said in Too Much:

Pose order can be useful for async scenes or play-by-post roleplay so I think it has its place, but I just personally don't enjoy it in an immersive roleplay environment.

Pose order is a conundrum for me. I don't like that it slows things down, but at the same time - without it, I have an even harder time holding the threads of conversations. You'll be in the midst of typing up a reply to one thing someone said, then suddenly somebody else replies to them first and the convo goes off on a tangent and your pose no longer makes any sense. So I view it as a necessary evil. Honestly 3-per and free-for-all pose orders just give me a headache and suck the enjoyment right out of a scene.

Three people is about my limit for a normal scene. Any more than that and I mentally check out. It's just too long between poses or too hard to follow all the threads of conversation. Especially since most players will pose a paragraph replying to multiple people at once. It's like having six different conversations going at a dinner table and you're never sure which ones you need to pay attention to. (name highlighting helps but not enough)

@ganymede said in Too Much:

And then DWOPP got with my PC, and we TS'd, and I found out later, and I was, like --

But I mean, my PC was dating his, so I can relate - even if it was solely FTB. To wit, my comment in the other thread:

Setting a shared expectation up front can help, but there are some who will push things even if you're super clear about no TS, no OOC bleed. It's annoying.

@ganymede said in Too Much:

BSGU was one of the best experiences I've had in 20+ years. I wish it was still around.

Any more than five or six players and it just gets too much for me. When I did big scenes on BSGU, I would set it up so there were natural ways for folks to break up. So for instance we did a big awards party, and there were a couple different locations - the beach, the bar... I forget the others. Or if there were a big battle, there'd be separate angles. Air wing and marines, or two groups of marines, or whatnot. So it was really like multiple interconnected scenes under the same umbrella.

@derp said in Review of Recent Bans:

What are you guys, idiots? This is obvious to anyone with half a brain you corrupt bunch of fart-sniffing howler monkeys.

I agree with all of your points, except isn't this exactly the sort of conversation that happened every single day in the Hog Pit? I'm not trying to justify that behavior--it's always made me uncomfortable. But when it's the norm, even encouraged, I think maybe it might be worth considering giving people some grace to downshift to a new normal.

If you think the behavior was beyond the pale even by Hog Pit standards, or feel strongly for other reasons that grace isn't warranted, that's entirely your call. As I said, I'm not weighing in on any specific bans, merely speaking in generalities.

@ganymede said in Review of Recent Bans:

but perhaps you are very sad because you're seeing people on both sides who are worthy, valid, and smart at loggerheads. This puts you in a difficult position because you want to enjoy the company of all, but feel you can no longer do so because that might be seen as "taking sides."

I will chime into say that this is how I feel. I have good friends who were banned and good friends who remain, so I feel a bit caught in the middle.

I missed most of what transpired because it was in the opt-in groups, so I am not competent to speak on the merits of any individual ban.

Speaking generally, though:

On the one hand, I believe in the "house party" analogy to forums and games. If you are at a party, and the host asks you to refrain from doing something, you refrain from doing that thing. If you do not, that is a valid reason for you to be asked to leave. Full stop. There are plenty of us who had thoughts and feelings about what went down, yet still managed to respect repeated requests from admin to not throw more gasoline onto the fire.

On the other hand, I realize the above philosophy is not traditionally how MSB has been run. Especially in the Hog Pit, which basically had "call out perceived bad admin behavior" emblazoned on a banner across its door. So I can also understand how people who felt that something untoward was happening felt justified--perhaps even obligated--to speak out despite requests not to.

So mostly I just wish things had gone down differently, on both sides. It sucks to see the community splinter in two because we are not a big community to begin with.

Nevertheless, I support the changes to the code of conduct. I have long been a vocal opponent of the Hog Pit, believing that there was no way for a constructive section to effectively co-exist in a place where people were so used to mudslinging. Bad feelings and behavior constantly spilled over. I am somewhat skeptical about whether people will stay, having lived through similar experiments with ES, IGU, and even my own Ares forums, but I applaud the effort.

@derp said in Positivity Going Forward...:

If there's one thing that we learned when MSB was dying a slow death due to Redis weirdness, it's that there really weren't any alternatives out there if, for some reason, the server that MSB is stored on catches fire tomorrow.

I mean, there have been? Reddit, the Ares forum, the Evennia group... other venues exist and have for years. I'm not saying competition is bad, but people go where the people are. That's been true ever since WoRA and Electric Soup back in the day. I applaud the shift to a more positive environment, but I'm skeptical as to whether the community has the bandwidth to really support multiple forums.

@il-volpe said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

It's really a pity about MUDstats no longer adding new games, because its charts showed you when a game's prime time was.

AresCentral shows it for Ares games. For example: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/game/5e5966e2bbdbe407682b05a2/detail

Though I think what you'll see overall is that activity is a lot flatter than it used to be. With web players popping on throughout the day and people staying logged in to hang out or wait for someone, you don't see the big peaks and valleys that I remember seeing in things like MUDStats ages ago.

@hobos said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

IC romance does not equal TS at all.

This. My favorite IC romance started off with a random page that went something like: "So I don't do TS but I think it would be hilarious if our chars hooked up for a drunken one night stand and then regretted it." The other player also thought that would be hilarious. We had so much fun with it that the chars awkward-ed their way into dating. They eventually got married and dealt with a whole host of issues from infidelity to infertility. All without a bit of OOC drama or TS.

I wish that were the rule rather than the exception.

@meg said in Mustard MUSH List:

But linking someone else's hard work in your menus comes off a lot like presenting it as part of your site, part of your work.

Ah, I understand. To me it's clear that it's going to an external site so I don't see it as any sort of claim, just a quick reference. But I get where you're coming from.

@Meg If you feel that it would be courteous to ask before linking to something, that's certainly your prerogative to do so. Just seems like a strange thing to expect. I have plenty of MU resources (including now this one) linked from the AresMUSH site and certainly don't feel obliged to ask every individual creator if they're OK with me saying "Hey here's a helpful site, check it out". That's generally not how resource linking works on the internet. YMMV though.

@meg Glitch certainly deserves kudos for designing such a thing (nice job, Glitch!), but I'm confused why you think they would or should ask if he wants it linked. It's a public resource, and it's up to the forum admins to determine which resources they want to allow easy access to for the community.

@ghost said in Positivity Going Forward...:

I'd like to see a community in the hobby where those elements (or the urges to clap back because people are being mean) aren't necessary where I can make friends and swap ideas.

This.

@ghost said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

I'm not saying everyone needs to agree with my views on TS/Romance in some cases being treated like "pseudo-dating". If you disagree? COOL. I just feel this way and thus (up until my end of mushing) marked it as something to be very very very very careful about.

As someone who sees IC romance as purely writing, I can emphatically agree with you that the majority of players I've interacted with do not see it the same way. So. Many. Boundary. Issues. Setting a shared expectation up front can help, but there are some who will push things even if you're super clear about no TS, no OOC bleed. It's annoying.

There are some good folks out there who can keep things separate. They're the best. The trouble is finding them.

@derp I just finished Artemis by the same guy and it was awesome.

@misadventure said in Books...Books...Books....:

Sword and sorcery with a light Christian element"

There's always Narnia, heh.

I'm not familiar with Song of Seare myself, but some of the series my kids in that age bracket like are:

Ranger's Apprentice - fantasy adventure, kinda junior LoTR

Keeper of the Lost Cities - telepath, elves, world parallel to ours sort of thing

Wings of Fire - dragons have their own game of thrones I guess

The benefit of opt-out is that it works for ANY category. Don't want to be bothered by codey stuff? Ignore the MU Code category and it won't show up in your recent list any more.

I agree that the flammability of Hog Pit and Politics probably warrant a pinned topic at the top of the categories to remind folks they CAN opt out, but at the end of the day it's not the admin's job to teach people how to use the basic forum features.

@noodle-mcdoodle The pitcrew group no longer works actually - the Hog Pit is (was, I guess) visible to all.

However, you can do as I do and just click the little "Watching" button at the top of the thread and set the entire forum to Ignore. Then at least you don't have to see it coming up in your recent posts list.

@tat said in Meshing Groups:

Or just be okay with less interaction IN the scene, and build in time for those characters to connect around what happened later.

That's what I do. Like if the plot starts at 9 and I know that most players pumpkin by midnight, I'll make sure that the "meat" of the plot ends by 11 so there's still time for folks to do wrap-up and stuff afterward.

Personally I don't enjoy doing a lot of interaction in the midst of plot scenes (which tend to be action scenes on my games). It's hard enough to keep track of what everyone else is even doing without then also trying to respond to a bunch of different conversations. And it tends to bog things down.

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

It is okay to mourn the loss, even if it was a shitty situation.

Oh, for sure. I was interpreting "feel bad" as feel guilty based on prior related messages. I don't think leaving an unsafe situation is something anyone needs to feel guilty about, but ultimately how you feel is how you feel.

@kk said in The Work Thread:

I feel bad, but

You shouldn't feel bad for leaving an unsafe work environment. It's not your fault that they suck. Hope your new place treats you better.