Posts made by faraday

@thenomain said in Favorite Minigames:

In the end, all things online are Zork.

Colossal Cave Adventure came first (1976 versus Zork's 1977).</geek nitpick>

@thenomain said in Favorite Minigames:

Thinking of RPGs as MMOs puts a lot of clarification on Mu* design.

Y'all are just kind of reinforcing the point here that these minigames are more of a MUD/MMO/RPI thing Which is not to say MUSHes can't have them too, of course, just touches on why some folks feel it's out of place.

If I want to do a farm sim, I'll go play Farmville. If I want to grind mobs, I'll go play a MMO. MUSHes offer something different, and I don't think they can really compete. Anything we do would feel like a pale knockoff of what else is out there. (And the cynic in me says: probably also be horribly broken/unbalanced.)

@wizz said in Coordinates-based Grid:

build a roomless, coordinates-based grid

I'm not quite sure what you mean. You can't have a literally roomless grid because the entire basis of every MU server revolves around characters being in rooms. HSpace and the like create dynamic rooms. That's eminently do-able in every server, but the code is a pain because you basically have to re-invent the entire MUSH movement system, which is based on static exits linked to static rooms. Most places just don't bother because giant exploration and space games fell out of favor years ago.

@apos said in Favorite Minigames:

I think, with just how so much of MUSH rp culture is self-enforced, as long as something is clearly visible to players, we as game runners don't need to worry about that part.

I'm glad you've had a good experience with it, but I wouldn't take that to be universal. Especially among more narratively-inclined players. My experience has been that they're more likely to be resentful of having code intrude upon their RP and skirt around it, especially if the code is perceived to be optional. This can then lead to sour grapes with people who are actually trying to follow the systems in place. (Granted this experience has been more around economy systems than scavenge specifically but I believe it's still relevant.)

@three-eyed-crow said in Favorite Minigames:

I did really like this piece of code

Despite my previously-stated dislike of minigames/coded systems, I am genuinely curious -- what made it good? I'd contemplated doing a scavenge sort of system on prior games but couldn't figure out how to avoid making it suck in the ways @Apos listed. How did they avoid the pitfalls of things like....

• Sorry, nobody +scavenged food this week so everyone starves.
• Mary is ignoring the +scavenge system, but is RPing having scavenged something nifty from the rubble anyway.
• Joe had a cool idea for a plotline involving scavenging something, but he's trying to honor the +scavenge code and doesn't run it.
• I've +scavenged seven times this month and all I keep getting is this lousy Cheese Hat.

@lithium said in Favorite Minigames:

Now OOC Drama is another thing entirely, and the bane of many games existence. It's certainly chased me off of games in the past.

I was referring to OOC drama and toxicity. I'm all for IC drama.

@three-eyed-crow said in Favorite Minigames:

I'm not a person who gets much out of MMOs, and I feel like my ambivalence for MU mini-games comes from the same place.

Sorry for double-post but three-eyed-crow reminded me... Part of my distaste for advancement-based mini-games in MUs stems from seeing the negative effects such competition breeds. Like we discussed the "pilot kill counting" thing on another thread. One would probably consider that a pretty harmless sort of minigame (a scoreboard for how many virtual badguys you'd gotten) but it bred drama almost to the point of toxicity. I've seen the same thing with political advancement systems, loot systems, and promotion/award systems... SO MUCH DRAMA (ETA: OOC drama, that is).

In a tabletop environment you're either among friends or you're in a convention-based environment where you're not likely to interact with those people beyond that session. In a MMO there are millions of players so the competition doesn't usually become personal (setting aside the doxxing/swatting crazies). But in a persistent world with a modest community of strangers... ugh.

@apos said in Favorite Minigames:

Definitely correct me if I'm wrong since I don't want to misrepresent your position, but it sounds like the objection is against anything that represents alternate advancement because it undermines the focus on RP by getting people invested in some kind of progression for characters that aren't narrative/story focused, in a video game-ish way.

That's a fair assessment. And it's definitely a style thing. Again, I'm really not trying to cry 'wrongfun' here on anyone. I realize that the consent-based narrative style of RP is a dying breed in MUSHland, but that's the kind of MUSH I "grew up" on and that will always be my ideal. (Which may seem ironic coming from someone who designed skills and combat code, but I see those things as necessary evils for my game-running sanity.)

But anyway -- yeah, things like checkers or BSG pyramid/triad code would be harmless diversions. I'd rather just wing it, but if someone wants to use it in a scene it's not going to send me running for the hills.

The systems I dislike are ones that supplant the story, get in the way of telling stories, or limit imagination in ways that I find a hassle. A few examples:

• As @Lotherio mentioned, I've been on several games (including SW1) where people were so focused on the trade/economy minigames that it supplanted RP. People were off doing code-y things and just not involved in telling stories.
• I've been on games resource management systems that got in the way of telling stories. "Oh I'm sorry, I know you have this really cool plot idea involving finding some meds, but you failed your +scavenge roll so sucks to be you..."
• Some folks have mentioned outfit code. While I don't have an issue with this as an optional system, I get really annoyed when I'm forced to +buy and +wear crap just to avoid my character running around naked. It's a hassle. It adds absolutely nothing to the game for me and it's just a drag I have to worry about.

Now as @Arkandel mentioned, some of this is down to crappy minigame design. But that ties into my other issue with all of this...

MUSHes are run by hobbyists. Players now not only expect these volunteer admins to be their personal GMs, constantly feeding them plots, and interpersonal-conflict mediators, but now they also expect them to be expert game designers building fun and engaging 'minigames' (and coding them, too, of course)? Look at some point enough is enough.

(ETA: This isn't a knock on game runners who want to do these things. More power to them. It's the player-side expectation that grates on me and again has led to game-running burnout for me and others.)

@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:

I don't think the focus is diluted, that's all. If WoW is too different then surely D&D isn't, and it's been incorporating both story and loot for thirty some years; sure, different campaigns (which I can argue is a similar concept to 'different MUSHes') can definitely focus on one over the other, but the default case is to have both.

Yes, for a tabletop RPG I agree. But I don't think MUSHes work well under the tabletop model. This has been mentioned ad nauseam on various threads here. It doesn't scale to larger groups and it doesn't do as well with strangers. I think that the hobby is poorer for trying to stick to that model. But you're right - this is probably veering off topic so I'll shut up now

@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:

so why not?

@faraday said in Favorite Minigames:

Everything else is just a distraction and room for more OOC competition, sour grapes, or a gap between the haves and have-nots.

You may disagree with my reasons for "why not", which is absolutely fine, but they are nevertheless reasons based on actual experiences.

ETA: I don't think WoW is a good example. It's not built around raiding as a primary mode of gameplay. It's designed as a business to maximize cash flow by appealing to as wide a variety of players with different playstyles as humanly possible. That's why it has elements that appeal to all the different Bartle types. It also has a support system in place to handle that many players with disparate goals and playstyles. I don't think most MUs can handle that dilution of focus.

@arkandel said in Favorite Minigames:

Most games don't have anything like that. We are so very focused on XP we've stopped providing any other venues for advancement in games

I don't want this to come across as wrong-fun, so I'm saying so in advance. To each their own - and if that's what you find fun then I hope you find it.

But this attitude is why I'm kind of burnt out on running games. I view MUSHing as a collective storytelling game. You're there to tell stories. If people aren't going to be motivated to tell stories unless there are carrots on sticks to let them 'advance' ... if people aren't going to be motivated to tell stories unless I build a farming or survival minigame ... then fundamentally they're looking for something I'm not interested in selling. The story is the point. The story should be the only necessary reward. Everything else is just a distraction and room for more OOC competition, sour grapes, or a gap between the haves and have-nots.

(Obviously I have no favorite minigame because I inherently dislike them.)

@ganymede said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

Well, you are my hero, so this definitely works out.

:beam:

@ganymede said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

But, yeah. Like any RL relationship, set clear boundaries where applicable and don't budge.

This - 100%. I'm maybe not the best at enforcing boundaries soon enough, but I do have my limits. And I really do believe that a lot of the folks in this hobby who have boundary issues honestly don't realize they're doing it. I've been in a couple of IC relationships where the other player started blending IC/OOC too much for my liking, and I've found that a polite but firm "Yo, you're being creepy - I am not my character, knock it off" works wonders.

A lot of players are loathe to do this, but the drama caused by avoiding it far outweighs the potential drama caused by confronting the issue. And by confronting such behavior, you're saving other players headaches down the road. Consider it a public service. Player X being told a half-dozen times "Yo, you've got boundary issues and I don't want to play this relationship any more" sends a much different message than players just mysteriously bailing.

@ganymede said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

The worthy suitors and lovers will come by and enjoy the living shit out of you because, lo, you're being an adult in adult situations.

I tend not to do serious IC relationships any more. Been burned too many times by either players with boundary issues or players who just bail on the game without warning. (Like... yo, if you're not going to play that's fine -- but at least have the courtesy to write your character out and not leave somebody hanging.)

The only time it really worked out was on BSP. It's great when you've got two mature, chill people who are there for the story and not some sort of OOC relationship proxy. You can actually do dramatic, potentially difficult storylines without worrying that the other person is going to freak out or get OOCly jealous. Sadly, that's pretty rare.

@Ganymede is my hero.

@tinuviel Shush, you're not helping

@surreality said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

That not all games have the things they want does not make those games wrong, bad, or failures, they just make them not what that person wants, and they seem incapable of comprehending this.

Yeah, and the "logic" there is pretty mind-boggling.

It's like... "ZOMG look at the box office results, people! Comic book movies made eleventy bazillion dollars in 2017. Why haven't you nitwits figured that out yet and stopped making these lame art house films? Just make everything a comic book movie and all your problems will be solved!"

@ganymede said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Why overlook the struggle to survive by making food and water an after thought? You may not need to force people into a harvest mini-game, but threatening the PCs' collective existence should be part-and-parcel to how the game works.

One further thought about this and the whole "survival mini-game" thing... I think a lot of post-apoc TV dramas show what I'm getting at. Occasionally they'll have a "we're running out of water" episode or a food crisis where something dramatic happens getting water, but day to day survival is not the focus of the show because it would be boring to watch. These shows focus on the more compelling aspects of human drama and/or adventure in those environments, not the nuts and bolts of finding enough food and water to subsist.

Now if somebody wanted to make a whole resource/survival aspect for their game because they think it's cool - that's their prerogative. I'm not knocking that, even though it's not my personal style. I just reject the idea that if you're not OOCly forced to fuss with resource gathering that you're destroying and/or polluting the genre.

@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:

Of someone show up to a scene and for whatever reason has all the impact on it as third extra on the left, I would not begrudge them complaining or just saying fuck it. Why should anyone spend 3 to 5 hours doing essentially nothing?

If that's your POV then hey - that's cool. I'm not saying you (or they) are wrong to spend your time elsewhere.

But for me? I don't give a crap if my character has a Big Hero Moment or not. I mean, sure, it's kinda neat when it happens but it doesn't drive my RP. I had immense fun being the lone Grounder PC in the 20-person scene in 100, making wisecracks to a NPC I was emitting. It's roleplay. It's a story. I didn't feel like the "third extra on the left" even though my character didn't really accomplish anything, ended up on the losing side, and got shot in the head and mostly incapacitated by some random NPC extra.

Different people like different things. All I'm saying is when you have a significant number of people feeling like "I've got a 66% chance of wasting my time if I don't get to do something awesome", you've got a serious logistical problem that I don't think is solvable.

@thenomain said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

But if all people want to play are Social MU*s with RPG elements, then why bother making anything else?

There's plenty of room for all kinds of games on the internet. MUDs have very little socialization. RPIs have some socialization but heavy coded elements to drive that RP. MUSHes have tended to be, as you say, "socially oriented with some RPG elements". (I would argue that Firan fell closer to the RPI scale than the MU scale but others may disagree.)

Is any of that bad? Is it perhaps that all you're looking for is more of a RPI than a MUSH? Does the distinction even matter?

To put it another way... what do you envision for a game that's got dozens of players and runs 24/7/365 for hopefully years that isn't primarily socially driven?

@lotherio said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Newer games are cutting down on the boring grinding parts by offering other things to occupy the gamer, as mentioned, like mini-games.

Yeah, you don't have to look far on the internet to find tons of people complaining about "the grind" in various games, finding ways around it - including exploits or automation - and whatnot. Minecraft has creative mode and a gazillion articles out there about how to farm/grind resources most efficiently because a significant number of people hate to do it. Also, Minecraft and MMOs are hellishly addictive, so proving that you can get somebody to do something repetitive and boring if you make the game addictive enough is maybe not the best treatise.

So yes, games with grinds still become popular. My assertion is that they become popular in spite of the grind, not because of it.

@ominous said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

The popularity of Minecraft, Subnautica, Day Z, Ark, and Don't Starve contradicts your supposition that players avoid menial tasks.

It really doesn't. It proves the supposition that if you make the menial task fun or worthwhile then it's no longer menial.

@lotherio said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

It less a question of would it happen then someone defining theme differently. One person wants zombie apocalypse with bad hygiene, halitosis, and body bugs, someone else wants hollywood version where people can kiss even if there is no toothpaste left in the world?

Yeah I think this is the larger issue. I never played No Return, but I've seen the "people playing house while the world is ending" complaint about a number of games. Obviously players RPing wildly out of theme is a problem, whether that's folks acting like there's food enough for a banquet in a zombie game or folks walking up and hugging the queen in a L&L one. I fail to see how that's related to Social RP specifically.