Posts made by faraday

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

What is "Social RP"?

By my definition: Any scene that does not involve plot events or move a plot forward in any way. Usually it's characters just sitting around chit-chatting. Getting to know you RP, "BarRP" in its many forms (the bar, the commons, the hangar deck, the restaurant, the mess hall, the gym, the coffee pot in the doctor's lounge, ...), courtship RP, bringing someone flowers in the hospital, etc.

Note: I'm not saying any of this is bad. It's the glue that holds characters together. Without social RP, when the zombies attack it's just you and a bunch of strangers you have no connection to. And after the zombies are gone you just go your separate ways until the next attack. Social RP is essential, IMHO, which is why I don't really understand the assertion that it damages some settings.

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Why do people need to be logged in to the game 4-5 days a week?

Why shouldn't they be? The game is "on" 24/7 and some folks who have nothing better to do like to play when they can.

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

I'm not objecting to social Rp. I'm saying some settings are damaged by it.

A solid 80% of RP on every single game I've ever seen is social RP. If you want to try build a game without it ... hey, go for it, but I don't really think it's practical. And I think that we've seen as much with every post-apoc game that's ever been attempted.

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

If you're running a post-apocalyptic game, survival is kind of important. 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. If not, then, again, I think you're missing a chunk of a game that could yield interesting RP situations.

Oh I agree that the struggle to survive should be a part of the game. But I think you need to address that in a fun and interesting way if you want people to engage with it. Computer games (not just MUSHes) have been trying to "force" people into menial tasks since the beginning. Players as
a general rule hate it. They avoid it whenever humanly possible and they resent it when it's not possible to avoid. If you can make a survival mini-game fun for the majority of the population, or if you can figure out a way to make "foraging for berries" interesting, then as @Thenomain said, there's no reason not to go for it. But taking something that the majority of your game's population isn't interested in (as demonstrated by what they are playing) and trying to force them into it sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

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

The thing about necessary resources is that you can compel players to interact with it. That's why such systems are of interest to me.

I'm sure there's a niche for that. It worked for Firan. But personally I wouldn't play on such a game. When I want to play a resource management game, I'll play Sims or something. I play MUSHes to tell stories, and if I can't tell an interesting story because I'm forced to spend my limited play-time gathering berries to avoid starving (or managing some complex task system to say "Yep, gathering berries"), I'm just not going to play. A character exists in the world 24/7/365. Why is it so horrible to just assume that they're doing the boring eating/sleeping/avoiding-starvation stuff off-camera?

@kanye-qwest said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

What a rich and fertile ground for storytelling! Problem: no great setting or narrative element survives (a lot of) players. So if you do it well, and it's popular, you'll have people doing social scenes and bar rp and sleepovers, etc, in your stressful/limited/dangerous environment. Unless you have a team that can commit to offering NON STOP STORY to keep people from drifting into these comfort zones to amuse themselves. Maybe even if you do.

I've never understood this objection. Social RP is what drives MUSHing. Like... what do you think people should be playing instead when they log in 4-5 days a week? Scenes where they wander through the forest looking for berries? Or through houses scavenging for another can of soup? Boiling water? Tending crops? Day to day survival is tedious and freaking boring. I don't blame anyone for falling back to drinking moonshine around a campfire and socializing whenever there's a lull in the zombies/bandits/plague/whatever. I don't even find it that unrealistic - I think people in that sort of environment would crave connection and normalcy, or at least the illusion thereof.

@arkandel I don't think that will work. The jealousy is secondary to folks wanting to feel special. If you spread the spotlight around and everyone’s special, then nobody’s special and folks lose interest for a different reason. Plus even sharing the pie doesn’t prevent petty competitions about whose slice was bigger.

Bottom line - as long as staff isn’t being horrible with blatant favoritism or anything, I don’t think this is a problem than storytellers can solve. It can only be solved by players showing some maturity.

@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:

I think we watched an entirely different version of A New Hope...

No, we're just looking at it differently. You're looking at what actually happened in the movie script, which yes - everybody but Luke and Han were pretty much useless and completely ignored. I was trying to get people to picture it as a MU plot where there was no pre-ordained hero of the story. Everybody had a chance to complete the trench run, but only one would be the person who actually did it.

Edit: to get away from the trench run in particular since not everyone can be the hero all the time. Even if you include EU stuff the only non-Luke non-Han pilots that get any sort of glory that were at the first Death Star fight are Biggs and Wedge who I would say do get big moments. The rest barely count as named characters.

The "since" you're pushing aside there was the entire point of my original post. Not everybody can be the hero in every scene. It's just simple logistics.
And yet, a lot of MUSHers seem to feel that if they're not the hero, then they're just as much window-dressing as you seem to find the other Rebel pilots.

Just how many "big moments" can you reasonably expect a Star Wars MUSH to have?

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

My question is: Is it even possible for one of the other ones to get the killing blow? If not, can they make it easier for Luke to get the killing blow in a meaningful way? Can they mitigate negative consequences, reduce losses, whatever? If not, then no, just participating isn't special at all. In a movie, having a few lines is all you need, but in a game, if there's no chance to affect the outcome beyond your own personal existence, you're not so much a secondary character, you're an extra. And that's never special.

I agree. But that's exactly what I'm talking about... it's not enough that they had a chance to get the killing shot and missed. The sheer fact that someone else got the Hero Moment causes epic levels of jealousy. I've run dozens upon dozens of combat scenes (across different games) where there was no pre-ordained "Luke" and I've seen it more times than I care to think about. It's like if you don't get to be a complete badass, you may as well have stayed home. I think that's a bad attitude to have, and it's alarmingly prevalent.

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?

It really does, and I'm not meaning to tunnel vision on this particular analogy. But I think it's useful, because it deals with the aspect of having realistic expectations.

Let's say that 12 people show up for the Death Star battle MU scene. I think it's utterly impractical to give all of them Luke levels of impact. But if only one of them gets the killing blow on the Big Bad, does that really mean that everyone else is just window dressing? I don't think so. And how many Epic Big Bads can you really expect a game to have, if you expect staff to spread the Hero Time around?

Nobody wants to feel like window dressing. But not everybody can have Luke levels of Hero Time either. I think MUSHers need to accept the middle ground in there more than they typically do.

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

I don't know! Sometimes I think I might prefer playing a janitor with a real chance at meaningfully affecting the cleanliness levels of the Death Star than playing a pilot who is basically just set dressing in a battle they have no real chance of affecting in any meaningful way, other than by exploding prettily against a backdrop of stars.

Back up though... if this were a MUSH scene and not an already-written movie script (which I know makes it an imperfect example), who says that Porkins couldn't affect the battle in any meaningful way? I mean, yes, only one person can score the WINNING hit on the exhaust port, but it's not like everyone else is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. There are TIE fighters to take out, turrets to dodge...

That's the issue I see with MU players. Everybody (again - generalizing, because like @Three-Eyed-Crow says it's not as much of a minority as folks might want to believe) wants to be the ONE GUY that does the uber special thing, and there just aren't enough uber special things to go around.

@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:

That seem to me like you are telling people to be happy with being the bit parts, which means some will be but a lot will not, it doesn't matter how many or few players a game has

I'm not telling anybody to be anything, I'm just making an observation about why MU players want the spotlight, in response to Ark's question.

But setting aside the whole "they all got killed" thing, I do think that being one of the few pilots in the rebellion who get to participate in the final epic battle against the Death Star is a "special" thing.

@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:

The thing is except for Luke, Han and to a lesser extant Wedge, those pilots aren't special. At least not as far as the story of the movie goes. They appear in two scenes and their characters exist to add to a body count. I tend to play characters that are away from the spotlight by personal preference, but if I wanted to play someone special and was told Oh play the fat guy named Porkins that dies in his second scene or the dude who grew up with the main character and dies in his second scene I know my response would be less than polite.

But that's my point... setting aside the dying part, nobody(*) wants to be Porkins or Biggs - or even really Wedge most of the time. They don't want to be hero-adjacent, they want to be the hero.

Which is perfectly fine if you're writing a story of your own. It's even perfectly fine if you're playing a tabletop RPG and the GM can ensure that your particular group of 4-6 people are the most awesomest, most famous adventurers ever. But the scale breaks down when you have 30 players all wanting to be the Luke-and-Leia level of heroes. @surreality points out that even second-tier characters in GoT get their moments sometimes, and that's true, but nobody(*) wants to only get one or two cool things to do over the lifespan of their character. They want to be Daenerys or Jon Snow.

It just doesn't work. Starring roles are limited. Everybody(*) desperately wants one, and then they get bent out of shape when they get passed over.

(*) - Broad sweeping generalization, not literally everybody/nobody.

@three-eyed-crow said in Spotlight.:

Yeah, I'll admit this BS is the primary thing that makes me jaded about the hobby. I think the cheaters and harassers and true bad actors are anomalies. They're terrible, but you ban them and, problem done. But you're going to have to deal with jealousy every day, even from players who are mostly OK a lot of the time.

Yep, same. It's bad enough as a player, but doubly so as a game-runner because you get a constant barrage of "why did so-and-so get more <whatever> than me" and cries of favoritism, etc. It's just exhausting.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

The game had become a zero-sum one to her. I suspect this might be more widespread.

Yes, I think it is.

You can see it in a number of venues. Attention, like you said - if someone else is getting more RP, then I'm less special.

You can see it with skills. If you let everyone start with "Amazing" then my Amazing rating isn't as Amazing any more.

You can even see it with things as ephemeral as in-game scoreboard, like pilots or warriors tracking kills. There's absolutely zero practical benefit to being higher on the leaderboard, but ZOMG the OOC drama. Players paging each other "You stole my kill!" or "Back off - I want this one!" (IC drama? Sure! Play out Top Gun as much as you want. But why does counting virtual bad-guys need to become a zero-sum fun experience?)

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

So what gives? Why are (some, and not just a few) folks driven to stand out by being assigned prominent positions?

Escapism. For a lot of people, MU*s are about wish-fulfilment fantasy. They want to feel special, which means they want their character to be special. It goes back to the whole issue of IC/OOC separation. It's not enough to be one of the many X-Wing pilots taking part in the assault on the Death Star (which, when you think about it, really already makes them kinda special), they want to be like Luke (making the shot) or Han (taking out Darth Vader so Luke can do it).

Not everybody's like this, of course. Some folks are content just to tell their own story - whatever that may be - in the game's environment. But it's certainly prevalent.

@pyrephox said in Spotlight.:

So, the only thing I say is - ask. Someone can always turn it down, if they're happy as they are, but it never hurts to find out if someone wants an IC direction or boost, but just isn't sure how to do it.

And the only thing I say is -- ask If you're playing a support character and want to get involved in more, talk to the game staff. Be proactive. See if there are plot hooks you can follow up on. As @Roz said - maybe you become the crazy cook who ends up in some kind of secret society. I just put the onus on the players rather than the staff. If you want to get involved, then get involved. Don't expect fun - or spotlight - to be handed to you on a silver platter.

@pyrephox said in Spotlight.:

If you're going to have big nobles and tailors as PCs, then I think you need to design the game so that each have exclusive things that are important and meaningful.

Not necessarily. Every game has supporting characters. I may play a mortal bartender in a Vampire game and get some fun RP out of it, but I certainly wouldn't expect "equal access" to the metaplot. It's the same with a deckhand or cook on a Battlestar game, or a sidekick in a superhero game. A tailor in a L&L game seems to fit that bill as well.

The trick, of course, is to make the expectations clear. If someone is playing a supporting role and thinking that they're playing a starring role, that's a problem. But some people like to play supporting roles, and there's nothing wrong with having them.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

Do all players deserve the same access to the spotlight?

No. As a game-runner, I don't owe anybody anything other than a comfortable and safe environment to tell their stories. Spotlight has to be earned.

• Activity - just showing up and playing nets you more opportunities to have a moment where you do something cool.
• Initiative - following up on plot threads and doing something beyond BarRP nets you more opportunities to get involved.
• Being helpful - I'm much more inclined to run a special focused plot for somebody who's contributed to the game in other ways than somebody who just sits in the OOC room all day.
• If you do want the spotlight, make a sensible character choice - A Viper Pilot is going to get more chances at the spotlight on a BSG game than the cook. On a western, a gunslinger or doctor will probably have more opportunities to get involved in stuff than a farmer. That's just common sense.

Now spotlight can sometimes be used in obnoxious ways, which is why I think people are sensitive to it. It's poor sportsmanship to run a plot featuring your own PC and not let anybody do anything else meaningful. That's like inviting people over to play basketball and hogging the ball the whole time.

Similarly, excluding otherwise proactive and decent people from having plot opportunities just because they're not your buddies is equally poor sportsmanship. It would be like inviting people over to play basketball and only letting your friends have a turn on the court.

So don't be a jerk, but recognize that nobody's entitled to anything.

@the-sands said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

I'm referring more to a case where you simply have to use another database system.

Ares cannot be made to use a different database system. It's tied to Redis. But if you mean having two database systems running in parallel... I can't imagine why you'd want to do that, but yeah, sure, you could.

@the-sands said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Unless you're doing something that requires a data model more complicated than Redis is supporting.

That is exceedingly unlikely. Redis by its nature stores simple key/value strings, and the Ohm db model reflects that. You can build all sorts of complexity on top of that, which Ohm also does with things like relationships and data types, but you're not going to need to tunnel under the ORM.

@the-sands said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

I should note that I am not saying you can't do this in Ares.

You can but you shouldn’t need to. Redis is a NoSQL database so its data model is more simplistic to begin with.

@zz - I’m probably going to do a simple fate plugin.