Posts made by faraday

@arkandel said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Now I have more time and I could do it, but I'm not sure there's a use case for it. If there was a strong enough request, sure, but... why?

I'm not saying you need to, but the answer to 'why' is right there in what @Ghost posted. There's data here, and that data could, in a worst-case black-hat sort of scenario be used as an attack vector. Whether it's a weak password, or identifying someone's Google account through their email (which often is the key to their virtual kingdom) or tracing their IP, or stalking posts to glean info to use in some kind of social engineering exploit, or impersonating them to a MU friend to open up some other attack vector...

Is it likely? No, not especially, which is why mom-and-pop websites have been using HTTP for years while only banks and places using financial transactions opted for HTTPS.

But it is possible, and that's why the security tide is turning.

@arkandel said in What's your identity worth to you?:

I suppose I could have it do so but frankly you'd be well served not sending anything through this forum which constitutes 'sensitive information' of any sort. It's a gaming forum. Don't trust it.

Interesting tidbit - Google is on a bit of a crusade to eradicate HTTP and make everything secure. The other tech giants have been doing the same for telnet (it's no longer available on OSX terminal for example). So in that regard I agree with @Ghost that MUSHes are horrifyingly behind the times as far as security goes.

But I don't see that changing any time...ever, really. I looked into supporting SSL connections with Ares. The game code is trivial, but the steps involved in enabling it server-side were hideous for anyone who isn't an experienced server admin. Until MUSHers are willing to transition to a platform like Storium and sacrifice control over the game code in favor of having a robust, secure, game-on-demand platform, it just ain't gonna happen.

@rnmissionrun said in AresMUSH Updates:

I think I got as far as the "Coding for Ares" page, saw that it didn't really tell me anything, and stopped reading.

Hmm... was this awhile ago? Because yes, during the alpha stages the installation scripts had various issues and the tutorials were virtually non-existent. I wouldn't be surprised if someone got frustrated trying to figure it out - but it wasn't really ready for public consumption yet.

Since then, though, I've polished up the install scripts to be as hands-free as possible and spent considerable time trying to make the documentation as robust as I could as @tat and @krmbm mentioned (thanks!) It doesn't just cover Ruby but goes into the various components of the Ares code. It has two step-by-step tutorials (Quickstart and Creating a Plugin) that give an overview of how to use the basic building blocks. If you saw all that and still feel that it "doesn't really tell me anything" then please feel free to submit ideas for what sort of tutorials you would like to see.

Sorry for the double-post but I just realized I neglected to cross-post a note from the Ares Forums.

With the recent 0.7 release, I consider the code stable and ready for public beta testing. There's a complete suite of tutorials covering installation, configuration and how to code. While bugfixes and minor feature changes are still likely, I do not anticipate any more major revisions to the architecture.

I think it's less spammy to MSB folks to ask specific install/code/help-me type questions over on the Ares forum, but I'll answer questions here too.

@rnmissionrun said in AresMUSH Updates:

I had pretty much the same experience. After spending most of the day just getting it running, I poked at it a bit before my eyes glazed over, I said "Uhhhh yeah..." and went running back to Evennia. I'll take another look when it gets an official release.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but without feedback there's no way for me to improve it.

What took a whole day to get running? Were there errors during the installation? Were the configuration tutorials unclear?

Did you try the coding tutorials? Did they suck?

Not trying to be difficult here, but without knowing where the stumbling blocks were, the official release will look 100% like the current release.

@ixokai said in What's your identity worth to you?:

They are offended by the very presumption one would ask for an email address, not hindered by some lack of technical ability to use a throw-away address.

Yeah, from the polling I did for Ares it's usually either principle ("You shouldn't need to know that! You must be dumb and/or shady!") or just not wanting to be spammed and not wanting to be bothered creating a MU burner.

@apos said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Oh yeah I'm sure they exist, I just think it's so small and so niche that it's not worth it to factor them into design decisions.

I guess it depends. Unlike Arx, most MU*s are pretty small. The idea of potentially alienating up to 10% of your already-small population seems like something many games would want to factor into their design decisions - even if that decision is ultimately "screw it, we're using email".

@ixokai Thanks for the feedback.

The FS3 plugins can be disabled easily, as explained in Enabling and Disabling Plugins.

As for creating your own system - any new codebase is going to be somewhat overwhelming, whether you're sitting down to learn MUSHCode for the first time or you're like me trying to figure out Evennia (even though I know a little Python).

Have you checked out the Coding for AresMUSH tutorials series? One of the tutorials is implementing a simple traits plugin like you might find on a comic game. I thought that would be a good place to start for someone wanting to make a more sophisticated RPG system. If you find that inadequate and have some suggestions on where the gaps are, I'd be glad to hear it.

@apos said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Currently, I'm on character application #1809 on Arx and I've had to do that special process for the violently email-less exactly zero times.

That's reassuring but hardly conclusive. I mean, setting aside the pages of MSB posts on the subject, I've personally spoken to people of the opinion that: "I simply won't play on a game that requires email registration". They're more likely to just walk away than to jump through extra hoops for a special process. They're probably a minority (and hopefully diminishing over time as more of the younger generation comes in), but they do exist.

ETA: But just to add more data to support your general point... The Ares player handle system allows you to enter an email for password resets. Strictly voluntary. 90% of players have set one.

I'm not sure what value a few data points on a poll are. In real social media people fall all along a privacy spectrum, from "I'm a ghost" to "My life is an open book" and I would expect MU folks to be the same. I do think that the Bad Actor history of MUSHing does tend to sway people a little more towards the privacy side though.

FWIW, I fall more on the open side because I am a writer and it's kind of a PITA to maintain a separate identity for a pen name. I've found that my gaming and game-code experience is a selling point in my industry and not a drawback. But I get why other people are more privacy conscious, for reasons from industry stigma to security clearances to Bad Experiences.

Though I do think that many MUSHers are irrationally resistant to supplying emails. It takes sixty seconds to create a burner Gmail account for spam and even my mom has managed it. The entire internet runs off of email validation, and I seriously do not understand the resistance against it in MU-land.

@wildbaboons said in What's your identity worth to you?:

I don't mind sharing who my alts are usually, but so long as I am the one doing the sharing. It's why I wish the profile piece of Ares was opt-in on sharing.

There's actually a reason why it's not, which I bring up (even though it's kinda off-topic) because it may be relevant to @Arkandel's master plans.

Selective privacy is ridiculously hard.

Think about Facebook and it's gazillion privacy settings for who can see what. Have you ever tried to explain that to someone who isn't very tech-savvy? It's insanity.

In Ares, for instance, your handle appears next to your name on channels. <Public> Cate (@Faraday) says, "Yo.". If only some of the people can see the @Faraday bit it gets weird, because nobody knows who can see what. All it takes is one person slipping on channel: "So Fara - when will that be done?" and all of a sudden you're outed. Plus, as soon as you register an alt then the game admins can see it. And we all know that game admins are super-trustworthy about keeping alt info secret, right?

So after a great deal of prototyping and careful consideration, I decided it was best to make handles public and not give people a false illusion of privacy. The only safe way to opt out is to just not have a handle. Even having a handle but only selectively linking alts is not foolproof because your IP follows you.

@Ashen-Shugar suggested awhile back that I make an AresMUSH version, and I finally got around to it. See the Dealing with Trolls tutorial on the Ares website.

@tat said in FS3:

I did use the saved NPCs fairly often, but the ability to just 'goon' and 'henchman' NPCs in Ares might serve the purpose they mostly did. I suspect that for recurring big bads, I'll create a character object to use.

Yeah that's what I was thinking. You can even create additional NPC types beyond goon/henchman/miniboss/boss if you want to have more fine-tuned pre-set NPC types.

Thanks for the suggestion @SG.

The PennMUSH version of FS3 allowed you to save NPCs. It maintained their damage lists, skill levels and whatnot. However, across numerous FS3 games I saw that feature get used... almost never. So it was dropped from the Ares version since everything needed to be re-coded in Ares. If there's enough interest I can recreate it Ares-style.

In the mean time, the best I can suggest is to make a sort of log file script of the commands to set up squad A-9 and then use your client's "upload" feature to send it to the game. If you want multiple people to be able to do that, you can share the script on the wiki.

@thenomain said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

And I wasn't saying that it wasn't a thing, but saying there was a historical timeline.

I never said you were being antagonistic? You said "Rule Zero flipped the discussion." and I disagree. I think Rule Zero was just a game explicitly stating something that lots of people had already been doing. Stating that Storyteller was the first game to explicitly put it in the rules is factually accurate AFAIK. Suggesting it was a game-changer in some way seems like an overstatement IMHO. We can agree to disagree, as I have no hard evidence one way or the other.

@thenomain I don't think we're disagreeing with the historical timeline - we're just saying that some (many? I didn't take a poll.) gaming groups recognized the need for Rule Zero and implemented it without needing the rulebook to spell it out for them. House rules have existed as long as RPGs have.

@surreality Yeah we played with 'GM Fiat' long before Storyteller - even with 1st Edition Shadowrun. I agree with @Thenomain though that AFAIK Storyteller was the first system that made it an explicit part of the "rules" to avoid people trying to rules-lawyer the GM by bludgeoning them with the force of the rulebook.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

Is it the earlier line that makes it sound like everyone needs to take it or is it the list of examples that suggests only people who spend quite a lot of time behind the wheel who should buy it?

Right - that's what I was getting at. Games/GMs need to decide which one to follow, and that decision may vary from one GM to another. Since it's unclear in the game text, it needs to be made clear.

But now doesn't that open up the counter argument that Bob was expecting '6 dice means 6 dice' and is told 'no, even though you have the same pool you can't do that'? There's nothing anywhere in the rules that suggest to Bob that he could suddenly be penalized simply because his Skill is only 1 die.

See... that's where I think we disagree. There's never been any statement in any rulebook ever that says "you can attempt any task in the universe with your dice". Skills have limits. That's Rule Zero, or the basic rule of common sense, or whatever you want to call it.

Where those limits lie is ultimately up to the individual GM. We can (hopefully!) all agree that it's OK for a GM to say: "No, you can't jump over that giant chasm no matter how many Athletics dice you have. You're going to fall and die." Similarly, I have no problem as a GM telling a commercial airline pilot: "No, you have no chance of successfully launching this space shuttle no matter how many Piloting dice you have." Or a GM telling a paramedic: "No, you have no chance of successfully performing brain surgery no matter what your medicine dice are."

I prefer it when a system spells out these limitations so that all players are on the same page in advance. (FS3 does, for instance.) But even if the system doesn't, I have no problem whatsoever with a GM making that limit.

One really big danger I see is that if your argument is 'no, you have to have Medicine-3 to attempt this' then shouldn't we forbid people from buying Medicine-3 unless they have earned their Master's degree, done 4 years of med school, and 3 years of residency (the requirements to be a GP)? After all, they aren't a GP so they are purchasing a skill their character 'can't' have by the dot-definition. Doesn't that mean they are cheating? If I expected that only characters with medical degrees could purchase Medicine-3 then doesn't that give you 'an advantage over me' because I'm following a more literal interpretation?

Just because you got an advantage doesn't mean you're cheating. Cheating to me implies deliberate and malicious action.

But I think app review is an important part of any game, and addresses this problem. Whether you're a tabletop GM saying: "Yo, dude, you're a 16-year-old high schooler; how the devil did you get Piloting 5?" or a MU staffer saying, "We interpret Medicine-3 to mean an actual doctor and that is inconsistent with your background; you must lower your skill." I have absolutely done that.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

I would dearly love for someone on the 'it's a rule' side to explain where I am mistaken

OK, new day. Let me try one last time, a different way...

It seriously depends on your definition of "rule", which is why I'm with @ixokai in thinking that the argument is a bit of semantic pedantry. So I'm going to answer the question in a slightly different way.

I think that the Player's Guide (any rulebook, really) contains different kinds of information:

1. Vital mechanics that are at the core of the system. (e.g. mechanics for conflict resolution as stat + skill + modifiers, how chargen works, etc.)
2. Detailed statistics and descriptions that are important to gameplay but easily altered by the GM without fundamentally changing the game. (e.g. the attribute list and what it means, XP costs, weapon stats, what you can do with skills/powers, etc.)
3. Clarifying examples that are intended to be accurate but not complete/exhaustive. (e.g. sample characters, pie-in-the-sky clan descriptions, etc.)
4. Fluff text that really has no impact on the game but is fun and helps you understand the world better. (e.g. fiction)

If your question is whether the oWoD skill descriptions are category 1, then no - I don't think they are.

I place them somewhere between 2-3. I don't think they're just category 4 "fluff text" and here's why...

If Bob makes up his character assuming that Drive means "stunt driving" and I make up my character assuming that Drive means exactly what it says in the skill descriptions, then our characters are not on a level playing field. Same thing if Bob makes up his character assuming that Medicine-1 means First Aid and I make up my character assuming that Medicine-1 means "medical/nursing student". This can have impacts down the line if we try to use said skills and are told by the GM "No, you can't splint that broken bone / drive that stick-shift because you lack the requisite skill". It also effectively gives Bob more points for “useful” skills since I spent some unnecessarily to get basic driving and first aid.

I think that's a Bad Thing.

That doesn't mean that Bob is a Cheating McCheater because he "didn't follow the rules". But it does mean that skill descriptions are important and games should clarify what they intend the skills to mean if they're not going to follow the pre-written skill descriptions in the Player's Guide.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

Using that logic everyone who fails to conform to their character cliches are quite literally cheating because they are not following all the flavor text.

Uh, yeah, that's literally not at all what I said. Anyway - we obviously don't see eye to eye and I see no point in prolonging our frustration.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

And this is my problem. My problem isn't that the flavor text is broken. I'm fine with broken flavor text. I look at it and go 'huh. That's stupid' and then move on. However, apparently some people want to say 'no, you can't do that, it's cheating'.

I really don't know where our wires are getting crossed.

<something> is written in the rulebook.
Player A sees <something> and says, "Wow, that's stupid. I'm gonna ignore that."
Player B sees the same thing and says, "No you can't ignore that - it's in the rules. That's cheating."

It really doesn't matter whether the <something> perceived to be broken is a mechanic (hello social conflict thread), flavor text (hello skill fluff thread), a bit of theme that someone thinks is nonsensical (hello Arx thread) or what. Different people have different tolerances for chucking bits out of the rulebook, whether you consider them "rules" or not.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

And I do apologize but in this context what's being discussed is quite definitely whether the fluff descriptors for oWoD (there are no fluff descriptors in nWoD) are 'rules' as some people want to maintain or just descriptors meant to give people some kind of idea as to what the dots represent. I know there are games where the skill descriptors are quite important. We simply aren't discussing those games.

Yes, I'm aware of the thread title. I'm making a point that applies to RPGs across the board, WOD included:

Flavor text is there for a reason. It provides context and details beyond the numbers. It clarifies how the designers intended the system to work. There's no inherent reason to discount a section on "here's what you can do with these skills at different levels" any more than there's reason to discount a section on "here's what these attributes cover" or "here's what these disciplines cost". They're all pieces of the game.

Whether or not they're "rules" is a matter of semantics, as @Thenomain pointed out, and ultimately irrelevant.

Because your problem isn't that it's flavor text. Your problem is that it's broken flavor text. It's flavor text that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in context with the dice mechanics, nor general common sense. Like any other broken rule, it falls to the GM (or staff, in the case of a MU) how to remedy it.

Personally I don't think skills need to be valued equally, so I have no objection to the fact that a modest skill in driving costs the same as a master's degree in theology. Maybe they did that on purpose because they figured Drive would come up more often. Maybe they always intended skills to have their own independent scales. Maybe it's just a goof. Who knows. In the end, all that matters is how an individual game chooses to set their playing field.