@auspice FS3 is just a plugin for Ares. You can remove it and incorporate any system you want. I know that doesn't help you since you said you don't have a coder. Just pointing it out for the record.
I agree with @Lithium that the bare tacks of FATE wouldn't be particularly hard to code. But it has some subtleties that could be a PITA if you wanted them to be codified as opposed to just handled manually by the GM.
@thatguythere said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
From my understanding Ares is a code base designed by Faraday that uses the newest version of FS3 also brought to us by Faraday. I haven't spent a lot of time looking at the newest FS3 since I have yet to play on a game that utilized it, (BSG and pirates aren't really my things) it looks thye the skill range has flattened but not the core mechanic seems to be unchanged.
Ares is an entire server, like PennMUSH and TinyMUX. Its core selling point is that it comes with all of the things we traditionally think of as softcode built in, so it's essentially a complete MUSH-in-a-box. It's also not done yet.
There's a blurb about all the Third Edition differences here.
@tnp said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
I don't hate FS3 at all but I think it encourages combat more than RP. That's not a fault of the system but the ones playing it.
Lots of people use it for combat-centric games because, well, it's one of the few systems that comes with a built-in combat engine. But you can use it for anything. You can even uninstall the combat engine completely.
@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
That's exactly how it worked out, yep. People still look at others sheets and have a yawp about it, though, and certain characters are utterly crushing at certain skills that the setting makes especially desirable.
Sure, but people will gripe about that in any system that has XP right? My only goal with FS3 was to make it so the dinos weren't crushingly untouchable like they were in the old Star Wars MUs I "grew up" on. As @Auspice mentioned, her ace sniper on BSGU is better than everyone else (as it should be) but it's not like she goes around stealing all the kills while everyone else twiddles their thumbs.
Ha! You've told me that before, but for some reason I've kept right on thinking it was 'Faraday System 3'. There was a comprehensive exam in being thick and I forgot to bring a pencil.
Hee, no biggie. For years I didn't really advertise why it was called FS3 so people just made up their own headcanon for it.
@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
@faraday Keeping in mind that this huge huge list of action skills is not, actually, a thing that I or anybody suggested and what I'm contemplating has, mmm, 12, is this still honestly a hairy deal?
10-12 is the recommended number. I was just responding to @Auspice, who brought up the giant skill list. I realize you did not suggest that yourself.
@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
GoB has sheet dinos. Not like WoD sheet dinos with big blocks of maxed-out stats, but nevertheless.
It depends on how you define dino. Any game that's been constantly doling out XP for what - 5 years? - is going to have some characters with max-ed out skills. What makes FS3 different is that even someone with maxed-out skills does not typically have a crushing advantage over your typical starting 'professional' level character. And new players can start off expert in their field of choice. Usually what you see is FS3 dinos grow horizontally (with skill breadth) whereas in other game systems they grow vertically and end up towering over newbies in effectiveness.
@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
@auspice said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
The overall game core is Ares. Like Evennia, Rhost, Penn, etc. The game system (for sheet/dice mechanics) is FS3.
Huh. I would have guessed that the MU* core is Ares and the dice system with it would be FS4, but cool beans. My error.
FS3 stands for Faraday's Simple Skill System. I add an 'edition' after it for subsequent versions. The one everybody's used to is FS3 Second Edition. Ares uses FS3 Third Edition.
@auspice said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
You're also talking having to craft a huge list of action skills and from my work on The 8th Sea, I found this to be detrimental to a game rather than beneficial.
I don't know jack about Magicians so I can't really weigh in on whether there would be 7 or 30 action skills for the magic stuff. What I can say is that you're right in general - FS3 doesn't work well at all with a big action skill list.
TL;DR; - Putting in too many Action Skills for folks to deal with is really up-ending the game balance apple cart. The whole point of calling them out special as "Action Skills" is to highlight what your game is about. It brings focus to the skills that are likely to be useful in conflict situations so people don't accidentally hamstring themselves or get overwhelmed trying to figure out what they should spend points on. It charges people more for "useful" things and provides some limits so they can't be good at All The Action-y Things.
@auspice said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
it'd be Base Attribute + Action Skill for Magic Type + # Bonus (ST directed based on your Background skills)
Just a caution... FS3 is balanced for Attr+Skill+Occasional Situational Modifiers. If the bonus you talk about takes the place of situational modifiers, are only used occasionally, and falls within the same range (-3 to +3) then you should be fine. But if you intend for the bonus to be on top of other situational modifiers, or to add in another skill on top, it can throw the entire balance of the dice mechanic out of whack. Novices would get boosted into the Pro range, Pros would get boosted into the Expert range, and the already-fine line between Pros and Experts would become almost irrelevant. It's the same advice I gave to @Ganymede when talking about factoring in some kind of Mass Effect class skills. Changing the underlying dice mechanic rarely ends well.
@the-sands said in Mocker - Complete TinyMUX setup with Docker:
I fully intend to document how I have created the Docker images and what is going on with them so that the project will outlive me, assuming there is interest, and people will be able to create their own quick deploy setups.
This is awesome. I want to do a docker image for Ares but I don't really know much about it. I definitely would be interested in how you set this thing up.
@griatch said in Charging for MU* Code?:
I can tell this is not unusual outside of software projects either; I've had more complex art/design commissions go down similar routes. With art you usually specify how many 'revisions' your contract allows, just for this reason. Without that, the client would nitpick details forever.
Absolutely. Each industry has its particular challenges. I don’t pretend to know all the challenges with art (or jewelry as @surreality mentioned) but I do know with writing that the revisions are usually a known quantity. If the original article was estimated to be 2 hours of work, a revision is probably not going to be more than 2 hours of work. You can estimate sensibly.
Not so with software. Not only is the original estimate notoriously hard, a revision like “oh but can you also make it do X” can be orders of magnitude more than the original work.
@ganymede said in Charging for MU* Code?:
@faraday said in Charging for MU* Code?:
Still, it's up to the professional to figure out what he or she will or will not do, so I'm not going to second guess Theno-pricing. He's a big boy; he can charge whatever the market will bear.
Oh I agree. My direct advice to Theno was to charge whatever his time was worth. I was just supporting Tinuviel’s quite-warranted advice to be cautious about “scope creep” and the potentially thorny implications once you start taking money for something.
“Hey Fara, can you do X for me? I need it to do A, B and C.”
“Sure np that’ll be $50.”
After the first draft...
“Oh. Well. That’s not really how I wanted it to work.”
“But that’s what you asked for. “
“But it’s not correct.”
“Well this other thing you actually wanted is 5x as complicated so that’s going to cost you more.”
“Wtf man you said $50.”
This is how 90% of software projects go and anyone going into it for money needs to accept and be prepared to deal with exactly that.
@seraphim73 said in Creative Outlets:
If my PC is usually a jeans-and-t-shirt-guy is wearing a suit, I'll have a suit desc, but I'll also mention that he's wearing a suit in my intro-pose. Just one little mention, not any detail about the suit (unless it's bloody or rumpled or something very distinct).
For me, it's not about whether the outfit is unusual to the character, but to the situation. If you turn up to dance club in a suit and tie, that's kinda unusual and bears mention. Otherwise I'll assume you're in "club clothes" and frankly don't give a crap whether it's jeans or cargo pants or what kind of shirt you're wearing.
(edited response for poor wording the first time)
@icanbeyourmuse said in Charging for MU* Code?:
I have yet to meet a mu* creator who doesn't know, almost exactly, what they want and a basic break down of how they want it to work.
I have. Often.
@faraday Couldn't a lot of that be avoided by not accepting anything from them with a layout of exactly what they want it to do?
Theoretically yes. In practice it just doesn't usually work out that way.
Like an interior designer, part of the expertise they're paying you for is often helping them to figure out exactly how it should be. They have a rough idea, but the devil's in the details.
This is more about larger projects than smaller ones btw. If all you need is a text-message system with three commands, that's different. I'm talking about the "looking for coder for a (whatever) game" type of folks who have loftier goals.
@ganymede said in Charging for MU* Code?:
I see the same premise here. I can tell Thenomain what I'd like to see, and he can charge what he feels is reasonable.
Yes I understand that concept. What I'm saying is that it's a well-demonstrated fact that software projects don't work that way. It's not like drafting a standard will or power of attorney where it's been done a bunch of times before and you know roughly how much effort is involved. Every project(*) is radically different, and how something is done (i.e. the details of the screens or the commands or the mechanics underlying them) actually does matter to the "customer".
(*) - with the exception of incredibly trivial or bounded/repeatable tasks like "install my suite of code", which are uncommon and really not what I'm talking about here.
You can say, "Hey Fara I want you to do my Mass Effect system" and I have no idea whether that's a 2-hour, 20-hour or 200-hour project without first doing a lot of legwork - including discussions on mechanics, commands, etc.
Sure I can just do my best to gauge the effort based on a quick convo, but I'm then taking on huge "risks" in not assessing a fair value for my time and effort or not properly bounding the project. I'm just setting myself up for headaches down the road if it turns out that your vision is actually 10x more complicated than I thought it was going to be (especially if I don't really want to put that kind of effort into it), or if we end up butting heads all "but I thought that was included..." "no that's extra..."
Incidentally, here's a great analogy about why software project estimates are regularly off by a factor of 2-3.
@thenomain said in Charging for MU* Code?:
Just for those who are suggesting it: Patreon does not have a "tip jar". I really wish it did. A whole lot of people wish it did.
Really? Wow that's incredibly dumb. Well you can still set up a PayPal tip jar.
@tempest said in Charging for MU* Code?:
Really, we're talking about contracts and shit?
Uh, you kinda replied to a post about "contracts and crap" with comments about commissions, so yeah - that's what we're talking about. I agree that doing it as a favor-with-a-tip or as a paetron type deal is the better solution here than trying to deal with it as a contract-for-hire and dealing with the inevitable scope creep that always happens (which is what @Tinuviel was commenting upon when you replied.)
@tempest said in Charging for MU* Code?:
They are delivering you a product. You do not get any say at all in how they are making that product.
Yeah, that's really actually not how software development works. So best of luck to Theno and anyone else who decides to try to negotiate a software contract, a feat that even professional software dev companies struggle with daily.
@surreality said in Creative Outlets:
I actually agree with you about this completely. And per the way WoD is written, it should be like that.
A professional rolling 5 dice (3 skill + 2 stat) gets at least one success about 83% of the time. So if you rolled a "few dozen times" and literally never got a single success then please never take that char to Vegas because your luck is astonishingly abnormally bad 
Arguably though 83% is low for a competent professional doing "their thing" under routine circumstances. But that's an artifact of the nWoD dice in particular. SR4 and FS3 have different percentages.
@scar said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
There's always the reset button if and when a big code overhaul has to occur with this new update.
Just to clarify - there's no big code overhaul coming with the new update. The only thing changing (much) is the web portal, which they're not using.
In my experience, the overwhelming majority of players never read character descs. Folks can lament about the “good old days” and moan about lazy people all they want, but it doesn’t change the reality. Descs should be considered supplementary info for those who care, and the essentials captured in glance and emits as appropriate.
@roz said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
So I'm not likely to play an Ares game that's going to ignore the web portal.
Just for the record - I advised T8S staff not to use the prior web portal release because it was still kind of hacky and buggy and I knew it was getting overhauled anyway. It didn't make sense for them to do a bunch of work porting over their oh-so-pretty wiki style only to have to redo all the design work in the next version. So that part's not really their fault.
@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
There's currently no doubling up
I think what @Roz meant is that the log is literally already there in the web portal, but you still have to copy/paste to the wiki. Ditto with character pages. You have to update your info in-game (even if you're not using the portal; for example with RP hooks) and then copy/paste to the wiki. While you may not be using the information in two places, it's still more work.
The new version's going to be rolled out on BSGU in the next couple days and I'd be happy to help Blu sort out the style changes to make T8S's version look as close to the wiki as possible when y'all are ready to update.
@surreality said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:
Odd question, but... does this mean access to the game itself would only be accessible through the web portal? I may be in the minority but I am one of those folks who likes my MUclient where I have all my colors set up to work with my eyes and brain and all that.
The new version supports joining scenes through the web portal, but the telnet experience is unchanged.
@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:
These, Fara, I think are the types of people Apos is referencing. The ones that are just overwhelmingly negative.
I think it's just a question of where you see the line. As I mentioned, people who are disruptive are a problem, and that guy would clearly fall into the obnoxiously-disruptive category. But @Apos and @Ganymede both have mentioned a stricter line against public criticism about the game or PRPs. That's their prerogative of course. I just disagree.