Posts made by faraday

@apos I think you're understating the impact of different societies on everyday RP.

For example - when I played on 100 there was this one scene where some of the Arkers were visiting the city and it's like... wait, how does the economy work? Are there restaurants or is it a like a tribal common meal? Can I just go and say "These are my guests, give them food" or do I pay for it or what? Is it some grand faux-pas to bring outsiders to the marketplace? IS there even a marketplace if there's no free economy?

This crap is not easy, and yet it's vital if you want to do scenes beyond: "okay we get food somewhere somehow... handwave handwave handwave"

The same can be said for leisure time, sports, popular media, etc. To say nothing of the complexities if you introduce aliens.

In a fantasy setting everyone pretty much has a shorthand of "DND economy / feudal politics" and you're off to the races. People don't travel as much and it's not like they have the internet, so ignorance is easy to handwave ICly without your character looking like an uneducated bumpkin.

This kind of stuff is way more impactful than someone demanding "tell me all about how a phaser works".

@surreality said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

I vehemently disagree with what you are saying as it pertains to a MUX on which players are going to be making characters that have expertise in some area or another that you have to define as existing in the first place, what it entails, and why it's the difference between life and death when you're living on a space ship.

Yeah I agree with this. Take Firefly for instance. It was definitely a "dole out theme as needed" sort of thing, because it was an intensely focused story with a very limited number of characters. It didn't matter what Bellerophon was like - or even that it existed! - until they got there. Everything Kaylee did with the engines was a level of Handwavium that frankly most MU sci-fi players wouldn't tolerate.

That is an extremely different animal than a MU, where you have a widely diverse group of characters doing a widely diverse set of things with a whole different set of expectations.

Fantasy settings often get around this by having everyone be from the same kingdom - and travel isn't as easy / important to the setting. Plus the audience is a bit more tolerant of "eh it's magic, just go with it" than sci-fi folks tend to be.

I think people are more interested in original sci-fi in the abstract sense. Like "wouldn't it be cool if there was a good original sci-fi game" ranks right up there with "wouldn't it be cool if I won the lottery." Because let's face it - original sci-fi is hard to pull off. I think it's understandable that people are a little gun-shy about actually investing time and energy in learning this wholly new theme that might just end up as yet another EmptyMUSH.

@rahnevyn said in Armageddon MUD:

When I mentioned being in the wrong neighborhood and getting mugged as a mistake earlier (like back on page... 10?..) I meant it as a mistake in terms of a "I have heard these warnings, but don't heed them" sense rather than a "Whoops, you took a wrong turn, now you die!" sense. Just to clarify.

I think that's been a big part of the problem in this thread is all the seemingly-contradictory information.

"You won't be punished for being a newbie" vs "People will totally react to your faux pas without breaking character, as if you're a moron, or take advantage of you for making a mistake"

"You have to just learn things for yourself, like where water is and where to hunt" vs "Here's a handy map and a helpfile describing how to hunt"

"There's no OOC channels in-game, why would you even want such a thing?" vs "It's totally fine to use +ooc for brief questions, that's what it's there for"

"Your welcoming might very well be a mugging and/or a murder, just roll with it" vs "We're here to help the new players and there are tons of OOC and IC warning messages"

Etc. And that's all from the people advertising the game - that's not even counting the obvious critics. Personally? It's not a game for me either way and can only attribute my continued participation in this thread to temporary insanity. But folks trying to boil down the dissent to a disagreement about MUDs vs MUSHes are completely missing what folks are actually complaining and/or confused about.

@arkandel said in Armageddon MUD:

By nature newcomers to games don't know much about what's going on, but unless you only roll newcomer characters as well then the latter's IC experience will be greater than their players. For instance if I rolled a peasant on Arx, knowing nothing about Arx OOC, my character will still know way more than I do about the world. You can't escape that fact, even though a well documented friendly web site for your MU* can certainly help.

Yes, exactly. The Armageddon spokespeople seem to be making a false equivalence between "I want accommodations given for the things my character would logically know, given the sum total of their experience living their life in this world" and "I want to be super-awesome at everything without having earned it". These sentiments are light-years apart. One is just rational, like an actor wanting to know their character's backstory. The other is just a silly strawman.

@evilcabbage Yep, so, it's a video game with some emotes and not roleplaying a character with knowledge beyond your own. That's fine. Good luck to you.

@arkandel said in Armageddon MUD:

Roleplaying is an abstraction. You don't have (or you very rarely do) the information, experience or expertise your characters do. Do you suppose all those doctors on TV have graduated from medical school?

Yeah, both you and @Ganymede are spot-on. That's the whole point of roleplaying (and acting, for that matter) - going beyond your personal knowledge to take on the role of a completely different person.

Otherwise it's not RP, it's just a video game. Which is fine!! Hey, I love video games. But you're not going to convince me that Tomb Raider has anything to do with roleplaying when my "super-awesome adventurer/explorer" Lara Croft is constantly walking into walls and flailing around uselessly just because I the player suck at the game.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

First of all why would you ask “where’s the best place to hunt?” Out of character, in the middle of roleplay, when you can ask that in character, when you can ask on the discord or the new player questions forum?

Why? Because that is the norm on literally every other online roleplaying format I've ever encountered. MMOs, MUSHes, Roll20, Storium.... all of them. When you have an out-of-character question that your character would know that you (the player) do not, you ask in the game via the game's out-of-character band (+ooc, PMs, chat, whatever).

Armageddon wants to do that differently and take all OOC questions off the game to discord/forums? That's their prerogative. It seems unnecessarily cumbersome to pause RP and fire up discord just to ask a question when you can just ask the question right there to the player you're playing with but whatever.

Asking in-character though, as bolded in your response, is just weird. Did your local hunter get hit on the head and suddenly forget where the hunting grounds were?

@arkandel said in RL Anger:

I also call that "taking people's stuff".

Ayup.

@ganymede said in RL Anger:

Yeah. Like spousal support.
I can't wait to hear the collective outcry from middle-class white male America.

Well I'll join them there. Having to pay taxes on money you never received is complete BS.

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

i think you will find the opposite.

If you actually read those articles you might find a common theme arguing against using quotes for emphasis. Scare quotes cast doubt on the validity of something, so using them for emphasis really has the exact opposite of the intended effect.

If you saw a window sign for ‘homemade’ stew or a label promising ‘delicious’ waffles, would the punctuation affect how you imagine the food? What about a cosmetic product that’s ‘good’ for your hair, or a claim that a service is ‘free’? Are you feeling trustful? source

Kind of like trying to brow-beat people about grammar on an "advertisement" thread.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

If you can point me to a game that’s free of players like that, I’d gladly play it. As far as I know there is none.

There are plenty of MUSHes where that sort of behavior is not tolerated. Now of course bad eggs happen and have to be dealt with, but that particular example is not something that happens often enough to bear mention.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

Also you keep describing something that doesn’t happen. It simply doesn’t.

You yourself have said it does, repeatedly, by saying that people will react IC to people making OOC mistakes based on misunderstandings. Case in point:

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

What I was trying to get across is: Some people won’t break character to show you the right thing to do or say. That’s one of the essentials of good story telling right?

I'm not saying you're wrong for playing it that way. Your game, your prerogative. I'm saying you're wrong (IMHO) for insisting that it's an essential - or even preferred - way to play. I'm also saying that playing that way on the vast majority of MUSHes would quickly get you in trouble.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

Those are for the most part the people that are gone from the game.

And the fact that it's only "for the most part" and not "a new policy has outlawed that crap because it's obnoxious and unacceptable" is the problem you seem to not want to acknowledge as a potential problem.

If I pose something obviously wrong based on an obvious OOC misunderstanding, allowing someone to react to that ICly strikes me as no less ridiculous than a director allowing actors in a period drama to react in-character to one of them accidentally leaving their cell-phone on. The proper response is to either gracefully pretend it didn't happen or to yell "Cut!" and fix it. Nobody expects the actors to stay in-character all: "OMG what sorcery is this? GET HIM!" (though that would be a pretty funny blooper on the DVD version)

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

What I was trying to get across is: Some people won’t break character to show you the right thing to do or say. That’s one of the essentials of good story telling right? Show don’t tell. I know it can feel like it’s a personal affront to you the player, but most people aren’t doing it to make you feel bad or silly or haze newbies. Give it a chance because it might lead you somewhere good.

No, it really isn't one of the essentials of good storytelling, and this blind and repetitive insistence that it's the only good way to play is alienating people here far, far more than the fact that you're advertising a MUD instead of a MUSH.

What you're describing - reacting ICly to an obvious OOC misunderstanding - is not only uncommon on most MUSHes, it's considered downright jerk-ish behavior. Not because we're wusses who get affronted by challenge, but because we find it silly when people don't acknowledge that the character should know things that you, the player, don't know.

@botulism said in Diceless/Stats Optional:

...True. But there ARE good players who won't do statless/consent RP.

Sure, but there are good players who won't do a lot of things. As long as you're willing to accept the limited audience, doing the kind of game that you'd be happy running is more important than doing what the unspecified masses may want.

That said, it's pretty well-demonstrated throughout MUSH-land that a) advancement-free games are a tough sell, b) "players do their own thing" games often devolve into relationship soap operas, and c) small-group-based games often lead to a splintered playerbase where people are off doing their own things with limited opportunities to interact. So I think you've got three things working against you from the start. That's not to say "don't do it". Just be aware that you're starting from a disadvantage and will likely have to work extra hard to get people interested/engaged.

@surreality Yeah a lot of the options were, like... "meh, neither". But I got 80% achiever / 73% socializer, which fits pretty well. On a MUSH my "achiever" gene takes the form of achieving the story/character goals rather than achieving levels or points though.

@thenomain Agreed.

Personally I like to view the categories like movie genres. You may have a favorite, but most people like more than one genre to varying degrees and at different times. And sometimes a movie doesn't fit neatly into a box and you end up with "dramedy".

Nevertheless, it's a convenient short-hand. In games, it can lead you to good considerations about what sorts of things might appeal to different interests and how those interests can cooperate and compete.

@sunny said in Armageddon MUD:

This game isn't for a lot of us around here. People's objections aren't because they're pansies who need a fee fee check.

Yes I think this is the part that @ThugHeaven is missing. It has absolutely zero to do with IC Actions = IC Consequences.

It's like... if I play Fallout on PS4, it doesn't matter that my character has lived their whole life in this bunker and in this world. I need to find my way around and figure out how crap works myself. When I fight in Battlefront, my reflexes matter more than my character's. And that's all totally fine, if people know that and expect it going in.

But most of us here are used to games where your character has knowledge and skills that are wholly independent from your own. There are rails in place so people don't go around being a jerk just because someone else makes a mistake that their character never would have made.

Which is not to say characters never make mistakes. But there's a difference between a gifted surgeon losing a patient on the table versus a gifted surgeon not knowing where the operating room is in the hospital they've worked their entire career. One is understandable and fun drama. The other is just silly.

@apu said in TGG/The Greatest Generation People:

@faraday

I didn't meet Jim until... 2007 I think, and didn't play there until 2008? It coincided with the two of us RPing on Kharon, whenever that was.

Kharon was 2009. Pacifica ran until the end of 2007. Genesis spun off from there, and Kharon came after AFAIK.

TGG-wise, the Gallipoli campaign was 2009.

@apu My earliest WWI logs were from November 2005, but the game had been around for some time before that.