Posts made by Ganymede

My kids are half-Chinese, half-German-Mutt.

They get part of this:

And they get part of this:

Merry Jailed-Pandas-and-Krampus-Demons-mas!

@alzie said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The only place that this template method would fail is with CGs with special constraints, such as NWOD and Specialties, but like you said, you can't be everything to everyone and at some point if you're trying to be universal, you have to lose out on some features.

Specialties, Gifts, Rituals, Devotions, Threnodies ...

@saosmash said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I don't think anyone has the money for that. We are litigating a dependency and I've never even had a deposition in one before and I'll have to get the office of public defense to pay my hotel if we go.

Admittedly, I'm a jerk when it comes to litigation.

The Uniform Deposition Act requires a recipient properly served to appear where designated by the party seeking to take the deposition. Whether by subpoena or by notice, the deponent has the duty to appear, unless he or she obtains a protective order.

I suppose, though, that you could agree to whatever you want, despite your client's intransigence. I've told more than one client that doing something their way would require an additional $2,000 from them as a retainer. They tend to come around then.

@saosmash

Why can't the out-of-state witnesses be hauled into your jurisdiction?

@saosmash said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I am being threatened with depositions in Alaska in December.

:[

What?

For what?

@alzie said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The reality is that you could open a game with a clear theme and maybe 10 important, constantly used locations alongside a coded RP Room creation wing and it would work just as well.

The problem is that if you do this, people will stare at you like you're fucking nuts.

It's been done before, with questionable success, on Victorian Reverie. If I recall correctly, it was something that the player-base actually liked. What we didn't have was a temp-room or scene command that could spawn rooms attached to those RP Nexuses. We do now, so I don't think there'd be much of an issue.

@insomnia said in Gamertags:

@Ganymede said in Gamertags:

Metamonkey

No LowVirtualMemory, many MetaMonkey (ies?)

I’m very sure I’m LowVirtualMemory in PSN and Steam. There may be spaces in the Steam name, though. I’ll double check.

@tat said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I would add to your list:

1. Private real-time communication between players

Really, there is no reason that mail and page can't be joined together. If you have persistent chat like in slack or google chat or facebook messenger, the difference becomes negligible. But I do think it's worth having the 'real time' addition.

That's a good point. I like it.

2. Conflict resolution

3. The ability to improve/grow/adjust your sheet

I think this is system-sensitive. Lots of games employ consent or description-based stats, so I didn't think these were "core" functions.

3. Logging/sharing scenes

Ares already has an impressive engine for this, but this is also a doo-dad. You can just as easily cut-and-paste what's on the Screen, which is what I had to do with zMUD.

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

• Pages/Channels/Mail become Chat like Discord/Slack/etc. One’s just public and the other two are private.
• Posing/OOC talk/Places are all just different ways to Add to a Scene.
• BBoards become a Forum.
• Grid/movement would be gone. Choosing/changing location is just an integral part of conducting a scene.

That's what I meant when I talked about a paradigm shift instead of just slapping a web UI onto the current MUSH commands.

This is probably what I meant to say in my first post, and is said much better.

@zz said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

To tag on to @saosmash 's mention of our brief foray into F&L and the amazing character relationships there, I deeply enjoyed playing my first nations Nevada ghoul. Wendigo renamed herself into the creature she thought that @Caryatid 's lovely vampire created and slowly cast aside the difficulties of her mortal life for the more insidious dangers of the masquerade. Far older than some of the vampires her humanity lingered only by a thread and the stories she grew up on. It was incredibly interesting to explore her and delve into the history of the area. Also to be a semi-babysitter to neonate babes. Unflappable ghoul.

I never got to play with Wendigo much as Wes. But there shall be more time, and hopefully more stories.

Shelbeast and I were a bit concerned.

I'll get to work finishing up Blood Sorcery over the holidays. That should pave the way for edits for staff consideration. And public comment, if warranted.

@tat said in Alternative Formats to MU:

So when thinking about web-based alternatives, I think it's useful to think 'this could work like Gmail' or 'this would be great like google docs', but less useful to say 'just use google'.

This is all very true. When I say above "let's use Google," I more meant "I'd like my UI experience to be similar to Google's online junk, and maybe you could pluck some ideas from there as to what I, as a gamer, might like to have."

Except forums. Forums are awesome. Just great.

Let me try to get this back on track.

Query: What are 5 core functions or commands necessary or desired for a MUSH?

Next Query: For each of the 5 core functions, how would you envision them in a non-telnet (command line) UI format?

I'll start this exercise.

1. say/pose/emit

This is essentially the same command: you are projecting text that others in the same room can see. For a UI, I'd like to see a button that pops open a window you can type into. Once you're done typing the message, you click a button on the window somewhere that closes the window and projects the message on my main window (let's call it 'the Screen').

2. moving/exits/rooms

Ideally, when moving from room to room, I'd like to see a description pop up on the Screen, which will also show who is in the room. I'd like to abandon the traditional exit-to-room-to-exit-to-room way most MUSHes use; instead, have a drop down list or new window of All Public Rooms, and simply pick which one you want to go to.

3. bulletin boards

I like the idea of simply using forums. They are complex enough to handle any task that they are used on MUShes for. The end.

4. mail

Something like a normal mail browser would be simple and easy to use, and appealing. Hell, you could just have people use Gmail, with the benefit of having functions like GoogleDocs and GoogleSchedule.

5. generating a character

Honestly, the best way to do this is send some sort of document or form to staff, and let them generate the character for you. Using a wiki, you could set up a bunch of templates that people can select to start with, and just add additional freebie points or whatever to customize. All someone would have to do to make a character would be to point out which template they wanted, where to put the "free" points, and submit a request to staff.

Just some ideas.

If a game where to implement these, or had a UI that could handle what limited UI functions I've mentioned, then I'd be more than interested in checking it out. We've already determined that I have no interest in learning to code everything up, but implementing these policies for a game might lower the barrier of entry into MUSH-style gaming considerably.

@thenomain said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Usually I say that when players are all, "Nyeh, this code is broken! Nyeeehhhh, I want phone and IM code! Nnnyeeehhh!"

(For those who don't watch Venture Bros, you really should. Nyeh is the sound that Shoreleave makes when mocking someone's whining.)

I thought you were channeling the ghost of Edward G. Robinson.

@tek said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

All of the songs I've heard from it are just terrible, irrespective of the rest of the libretto.

All of your face is terrible, regardless of your opinion.

@thatguythere said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I don't think telnet is a requirement for real time, but in the current MUSH environment things have drifted to the point where things move slower than I would like, I can't see how moving the way to play the game to a program that presents literally thousands of other things to do while RPing will not adversely affect response times. It is not a tech issue but a human behavior issue.

So, your complaint is about players, not the technology being discussed.

Got it.

@faceless said in Do you buy your RPG books?:

A book in my hands causes a reaction for my heart, similar to a cat's butt as it's preparing it's kitty-cat engine for a pounce.

Or for a mind-wrenching kitty-fart, which is sometimes what these books read like.

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

And let's say you're someone like @Ganymede who lacks the time and/or inclination to learn how to code. That's fine. So you need a coder.

Hey. I never said I lacked the inclination.

I really don't have the time. Sure, I may be more inclined to spend time with my kids, workout, cook, clean, wrap gifts, sing, play music, and occasionally sketch, but if I had more time I would definitely try to learn Python and/or Ruby!

That said, I know a bit of MUSHCode, but not a lot of it. If Python and/or Ruby is easier to learn, hells to the yeah, I figure. But I'm a mooch too, being a lawyer, with some disposable money to toss around.

Anyhow! Alternative formats good. Gany, kind of rich and lazy, riding dirty.

@sunny said in Alternative Formats to MU:

How is that related to her point?

Faraday picked up on it.

Of course if you want special, unique features you'll need a coder. That will always be true. But right now you need a coder even if you don't want special unique features, and that's silly.

And Apos did as well, sort of.

Yeah, I don't mean this as a slam on WoD at all, but it seems to me that a core reason for its popularity is the already existing softcode that can be plugged into it.

I concur with Apos, and sympathize with Faraday. My comment was, by no intent, a knock on what she's doing on her end. (I'm a Faraday fanboygrl.)

I have ideas. I always have ideas. But I lack the skills to turn those ideas into functional code. Yes, I could learn how to code, but that's a barrier due to time and personal responsibilities. So, for now, I must rely on a coder, or someone with enough proficiency to take Ares out of the box and make it work (chug chug chug). I love BSG:U and will continue to promote it, but what I want to do slightly differs in that I foresee the need for an entire block of other commands that don't exist yet (as far as I know).

That said, I want whatever project I have in mind to work with Ares. I think it, and Evennia, are the way of the future. I want to promote both.

But I still have a problem doing this myself. So the "do I have a coder" flowchart is still stapled to my ass. And I think that successful games need something unique to themselves, so there'll always be a need for a coder, no matter how much Faraday adds to the standard toolbox. If innovation will help the hobby flourish, then games will need coders to push that envelope. And, from a non-coder perspective, I think this is a fact that makes the "do I have a coder" flowchart a truism.

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Are they really doing the same things though? Smashing the do you have a coder flowchart that has hindered the creation of games for 25 years. Making it orders of magnitude easier to learn to code, as @Tat mentioned. Creating a seamless web/wiki/game integration. These are things that, to the best of my knowledge, haven't been done before.

All of this may be true, but good games differ from one another. Your package may have all of the great features we've come to know and love, but I don't think, for example, that the developers are interested in coding up special, unique features for each game.

I could be wrong, mind.

@insomnia

Pourquoi-ca, you cheese-eating surrender-monkey?