Posts made by Groth

I think the concept of player privacy is an interesting game design aspect to discuss. I've been many games handling these issues in different ways.

In the first game I ever helped staff was built on digichat, in it was common practise for the Storytellers to wander around the public rooms invisible, watching the scenes going on and sometimes when appropriate they'd start running a scene on the spot. If you wanted real privacy you had to create a password protected private room. This actually worked out surprisingly well for the most part.

On RfK, we had a policy that we would never be dark on the grid, as I understand it due to various horror stories from MU* past. However what we did have was a debug channel which outputted information when most coded systems were used like rolling dice or feeding, the most interesting part was when after many requests a simple 'txt' code was added. It was really just an alias for page and like most of our other systems, it was set up to output into the debug channel.

This turned out to be really interesting and valuable for us in staff since we got a live feed of the things that characters were talking about ICly at any given moment, giving us a much better idea of the current state of the game.

The biggest problem I tend to discover in the transition from being a player in a game and staff in a game is that as your awareness of behind the scenes things increase, like player requests, metaplot etc etc you often lose awareness of what's going on at the player level since you don't get to interact with people in scenes the way that you used to. Spying on players is one way to gain that sort of awareness but it's something that is easily abused and can lead to the loss of player trust.

What are your experiences and thoughts on player spying?

• I always turn off automatic Windows updates because I want to decide when my computer reboots.
• I updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 recently.
• I often use open unsaved notepad files to store random notes for use later.
• I spent the idle hours of the day organising information into one of these notepad files and went to sleep. When I woke up I was greeted by a blank desktop and Windows cheerfully notifying me that it updated itself and rebooted my computer without asking me.
• Few times I've ever felt such a sudden urge to strangle a fellow programmer as that morning.

That article doesn't say what you think it says. Racism when used academically refers to an institutionalised system of oppression, that's not what anyone refers to when they call someone a racist.

@Wizz said:

Read: pervasive racism and sexism. If you really want to drag this down to semantics, fine, whatever, yes, he will encounter fleeting moments of "racism and sexism" by one of the literal definition of those terms outside of the context of this discussion.

Derp will face pervasive racism and sexism. Benevolent racism and sexism is still racism and sexism and has it's own issues. For instance it will most likely continue to remain hard for Derp to gain access to support groups as the social expectation is for him to be able to take care of himself

@Wizz said:

And yes, there will be a finite number of times in his life where he will experience real hostility or negative bias. There is still just no comparison to the kind of life typical to a person who doesn't check two arbitrary boxes.

Assuming Derp is telling the truth, then Derp is doing worse then the typical member of any western social group you can care to name. The typical, as in statistically median member of most social groups is doing just fine.

@Wizz said:

But in the context of your entire life how difficult it is to get into college is really pretty fucking small potatoes compared to the quality of the remaining 60+ (or whatever) years of life you will have where you don't have to deal with pervasive racism and sexism because you were born with a penis and you're pale. Just saying. It's not even a contest, there IS a universal disadvantage there.

That's just not true. Just like everyone else Derp will face both sexism and racism, it just takes different forms and is on average more beneficial.

The problem here is that there are certain things which are statistically true which will not be true for independent cases. The average white male is more privileged then the average of most other social groups, this is a well supported fact. This does not mean that every white male is more privileged then all other social groups, it's trivial to find counter-examples.

Whenever you find yourself arguing of the form 'Every X is Y' then you should really stop yourself right there and backtrack, because you're going to be wrong and you're going to be wrong in a way that undermines what you're trying to put forth.

I never played on Eldritch but I'd argue that the measure of a good run is not length but rather if the players enjoyed it while it lasted.

The paradox people are talking about "One world of darkness" and

https://twitter.com/ShamsJorjani/status/659808852288884736
"the past few years we've seen the brand going in many directions at the same time - not good. We'll see more coherence going fwd"

My reading of this together with the fact they're resurrecting the White Wolf website and are directing people to watch the White Wolf twitter is that they're going to bring OPP and BNS back under the White Wolf brand while letting OPP and BNS continue to be the people developing the products.

Creepy Nosferatu are awesome. Jadeds Nosferatu was awesome. These two things may be related.

Dominate is great outside of combat. Inside of combat I'd rather have Majesty due to the AoE Sledgehammer nature of the effect, it achieves similar things to Obfuscate in that even if one person might be able to act against you the fact noone else can shifts the odds dramatically in your favor. If you really want to push it you can even go with the Cerberus bloodline at which point losing a Lashing Out contest isn't going to happen.

@tragedyjones said:

Just a clarification, Lashing Out only costs a Willpower when defending against a Kindred with higher BP. Initiating it is free.

Further, a vampire can voluntarily intensify her predatory
aura to elicit a reaction. Against other Kindred, this escalates
the encounter, forcing fight or flight instincts. Against mortals,
this asserts power and cows the lesser creatures. Lashing out
with the Beast takes an instant action, and against Kindred
costs a point of Willpower. It’s free to use against a mortal.

@Ganymede said:

@Groth said:

The second most powerful combat discipline in the game is Majesty.

You're kidding, right? If you want to start any effect, you need to hoist up Awe. And Awe can be broken via Lashing Out. From personal experience, Majesty will get you nowhere if you're up against a vampire with higher Potency.

No, the best part about Majesty is the number of useful Devotions attached to it. Enfeebling Aura, Wet Dream, etc.

1. You can only lash out against Awe if you're aware it's active, which is non-obvious.
2. Lashing out costs both a point of willpower and your action for that turn.
3. You have to successfully lash out and even those that succeed, only protect themselves. Majesty based vampires have a strong incentive to have the better lashing out die pool.
4. My Vampire on RfK successfully used Awe+Idol to subdue the entire Primogen council.

Majesty gives bonuses to the Doors system in addition to all other effects. It in no way relies on that sub-system to achieve its effects.

Majesty does not at all use the Social Manoeuvres or Doors, it bypasses those systems entirely and uses its own system just like Dominate does.

Awe unlocks the use of Confidant and Idol. Confidant unlocks the use of Green Eyes and Loyalty, both of which allow you to make people want what you want them to want. Idol makes anyone that isn't highly resistant fail in opposing you in any way.

For purposes of Combat Twinkery, Obfuscate is the hands down most powerful discipline in the game if you're not using the Blood Sorcery book. The second most powerful combat discipline in the game is Majesty.

@mietze said:

I wish I was someone who did not need to play these games with myself to get things done, but...I do. I just need goals, simple, time sensitive, and measurable to be motivated. It's like that in fitness, housewife/work stuff, as well as immensely helpful in my business.

Now that I think about it, I'm kind of happier with that in MUSHdom too. Maybe thats why I /like/ aspirations and things like beatsheets. Bleah, that must be annoying.

I'm exactly like that. It can be a huge undertaking to get anything done if I don't have some sort of feedback cycle. When it comes to exercise, having someone to exercise with is such a huge help in making sure you have a reason to get out of the door.

@BigDaddyAmin said:

Cons are mainly what I have read off the internet. Just about CrossFit not being very healthy, in particular on joints. I'd like to be able to pick my grandkids up when I reach 64. There also seems to be a kind of creepy factor with a lot of these facilities that they remind me of the fitness equivalent of Scientology.

Just avoid doing the exercises that are damaging to the joints such as lifting weights above your shoulders or doing improper squats and you should be ok.

Scenario A)

Character A travels into the future and meets the future version of Characters B, C and D. If anything happens to characters B,C and D between the 'present' and the 'future' that's a violation of causality, how do you handle that?

Scenario B )

Kill them before they're born. Possible? Not Possible? Why?

Scenario C)

Character A, B, C and D all go back to times 1 year apart. Who is supposed to figure out what each time looks like?

@Thenomain said:

"It's easy, once you know how."

This undermines the idea that it can't be simpler. Simplicity compliments flexibility. Flexibility does not compliment simplicity, unless we're talking about redundancy then (through some irony that works) it does.

Which is to say: I think you're trying to push an agenda. Enjoy!

The problem here is that we're trying to pretend as if 'simple' has a single definition. Simple depends entirely on context, simple to read and simple to write are not the same thing, see for instance Stenography.

If a user that understands the commands want to dig a dozen rooms, none of the suggestions that you or @HelloProject have proposed are easier to use then @dig. If a user has never dug a room before, then the command prompt approach will be easier however would you want to go through a multi-step prompt every time you want to dig a room? Probably not, you want @dig.

Any attempt to write a simple and flexible CLI command to dig rooms will look remarkably similar to @dig.

@HelloProject said:

@Groth I guess I should say complicated syntax, then. But either way, an extremely simplified dig command would be:

dig

And then prompts pop up asking what you wanna do and what to type in to do it. Preferably something like north/south/west/etc. Then prompts like what you want the name to be, etc. Dig would initiate a series of prompts, so the only thing you'd need to remember is to type dig to begin with, and everything else is just handed to you.

I think the main reason there's not more prompts at least in PennMUSH is because PennMUSH does as far as I'm aware not have any real support for prompts. Having back-end support for prompts would help a lot in that regard.

@Thenomain said:

@Groth said:

The comma in the pennmush dig command isn't actually sneakily hidden.

From a coder perspective, no it's not. From a legibility perspective, ;;;,;;;; it is. I'm approaching whatever your 911 is from the claim that you couldn't make it simpler. You can.

Yes, a long @dig command is a proper nightmare to read. However it's really easy to write if you understand the syntax which is the point of it, making it easy to dig rooms. In order for the command to work in needs two different delimiters, I suppose you could make it more legible by using |,>,], } or / instead of their choice of ;/,.

@Thenomain said:

I don't know what we're talking about or why it's important, but user interface can always be simpler than a string of colons with a sneakily hidden comma.

The comma in the pennmush dig command isn't actually sneakily hidden. The syntax is @dig <Room Name>=<Exit Name><; delimited list of aliases>COMMA<Return exist name><; delimited list of aliases>.

That is if you don't want to define any aliases, it's just:
@dig Kitchen=North,South

However if you don't define any aliases, it's unlikely to work the way you want it to work, ergo the more complicated command.

@HelloProject said:

The fact that you have to remember any syntax at all pretty much illustrates my entire point.

By definition you always have to remember syntax when dealing with a CLI interface.