Posts made by gryphter

Well sure, but I've never been on a MUD where I had a sense of metaplot and storytelling. I'm sure they're out there, don't get me wrong.

It's very true that once you get into the nuts and bolts of what it would be to collect a paycheck to run a game for players, it's not the dream it appears to be on the surface -- 'dream' because of how amazing it would be to focus absolutely on generating content and activity while the bills are paid.

It's not a terribly practical or achievable dream, and as has been alluded to, it almost certainly wouldn't be as much fun as it's cracked out to be.

@mietze It falls apart on the mechanics, but the idea of making a living running a game people enjoy is attractive.

I was sad to discover that by the numbers, I am considered a millienial. The fact that I'm kind of disturbed by that probably means I/we bear a responsibility to change what the subtext of 'millenial' is. If I'm one, they're getting a lot of it wrong.

This raises some interesting points. Are there ways to set up a world so that the players can impact and change it without GM intervention? I think that's the core thing we need -- to know that our stories are canon and exist in the interconnected world, and can change the broader story.

Then there is the babysitting. There will always be issues between and with certain players. Somebody has to deal with that stuff. Arguably it could be made a little easier by putting the tools to control what they have to see in the hands of the player. There seems like lots of momentum in that direction, in fact.

If you can put a game in place that the players can guide and change without a GM and empower them to deal with their own conflicts somehow, then you'd eliminate a lot of staff work right there.

Redux:

@faraday Power-upvote. There are lots of us who can't code a bit, but we might make badass games, for all the world knows, if we were just empowered to do it.

@Griatch Certainly I would imagine that someone with the code chops could take an Ares or Evennia setup out of the box and do virtually whatever they want with it. I've had more direct exposure to Ares done different ways than Evennia, but I'm sure you could emulate or approximate any function of one within the other if you really wanted to. When I get into combat in FS3 on Ares I'm not not gaming, but when I say 'Evennia feels more gamey' I'm aware it's more a statement about what I've seen either code base do than what either is actually capable of doing.

That being said, Ares out of the box feels like the RP crowd I would've found in the 90's on a less code-heavy, more freeform game. The sort of players who came over from other venues of RP and found MU*. I've really only seen Evennia run Arx, but its resources and item objects in tiers of quality minds me of the code-heavy games where you were more likely to find players that had come from MUDs and RPIs. However they got to MUDs in the first place remains a mystery, but I posit that it has something to do with the large monetized MUDs that were successful and marketing heavily at the time. Your Gemstones and Dragonrealmses.

And once again, we're talking about money and marketing now. What's interesting to me is talking to folks, most of the people I've asked would be comfortable paying a subscription-like fee -- within reason -- to be on a game, provided that the code and admin support felt 'worth it' to them. I think we've all dreamed the dream of a MU* so successfully monetized that its admins can afford to quit their day jobs and focus on pretendy-funtimes whole hog. But there's a slippery slope here. Would you want, as a staffer, to be a literal employee of the game? How chill would players be if they had the mindset of paying your bills, I wonder?

@mietze

Side note, remember when you used to have to '@lock me=me' to prevent everyone entering you? Those were the days. I seem to recall littering items into many an unsuspecting friend.

I love Ares, but I don't want to forget my love of Evennia either. There's something that feels more like 'game' there, and it's pretty slick and modernized too. I've thought that Ares comes off as more of a collaborative writing tool for RP and Evennia comes off as an RP-centric game. Both of these approaches are awesome and valid, and both can be spawned up easily and functionally in-browser. I feel lucky to have both any time I'm forced to fire up a client program (gross, how 90s).

So we have the systems. Are we just so out of touch we're only playing themes nobody but us gives a shit about? I'm really not ready to believe that either. Maybe we need to slut ourselves out to some new clientele with games that pander to new users, but I think those would draw the little preciouses deeper into our webs and onto our more thoughtfully-crafted settings.

The sort of places we've applied our collective experience over years and decades evolving ideas together to build. Maybe we can do the same thing and put our heads together to come up with game settings that would work and appeal to fresh meat -- get them in the door and twitching our webs.

There are some benefits to not having everything occur on a grid, too. If Romeo and Juliet decide to bang in the fountain again, they can do it in a private scene nobody else has to read, even if they RP at, in, on, or around that fountain at the same time.

@SquirrelTalk I drew the breath -- so to speak -- to say that I am married to grids, and then it died on my lips as I realized maybe I'm not. Probably I'm not. The way Ares handles scenes I'm not sure you need a grid at all and we pretty much have it because we're used to it. Having observed the scenes system I think even shy people feel comfortable joining an open, public scene, and that obviates the need for players to 'happen upon' one another on a grid. Just join the open scene -- and people do. The behavior change took, in my opinion, and very quickly at that.

But you do need, if not a grid, something like Ares' scenes that lets people have some way to know when RP is out there that is open to them, and to let them know they are encouraged to join it.

@Auspice ...what is a Homestuck? Is it a drug?

@SquirrelTalk So maybe the idea is to run a flag up into a major, active fandom that exists. See previous commentary re: Wheel of Time, maybe, or something stranger and braver still.

What are the young folk into this days, anyway, he asked with a painful lack of irony?

So how do we reach out to that collaborative soul, that RP junkie that doesn't even know it yet, and tell them we're out here existing?

ETA: I don't think format or codebase are the problems. I can haul up all the Evennia and Ares games I want easy as hell in the browser of my personal preference, but I have to know they exist first.

Considering all that's been said here, it occurs to me that maybe our primary failure really is marketing. We're able to vocalize pretty cogently what we love about MU*; surely there are younger people who exist that would like the same things.

I know that when I was a kid, I found the hobby very much by accident. Looking to do a research paper on the Celts for school, I ended up on a game about fairies and whatnot with a name I've long since forgotten, and never looked back. I've heard a lot more stories like that -- accidental discovery that stuck -- than not.

How would you find this if you didn't know it was here? Honest question, because I really don't know. Perhaps if we answer it, we draw the new lifeblood any population needs to survive long-term. I would hate to see this dwindle and die with us; I refuse to believe this is a generational phenomenon.

@SquirrelTalk You'd obviate the need to describe actions if you could just do them. But that would get old. Maybe in a few years when we're able to imagine at computers.

I always dreamed a little dream of something that would look like an MMO but would give you the level of control over your character's movements and facial features that would lend itself to our immersive style of RP. Maybe you speak through a voice changer? I dunno. Anyway, someone invent this now please, kthxbye.