Posts made by il-volpe

Conan

Oh, I am totally giving unasked-for advice.

@Sunny said in Dice code:

@il-volpe

“Something ought to be that way” implies that you think that it ought to be that way. It’s not weird to read it like that.

It's not weird, but it is making that extra effort to make my opinion into something more than it is.

@Tinuviel Yet you agree with me: "where possible/necessary, the math should be visible." but somehow take the word 'ought' to be a demand while 'should' is not.

To be clear, I'm not phrasing it as a request because I'm not making a request. I do not need anybody to code me a dice system. Nor do I expect coders to just comply with what I tell them they ought to do 'cause I said it. They probably ought to get more sleep, too. See?

Naw, really. If I say, "A cheese sandwich ought to be melted clear through," I mean just that, and not, "Hey, anybody who can hear me and has a pan, run out and make me a cheese sandwich that's melted clear through." Promise.

I did not mean to include systems where player-intelligible maths aren't involved, though. Like Faraday said, doing this for the combat system would be off.

No user who wasn't paying for software development has ever had a good idea about what features users want in software.

Also, saying "things ought to be thus" should always be understood as a demand on others' time.

@Tinuviel Hahahah. Yet you appear to be offended by the math being visible as a 'useless thing.'

If you want to keep it constructive, "Build your own if you want it the way you want it" isn't.

@il-volpe said in Dice code:

Aside from people whinging it's because if you do +roll dexterity+basketwarping and the system isn't set up to say "You don't have a skill called basketwarping" then you probably won't know that your points in basketweaving were not applied. This is pretty much inevitable when you get to skills with more than one word names, as players forget if it's space, dash, or underscore on this particular game.

@Tinuviel said in Dice code:

@il-volpe said in Dice code:

and the system isn't set up to say "You don't have a skill called basketwarping"

Then it should be setup to say that.

@il-volpe said in Dice code:

@Tinuviel This is an inferior solution, as it doesn't solve the whinging and it take away the player's silly toy of +rolling butt-slapping and other non-existent things that amuse them.

@Tinuviel said in Dice code:

@il-volpe Then write your own dice code if you want it to do pointless things.

@Tinuviel said in Dice code:

@il-volpe Then write your own dice code if you want it to do pointless things.

Touchy touchy. Can you tell us where the visible dice hurt you?

@Derp said in Dice code:

Jesus, players already get wild with eye-searing ansi in names and comtitles and stuff, can you imagine what kind of painful rainbow vomit we'd see if they could change the colors of everything and make other people see that shit too?

Do people really do this? I mean, I do remember when people did this, but that was back when ANSI colours were a newish MU feature, and I didn't see it because I played from a dumb terminal. For the past 25 years the closest I've seen to this is somebody complaining that the colour-scheme for the frames around room-descs is ugly.

@Tinuviel This is an inferior solution, as it doesn't solve the whinging and it take away the player's silly toy of +rolling butt-slapping and other non-existent things that amuse them.

Aside from people whinging it's because if you do +roll dexterity+basketwarping and the system isn't set up to say "You don't have a skill called basketwarping" then you probably won't know that your points in basketweaving were not applied. This is pretty much inevitable when you get to skills with more than one word names, as players forget if it's space, dash, or underscore on this particular game.

Now, colours...

MU dice commands ought to show every individual die's results.

They ought to also allow players to change the colours of their dice so you can do something of a virtual version of flinging a recalcitrant one away and digging out another.

A party-vs-party post-apocalypse or 'Walking Dead' thing. Or party vs party vs party 'cause splitting off and founding your own little group would be a thing, but you're always competing for fuel/food/shelter, and there are good mechanics for base-building and stockpiling stuff.

@surreality I remember it. I didn't play there, but recall looking at it with interest. It was HellMUSH. HellMOO came first and is another thing and I don't know what it's about except that it was one of the earlier LambdaMOO-spawned things so it's probably about socializing and coding.

Did somebody make a Fraggle Rock MU once, or did I dream that?

@ZombieGenesis said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I'm a little shocked there's not a L&L game set in King's Landing. L&L RP, the servants and noble style RP, knights, thieves, etc.

That's Blood of Dragons, except you can't play a thief. Unless, maybe, said thief is a lord or lady.

I think ASoIaF is kinda done, at least until the prequel show makes its appearance.

@Quinn Well, yeah, if you want. It would be better if you behaved scandalously and caused three guys to die in duels, and then when it came time for time-warp week, posted that as your age-up story. And then skipped a round with that PC so next time we see them they're still in the kitchen making candy but it's fifty years later and the family is richer from selling the unending supply of candy made by this old woman they all just walk around and don't talk about.

@SparklesTheClown I don't know what that is, besides 'a manga'. One Hundred Years of Solitude the novel follows this family who found a remote
village that over a century becomes a small city and then a ghost town. There are wars and floods and banana plantation massacres, but it's not exactly an action-show.

@Testament You'd be encouraged to create your PCs descendants as later PCs, and inherit stuff.

eta: Or allow your character to survive the whole run, possibly even unnoticed so at the end the young gallant from the start of the game is an old man who's been sitting in the corner of the house for the last two time-jumps.

One Hundred Years of Solitude MUSH

Each character may begin with one useless surreal supernatural power, and those without may have one inflicted upon them, eg. Yellow butterflies keep coming out of your hair.

Once a year or so, you must wrap up for a ten to thirty year time-advance, and either age your character or retire them and make another. Macondo rises and falls.

@Jeshin said in Emotional bleed:

Integrity of the story, not individual integrity. The shared suspension of disbelief. Obviously people have feelings and one of the reasons there's such a culture of don't do it finger wagging (I think) is because of the final question.

Mmm. I would not describe it as 'integrity' but there's a thing.

For shared suspension of disbelief, we need all the players to understand the game-world consistently with one another. We also tend to like a consistent emotional tone to the game. We call the mix 'theme', right? Pop fiction IPs work great because lots of people will already know what the game's universe is like, and also things like where the overall comedy/action/angst/coziness levels can be expected to lie.

What the hobby doesn't seem to have done is find a consistent way to communicate the OOC version of this. 'Community theme'? A "we're a serious bunch trying to tell a grim and complex story, and this tale holds priority" makes a very different MU from "We're goofing off and if we make a great story that's awesome but everybody having a good time is priority." Plus a lot of points in between, plus, "Core players having a good time telling their cool and complex story is priority, we'll fuck up that story to cater to their feelings, but not yours."

What your game is like in this community-thing regard probably makes a huge difference as to what bleed even is, as well as how to handle it.

@ThoughtBubble I have heard plenty of people say his has happened to them. It seems so common that I actually made an explicit rule against it -- "you don't have to play with anyone you don't want to play with, but don't try to convince other people not to play with them" or something like hat.

You have observed something important and quite relevant -- many, many MUers have the brain cooties. Some types of brain cooties get along well with other types of brain cooties but conflict harshly with still other types, and most of them make people idiosyncratically abrasive and idiosyncratically sensitive, so communities with high levels of endemic brain cooties get weird even without anybody being an actual asshole.

@SixRegrets Not to worry. I hope I'll hear from you about it. Thanks.