A MU client that detected the type of MU you were on and correctly determined the commands for most ordinary actions and made them into buttons you could click (while still allowing you to enter the command directly if desired) would probably be awesome. It'd turn the learning-to-function-in-MUSH experience from a 'what the fuck do I do at the DOS prompt?! Tell me! Ffffff!!!' experience into a learning-hotkey-combos-for-a-GUI sort of experience.
@Thenomain said:
This shouldn't be a rule. It should be a definition of playing an RPG. You follow theme and setting. If you don't want to follow theme and setting, please find your entertainment elsewhere.
Cue 'Fight Club' clip of Marla Singer walking into the testicular cancer support group, "This is cancer, right?"
Cue me getting yelled at by players who are mad that I refuse to approve them to play an elf or a French princess on a Game of Thrones MU.
My 'bravo' has naught to do with this -- rather, I express approval at OR reducing the frequency of their updates to once a month.
I think we've been-there-done-that with pay-to-play MUs.
I don't think we need revenue to advertise the hobby. We just need better newbie support, more different kinds of games, and to take advantage of free advertising among table-top and play-by-post RPGers.
@ThatGuyThere said:
When it interferes with rp rather then facilitates rp is my answer, granted i know that is horribly imprecise and will differ for each game but that is also the truest answer I can think of.
Yep. And it's easy to have a 'too much' situation where adding more helps: eg, you've got obfuscate code, but no code to allow people who ICly can see through it to see through it. Either don't code obfuscate and have everybody roll and ICly behave as if they really can't see it if they fail, or add code to give them as have the right powers an automagic chance of seeing through it.
I once had a character who was shot with a shotgun his first hour on the grid. The PC who shot him said that he wanted to hit him over the head with the gunstock, not shoot him, but was told that the code demanded that he shoot once he'd wielded. I think in that particular case the GM was just being silly, but that sort of thing does happen. It really mucks up the game for me if I'm told I cannot do something that's possible in the imaginary world because the code won't support it.
@Thenomain said:
This is really what we're talking about in this thread. Not so much how to portray darkness, but how to get players to stick to theme and treat their character as a living creation that is not themselves.
Once we can work that out, we can tell people that they volunteered to play a game where bad things happen and ask them where the disconnect is.
Yeah. There's this overlap, though. Or so I believe, because I figure that some difference between WoD horror/tragedy and WoD superhero-monsters arises from the fact that the superhero ones don't get their stuff taken away?
I know nothing, I haven't played a WoD MU in years.
@Coin said:
If you look at the supernatural splats's version of "Integrity" it's more about doing monstrous things, like I pointed out before, and losing yourself in one way or another because of it.
I'd suggest the overarching theme for WoD is one of tragedy, rather than 'true' horror.
@Derp said:
How do you get players to keep to the feel of the game you are wanting to create without telling them that their fun is WrongFun?
I don't think you can, really. With WoD especially, you're going to get a lot of players showing up who have expectations about what a WoD MUSH will be like, which will lead them to think that playing Superheroes with Splat is wot's goin' down, and they'll be angry when it isn't.
Besides the PC-lack-of-control thing, or part of it: In a horror plot, one tends to take things away from the PCs. Someone they love is lost to them somehow, their house is haunted and you can't use the bad-ass billiards room in the basement because of all the ghostly viscera hanging from the ceiling, their fifty retainers are dying of rabies, the office building they own was blown up by Project Mayhem and their wealth stat has been dropped hugely, whatever. It's not just the 'we can't create tension when players know characters prolly won't die' trip, either. For a horror plot to be horrifying, something bad has to happen. But when something bad happens more or less out of the blue to a PC, they often feel that the GMs are punishing them. The in-game culture of a good horror MU has to accept IC loss as part of the fun.
@HelloProject Optional Realities isn't a 20 year old community, it's quite new. RPI MUDs (and their community of players) have been around about that long.
@Jaunt said:
I'm not on the spectrum, and I'm a social guy.
I would have guessed as much.
My asking for specifics from @EmmahSue was due to how counter-intuitive I find its unspoken social etiquette to be. It's not rule lawyering, it's an attempt to understand your community; again, you project what you want to see onto my words. It's why trying to talk to you is so often useless.
You asked EmmahSue what the the official moderator stance is on the issue. I pointed out that thinking that there such an official stance exists is a failure to understand how the culture here works. I then proceeded to attempt to explain how it does work.
This is an attempt to be helpful.
Honestly.
From my point of view, I have simply repeatedly tried to give "don't do it that way, do it this way," tips about getting along in MUSB. You have projected, or whatever, to see them as naught but insults (or whatever it is you see that makes them so useless) in spite of them including direct descriptions of how things are and suggestions about how to deal with it.
...no way that I'm going to be convinced that using aggressive, insulting language to make your points is not going to muddy the actual specifics of your point and reduce the likelihood for mutual understanding..
I just don't find it an appealing or particularly effective method when the goal is actual, valuable discussion.
I don't think anyone here, ever in all its years and different names, has thought that the jolly vitriol was a particularly effective method for valuable discussion.
So, hey, did anybody tell you what WORA stands for? "When Online Role-playing games Attack". The board's culture is informed by its history as a place where one gets that cathartic whatfoo from bitching about the games, and about the players, and arguing.
It's how it is here, and if it genuinely bothers you, this is not the place for you. That's not bullying, any more than OR's policies about automated combat, which make OR not-the-place-for-me, are bullying.
As far as how other sites view our advertising weekly updates to content, none of them have said a single word in protest about it ...
I'm a bit surprised, but some places tolerate that sort of thing. Personally, I don't care a whit, I am just also very much not surprised that some people here do mind. If I were you I'd go for monthly or maybe fortnightly updates and see what happens.
No worries; I am pretty sure when I downloaded and installed Atlantis it was pretty explicit that support was not guaranteed in any way.
I really like Atlantis. Thanks.
(Though I do wish it'd give me the option to unmask the passwords, and also and get a tinyfugue-like list of my existing worlds in a 'character-name, password, address, port, new line, next-character-name...' format for relatively easy hand-porting into other MU clients.)
@Jaunt said:
That's useful, thanks! So what I'm hearing from you is that the official moderator stance is that you prefer people to not post regular updates (say, weekly updates including new articles and contests or whatnot), but rather just advertise with the first post and then discuss from there. Is that correct?
See, it's NOT A RULE. If it were a RULE @Thenomain, who is also a mod, would have said, "You're breaking the rules, stop or you'll get kicked off," because that's how RULES on forums work. What it is is what @EmmahSue actually said -- it's typical to post once and let it go from there. That's not an official moderator stance, or a rule, it's just a fact.
See, the culture here does not work the way you think. So your appeal to authority ("It's not against the rules!" "What's the official moderator stance?!") is irrelevant. The fact that Theno doesn't mind the updates doesn't mean that other people are not allowed to object to them. If people think you're being a dick, they can say so. You can continue doing the thing they think is dickish, and they'll continue to say you're a dick. There's no list of what-is-dickish for you to cry, "But I didn't do that!" about, and Theno and Emma and other mods are very very unlikely to play Mum and Dad and make a ruling about it. Basically, you gotta be some sort of adult and accept that if you want so-and-so to stop calling you a dick you must stop doing the thing that he thinks is dickish, or wait for him to get tired of paying attention to your doings, or fuck off.
Are there any unwritten exceptions to this rule (say, for major site changes, or extra special things)?
Actually, I told you several pages back. The typical thing to do (and not just here, but most forums, in my experience) is to wait 'til the advert is no longer on the first page of threads, and then post your update-info so it kinda-sorta looks as if you have something to say and aren't just bumping your ad to get it back on the first page of threads.
NT = Neurotypical. Not autistic. Though also not a number of other things.
I gotcha with the waaaaay. Though actually, 'severely' autistic folks on forums don't do that shite either, that I've seen.
@WTFE said:
Personally I think it's because of the huge number of people who fall waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the autistic side of the spectrum in this hobby.
As an autistic person myself, I protest. Autistic adults bitching about how hard unwritten social rules are? Yep. Autistic adults pretending that unwritten rules don't exist and everybody will be fine with a person doing anything that's not expressly forbidden? Kids do that, and rebelling teens do that.
NT kids are always doing that, too. Because, you know, loopholes are useful for gettin' to do what you want without consequences. If we had a rules-based power structure here, right, it would work; we'd have to change the rules or stop bitching. In the rules-less power-vacuum we've got here, there's no opportunity to call on the law to force anybody to do anything, which makes things sort of rough in a person who doesn't want to negotiate.
@Jaunt said:
I'm not suggesting that we're special.
Doesn't matter what you're suggesting; you're acting like you think you're special, and intention is not magical.
Regardless of my thoughts on the quality of the 'manners' here, I'd suggest that part of the issue is this site's complete lack of transparency on its expectations of users, and code of conduct.
I dislike some elements of Japanese manners and find them annoying and rude, but regardless of this thought, I cannot reasonably go to Japan and take offense at normal behavior that happens to annoy me, nor do weird things that Japanese people think are rude but which I think are fine AND expect not to be told to fuck off.
If it does exist, I haven't found it, and I have looked.
It doesn't exist, because these are not rules. It is not a code of conduct. It is not a user agreement. If you act like an ass (by the communities' standards of what acting like an ass is) then people will react to you as if you are acting like an ass. Either you adjust and learn to behave in a way that meets community standards of not-assness, or you're an ass. You're allowed to be an ass. But the expectation that doing anything that is not expressly forbidden should never raise ire? That is silly.
I don't think anyone here wants to put a list of rules-of-conduct on the site. Honestly, looking over the site with some measure of throughness gives you a good clue, as does responding to the suggestions of others (I mean responding as in, taking their word for it and complying to some degree, not saying, "But it's not written down to not do that!" or "It's normal on other places!")
Actually, I'm pretty sure I'd annoy plenty of people if I acted about my MUSH ads that I put on "Game of Thrones" fansites and Play-by-Post sites and tablet--top gaming sites the way you've acted about yours, except I would have been booted off the site for it.
Also, good lord, what a pain -- thing is, I didn't want to move the characters to a new computer also using Atlantis, I wanted to put them onto this horrible windows box and run Potato or summat. But at least I can read the passwords out of the .awd files and access 'em! Fangs!
I love you.
As it happened, the computer troubles that made me think it was urgent are resolved, but it's really a totally vital thing to be able to do.
BTW, the Atlantis support forum thing has the same question posted, with no answer. 
@Jaunt said:
"Go the fuck away, nobody wants you here" is bullying.
But, "Meet our standards of behavior," is not bullying.
A: "Blaaaaaaaaarrrp!"
B: "Dammit, don't belch in my face, you're being a dick."
A: "You're being a dick by calling me a dick, and I'll belch where I want."
B: "Go the fuck away!"
Who is the bully here?
You're not talking to all of the OR representatives right now. The thrust of your conversation's been with me.
@Thenomain said:
And yes, Jaunt, you are here officially representing Optional Realities. You are staff there, you are talking about it, you can't get away from that.
What Theno said. You're staff there. You're talking about it. I'm talking about the collective behavior of staff there in talking about it here. You are part of that. You can't just disassociate from it whenever it suits your argument, like.
Please, tell me what the expected standard of behavior customary to the locale is for MSB. You've said this a couple of times, but without more specificity, it's not helpful to me.
I have told you, repeatedly, pretty much every time I mention these expected standards. Two standards that you lot have violated, which I keep mentioning:
Don't post misleading adverts. Or links to a misleading charter, as the case may be. (And FFS, don't respond to this with a complaint that you've fixed it, you guys were complaining about the negative response to it months before you agreed to fix it.)
Don't bump your ad thread every damn week.
Hint! If #2 was okay, everybody would do it! You are not special! Similarly, your complaints that you feel dog-piled on and bullied by the manner in which people told you that your ad/charter was/is inappropriate and misleading indicates that you think you're special, and should be immune to the vitriolic criticism that characterises the 'voice' of this board.
There are a whole bunch of other standards of behavior! OMG. And you have to learn them organically, because they are manners, see. On this board there are not rules against acting like a dick. You are allowed to act like a dick. But you also get the consequences of acting like a dick. It's magical.
A good standard of behavior to adopt when entering a new community is to acquiesce when people ask you to conform to some standard of behavior. But you're violating that one, too -- ask OR folks to stop posting the updates every week, the response we get is an explanation about why you do it and a remark that you guys judge the value in doing it above the harm Lithium finds it does. But actually look at this advert board, and you will find that nobody else posts weekly updates. You want to be special. And by funder, you're being bullied when people say, "Fuck off," in response to your insistence on behaving as if you are.
It would be bullying if I posted links to all the new logs on my MUSH's wiki, every week, and nobody minded that, but they gave you shit for your updates. If I had advertised my game as "General Fantasy" and let people get excited about playing Elves and Dwarves only to discover that it's a "Game of Thrones" game and that's not allowed -- if I did that and wasn't yelled at and slapped about until I fixed it and then some afterwards for good measure, then how you're being treated would be 'bullying'. But if I did either of those things, I would get a kickin'.
@Jaunt said:
@il-volpe said:
You did change the statement, but it sure wasn't easy convincing you lot.
You have this twisted sort of view of things. I was convinced immediately, and I said so...
It's a collective 'you,' meaning all the OR representatives. A great deal of this thread would utterly fail to exist if OR as a collective had been immediately convinced instead of telling people here of the wrongness of their objections. A fair bit of that happened before you, Jaunt, showed up, I think. I'm not gonna read it again and check.
And once again, you're missing the point -- you are not being bullied because you have a different 'philosophy' of text-based gaming. You're being asked to meet an expected standard of behavior customary to the locale, and responding by arguing, yet claiming to be bullied when people yell at you for it.
@Jaunt said:
- We stop posting to MSB, 'cause (some of) you don't want people with a slightly different text-based gaming philosophy than yours here.
Nobody cares about your text-based gaming philosophy. They found it annoying that OR's mission statement and advert was misleading. They find it annoying that you're posting updates about OR every week.
They wanted you to change that mission statement to match what your community is about (or change the community to match the statement, but nobody really expected that, no matter how much you felt like they did, honest). You did change the statement, but it sure wasn't easy convincing you lot.
- We go fuck ourselves.
This is because you take so much fucking convincing. You put up a lot of resistance to that 'one useful thing.'