Best posts made by ixokai

@Rusalka said in [Where do you draw the line in having your character take what would otherwise be an "IC" action for them?]

And yes, I do consider scene stealing and derailing to be potentially damaging to other people's fun. I've seen it ruin scenes and plots ("I solve the whole thing immediately, by myself!"), and the people involved in the worst cases didn't seem to care because "it's what my character would have done lol." (I have several "wonderful" stories of what not to do, in fact, but those are probably better suited for the Hog Pit.)

On the 'I solve the whole thing immediately front', I agree and disagree, and as we just had a big whole Lets Talk About Plots on M1963 tonight, and we talked about just this thing, I have various thoughts.

First, those people with an urge to solve everything in everything they do -- they are robbing everyone else of fun. This is bad.
Second, however, is that sometimes a player might come up with a clever approach using their niche powers that really do solve a scene all by themselves. This is good. To not let them shine in this way, to not reward their cleverness and specialty, is to put plots on a rail and that is bad.
Third, if someone tries to solve everything there is very often a likely consequence you can or maybe should apply. Rarely, I think, is a scene constructed where someone can really win it individually without going all out on such a way there might not be collateral damage at worst or unnamed consequences at best. These should be applied by the GM carefully: you shouldn't punish players for cleverness, you shouldn't wield consequence as a punitive measure because your plan got derailed. Your problem here was having a rail at all.
Finally, its very, very important to let each and everyone who can reasonably do so -- shine in their moment. Note the first -- if the character is playing like they solve everything ever that's another matter. But if you have your iconic moment of awesome, the GM shouldn't hold to a rigid set of reality that punishes you for it unless you went a bit crazy. Let the player shine.

This is all a little off topic but, hey, you know, it happens.

All of this can be boiled down to: Collaborate. This is a collaborative environment where we all want to have fun.

But accept sometimes the unexpected happens and that's a good thing.

@Auspice said in Mac Client Recommendations?:

And that dual-input, right? That's the main reason I'm bit-chomping. I've been missing my Potato dual-input soooooo bad.

It really is the best feature ever. I love Atlantis but if Potato wasn't so godawful ugly on Mac I'd probably switch just for that... until Atlantis 2.0 at least.

@Arkandel @saosmash

I second NK Jemisin is great. I can't reccommend The Inheritance Trilogy, starting with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, enough.

All of her stories have very intense and interesting and different worlds. They are very atypical fantasy that don't delve into easy tropes, she has great characters, and while there is a lot of world-building, it doesn't bog down the pacing a lot, imho.

@tekmunkey said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

ROTFLMAO

I logged into this MU

I typed +staff

I got something like 6 lines of

#-1 NO MATCH

So the essential failure was not in general or even with code, it was literally ROTFLMAO

... did you not get the fact that the game isn't being run anymore? That its up at all is because I haven't bothered to shut it down?

I don't really see the "and thus MUSHes" connection; almost none of that is really applicable to any MUSH I've ever played. (Granted, I gave up after awhile when I got tired of thinking 'nonsense...')

MUDs and MUSHes have some things in common but there is a great deal different.

I can't speak to ever using AWS, we use it at work to... satisfactory results, but it takes some work.

That said, I host my game(s) on Linode. Its a hefty one as it does a variety of other things, but the $5/mo linode tier is very cheap and more then a mush needs, plus Linode is just excellent in support and reliability.

EDIT:

Also, Lish is the best thing since sliced bread. I know lots of services offer a way to get console access to your VM, but I've had no end of problems from them from every host I've ever been on. Especially the web based ones (Rackspace's was the worst)

Lish, though? You SSH into a special address, log in with your Linode account credentials, and ssh connects to the console -- not a ssh server on your machine, instead you get access to the console itself. So if you screw something up (say, you install a firewall and oops and forget to add ssh access?), you just use lish to get direct access.

Thank god for buspar.

I haven't had a panic attack in two years.

@sparks said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):

@bored said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):

Oh, I guess you could be Jubilee! Hooray!

As someone who has played Jubilee more than once before, I have to just chime in with an obligatory, "Why does everyone say my name like it means 'shut up'?"

Because while I know you don't suck, I'm sorry, but, Jubilee has a weird attraction to those that do more then suck, but suck badly and with intensity.

Jubilee was my first ban on m1963. She was the second Jubilee. The first, was only just not banned, and by a small margin.

Jubilee calls to the crazy. Its not that all Jubes are crazy, at all; I'd never judge a character based on this history. Buuuuuut.

History says: Jubilee are cray, yo.

@auspice is a monster

@Chet said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

I see metaplot as the plot elements addressing the issues that a particular plot is inspired by. Nice and simple definition.

Yet, to me, I've never seen it used that way.

A metaplot is not a plot in that you usually don't do anything about it specifically.

The metaplot is the plot happening in the world around you; you might do plots that it spawns, but it, itself, is not touchable as a PC.

Its the ongoing, large story that's bigger then an individual PC.

In OWOD Vampire, the metaplot was the Jyhad and the eventual rise of the Antediluvians.
In OWOD Mage, the metaplot was the Ascension War.

Etc.

Now, a game can have its own metaplot below (or combining) this game-wide metaplot, sure. There doesn't have to be a single metaplot.

The point is the metaplot is the high level story of the world moving.

On a smaller scale, on the scale of PCs in a city or region, that metaplot will spawn plots that you deal with. These might affect the metaplot, but indirectly. That's why its meta.

Actually admitting and apologizing goes a long way, to me, to keep Franken not on my shit-list.

"She's a liar" makes me almost more angry then anything else in these situations.

Now, for those people wanting proof... how the heck is someone supposed to prove that she got hit on by a 30yo man when she was 14, 40 years ago?

How does someone prove that she got drugged and raped while unconscious a decade ago?

Any 'evidence' is long gone... and because our culture is such as it is, sooo many women don't feel safe reporting so the evidence could be gathered.

@tempest said in Stranger Than Fiction MUX:

@arkandel said in Stranger Than Fiction MUX:

@tempest I am ignoring you, because I don't care. If you think it looks dumb, well, it's the Hog Pit and you can say it.

It sounds a lot like you're realizing this whole 'mod' thing was a disgusting failure, but you refuse to admit it.

There has been a marked decline in activity on the board outside of the "Hey what flavor of cupcakes do you guys like :D" kind of threads, ever since the 'Administration on MSB' thread blew up.

I want to point something out here, just briefly.

I find myself agreeing with @Tempest here.

On a general part of me living my life, I'm not sure I'd be okay with agreeing with @Tempest if she said it was day or night. If she said there were two colors in chess I'd go out of my way to find an example where black was red. I don't know that I've ever played with her on any game, but I disagree pretty hard on almost anything she says. I think she trolls aggressively and tries to spark drama for its own sake.

And yet I find myself agreeing with her here.

The current methods and ways of mods is deeply flawed and counterproductive. Mods are abusing 'mod voice' (that very idea is absurd: that you think you can participate in a board that has something like a hog pit, and moderate something moderately constructive, is astonishingly naive), there's no clarity of what's right or wrong anywhere, and the general atmosphere of the place as a safe-to-bitch-fest and also safe-to-chat-fest, is harmed.

Yes, there was issues in the previous mod rules on Advertisement threads in particular and where they fit, and how they should be treated. But we're not in a better place now.

Advice: Make mod accounts. Completely separate your voice from Mod Voice. Do not allow casual comments to be felt to have the power of mod behind them. Split threads early, clearly declaring why. Resist the urge to be the censor: there should be clear standards of behavior but otherwise, the biggest concern is IMHO your PERSONAL opinion of what is right being what you decide is acceptable discourse.

The problem with personal opinions is I don't like, as I mentioned, @Tempest. Though I'm agreeing with her here. If I were through some magical impossible world made mod, how could Tempest ever trust me and my modding of her?

Thus, at the very least, separate mod and user voices. Not by bolding up Mod Voice in the middle of a post-- especially since we've already seen that used questionably.

Note, the linode I use to host games got taken down an hour early, FYI.

@faraday said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@lotherio said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Not to call her out or drag her in, @Faraday has, just prior to AresMUSH go-live, consolidated a lot of standard global features and add-ons that players have come to expect and enjoy all in one location as a Softcode Core.

Heh, that's been around for close to ten years.

Since @Tempest asked in the train wreck thread about a sandbox setup -
here you go - Zero to Faraday Softcode. It has FS3 and other stuff built in but you can get rid of them with the +uninstall command. It doesn't have +traits, but that's easy enough to do. Maybe @tangent or @ixokai has that quick and dirty version I threw together for Marvel63 when it first opened.

I don't have it anymore readily, because we migrated off that platform onto my own awhile ago. (RhostMUSH, all code besides bbs/jobs by me)

That said, I've taken M1963's database, wiped out all the characters and grid and saved it as a sort of empty starter DB that I can give to someone if they want it.

I am choosing not to laugh.

I am choosing to judge.

Not, like, you know, a lot.

But its never going away, now, this whole, 'What do centaurs do with their hands during sex?'

You'll talk about medical health care one day, and I'll be all like, thinking: centaur hands during sex.

I played a lot of Sin Eater on TR (I was Chance, a Reaper who hunted the living who created ghosts-- abusers, killers, (ab|im)mortals), but never did find a group to fit into and krewe it up. It's.. oddly tempting, doubly odd because I sorta thought I was done with being tempted with most things WoD, especially the freak hybrid 'half-GMC' TR/FC thing.

But you've moved your krewe mythology away from Greek, any words on what to?

@thatguythere said in FCs on Comic MUs:

"If staff feels a role is not being met the person will be replaced."

I find as a rule this is completely impossible to fairly apply. For one thing it means that staff has to actively monitor everything going on in the game, and for any game over five players, that's a ton of work to read logs and evaluate if 'the role is not being met'.

I don't have the time to read everyone's logs and make that kind of evaluation.

I personally have no issue with having a) minimums and b) a rule that meeting only minimums is insufficient. Policing it is not really that hard if you have good code in place. Its not perfect, and for some roles you may want higher standards -- but then you create this perverse incentive to make the more important rules less likely to be played. (Thus, imho, everyone on the same standard is best)

@surreality said in Random Thoughts:

ETA: This conversation == Infinitely more entertaining than the eternal 'do vampires have sex and why' discussion. (PLEASE NOBODY START THAT ONE HERE.)

Now here for me the big question has always been not do they but can they, and if they can, do they want to, and if they want to, why ...

Holy fuck I've officially thought about vampire sex so much over my staffing history its automatic. I can't stop it. Please wait. Drinking large gulp of bourbon.

This is oddly appealing to me. I like the system, the inversion of you don't win against the monsters, you survive the monsters. I like there's a touch of Buffy but without Buffy herself, let alone Willow. And if my character survives, hey, college vampires to survive!

I wish very slightly they didn't name it 'Lovecraft', because that just means something specific. But whatevs. Staff is helpful. chargen is pretty simple. Mechanics are light but not so light that there's just a nod towards mechanics.

Haven't actually RP'd there yet, but making a person was pleasant and the setting is very well fleshed out and staff seems to have thought through things.

@thatguythere said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@ixokai said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@thatguythere said in FCs on Comic MUs:

No meeting the minimum standards is still sufficient because there is a minimum activity level where you would not boot someone (there has to be or you would boot everyone) it is just that the rule does not actually state what the rule is.

=To clarify on the minimum standard thing, if for example you have someone playing the Dane Whitman version of Black Knight and he gets a scene every 19 days and staff doesn't notice, than he starts going 20 with out a scene and staff notices and talk with him, that clearly establishes the minimum is 19. What the actually written rule states is meaningless because what staff enforces on the game becomes the actual rule.
The rule might say 30, but in reality it is 25 or 13 or some other number that is just under what would actually draw staff attention.
I an not picking on any game in specific with this, never been on the one @Ixokai staffs (never played there and have honestly heard nothing bad about it) just using that as an example of the similar rules I have seen on most comics games.

This would be true if staff and the system only ever looked at the 'current period' and was blind entirely to the past. I admit most games, I believe, do things this way-- or do things entirely subjectively/manually (I heard one game which every quarter looks over log activity manually for each character to make a determination, the idea of doing so making me want to pluck my own eyes out).

However, in our situation, every night a program queries the wiki and grabs a link to all new logs. It determines who is in each log and writes all this data into a SQLite database. Now we can look at this data in an automated way with more sophistication: we don't need to 'only' look at someone's activity for the 'current period', we can look at their overall history for the last...however long we want to (currently: 3 months) We can see that though the rule is 30, they're only RP'n every 29, and that deserves a warning. Right now its still semi-manual cuz I've been to work-busy to code the analysis tools, but they aren't hard to do.

Awesome use of tech, but that still means there is a minimum, Ok 29 deserves a warning, what about someone scening every 12? I would guess no which means the real warning level is somewhere between 12 and 29, if yes the real number is somewhere under 12.
Either way my point is there is still a real minimum number that players are left to guess at. I would very much prefer this real number be listed somewhere rather than the 30 that is.

30 is the real number. Beyond that its not "x/day", its not day-oriented. You could have a log on day 28 and 29, or a log on day 12 and 29. For part 1 of activity ('minimum'), its 30. For part 2 ('sufficient'), its amount of RP over a period, with amount of days between logs not actually mattering.

@bored said in FCs on Comic MUs:

On activity, I think you basically need two standards. You can have a basic one for FCs that's fairly... standard MU whatever, lose the character if you're idle for X amount of time without Y votes/logs, whatever. That works for 90% of characters that exist.

But I'd also put all of the iconic roster (ie, basically anyone who's in the main cast of a movie or TV show) in another tier. Most games only do this with the absolutely top characters (Superman, Cap, whatever). Those people are expected to keep up public activity etc. It's in the job description and sorry, if you're not willing to be a PRP runner, you don't get to play the current hotness characters.

With that setup, staff doesn't have to review every log or monitor everyone's RP. But they do keep an eye on what the stars of the game are doing, and push them along.

I find this a reasonable approach -- but you have to be very careful with it. Its already really hard, for example, to fill a Charles Xavier position, and he's so important for the X-Men. The bigger the burden we put on it, the even harder it will be, I think. There's a delicate balance you have to find between them being the "job" and them playing.

Also this "PRP Runner" thing is very a concern. If Superman has to run PRP's to play, then there's a very ripe opportunity for him to basically be the center of all the plots. And that's boring. Just by being himself he is apt to solve most problems if he shows up to a plot. Who wants to show up to a plot where Superman saves the day again and again?

For characters like Cap, or Xavier, who may be iconic but themselves can't usually solve all things, that's not so bad, but for some of your iconics they're heavy hitters in their own right.

@faraday said in FCs on Comic MUs:

It can be done.

I know it can be done; but I do find it pretty out there a suggestion for 94 FC's. The time it'd take to do it would have to come from somewhere, which probably means cut my playing time in half. Which means burn out. But if as @bored suggested it was only for certain iconic/key FC's, that'd be doable.