Posts made by Jeshin

Hey,

The Haven people having fun decided to leave Haven for a laundry list of reasons. I'm not sure having once played Haven for a month, a year, or several years somehow makes that person(s) enjoyment of a game irrelevant. I will say that when the group started making character the staff and players were very friendly over newbie channel and aside from a small issue with timezone for some of our group, roleplay is pretty consistent to find.

Certainly nothing that has happened on Kushiel's Debut is as bad as the stuff happening on Haven, so maybe we're just underwhelmed by any drama going on. That being said Eiseth... Ehisthe... Sunny was one of the staffers who helped get people through chargen in a reasonable amount of time, so it sucks that there was a falling out there.

We also... you knew took a very hard look at our mission statement and our goals and we updated those too. Probably a bigger deal >_> and more likely to be something this community is going to appreciate.

TLDR - All text-based games including MU*, Interactive fiction, roguelikes, and other unspecified types have equal ability to advertise and equal tools to do so on the site with no subforums existing anymore except by "type"

Hey,

Sorry for being personally absent from this community for so long. Real life tied with difficulties in Project Redshift's development a long with a complete loss of our webserver kind of hit me pretty hard. Even though that has only been occurring in the last 1.5 weeks leading up to it wasn't much better.

I have slept, we have worked, our direction has been updated.

http://optionalrealities.com/ --- new website and new mission statement
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/ --- new forum and we really liked nodebb so we used it.

Hey

@Thenomain

http://musoapbox.net/topic/341/optional-realities-project-redshift/728

Jaunt posted our likely changes to our front page and I was commenting on that fact and that we saw the feedback provided and that the delay is due to our graphic designer making new slides.

Hey,

Minor update. @Jaunt has posted the updated slide text to our front page and we're looking at the feedback on changes. The only hold up is Hex (our graphic artist) having time to mock them up and kick them over to us.

Still following the thread on my free time.

My point is that there is a portion of the website for people to submit articles. Which leads into a follow up that probably a third of our articles were written by people who were not active staff for any game at the time of writing such as Leah's staff ethics editorial and Sabrelon's Customer Service article to name the most recent ones off the top of my head.

EDIT - But I will admit I probably missed the point, I need to re-read some sections over again. So many words O_O

Hey

@il-volpe

http://optionalrealities.com/contact-us/

Our website since the 1st week has had the request to contribute an article on our contact us page.

Hey,

I have been following this thread. I did let both @Jaunt and @Crayon off the promotional lingo line. I did refrain from censoring anything they said (I have a thing about censorship) and I did it because of two reasons.

1. This board appears to have a culture where gloves off discussion has to take place between an understanding can be made. I was telling another staffer from another game that flash in the pan OOC bitching about IC events is generally healthy. It vents steam and most people get over it pretty quick. In the same vein I decided that allowing my staff to speak openly and freely on a personal level would lead to (hopefully) a progression of the discussion to a new place we could continue on from.

2. We have been discussing OR and how it works as a community a lot and since Musoapbox (out of all other communities) has been the greatest contributor to message clarification and introspection. I figured if we had to have a messy muddy possibly brand damaging thread this would be the most productive place to do it.

Bonus 3 - I was dealing with real life stuff and trust both my staff which I think paid off? I feel like the general vibe is improving.

PS - Hopefully by this weekend I'll have something substantial to share from an OR changes or clarification standpoint.

Hey,

Yes @Thenomain has made several posts regarding phrasing, structure of responses to concerns raised, and general tone of promotional content both here and on our website. However thus far (and I've read this entire thread twice in the last 18 days) he has not asserted that I have lied about our intentions or purpose.

The is a difference between a disagreement which appears (at this time) to be at an impasse and either Crayon or myself or Optional Realities actively lying. It is the specific instance of us lying I am asking for @sunny , everything else I am willing to acknowledge can or does exist but if we have lied (I don't think we have) than I need to identify where the issue exists in our posts or website and properly update it (like I have before).

If we're not lying and you were making a general statement that you feel like we're untrustworthy that is slightly different because that is a subjective and not objective state and I'm not going to say that our posts cannot be seen as untrustworthy based on how someone else reads them.

PS - The issue of our promotional presence being contradictory to our intended goals is the primary reason I have read this thread twice and why I am also asking for a specific instance of lying but I am actually concerned I may have missed something here or on the website. This isn't some kind of hurhur prove it with a quote response. This is honestly asking for directions to the issue.

Hey,

I appreciate the sympathies, Ali was a great dog (mostly my mothers in the end) and like I said it wasn't sudden but it did take up a considerable amount of my energy.

My girlfriend Hex (WildGiller) actually did some artwork

http://orig14.deviantart.net/b64e/f/2013/189/7/4/amy_and_ali_by_wildgiller-d6cmiy3.jpg

Not that it's on topic, but it makes me feel better to show it. It's a pretty nice picture to remember by.

Thread continue onward.

Hey,

I am still looking at changes to our promotional methods, like I said I would, my dog of 16 years was put down today (long life, not sudden, expected) and I've also been dealing with some behind the scenes stuff.

I miss the 2 week mark, I apologize, still committed to doing what I said I was going to do.

Side note, @Sunny please point out where we lied as I take that very seriously and have (on several instances) modified language on the site to try and avoid misleading people.

Hey,

So I'm going to take... A week (think I can do this in a week) and re-read through this entire monster of a thread. I'll then brew on it for a week, so in 2 weeks time, I'll get back to you all with any significant changes we'll be making.

In the meantime though Crayon will continue business as usual with our weekly updates.

Talk to you in 2 weeks.

@Thenomain

Once again I stated publicly here that we would include the criteria on the connections page after you stated it should be included. I gave a timeframe that it would be added and stuck to it. As to the phrasing, I'm probably not going to change it. There is a certain amount of salesmanship going on and yes I know you (most of you?) find it distasteful but it is what it is.

As to welcome too and feel free, that is the blunt truth. I've even gone and pursued some games to have them become members though I'm not doing that any longer. I'm sorry I didn't pursue your game or games that you feel should be on the site but we do have MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs in our connections page and our sub-forums. We aren't lying. We aren't creating double standards. We are doing exactly what we said we were going to do and when that message has been unclear we've modified it (several times). Truthfully this website has probably been the largest contributor to edits to phrasing, policy, and approach for Optional Realities as we take your guys criticisms and do consider them.

There are at least 4 posts in this thread alone of my publicly announcing a change will occur in x time and that change has occured as promised on schedule.

@Thenomain

I have stated dozens of times that the community forums discuss any game(s) that wish to promote themselves and that only, solely, exclusively, and specifically is our partnership with games for linkbacks and a sub-forum saddled with a filtering criteria. Any MUSH should and could go to the other games thread and post up right now. They could go start discussions about topics they feel are under represented on the website and people would participate with them.

The surprise at games being discussed shouldn't be a surprise at all!

EDIT - I mean go look at the Other Games thread, I love promoting Knee Deep because it was made by a member of the text-based gaming community (Brody from Otherspace) and it's a telltale like adventure game. http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=211.0

written by Raphael Osteen (“Jeshin”)

Welcome to the inaugural article of Optional Realities, a text-based RPG community with a focus on heavily roleplay-centric games. My name is Jeshin and I’m the founder of both this community and Project Redshift, which is a science fiction themed text-based RPG currently in development. I say founder of this community, and not owner, because I hope that this community grows and takes on a life of its own — one where every member participates, and contributes to its discussions and goals. For me to do that, you all need to know what the goals and purpose of this website are, thus the topic of this article.

Optional Realities was created to be a community dedicated to text-based RPGs, not just MUDs, or MOOs, or MUXs, or any of the various sub-genres that we’ve divided ourselves into over the years. Our connections page is for any text-based game that is focused primarily on role-play, has coded support for player activities, and includes permanent character death. This shouldn’t be taken as a discouragement to games that do not fit our listing criteria. At the end of the day I think it important that we acknowledge that we have a lot more in common than we have separating us. The community forums are open to anyone and everyone with an opinion or game they would like to share and I strongly encourage anyone reading this to do both.

With that concern in mind, I hope that Optional Realities can help bridge the gap between all of our games and create a home for our genre of text-based RPGs. To help facilitate this the, O.R. team, and leading administration of prominent text-based RPGs, will be producing weekly articles on various topics ranging from role-play, to administrative practices, and even on suggestions on how best to develop your own game. In addition to the weekly articles, the community forums will hopefully be a place of vibrant discussion, and will also allow for promotion of games in their respective sub-forums.

To wrap up, I’d like to introduce the rest of the O.R. team. We’ll begin with Redshift’s Lead Designer and Writer, Donathin Frye, AKA “Jaunt”. His focus will be on game design philosophy, story, and world building. Next is Redshift’s Lead Coder, Faye Yao, AKA “Apollo”, who will be focusing on implementation of game systems and scripting for text-based RPGs. Finally, we have myself, Raphael Osteen, AKA “Jeshin”. I will be focusing on why players unfamiliar with the text-based RPG genre should be playing it. I will also be writing about staffing philosophy and standards. We all hope that our articles are interesting and helpful to you. If you happen to be staff on a text-based RPG, please contact us if you’d like to write an article of your own, or have a sub-forum added to our community. We’d love to include your game if you fit our very loose criteria (roleplay-focused, coded systems, permanent death). As for everyone else, please check back with us soon to read an article by a contributing game’s staff and also Jaunt’s thoughts on Immersive Combat Design in text-based RPGs, and to get a bit of a tease on what our upcoming project, Redshift, is all about.

^ This is the full text of that article.

Hey,

@Thenomain

I actually updated that document, posted an announcement about the update, and linked it here at the time based off feedback from you. It's in the earlier part of this thread.

Hey,

We want to share our community with this community.

Until we get asked to stop posting by a MOD or the thread is locked we'll continue to try and do so and even make changes to how we do so.

Hey,

I actually put hey at the beginning of my posts because it makes me feel more comfortable posting. It both disarms my concern that I'm a post shilling robot and is a nice little greeting. It's just a thing I do to help get through all the posts I make on various websites.

I think that one of the issues we're having is that we (I) am not comfortable directing people to Optional Realities for specific content. It was just an ethics thing of not wanting to spam people and be like. Oh you have a differing opinion well <link> there is my reply. We (I) though it would be better to try and take the time to reply on the appropriate forums to individual concerns. Obviously this has not played out as well as I would have liked.

Maybe we can begin posting links to additions/statements/changes that we've made in relations to stuff you guys have asked us or perhaps we can take portions of it and edit it to be posted here specifically so there is a better dialogue without duplicating to much effort on our part.

Hey,

Sindome is a MOO run by Johnny. They recently had their Head GM (Cerberus) step down and are going through some kind of policy/standards change in how they handle storytelling. It probably has 20-30 players average and is very RP oriented. They have some neat coded systems and the staff takes a lot of time to animate NPCs to interact with players to supplement their coded support. It's kind of like a cross between MOO/MUD so it's a good inbetween if you're kind of looking for an easy fit.

http://www.sindome.org/

Their history with CS isn't really known to me. All I know is that the playerbases used to be one on CS and when Sindome was made due to differing staffing philosophies or something that a goodly chunk of players migrated to the new game. I don't think there's bad blood.

My GF Hex plays there everynight, sometimes it's 2 am in the morning before she's done with all her crazy cyberpunk RPs. She has pretty good taste.

Hey,

It is my understanding the CS is still alive. It is a cyberpunk MUSH/MOO? which is where Sindome spun off from. I was in contact with Rain 2 months ago and he seemed to be trying to loop in old players to return and new players to try out the game.