I can dig it. Real quick that setup for the game was actually written between myself and a few scientist friends as what we thought would be the most reasonable projection of the future which gave us a ship traveling through space and the opportunity for exploration. The council is also public. Thanks for the input though I am planning on watching the anime this weekend.
We currently have 2 MUSHes on our connections page and several MUSHes in our Other Games thread. We also have several posts here inviting anyone to come post on the community forums about their games or topics relevant to them. I'm pretty pleased with Optional Realities thus far (I am biased) as this thread alone has a significant amount of discussion. Mission accomplished. Discussion on text-based gaming achieved.
LabMUD and Project Redshift. The connections page has their release date in the blurbs.
As to RPI specifically. I was not a part of those debates and the game I spent years staffing on was not an RPI MUD so I wouldn't take them to mean anything to me or my position. I explained up there why I believe death is important to storytelling.
Now I shall return to this thread on Thursday! If we have anything I think will interest the community.
Passed along your commentary to Crayon the article author. I would point out that incentives in MUDs (specifically) tend to be more it is beneficial for you to do this and less direct XP that converts to power progression.
It is yeay. We're always glad to accept new people and happy to let others know about it!
Anyone and everyone is welcome. Seriousness not required.
You didn't give feedback on the document in the thread! - but everything else was appreciated. Better than being completely ignored, after all.
I googled up Knights of Sidonia which appears to be a manga that was produced into an anime by Netflix. I'll have to watch it but based on my initial pass it's not a blatant copy. I would be curious to know which similarities you feel are derivative or stolen from the show/story you listed. To my knowledge no one on the team has seen it before.
It's Thursday and that means new articles and updates about the activity on Optional Realities! If none of these are of interest or relevant to this community let me know. We are glad to have ZombieMUSH (No Return) added to the listings though!
Crayon comments on Roleplay Culture
http://optionalrealities.com/regulating-roleplay-the-pulse/
Optional Realities Welcomes No Return to our listings
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=140.0
Optional Realities June 2015 short story contest continues
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=107.0
Do you want to contribute to Project Redshift's development in some way?
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=124.0
On The Sea of Storms (wheel of time) we had an alternate timeline. The worlds own lore and storytelling supports that alternate timelines exist. We used this as a way to explain any variances from the established canon. We also set the game 50 years into the past (prior to the 1st book). This allow us to follow the canon as laid out by the books but empowering player agency.
On Shadows of Isildur (Lord of the Ring) they had an agreement with the Tolkien Estate which required them to adhere to major canon. They actually approached this issue in 2 separate ways which I will convey in as much clarity as I can. The first method was they had a set timescale so that for every year that passed, 4 years passed in game, they also had major events which were beyond the scope for players to effect and smaller events which could be altered. They marched along through time opening new zones as they became part of the canon story, creating new clans, generating new plots, creating new items, and documentation. In the final years of Shadows of Isildur 2.0 they determined that the strict adherence to a set timeline was damaging the game. Staff were burning out at a prodigious rate and players were sometimes dissatisfied that their beloved city or clan was doomed to fall. This is where they decoupled themselves from a set rate of time and said that when the story progressed to a point that a major event happened. It would happen but that they weren't going to override all player agency. So if canon said all Gondorians were slaughtered and the outpost was lost in some major war. They might tweak it to say that a brave band of Gondorian soldiers were able to save the lives of many by allowing the others to retreat while they held the outpost until they were overrun. Essentially the same thing happens but the context is different and the result to PCs/NPCs is fundamentally different because player agency could affect the things players care about. Also unless that outpost was specifically mentioned again they could go retake it after the "scripted incident".
EDIT - Personally I think setting the game within the canon of a story but not in the same physical location is a valid tactic. So for Name of the Wind (for example) setting the game in the University / Imre is fine. You could even have some appearance by book characters. But there's no reason you'd have to enable people to play outside that city/immediate area thus keeping them within the game world and potentially bumping into characters but prevent them from running off and slaying villians or something.
Alternatively I think you can set a game at the end of a canon story depending on the ending. I think in a lot of cases players want to experience the world and setting more so than the events in a book they read about.
I just want to point out, in the interest of another view of festivals! The Tudors montage! That violin player looks like he's enjoying the hell out of that festival, he's quivering.
@Game of Thrones / http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_Dead_May_Never_Die said:
"What is Dead, May Never Die"
Just so you know I'm not unsympathetic to what you're trying to say. I certainly got bruised up a bit in the Optional Realities thread due to some poorly communicated ideas. In the end I clarified but I stuck to my prior decision there. I think that if you acknowledged that there is a personal interpretation to the position on advertising of unauthorized games that people here would at least accept that the game owners (or you) have a personal opinion which you are enforcing. Which is your right even if they don't agree with you.
That or you could do like @Miss-Demeanor suggested and provide either the direct question/answer form between a member of your staff and GRRM... or provide your authorization document if you have one. Unless you are under an NDA. It's just my helpful advice because while this thread is getting a lot of views and responses it might not be advertising your game in a beneficial way (which is your intended goal). I made the same mistake, it's an easy one to make, but continually repeating yourself is just going to crush your soul and feed spurring people in the community to question the position because nothing was answered it was only repeated. (same mistake I made in the OR ad thread)
You mean Scottish people in traditional steampunk settings aren't supposed to represent dwarves? No but she's right, the RPG is Victoriana which I couldn't remember the name of.
http://musoapbox.net/topic/342/a-novel-game/48?page=1
Didn't want to clutter up their thread with a game/book question. I enjoy steampunk as a setting and when Sunny linked me to a steampunk RPG that she was using to develop Smoke (I believe). It got me thinking.
Is there currently an existing steampunk setting MUSH/Game the community knows about?
Is there a steampunk themed book that anyone can recommend?
Someone in the Evennia IRC was discussing making an Eclipsed Phase game. Think this will be super interesting to them. Thanks!
Which game are you referring to?
EDIT - BPII which has undergone a major code update and adding a zone has had occasional server issues. TSOSmud which is in the process of prepping their codebase for opensource release has also had some server issues over the last week. Both are up as of 1:07 am EST. If it wasn't either of them, please let me know.
Hey,
So after thinking about the situation for awhile I will likely go and edit the initial article to specify community versus listing. I do not see Optional Realities changing its listing policy at this time as this week alone we've reached out to 2 MUSHes to be added (one of which I'm pretty confident will be on soon). If this leads anyone to question my passion for creating a community for all text-based games (even those that don't qualify for a linkback/subforum) than I'll just have to live with that.
That being said I have made a common error of over-engagement which leads to a lot of repetition of the same point that leaves no one satisfied. My stance is that listed games meet the criteria and any game (or anyone) is welcome to post on the community boards with advertisement or commentary of their choosing. Just like the mods on this forum have allowed me to do.
I will not update this thread unless Optional Realities has content that specifically will interest the MUSH centric community that is here. Likely articles on storytelling or character development (which we have). I apologize if this decision disappoints you or makes me seem as if I have been false in my interest in learning more about the MUSH community. I can only say that I had no ill-intent and wish this community all the best as it has many passionate users.
I'm not sure. My involvement with Shadows of Isildur was as an advisor on game economies for Shadows of Isildur: Laketown. I know that they still hold an active agreement with the Tolkien Estate across the 3 iteration of SOI that have existed. I can ask Icarus to give me a brief history of the situation if you like and I can bring what he tells me back? Otherwise don't know personally.
I'm going to chime in here very briefly as I'm still thinking about other stuff and trying to avoid posting until I have it all sorted.
I have experience working with a game that is authorized specifically by the authors estate (Shadows of Isildur). In my experience with them the authorized game has no rights to issue cease and desist or closure requests to ISPs or other game owners. At best they have a responsibility to inform the authors estate (or copyright team) of any infringements they believe exist. Only the author (or estate) has the rights to issue cease and desist or closure requests.
That being said without knowing the agreement between GRRM and the staff of this game it'd be hard to determine where the lines are. For example Shadows of Isildur has to maintain a PG-13 rating as per their agreement with the Tolkien estate. They have to adhere to book canon in all major storyarcs. They also have a few other obligations but they do actually have a legal agreement and documentation of their status with the Tolkien estate. It is possible this game has one as well and if they were willing to share it might shed light on the situation one way or another.
@Rook said:
We are so roleplay-centric that we do NOT code automation, and leave arbitration to player interaction.
I was referring to this portion. Roleplay centric is roleplay centric with or without automation. Still thinking about things and will probably hold off replying further until I've made a decision!
I don't think that getting into a who is more roleplay heavy/better is really something that I'll touch. Different strokes for different folks. More automation or no automation isn't a sign of less roleplay or more roleplay It's just a sign of preference and/or game design.
As for qualification I would point out that while (currently) more MUDs do qualify the lions share of them do not. So I wouldn't paint the situation as biased against MUSHes. As to the article statement, I'll have to go double-check the phrasing on that. As to listing vs community (which is why I'll have to double-check that article) let me get back to you on that. I have an idea (thanks to this community) and as with some my ideas it is neither groundbreaking or brilliant. It's just something I hadn't considered before.
Yup you nailed the variance in how I was perceiving the issue.
Aha, yeah I'm starting to get that vibe.
By "codebase" I am of referring to game system. So 7th sea and nWoD are both used on separate MUSHes but if they are using a different underlying RPG (to me) that would normally indicate 2 different "code bases" because they are supporting different activities and different settings. Thank you though for taking the time to lay it out for me. Just the variance in perspective is helpful.
Kushiel's Debut isn't ranked yet. When I stopped in at the end of May to check them out again the owner? Skaldia commented that they were considering adding some automated systems due to the influx of players they had experienced. To which I replied, cool, I look forward to that because I'd love to have you on Optional Realities. I had actually reached out to Kushiel's Debut prior to the opening of OR to check with them to see if there was anything that we could point to as an automated system to get them in.
But that being said when I was running through the list that you guys gave me over on my Request thread I found ZombieMUSH. Looked like a good fit, popped on, and Phoenix is nice. We're in the process of getting them listed and hopefully (by the end of the week) they'll be all set! Also chitchatted with Sunny about Smoke to better understand what kind of softcode support they were working on and grid development is a viable form of automation, though I think there'd need to be 1 more in there. I suspect by the end of Smoke that the 2nd form would be added somewhere (just a guess) so I commented that upon release I'd come back around to see what's what. I'm continuing to run through the list from the request thread this week!