Best posts made by Jim Nanban

Since I'm about to post a little and try something in the MU* world again, I figure I should create this list so people know who the hell I am/was.

Current

None

• Life changed. I'm a Mercy main in Overwatch, though! NanbanJim#1178

Past

The Greatest Generation

• Bastian Hertz (WWII, Poland, Belgium, France, Greece), Fallschirmjäger NCO and my main.
• Jukka (Winter War, D), my first TGG character.
• Seppo (Winter War, D), crotchety old Jäger in the Winter War.
• Sixten (Winter War), Einar (Winter War, D)
• Vilhelm (Wehrmacht), Kunstler (SS)
• Dowd (ANZAC/Newfie WWI, D), the little Newfie who fell in love with a machinegun (according to the trench rumours, anyway)
• Thompson (ANZAC WWI, D), Lee (ANZAC WWI)
• and maybe a few others

Ravenswood Academy

• Lucian, Luck-based student, joined at the hip with Aya
• Twelve-Gauge (staff)

Shang

• Irja, with the trolly kinks list. I was there to connect with OOC friends.

Naruto Rivalry MUSH

• Irii, the samurai-musume.

Battlestar Kharon (I think)

• Panda (short for Pandorian), the dumb Marine.

The Reach

• Tolik, aka Bob, is make think he is being the really cool guy. (Russian Mage)
• Thomas, handyman and Malleus Hunter.

Serenity MUSH (I think)

• Jander, a former Black Company mercenary.

BSSM MUX

• Valk, staffbit who helped run the game into the ground.

... and a few dozen other characters lost to time.

Oh, I'm also Nanban Jim pretty much everywhere.

@HelloProject said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

And while I don't claim that my solution will work or even necessarily be considered all that great, I do think that there is value in trying and discussing.

This. This this this this this. This motherfucker, do you speak it.

There is so much social pressure on not being wrong, especially in geek circles, that what passes for "discussion" all to often more closely resembles monkeys throwing poo.

If you want to talk about why something can't work, FFS do yourself a favour and first come up with the same depth of reason as to how it could work.

OK, I'll get off my MU Soapbox now.

This is how I started writing my how-to on AWS:

So you want to run a MU*, for free, for a year?
OK, first things first:
KNOW UP FRONT THAT YOU WILL PAY OUT YOUR BUTTHOLE IF YOU GO OVER, AND NOBODY CARES THAT YOU DID NOT INTEND TO!!!!!
You are entering your credit card info in this process, so if you have any doubt whatsoever in the slightest that you might not remember to cancel services in the 11th month, or that if something about that goes wrong that you can't afford the hosting, don't do this. And for God's sake, do NOT do this for someone else.
I feel like I need to say this again in another way: DO NOT go over your 750 hours!! AWS pricing is stupid expensive (because it's not intended for things that 1.) take up as few resources as a MU*, and 2.) don't make you money).
So you've read all that and you think you're responsible/financially masochistic enough to ride this dragon.

And that's where I stopped. I started thinking of all the people I know from MUdom. I started thinking about me in my twenties. I started thinking about how I'd feel finding out someone had followed my AWS How-To with the very best of intentions, for some reason overran the 750 free-tier hours and were financially ruined by it (and let's be honest, a lot of us got into MUs because free was all we could afford, balancing on a razor's edge financially).

I can't mentally or emotionally handle that. Thinking about it makes me physically ill.
Even moreso, one of the very few demands my God puts on me is to love others. It's not my problem if you get yourself into trouble... but it's not very loving if I give you instructions I know have a real chance of causing you ruin.

Yeah, I recall @Cheesegrater mentioned it's not that expensive... That's awesome, but with the byzantine options provided at this point to me I can't see how he gets the price he pays, and so I can't in good conscience at all help people get embroiled into something I can't get them out of and can't be sure they won't get themselves into trouble with.

So my how-to is simple: If you want to use AWS for hosting a MU*, it's possible. The licensing is byzantine, but the Free Tier stuff is marked pretty well. You want a Red Hat LINUX distro, you'll need to set up a certificate in PuTTY (they have instructions), SSH in and sudo-yum a developer package, and you're on your way.

If you have the wherewithal to figure it out from there, you'll have the wherewithal to figure out how not to get yourself in trouble.

Sorry guys, I know I essentially promised a few of you a guide. It just gives me the willies thinking about how badly this could turn out, and I figured I could at least give that explanation.

In summary, AWS is a valid option for running a MU in test/dev/pilot-program... if you can figure it out yourself. IMO you're better off running TinyMUX on Windows, or signing up for some of the low cost options like Linode or DigitalOcean.

So it's 2019.
I figured out this past year what needed to be done:
Either stand up the rotting DB next to a clean one and do a manual copy-paste job, or do the same with the flatfile.

The first option is simpler. @decompile and then swap some #DBREFs before pasting into the new game.
However, the rotting DB is, well, rotting. There's no guarantee that what I get on an @dec is going to be accurate, especially as uptime increases. Any scheme to reboot it more rapidly is bound to cause even more delay.

The second option is more confusing, but the DB can't rot if I'm opening the flatfile in a text editor.
The formatting of attributes and DBREFs isn't too bad, though. This is pretty doable. Even for unmotivated me!

I think I've found my future for it, too. Twilight: 2000 has been a beloved game of mine since my teenage years. I've had some repeated online interest in it from friends and fellow T2k junkies over the year. I periodically ask these fans to pick a "sine qua non" for playing T2k. So far it's Humvees, distilling fuel, going home/rescuing home, lots of guns, and radiation danger.

Distilling fuel and rads are the only ones of that which would need some coding... and I can see some places in existing code that I might start from for these systems.

I was playing on TGG. It was the Battle of Britain campaign. I remember I was playing a Polish flier. Now, something you have to know is that TGG's aerial combat was a bit like running someone's EVE Online backhaul spreadsheet in your head, in real time. Except it was actually fun flying by text readouts. Fun, but challenging.
I thought I'd learned the flight system.
I thought I was able to fly my plane at 10 feet above the ground after a battle.
In fact, I thought I could fly it at 6 feet. It looked really cool, people were cheering.
And then something happened and I crashed and had to use one of my 3 +revives.

My narrative explanation was that it wasn't a crash... my pilot just landed on a street and hopped into a pub for a pint, and the revive represented military discipline coming down. XD

Looking for players/staff from TGG (The Greatest/Lost Generation).
I've fired up the database again, 5+ years after my last attempt.
Not sure I'll do a public game with it, but I figure some people wouldn't mind logging in to the old girl again.

This just blew my mind. Especially with the comment I saw it tweeted under:
"Using salt circle runes to trap an A.I. car is possibly the most cyberpunk thing ever."
https://twitter.com/Gossenphilosoph/status/884769533810143237

Distracted by D&D campaign.

@Thenomain Wow... then you're one of the people who helped me RP with friends and family when I moved away for college. And for getting me into this hobby, which helped teach me that I hate programming, kind-of like scripting, and really like networks.

Thanks!!

OK, I was going through my downloaded pictures folder and found this screencap of one of the most badass moments of TGG. This was from the Pacific campaign, wherein some Japanese planes--a Zero (piloted by the NPC Yoshi) escorting a Betty bomber (piloted by Ichiro NPC) were attacking the PCs ship, the USS McCalla.

This is an example of the code in the MUSH, and how the game so beautifully added amazing code to RP.

@skew said in HOW-TO: Reneg on a promise to write an AWS How-To:

What is this thread?
[...]
I'm lost.

Hey, buddy! Welcome to the thread!
This is a followup on my other thread here: http://musoapbox.net/topic/1546/aws-amazon-web-service-as-mu-hosting/
People had expressed interest there, and in PMs, and in chats elsewhere, about what I did to get a MUSH up on AWS Free Tier. I had told them that I would write a how-to... But as said, the guidance I could give was insufficient to mitigate the potential risks of a mistake.

@Cheesegrater above has a good breakdown of how to avoid those problems. It's much less dire, given that info... but given all the other options at comparable cost, it's just not worth the potential trouble to me. If/when I go to Linode or whatever, I'll write that how-to instead.

So that's what this is!

It just makes me think of this meme:

Just found my alt list in the TGG DB!

I haven't played these fancy FATE and Numanuma or whatnot games, so I can't comment on that. But @Woragarten is right, Fiasco basically models the IC and OOC workings of a MU*.

I love West End Games' d6 System they used for Star Wars, and I think as a core system you can hammer that thing onto anything and it fits. No mess, no fuss, you're adding dice to a pool, you can stay skilled or do multiple-actions for badassitude at high capabilities... and best of all, it's pretty damned simple to code.

I think the question begs the question, "and what kind of MU* would you want to play it on?" See here...

For a tight-knit MU* with a dozen players, half of which are online and available at any given time, I'd want a super-light system that encourages wide leeway in judgement. WEG d6 or Apocalypse World even.

For a MU* with a hundred players and expects to keep some internal consistency, I'd want something that codes clean and clear and has very little leeway in the system. Hero/Champions is great for this, you arbitrate relatively little of the system. (Granted, a lot of this comes down to having and enforcing OOC standards, which involves confrontation, which gamers aren't wonderful at.)

Then other systems work better if you want to code EVERYthing... and other systems work better if you want to basically be a platform for people to run their own stories that don't necessarily need to intersect...

One I'd like to see done on a MU* is Twilight: 2000, any version (even Twilight: 2013, whose excellent mechanics for psychological damage and teams were overshadowed by crotchety fans and abysmally unplayable book organization). I've only seen the CG done once: When I coded it as a teenager--and then suffered hard drive failure.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Which means they only care because it's butting in on the realm of dudebro, aka superhero films.

Here's another aspect that's off-the-charts idiotic: Since when do men NOT enjoy watching women watch another beautiful woman prancing around in spandex?! I know these MRA guys think they're trying to help, but stop ruining this for the rest of us!!!!!

I drove some games into the ground.

• KittyMUX and its successors BSSM/Neo-SilverMoon
• Ravenswood Academy and the followon Academy City MUX

I apologize to the people who put love and hard work into these, and to the people who were disappointed at the failure to do anything. As explanation, I had some anxiety issues and depression of various levels. That doesn't excuse strangling things that people loved.

I should have made something happen or stepped aside to let others do so

I've been a total dickbag.
It was often hilarious, deserved, or both, but it was still dickbaggery. To those who didn't deserve it, I'm sorry. To those who did deserve it, I'm also sorry: I should have been a better person, especially given my faith.

I'm in a better place now, and for those I've burned one way or another, I merely ask you allow me to show you the difference the years have made.

Thank you.

@Seraphim73 I've seen the code...

Thanks for the heads up. Gave less than I want, more than I should, but I guess she and I will both be having more peanut butter than we'd like in the next month and that seems fair.

I often joke about how awesome it would be to be hit by lightning. You'd have an excuse--nay, a reason--for any bizarre shit you wanted to do. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "I got hit by LIGHTNING!!!" There is no comeback. Which is appropriate, as there is usually no comeback from getting hit by lightning.

This is a terrible ramble. Help this kid out if you can.

@Cupcake Well, to be fair I certainly can't take sole credit for it. The more I think about it, the more I realize why I drank so much back then.

I done got all wordicatious here, then had some more coffee and realized I was answering the subject line, but not the body.

I need timely advancement to stay invested in the sheet instead of basically just making up shit as I RP. Just like a board game without pieces to fondle feels lacking, a MU sheet that I don't get to +spend on every couple of weeks also feels lacking.

Granted, without a system of stat degradation or triennail pwipes (that idea's growing on me), this leads to Charzilla. Hey, I didn't say I had the answer to the problem it creates. I just like building up a character's sheet!