Posts made by Kestrel

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

*— except for @faraday's concerns based on extensive experience/research about how to avoid alienating the core community/playerbase these games draw from. Which I'll address in a separate post to avoid getting too convoluted. Please standby for Chapter II.

So as someone who's played and staffed a lot of text-based RPGs over the years in a variety of mediums, my experience has been that, be it a crunchy MUD with extensive quest/combat code or a lightweight MUSH, what keeps people logging in is two things: the community and (by extension) the story. It sounds condescending to say but I feel like even MUD players often don't seem to grasp this, and will chase numbers to their own detriment before burning out and realising the real treasure was always the friends we made along the way.

A lot of people have been asking elsewhere on MSB why people don't leave HavenRPG when they seem so terribly unhappy there. The reason for that is everything mentioned in the above paragraph; the game's been around for a full decade, and for better or worse its community has morphed into a kind of dysfunctional family. It reinvents itself every few years, wiping the slate clean with an apocalyptic story event and then launching a new iteration with some updated code, the chance for new characters to establish themselves from the ground up, while keeping mostly the same familiar lore and faces people have grown accustomed to. During this time a lot of former players tend to return from absentia to give the new version a shot, and a lot of new players come with them to start on mostly even footing with the established community. I'll note that while I've chosen to quit Haven (said the heroin addict), I remain good friends with a lot of people in the community who've known me for years and genuinely aren't garbage people.

Some time ago Tyr, Haven's creator, launched two new games (not at the same time obviously, with intervals). These were CyberRun and Ravencroft, both wholly web-based RP MUDs built on (AFAIK) ground-up custom code. The concepts of both of these games were pretty far out, to my tastes, and I spoke to a lot of other players from the community who shared the same opinion. Yet despite that, neither game had a shortage of interested players at all, most of them drawn from the pool of HavenRPG's established community — even the ones who'd expressed disinterest in the settings/concept still felt curious to give it a try with their friends. For a random gamerunner this would've been a much more difficult, maybe even impossible task, and a waste of a lot of effort to put themselves out there coding something entirely new for no payoff. But for an established game dev with an active fanbase and enmeshed community, drumming up interest is a good deal easier. I've asked people who played these games what eventually caused them to fold, and none of them said it was due to a gradual population drift — everyone said it was solely due a cessation of staff-run metaplot. So interest from the players, assuming they're regularly spoon-fed plot, was not a factor.

To frame this in a context MSB users are more likely to relate to — I can personally say that I'd probably give any game run by @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 a go based on that information alone, maybe regardless of setting. And I have a feeling that if Arx shut down today and relaunched as an entirely different beast, purely browser-based, most of its current playerbase would go along with that transition and gladly try new things, even if it meant losing their established characters to start from scratch, and even if they wouldn't have been interested in its final form had they stumbled on it as-is, without prior investment in what it had been before.

So, a coder cohort and I have reflected on our options and settled on taking a similar approach. (This thread really helped, by the way, thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies.) We have a story in mind that we want to tell, and we're interested in the idea of exploring platforms other than a telnet client, but his experience as a coder is with Evennia and Python, while mine is largely nonexistent. While I'm willing to learn, that takes time, and learning multiple languages for web development is asking a whole lot more than just learning Python for Evennia. So, we're starting small. If the game actually becomes something in the standard MU* format and develops anything resembling a lasting community, then we'll look at the next step of how to transition our stories and systems onto a more modern platform.

And, if not, then we had fun fucking around with a creative writing project and learning how to code. I can use those skills for professional purposes regardless.

I think people are overestimating to some degree the gulf of difference between MUDs and MUSHes. As someone who's played both and whose interest is almost exclusively focused on storytelling and RP, both have the capacity for these things and they share many systems in common. The clients used to connect to MUDs and MUSHes are identical, though you do see some differences in playerbase preference. For example I'm an Apple-user, and most Apple-users who play MUSHes use Atlantis. Most Apple-users who play MUDs use Mudlet, however, because although Atlantis is more stable, straightforward and lightweight by far, Mudlet offers a much greater degree of player-side customisation and scripting that can help you get an edge for complex combat systems or grid mapping. But functionally the information sent/received is the same. People still emote (pose) and RP, they just do it with a touch more game-strategy in the background. Pejoratively this is sometimes referred to as rollplay vs roleplay.

Here's a screenshot of Iron Realms Entertainment in-house web client. It's designed to be as accessible and user-friendly for new players as possible, but most "serious gamers" in that community prefer clients like Mudlet or MUSHClient with which to design their own custom systems:

The gameplay may not appeal to MSB's community and a lot of the information offered in this screenshot may seem pretty useless. Keeping track of your afflictions/buffs isn't beneficial on a MUSH where the pace of conflict tends to me much slower and climactic (over months rather than minutes), but in theory there's a lot here that could be swapped out for what's actually useful. For example a tab that lets you pull up other people's profiles or keep track of activity in other scenes you're following.

I'm aware that Ares already does all of this and I do hope nothing I'm saying comes across as dismissive of any of that. I'm also aware that my balanced interest in both MUDs and MUSHes isn't typical for MSB and so that's why I'm trying to make the point that although I'm looking beyond the bounds of just what's needed for a MUSH, the needs of a MUD/MUSH actually aren't that different. Evennnia for example is a system with web-integration options that can be (and has been) used to create both MUDs and MUSHes.

In terms of @Arkandel's question, 'What is a MU*', I think this coincides with comments @faraday made about figuring out the function that various systems fulfil. If a more modern system like a browser game or a desktop/mobile app could scratch every itch that MU* currently do, I have no reason not to believe people wouldn't make the switch.*

*— except for @faraday's concerns based on extensive experience/research about how to avoid alienating the core community/playerbase these games draw from. Which I'll address in a separate post to avoid getting too convoluted. Please standby for Chapter II.

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.

That looks more like a MUD? But yes, certainly there are other types of online text RP. Storium and Rollgate are also web-only and have thousands of players.

The question isn't whether anyone would play a web-only MU, but whether enough of the existing MU community would do so to achieve critical mass for a game. My research and experience tells me no.

Storium and Forum RP is nice and all, but I still prefer the MUSH-style RP, and I want to play with my friends.

It's a MUD platform, it can be used to build one. It's designed to be as user-friendly as possible for people with no experience coding etc., so the tradeoff is limitations in customisation. If you need to create custom commands and novel systems it won't suit your needs unless you can convince the person who made it to add that in, but if you're a builder who just wants to punch in your rooms, quests, combat and NPCs, it fits the bill.

I'm aware it's probably not fit for the kinds of games most people on MSB play (code-lite MUSH). My point was less 'everything we need is already out there' and more 'steps are being taken in that direction'.

@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I think probably at some point someone will make a web only thing. Had you asked me 15 years ago if I'd like something like ares I would have said no way. Said the same thing later on for real for any kind of trying to mush on mobile. But now I prefer ares specifically for the web interface that also allows me to comfortably mobile game.

So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.

@arkandel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

But here is the thing. Why is that an issue? As far as I'm concerned the 'need' for the hobby to move to web-based clients is in order to attract new players who might find the dedicated MU* clients intimidating or off-putting.

Are there games out there which need to be played from a browser because of radical new interface elements or features telnet can't handle?

Well, I see it as a limitation. There are definitely things you can do on a web game that you can't do on standard MU* client. And while we've all learned to make do without these things and think within the box, I see no reason not to look outside it.

I'm pretty much always going to be interested in playing text-based RPGs, but I'm sitting here wondering if that necessarily has to mean a MU*.

@ifrit

@sunny said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

ALSO

blinky blinky flashy flashy is super important to remind me I'm RPing.

IIRC Ares sends desktop notifications, at least on Chrome. Is there a difference here still?

I wonder if a mobile app with push notifications could make a difference, too.

@misadventure said in RL Sads:

I read something saying that some folks don't have the same sense of decay of the value or intensity of a friendship over time. That's how I feel, whether it's mixed, negative or positive.

big mood.

I'll be honest it kind of broke my heart recently when someone told me that I'm their oldest friend because usually they have a tendency to move on from social ties and circles over time — and that this realisation makes them feel we're likely coming to a close soon, too.

Now I'm subconsciously pulling back because of how much that hurts and I can't relate at all. I don't move on, when people genuinely mean something to me it's more of a forever kind of feeling unless there's serious conflict or a change in values that makes it start to feel unhealthy. Even then, for me, it's hard.

@wizz said in Online friends:

What factors make y'all decide to move further? Is it solely just time and trust?

Time, trust, reciprocity, loyalty, shared sense of humour, shared values. While I don't think that RL/OL friends are exactly identical, I do think that the process of becoming closer at least is sort of similar. I need to know that they value me beyond just the context of the game; if we stop playing the same game, are we still friends? Are we ride or die or is this an alliance of convenience? Are my off-colour jokes the same as their off-colour jokes, or does one of us offend/annoy the other when we do this? How relaxed do I feel talking to them? If I slip up, do they show patience or am I cancelled?

Sometimes I need to hear a set of magic words to hook me in, anything from a pop culture reference to a political joke. And then I'm like, oh cool, we have something in common beyond just this game, and now we're vibing. Although usually it starts by just admiring them from afar based on their posts, characters or writing style, on these games.

There can be certain milestones that happen even ICly which can make or break a potential friendship. For example if we just TSed, do they stay very respectful and chill OOCly or am I now getting really weird vibes from them?

Yes — but I would add the caveat that they're a different kind of friend and that it's important to keep things in perspective.

There are some perks that online friends offer that RL friends don't. The inverse is also true. In some ways my online friends know me on a more intimate level than my RL friends do because I'm able to communicate with them far more deeply via long chats over Discord late into the night, and depending on how many communities we share they get to see me in a variety of contexts, one-on-one, communal and public. I'm able to share sides of myself that I might not share IRL because of how it would impact me professionally or whatever else. My RL community was in some ways forced on me by geography, culture and circumstance, whereas my online community is almost entirely by choice. My online friends by and large don't know who I was 10 years ago and aren't likely to hold onto those biases, whereas to my childhood friends for instance I may never not be the rebellious slacker at school. I see most of my RL friends maybe once a week; I see most of my online friends maybe every day.

If you're kind of weird compared to the general population, finding people on your wavelength IRL can be a lot harder and often just down to luck. Whereas online you can join an entire community of weirdos, like this one.

The downside though is that online friends can't touch you. They can't hug you when you need to be hugged and their intimacy doesn't provide a rush of endorphins. When you're grieving the loss of a loved one or a fresh breakup, they won't come over and bring you soup. They won't buy you a drink on your birthday, wait by your hospital bed or check out a local restaurant/club with you. And sometimes their interest in you may well be conditional to your current shared interests and community; I'm sure we've all had the experience of drifting apart from a seemingly close online friend once you stopped playing the same MU*.

Sometimes being on the same intellectual wavelength isn't half so important as just being there, period. And I can't depend on my online friends for that; I try to maintain healthy boundaries and keep in mind that just because we're vibing the same RP right now doesn't mean we're actually friends.

I've seen several attempts over recent years to try and innovate and improve on the old-school approach to text-based RPGs. Moving past the idea of building a game you connect to via a telnet client, with some examples being optional web-based integration or a purely web-based experience.

The thing I've noticed playing AresMUSH games is that a lot of people still choose to use their old-school MU* client even when the option to play exclusively using the website exists. I wonder what possible reasons there are for this.

As a community, are we emotionally attached to old-school technology? Comfortable and nostalgic? Or is there something that this experience provides that more modern approaches can't?

@carma said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Kestrel I don't mean to trivialize the study, but my initial reaction is of course there's a bias against women and girls in every facet of the medical community. It's good that there's a study that proves it. I just feel like we shouldn't have needed a study to prove it, because of how obvious it is. What would be surprising is if there were no bias.

Still, thanks for the link and the signal boost.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm in the process of being assessed for ADHD right now and while I'm open to the possibility that it might just not be the right fit for me, my initial meeting didn't go so well: I fit the criteria for inattention but not for hyperactivity and was on the low end of impulsivity. The psychiatrist I saw indicated that I needed to fit the criteria for all 3 in order to be diagnosed.

I've been discussing this whole thing with a few people in the MU* community for a while now and @Clarity suggested I should look into research on women with ADHD specifically. Turns out fitting the criteria for inattention but not for hyperactivity is actually totally and completely normal for women with ADHD and doesn't lead to any better outcomes in life if it's left untreated. (Much more on this here.)

So I mean, yeah. We shouldn't need a study that proves it, but it's good that one exists — because I have a feeling that saying to my psychiatrist point blank, 'Have you considered that you might be reviewing this case through a lens of unconscious bias?' Miiight not go down quite so well as, 'Hey, apropos of nothing, I came across these interesting studies about women with ADHD! This article was published just last year. What do you think, Mr Doctor?'

(I learned how to communicate with male-kind thanks to the Cooper Review. Can't recommend this enough.)

EDIT: Sorry if this is old news to everyone here. I'm super new to all of this. Didn't start even entertaining the possibility until 2 months ago when some MU*ers quietly ganged up on me to suggest I should.

I've been reading some studies lately on gender disparity in the rates of ADHD diagnosis and referral.

Today one thing in particular jumped out at me and made me think of MSB, both because you guys have such an extensive ADHD thread and because there was recent discussion in Gripes about how one wraps their head around the idea that even when a person's gender presentation is but text on a screen, it's still possible to experience bias towards them because of it.

People may experience and respond to the same behaviour of males and females in different ways due to gender-related behavioural expectations [42]. For example in two studies where teachers were presented with ADHD-like vignettes, when simply varying the child’s name and pronouns used from male to female, boys names were more likely to be referred for additional support [45] and considered more suitable for treatment [46].

Study:
Females with ADHD: An expert consensus statement taking a lifespan approach providing guidance for the identification and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women

Open access, no need for any kind of fee/login.

When you're going through a thing IRL and completely independently, by sheer coincidence and not even your own initiative, a thing happens on a MU* that just 100% resonates with that RL thing you're processing and actually really helps.

In this particular situation it's a thing I feel like I can't talk to anyone about IRL, but then someone else's character decided to talk to my character about that exact same thing, through the lens of their own experience and fictional IC circumstances.

I've heard people say you shouldn't use MU* for therapy, and at least consciously, I don't. But I think that storytelling has therapeutic capabilities that even the staunchest of separatists can't/shouldn't deny. I have favourite books and shows and movies I return to in times of need; RP offers similar, yet without control or predictability. That's surely why in part you shouldn't use it for therapy, (plus not expecting/demanding/asking anything of other players) but when the stars align and something just somehow hits, it hits. It's powerful and it's precious.

So a scene today has left me really emotional, but in a really positive, helpful way. I feel seen — and by someone else's fictional character, at that, whose player had no way of knowing that their story could strike this kind of chord with me.

This hobby is great, and storytelling is fucking magic. For all the gripes and peeves this forum in particular is so well known for — those lows wouldn't be felt if not for the capacity for such ecstatic highs.

Wear heels for one day after slumming it up an entire pandemic and suddenly feel like a catwalk model.

@selira said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

So glad that MU*ing has taught me to always, always keep the receipts if someone is being shitty.

I hope they got defensive and accused you of being an obsessive stalker for it because that's by far my favourite part of showing someone irrefutable proof of their own lies.

Generally, to be honest, I don't. I don't feel the need to force a scene to be enjoyable if I don't think it will be; I just sit it out.

I find that these days my motivation to RP is somewhat lower than it used to be, because I'm always thinking on what else I could be doing with that time, so this scene better be good and worth it. I'm not gonna show up unless I think it'll be really cool and I'm genuinely excited to be there. Never out of a sense of obligation, never just to be polite, never to spare someone's feelings because they asked nicely, never just because there's nothing else to do. If I'm sitting here thinking about how to make something that doesn't seem fun be a bit funner, that's a sign I shouldn't be doing it.

I would instead suggest that when trying to come up with ways to initiate scenes with new people, the same rule applies to RP as it does to dating: find something to do. @L-B-Heuschkel's advice I feel is similar to this, as is the article linked by @Carma. For instance instead of starting/joining a bar scene, I'd be much more enthused to suggest we meet for a spar, or a secret recon mission spying on vNPCs, or that we got pulled into a brawl. Or if I am gonna join a bar scene I'll come up with a reason to be there that isn't just 'hang out and meet new people'; something like 'I'm here to ask questions about the missing person I just made up, here's a photo and the scary details of where they were last seen.'

My teething puppy decided to scare the shit out of me this week by not eating. Considering when I first got her she used to vacuum her meals up in five seconds flat, this had me seriously worried.

I switched to free-feeding kibble since the raw was getting wasted and then attracting flies. But, today I noticed her gobble up the last of last night's kibble and then look up for more.

So I tried breaking out the raw again. She gobbled it up. I was so elated by this I ended up giving her a treat — to reward her for eating.

Doggo eating again. All is right in the world. I am happy. Watching animals eat is a thing I could do all day.

Libertarian is a left-wing word.

Anarchism is a left-wing ideology.

Right-wingers stealing, appropriating and corrupting left-wing talking points to both discredit our movements and disguise the inherent selfishness of their own is nothing new. The most egregious and notorious of which would to my mind be "National Socialst" and more recently "identitarian", but still significant of which would be anarchism and libertarianism.

Anarchism is a word invented by Pierre Proudhon, the first person to ever call himself an Anarchist in 1840. A man also famous for his hottest of hot takes: 'Property is theft.'

Libertarian, in a political context, was first coined by Joseph Déjacque in 1857, a self-identified Libertarian Communist, who leveraged the term to criticise his friend Proudhon for not being inclusive enough in his perspective on Anarchism — in this context, towards the feminist struggle for women's rights.

On the other hand, the man known for coining the term "Anarcho-Capitalism", Murray Rothbard, conceded:

'We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.'

But even were we to look beyond history towards more modern usage of these terms, all they mean, in essence, is an opposition to authoritarianism; the desire to organise horizontally, collectively, rather than vertically in a society where power is pooled at the top and leveraged against those at the bottom.

Right-wing anarchism is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. If you endorse the exploitation of the poor by the rich through heritable ownership of land and means of production (landlords & CEOs), then you endorse the legacy of feudalism and hierarchal structures. Fighting authoritarian rule in order to supplant it with a different kind of authoritarian rule isn't "Anarchy"; it doesn't matter if your goal is to replace government regulation with unchecked corporate power, replace Capitalism with one-party Communism, or take out the president of the United States in order to enforce the regime of an unelected fascist.

Anarchism is when power is equally distributed through direct democracy, and the protection of all individual rights that don't impose upon other people's individual rights. (License to kill? Not included. The right to own slaves? Also not included.)

@silverfox Thank you for sharing this very important mews.