@pyrephox said in Online friends:
I also met my best RL friend through my first MU*. A++ friend, definitely 'real' friend. And several others that I've met in RL from online spaces who are good, fun friends.
My husband and I met on a MUSH. 
He's still just my online friend, though.
@pyrephox said in The Desired Experience:
In KB/AM games, one of the things I really appreciated them doing is having a sheet for 'wanted' character concepts, and then also listing character concepts that they considered 'overdone' for the setting, and then also closing character concepts when they decided the game had enough, or that the concept wasn't appropriate for this particular game.
Daww, this is a nice compliment. Thank you. 
Even with that: there's a subset of players that logs in to ask, "What concepts do you need?" When we link that page, about half of them go, "I saw that, but what should I play?" Because they are not a typical player, who can just select a concept off a list available to the unwashed masses.
MUSHers are just weird. You could tell all of us exactly what your game is for - we are here to RP family-friendly MLP sim - and at least one person is gonna show up and ask if they can play a Pokemon and explain how it totally works with your theme, promise.
@faraday said in Tyche Banned:
And yet the non-hogpit section is still relatively active given the comparably small size of our community. There are clearly folks willing to engage in mildly constructive discourse.
Absolutely. Which is why it's nice that the hog-pit remains opt-in, so people don't even have to go to the effort of avoiding it. (Unlike the ten million Arx threads, which I have to ignore one-by-one. Could we just make an opt-in for Arx drama?)
Having lately run a "small-town" game... can confirm. The same tattooed PBs get used on an endless loop by different people.
My initial hang-up was (and still is) that I'm paranoid and don't necessarily trust game owners. Chalk it up to the olden days of DARK Wizards and admin that read game logs to see if people were talking shit about the game.
However.
I realize now that this isn't a thing that should prohibit the march of technology. Yes, you probably should be able to page/PM from the portal. If I don't trust an admin enough that I worry they might be willing to read my page conversations? I definitely shouldn't be playing on their game.
I wrote fan-fic about The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past when I was about thirteen. It's all been downhill since then.
In a city nestled along the northern California coastline, buffered by a thick screen of old redwood forest, Santa Rosalia's residents find themselves facing increasingly strange occurrences. Is that a fairy, or a new species of butterfly? Are they casting spells, or tapping into something science simply hasn't uncovered yet?
The game focuses on gifted characters and what happens to them in their lives in Santa Rosalia. The PCs all possess a low-level psychic ability, which they're generally obliged to keep low-key so that society doesn't try to beat the weird out of them. Things are just a little bit off-normal in this world and are only likely to get stranger as the story progresses.
We've been open since November 2021, with a current list of wanted concepts on the wiki: https://rosaliamush.com/wiki/concepts
You can also check out our guide to getting started here: https://rosaliamush.com/wiki/getting_started
When everything goes... well... I can't exactly say "according to plan," since the plan was roughly "lol let's crash these people on Gilligan's Island and have them fight the Harlem Globetrotters and a Gilligan/Skipper chimera called the Gillamonster with the Professor as the brain..."
Anyway.
When everything goes and hilarity ensues. @bear_necessities
@Auspice said in What MU/RPG opinions have you changed or maintained?:
The issue I frequently run into is the opposite: players playing something entirely different (usually this is someone who knows absolutely nothing about the theme or setting and just wants to play somewhere active while investing low effort into learning).
This is really common, especially right now. There's such a dry spell in open games that people are just trying to shove concepts onto games where they don't really fit, and then they're miffed when the game doesn't adapt to accept them.
Which actually leads into my "then vs now."
Back in the day, I used to wish ill-will on any other game that wasn't the one I specifically was playing at the time. I remember thinking often and strongly that I hope Other Game implodes and people come play on Game I Like instead.
Now, I realize that variety and options are really good for this hobby. We need release valves, even if they're places that I personally wouldn't play.
Yes-and'ing my way through the last year with @bear_necessities.
I feel like this is due for a bump.
If there was no Ares, I would not be able to MUSH at all any more. I had to take down my gaming PC so I could set up my work PC on my desk at home. I can play from work some, but better than half of that is done exclusively on the Ares portal. After work, I am stuck on my iPad, where all of my RP is done via portal. (I tried one time to play on Arx, and the web client is not a workable solution on an iPad.)
So yeah. Thank you, @faraday, for making "shelter in place" bearable in a small way. 
I'll just say... I'm not joining anymore games that open with HELP US FINISH THE WIKI/GRID/WHATEVER!! WILL GIVE YOU XP!!!
So that's my metric for opening a game or joining new ones.
Play with whoever you like. Avoid whoever you don't like.
Why would you want to play with someone who is only there out of some sense of obligation? I would hope people play with me 'cause it's fun, and not 'cause it looks bad otherwise.
FWIW, the only code with which I've ever been fully proficient is MUSH code, and I've had really good luck with Ares since the beta release. I installed it according to her guide (twice), and it worked flawlessly both times.
I've been working through the coding tutorials, and it's actually pretty easy to pick up.
Also, @faraday is super-responsive on the Ares forum.
All that to say: Ares has been awesome to me since beta.
@Ominous said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
Yeah, humans only tends to cut out like 50% of the possible players.
[citation needed]
@zombiegenesis said in The Woodward Agency:
A game where 75% of the entire population of Maine live in one city. Interesting.
And 100% of imaginary creatures we made up.
We're clearly striving for realism.
When you have three scenes on a Saturday and there are some good lolz in each of them. Thanks, @thesuntsar and @bear_necessities and @Snackness - and a couple people whose handles I dunno.
@Ifrit said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
One of the things that I've looked at would be implementing some sort of scene/web portal thing into Evennia, but also trying to keep that grid based feel - so that one can just go sit in an interesting place on grid and see who stumbles in.
Just as a note... there is absolutely no reason you can't do this. Ares culture has emerged to use the RP Requests rather than grid-sitting, but you can still walk out on the grid and wait for RP. People can still type where and see who's just out idling in public.
It just quickly became culturally accepted (on SL and then GH) that people ask/advertise RP on the channel vs grid-sitting. Admittedly, if you are a passive seeker of RP that sits in public and waits for people to come to you? The culture of most Ares games to date isn't supporting that. The code still does.
@zombiegenesis I appreciate the feedback. If the population of the city we made up to house the boogerfishes is what kills your immersion? This isn't the game for you. We wish you luck finding one that works for you!
@faraday said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:
And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game.
I suppose there are some staffers out there who get their jollies NPCing Princess Leia in a medal ceremony, but most of us find it to be a terrible chore.
I assume this is where the "NPCs are PCs, too!" argument came to life. I am not a fan of this argument.