@silverfox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I've yet to play on an Ares game where when I threw up a general scene set and waited, people didn't show up. Yes, I did make sure there were people "active" on the game within it.
This has totally happened to me. Like three times.
Out of the hundreds of scenes I've played on Ares games.
@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I've given this some thought over the past couple of days and I feel like I want public scenes to time out rather quick. This is where people should be going for immediate RP right?
Yeah, I see where you're going. As I was thinking about it, there are some scenes that I want/need to last longer, open vignettes and stuff. I still would err more toward shorter timeouts than longer ones; the restart button is right there...
@Auspice Having a variable flag that allows scenes to stay open longer than an admin wants defeats the purpose, no?
If I want my game to favor live RP and not have aging scenes, I need to be able to make that decision as the admin. If you want a game that favors asynch RP and having aging scenes, you need to make that decision as a player.
That's kind of the root of my point: Ares isn't making these decisions; WE are.
When @bear_necessities and I ran GH, we had scenes time-out after 24 hours... because we think it looked shitty to have a bunch of scenes hanging around that haven't been doing anything for days. Exactly as @Lotherio suggesting: it's not inviting, it doesn't make new people feel like they will get RP, it just makes the game look like everyone is holed up somewhere private. Since we had a kick-ass system that enabled us to tune the game to our liking, we did so.
In fact, we changed it a few times. Over the holidays, when it was slower, we allowed scenes to idle 48 hours. When plots ramped back up, we turned it back to 24 hours to keep the scenes list clutter-free. The flexibility was awesome like that.
Honestly? Now that there's a one-click "restart" button on scenes? I'd probably knock it down to 12 hours on any future games.
@Lotherio said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
If I see age old scenes in the active scene list, it turns me off too. I don't care if they take that long, but if I want a pose a day or longer, I can find a forum to play on. This is just my pref.
Admin can also set how long scenes are idle before they time-out. If someone is keeping them active with a pose within that time... nothing anyone can do, but - if scenes are sitting on games for days and days with no poses - it's because the game owner decided they wanted them there, not because Ares requires them to be there.
@deathbird There are config options for this in Ares. Admin decide how where looks from three options:
+============================================================================+
Sandbox
-----[ Open Scenes ]----------------------------------------------------------
#235 Some Room CharacterA, CharacterB
-----[ Other ]----------------------------------------------------------------
Some other room KarmaBum
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Online 3 IC 4 Record
+============================================================================+
+============================================================================+
Sandbox
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location People
Some Room <#235 Open> CharacterA, CharacterB
Some other room KarmaBum
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Online 3 IC 4 Record
+============================================================================+
+============================================================================+
Sandbox
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status Name Location Conn Idle
ADM KarmaBum Some other room 47s 0s
IC CharacterA Scene 235 - Some Room 4m 1m
IC CharacterB Scene 235 - Some Room 2h 11m
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Online 3 IC 4 Record
+============================================================================+
"Passive RP seeking" = Sitting on the grid and waiting for people to come to you.
@tel Central Location
"Active RP seeking" = Advertising your desire for RP.
@tel Central Location
rp :is at Central Location if anyone wants to RP central location stuff!
If I'm not mistaken... Ares, Arx, PennMUSH, TinyMUSH, TinyMUX, [whatever the other one is that starts with an R that I just forgot]MUSH... all support both options.
It's just a matter of what people do with the tools they are given.
@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.
@Cobaltasaurus Your idle policy says 60 days, but you're enforcing it after 30 days.
@WildBaboons If it's not for people clueless about WoT? My comments are less relevant. I still think having your key elements on your site is a good idea, but where you draw the line between key and non-key? Enh. I would say "Cairhien" is a key element, but "Cairhien fashion" isn't. YMMV.
As someone interested in playing a WoT game, who is familiar with the theme, I'd still be willing to invest more in a game if I saw the game-runner invested in it, too. If that makes sense. Like, if I show up and see the person spent real energy building this game, I'll know it's less likely to be a flash-in-the-pan, and I'll give you my real energy in return.
Just at a quick glance: I recommend that you create your own wiki pages for key thematic elements (Saidin, Saidar, Amyrlin Seat, etc) rather than linking to the fandom wiki.
I've been watching the wiki get built since the game turned up on the Ares list, and I'm glad to see it getting beefed up with more of your own theme files, but those outside links should be supplemental information - if people want to know more. If you're selling the game as "no canon knowledge needed," then your wiki needs to support that.
$0.02
@Pyrephox said in Pacing in Ares Scenes:
(although it's hard to sustain any sort of real emotion with one pose a day)
Just wish I could upvote this one sentiment like 45,000 times.
@bear_necessities said in Welcome to the Euphoria!:
The starter page says you wake up on the spaceship and told who you are and you have no reason to believe otherwise. Does this mean that you have no idea who you actually are? The way the rosters are built suggests otherwise. It just sets a kind of confusing tone.
This is the bit that's also hanging me up. Like... does it matter that I don't know who I really am?
It feels like the "you wake up and get told who you are" should be important, but then it never seems to matter anywhere else, so is that just fluff that I shouldn't worry about?
If you want to put pictures in on Ares, super easy.
Upload picture medbay.jpg to folder rooms.
Edit room desc: [[image /game/uploads/rooms/medbay.jpg]]
People in the MUSH will not see a very pretty output when they look here, but people on the portal will see your image.
Edit: And then add in what @Coin suggested for people on the MUSH and dust your palms.
@faraday said in Why no Star Trek games?:
Comic games are also often consent, so I'm definitely not saying that it can't work. Just that I have my pet theory on why it seems to have fallen out of favor, and it has little to do with advancement.
Oh, yeah. No, never did superhero games. I would imagine that's a way different demographic. And much more prone to actual physical conflict. I guess I assume a Star Trek game would have more RP in common with Pern: mostly social with the occasional well-choreographed co-op battle sequence.
Pern games have pretty much always been statless. Something like 15 years ago, my husband and I ran one with stats briefly, and it was pretty fun. I think Schmitt may also have run a couple that had stats. But, by and large, none of them were statted.
We all just worked stuff out via page - "Hey, my character is going to punch yours." "Okay, mine has a glass jaw, so you win." In 20 years of Pern gaming? I honestly have zero memories of ever having a playground fight about it. So going statless can totally work.
But the carrot was there in other means: shiny dragons and high rank.
Going to recommend the Ares forum - https://forum.aresmush.com/
There's some good info about how to create your own plugin: https://aresmush.com/tutorials/code
@ZombieGenesis said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):
Even if the focus isn't on erotic RP(though it certainly could be) I'd just like to see more games that don't shame players for engaging in erotic RP. A lot of games nowadays have policies in place that amount to "do it but don't post logs about it or discuss it in any way" and I think that's a shame.
I don't think this is meant to be shaming anyone? Like, I'm sure once upon a time the NO TINYSEX rule was because it was disgusting and bad and we should all be ashamed of ourselves, but nowadays? We have children that read over our shoulders, we check logs at work, we share a computer with everyone else in the family, etc.
It's not shaming the person that RPed it. It's just an extra layer of protection to be sure nobody clicks through something that someone forgot to tag NSFW.
List all your skills, even attributes, under skills.
Race:
Human:
skills:
Grit: 3
Terran Patois: 3
Alertness: 3
Athletics: 3
Thanks to @Grim for stepping up to take over the game. We wish you guys luck. 
I just wanted to toss out some additional gratitude to @Pyrephox for all the energy and creativity she shared with us for the last year and a half. I had an absolute blast telling stories with you and @bear_necessities, and I appreciate how you always just rolled with things. We almost definitely took advantage of how chill and willing you are as an RPer and put your character though the wringer, and you were always awesome about it.
You are hands down one of my favorite people to tell stories with, and I hope our paths cross again sooner rather than later!