Best posts made by Lithium

This is why I really like the Fate social combat system, you can /always/ concede if you are losing, it's incredibly hard to be one shot, and if you concede you get to choose how you get taken out of the scene. So if you don't want to be seduced, have your character get frustrated at the constant seduction techniques and they leave/go home.

You would only get 'seduced' if you resisted the seducing to the point you had severe psychological issues (big complications) and they had the opportunity to dictate how you were taken out.

I don't know why people are so against the system when it handles social combat so well without removing agency unless you simply refuse to let someone 'win'.

I personally create a function object for each big bit of code, because really there's not that much additional code I really need but I am a blasphemous SGP person. I then put those function objects where they get hit by the @startup of the game. Not the most secure, but, functions shouldn't run outside of those I put in place that way.

Assuming I eventually get another coder then that may change, but I am pretty frugal with Wizbits, when it's pretty unnecessary for most things since My staff commands look not only for rank but for dbref.

@Nausicaa See I'd like to play in a Buffyverse game that was after Sunnydale that had ZERO FC's and no connection to Buffy at all anymore. Slayer would just be a player type since Willow unlocked them all etc.

That would be interesting to me, to see how the darkness fights back against a world that has hundreds of Slayers.

@ghost Heh Good Luck.

@Faraday That's the thing about FATE though is it /doesn't/ remove player Agency, until you are so far gone your character likely would have left before it got to that point.

So for example:

We go somewhere, someone is doing/saying something we don't like, they keep harassing us with it, we can do a few things but depending on our personalities we typically do one of three things:

1. We argue about it.
2. We leave.
3. If someone is being offensive, we go for help.

This is FATE social combat in a nutshell. You can argue/debate (Roll social combat fu), you can leave (Concede to losing the scene, have your character leave before any major consequences), or you can go for help (Maybe use contacts or resources as a social attack by calling friends or paying the bouncer to bump someone out the door).

FATE has everything to do with Player Agency, while also keeping system there to adjudicate.

Personally, I think Rhost, TinyMUX, and (to an extent) TinyMUSH are good. Penn is also good but one I will never use personally. The reason behind this is because of familiarity. People can go to games built on these platforms and expect a familiarity and ease of use (due to that familiarity) that they won't really find with other platforms.

Case in point, Evennia, it may be a coders dream to those who know Python, but as a player I just felt really confused by it all. Of course I feel the same way on MOO or MUCK for the most part as well.

It's sort of like when I was MUD'ding back in the early 90's, I prefered DIKU/ROM because I was most familiar with it. LP and Circle were similar but enough was different I never really got into them as well.

Considering how small this particular hobby is right now, I'm all about reducing barriers to entry. I used to hate FATE for example because it wasn't a crunchy enough ruleset for me, but it is really easy to get into compared to, say, Anima or Hero System etc.

So I agree with what others before me have said when it comes to ease of use and familiarity of control schemes.

Every time I find a new game that is cool, I /want/ to talk about it here... but then I see a post by @BigDaddyAmin and I decide it's probably better to keep it to myself rather than expose it to some of the elements on this forum.

I hate the Aspirations system. It is book keeping and micro management. Someone who is willing to do that, can milk that system for infinite xp.

@Griatch This is why I find Python such a bag of WTF?!

I can find pretty much everything I need in order to code within MUX help files and function lists etc. Sure I have to build some custom functions but the tools are /there/. When I first started to learn to code it was pretty much little stuff, how to code dice rollers, then how to store the results of it so it can be shown to others, then how to verify, then how to code a personalized verify attribute that only the person who set it could see to make sure nobody was spoofing you, etc.

It seems to me that in Python there's not even a box of tools, you're being given some raw ore and said, now go forge your hammer and nails, then use those to start laying the framework.

That's a huge barrier of entry by contrast.

@BigDaddyAmin You're not a bully. You're just a toxic element I wouldn't want on any game I play on.

Don't take it personal, you're not the only one I feel that way about.

Different strokes for different folks and all, and your personality here? Not gonna mesh with mine which makes for less than fun pretendy funtimes.

As a side note: It's also why I haven't tried looking for staff on my game here, there are quite a few I would gladly have as staff on my game if they were interested in such, but I am not comfortable putting the particular idea and build up for further review after responses here on this forum I've had to game ideas.

I love writing descriptions.

I just wish people read them more.

For me a description is how the character comes to life in my head, it's not the background, it's not the sheet, it's the description. I /hate/ how I am /required/ (by people who don't read on a reading based medium) to find a picture. It rarely matches my description.

I need a solid host that isn't going to be to expensive. I have an idea that I absolutely /must/ build, but given the current things going on I'm willing to take suggestions.

Hell I'd just take a spare port with Rhost (Don't really need reality levels for my idea) or the latest version of TinyMUX on if anyone has a spare port they'd be willing to loan me until I got it ready for alpha testing and could move to a new location.

The idea of a historical game is cool, but, I think the first thing that should be done is just to say the /theme/ is set in an alternate world that is like this spot in history.

That way the game has a future and a setting that is the target audience but leaves the future open for development.

One of the biggest things about truly 'historical' settings/themes is that it leaves the future already written, there's nowhere to diverge. The theme and setting become the greatest barrier to plot development.

For example:

Setting a game in Rome during the time of Julius Caesar might be a cool idea, but, we already know that Julius gets wiped out by Brutus and crew which means that the future is already written if you go for historical accuracy.

So the best way (in my honest opinion) to do something like this is to just state right out the gate that these are the differences between historical Rome as we know it (Using the above example) and that things aren't set in stone. The future is unwritten. Women can and do have some power openly, etc.

Any time you make a historical piece and try to keep it true to history such as with religious wars and the like you are setting yourself up for grief in my opinion.

@faraday said in Creative Outlets:

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of players never read character descs. Folks can lament about the “good old days” and moan about lazy people all they want, but it doesn’t change the reality. Descs should be considered supplementary info for those who care, and the essentials captured in glance and emits as appropriate.

That is because of the prevalence of PB's and wiki pictures. We've /lost/ a major chunk of what used to be an introduction to a person's writing style and persona.

The description.

Remember when Descriptions used to give us an indicator of how much crazy we were dealing with? Or how someone posed, typed, or otherwise?

This aim for the most common denominator just puts an emphases on mediocrity.

I've taken in people before, and I've been taken in. It can be a mixed bag but can make a very big difference.

If I had the space I'd probably be willing to take someone in but, I don't... in fact I am nailing down some job experience here before buying another house down in Florida this time.

But good on people who are willing to help others out.

Doing a 'historical' game based only on information one can get from Wikipedia is... not a good idea imho.

@skew This sounds like how I coded at first, I stared at the screen, started with the functions I knew, when those didn't work, started digging through help files, experiment, so on and so forth. It's part of why I know someone who is a more practiced coder could probably make something much more elegant, but as long as it works damnit

I do really enjoy the multiplayer though, it is fun. I haven't run into many bugs with clipping or things like that personally. The only thing that's really bugged me was the latency on some multiplayer games, not able to see the host's ping sucks so bad.

@Lyanna said in Historical Mu* - Looking for interested Staff:

As much as I like fictional settings. Even fantasy settings invite discussions about theme. It -always- depends on the staffers and the players in particular.

Meaning, avoiding a historical setting won't keep you from the drama.

It may be impossible to stop all drama, but you can make an effort to limit it, not embrace themes/topics that will make it explode imho.

If a characters social stats cost the same as physical stats and mental stats, and if physical/mental combat is mandatory, then social combat should also be mandatory.

If the system isn't to your liking, change the system, use a different one, but completely invalidating a huge chunk of character concept?

That's just shitty.

It's not even /hard/ to make your character be resistant to social combat, if you can step away from MurderEverything101 build.

I must have the luckiest system in the world, I've not encountered any real bugs in my playthrough of ME:A. So far it's been quite entertaining, if it wasn't for work... I'm sure I would have finished it already and probably be working on additional playthroughs.

That said, I do miss Warp, and Annihilate and Lance just don't seem that good to me, I miss throwing curveballs around cover to tag people with warp but I /do/ love how we can mix and match powers/abilities to our hearts content.

I've been loving the pull/throw/charge build I've been using.