Posts made by Lotherio

Quick follow up. Still looking for folks. I have time to really play again after a crazy fall and this is something I'm passionate about.

Changed the name here, Ephemeris Erudition was probably a bit pretentious, Rise of Legends is more on point for what the theme is about. Changed the branding just a little, but same theme.

For those looking but not wanting to check out the theme and wiki, here is a little overview.

A thousand years from now, magic returns to humanity as they are colonizing the solar system. An extra-dimensional threat returns capable of using magic, and once again heroes are born with this ability. Its a spin off the idea of legends returning to the world during its greatest need.

Focus is on college aged students learning to use magical abilities, players are the first generation of these 'heroes'. They can be typical spell shaping/casting elemental like wizards or they could have the ability to imbue magic into constructs/contraptions (such as arms and armor, or technological devices drones, vehicles, and mecha).

It utilizes Open D6, spells are similar to TT WEG Star Wars. Determine effects and that sets difficulty, roll the appropriate skill (not far off from Force in Star Wars D6). Its similar to Mage, imagination is the limit; but remove paradox and there are more clearly defined difficulties in casting (for those not familiar with D6). Special abilities are retained for the game, but given to the artificers, to imbue their items/tech with.

We have a lot of plot we're itching to run, so still pitching out feelers to round up a few bodies interested in playing. Our starting arch is aimed at a threat that has taken over Neptune and its moons along with the Caelus (the 8th planet, renamed cause no interest in guest jokes on pub channel over and over again). This is just the first wave as magic returns (we've been vague about that idea, but think of it like the ages of Earth Dawn and magic returning).

I'm offering weekly campaign meta, but we're good for persistant RP and welcome ST/PrP play for any interested in the theme.

@kanye-qwest said in Armageddon MUD:

I would love a game where there is no real ooc communication and you just log in and do your thing. Unfortunately, it sounds like this one is pretty full up of people who use that to be dicks. Ah, players. They ruin everything.

A friend and I pondered several iterations of a MUSH where players just wake up in a given environment and they know nothing and half of the opening play is just figuring out why/where; the wiki page would only have a page at most and its up to players to fill in what they discover for theme info and all that. With various benchmarks and such along the way to open up things and information.

But then we also figure its an age where most folks float around Mu* to Mu* with friends, so even if OOC communication was disabled somehow on game, they'd still skype/text/chat/share information in their circles regardless.

As a Polish-American that enjoys a good Polka, I fully endorse The Polka King with Jack Black. Based on Jan Lewandoski's story, the portrayal of Polka folks in the movie is humorous at times. Makes me want to bust out my satin windbreaker with eagle embroidered on the back and polka.

A funny running gag in the movie is every time they ask him how to pronounce his name and he says however they like, cause he doesn't care. I do the same, now I see how it might be frustrating to someone asking and not getting the correct pronunciation of the name.

Yeesh, sorry for all the hate, I use tab/indent for paragraphs.

I know, its more a benefit to printed material, but coming from the days of telnet and before softcode included space/carriage return between posers, those tabs helped me distinguish between posers even. My dyslexic eyes needed them. Old habits die hard. Guess I don't get much RP cause I tab or something.

If anyone has interest in original sci-fi/fantasy, is on during the days on Friday and wants in on a regular campaign I'm going to try to run a weekly campaign. Reglar RP welcome any other day/between adventures, PRP/Sandbox style play welcome otherwise as well. It is OpenD6 for those curious.

Theme: http://therise.wikidot.com
Connect: 71.171.93.80:1510

@three-eyed-crow said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

our respected American Founding Father's started newspapers specifically to trash each other

I challenge you to a duel, Mr. Hamilton!

@arkandel Sorry, I meant do the other players have their devices with them as in the OTT software/website might help. Could physical/digital dice by choice even; even slack has a dice app to OTT.

Any other parameters to know about? Only you have your laptop/tablet handy?

I'd imagine like Roll20, or other sites/software designed for OTT play only could be helpful, easy for you to pass notes or what not, coordinate a map and such, track chars/etc..

I think you can get 'home' projectors for cheaper these days too; to share (or if no one else wants to bring laptop/tablet).

@faraday

PennMUSH ...

INFO

This command returns some information about the MUSH you are on,
such as its version number, time of last restart, number of players
currently connected, and size of database. It can be issued from the
connect screen.

MSSP-REQUEST

This socket command shows some basic information about the MUSH, along with
any admin-defined information specified in mush.cnf with the 'mssp' option.
The info is also shown via the MSSP telnet option. Useful for MUD crawlers
and bots. For more information about the MUD Server Status Protocol (MSSP),
see http://tintin.sourceforge.net/mssp/

See also: INFO

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

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

it's a really nice tuxedo cat

I tuxedo cats.

Fighting evil by moonlight?

@ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

I mean, fuck midichlorians, right?

Thusly, the force was born, and then again ...

Jealous of its sibling, it was always a struggle for balance?

@lithium said in Good or New Movies Review:

@aria LOL Not only that but, how were they flying the planet around to different suns again?

Then Han Solo showed up to fly it faster, 12 parsecs on the Kessel run. This super fast glitterstim run was observed metaphysically by force users and confirmed to be true. Qui Gon convinced a sentient sub atomic species to verify the accuracy of these results.

@tinuviel said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

My resolution is to give even less of a fuck next year than I did this year.

Is it possible to give negative fucks? How does this math work?

Dice and combat resolution ...

This is a big part of the discussion I think. There needs to be some standard of interface that recognizes the system choices made by the admin. Even if as a 'user' the admin must still learn code, the UI for the player still needs to work with the game system of choice.

I mean, honestly, wasn't that the entire point of going from MUD to Mux to MUSH to whatever, more players could softcode while playing inside the box to accommodate whatever system was floating their boat that day?

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice Why would this need to eliminate phone MU? Or using not a mouse?

Actually, with AngularJS, I can implement so much more in terms of touch-responsive UI. I could, hell, integrate a swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down motion to move your character through the grid. How fucking awesome would that be?

MUD Client apps for phone come with movement buttons already, I don't know if they swype or touchscreen yet, but I imagine its something the MUD folks are doing already. I'd be more surprised if this wasn't utilized on some level by MUD client developers, even if only in the works.

They have swipe scroll wheels for word banks so I can string command lines for whatever MUD I'm on (like get all from *; where I make user generated contanct on the swipe wheel for 'corpse' so I can loot by swyping after I kill mobs).

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@Arkandel
I just don't see the difference between typing things out and filling out a webform, when it comes to making a MUSH character, other than the UI. You still have to write up a description, you have to select all the nibbly bits of Stats, Attributes, Powers, Weapons, Merits, blah blah blah...

But the UI is a tremendously important part of the exercise. Imagine if, in order to use Google Maps, instead of typing in an address (and being presented with potential matches you can just click on) shown on a map, you had to type in a long command, then manually grep through the text-only addresses to find the one you want, then having to paste the one into a second command to actually start being navigated there... in text, rather than being shown the roads.

Different experiences.

If you want to find an asteroid as part of some personal agenda as an amateur astronomy, guess what, you're best bet to locate it is telnet via the HORIZON system. You can google where the planets are right now. HORIZON has web interface, but it just isn't as advanced or useful as telnet'ing into the system. Astronomers aren't trying to update it, the tool still works and its easy to learn through the HTML/PDF documentation. If you don't know the math, it will look greek to you. If you're interested in astronomy, surprise, you'll learn it on your own.

I use google maps, but I like travelling on back roads, a lot. Like dirt roads, county roads, etc. I'll use google maps to get to another city and such, I love the interface of my phone tracking me and offering groupons in other cities, or google suggesting I review the restaurant I'm in and snag a picture and all. But if I'm really exploring about, I still pick up the current year atlas for any state/location I'm visiting just to be safe.

Edit: New systems are great, I know there is also a drive to work through SQL on the backend to coordinate between soft code in the system, altering the hard code from in the system, and utilizing that for web interface. It all sounds great, and I'm looking forward to what may come. I look forward to what's to come, but yeah, still that social barrier of 'meh' too much text to read, or 'too many commands to learn'

As for telnet and too many commands to learn, I don't think that holds ground. Look at minecraft, finding servers; you have to put your telnet address and port into a client (the launcher). You want a 'safe' environment, you have to go through a white list (ie, giving your telnet addie and port to host admin to be allowed through the ports). Many people learn this through minecraft, its not archaic yet.

Just a real quick two cents, again, at this point. I kept trying to delineate between Evennia and Arx. Arx is bringing in new players and its not because of updated technology; sure more kids know Ruby, they play the code games (which have been around for 50 years as noted. It is helping new players learn the system more than updated UI. Arx and Transformers: L&F are targeting players outside of MU and when they show up with the 'hello', they're being helped to make the transition rather than left to flounder. People who know are helping people learn what it is to MU. I think way back when, when I started getting into the topic, I responded to @Apos and renumbered some issues for barriers brought up to emphasize the social barrier.

I agree, helping new players make that transition is good, I enjoy working with new players. I'm in favor of whatever helps new players come in, see the exponential size of the sandbox for MU'ing as a whole (not one distinct persistent game, including contributing to the games they like as well as making their own games with improved tools of the trade).

I don't think MU'ing is wholly dying, every few years that seems a topic and yet MUDs still see hundreds of unique folks playing, many willing to pay-to-play still. MUSHes still crop up that pull in that number (I don't want that sort of problem ever). Heck, lately for me is the lack of 'unique' themes of late, the trend seems towards established cannon and theme more and more, but that could just be me.

@tat said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The issue of people not wanting to type complicated commands, well that's a little different, but I look at it like this. You're communicating with others in a text-only medium. You're using words to convey visual information, emotion, sounds, moods. If you can handle all that, but are stymied by the syntax for the command to make a bbpost, then you're probably in the wrong hobby.

I've been M*ing for 19 years now and I am regularly stymied by the syntax for the command to bbpost. I have to look it up every damn time.

If that's not a sign that the tools are bad, I don't know what is.

I'd give a lot to be able to just post on a webpage, using clicky buttons. The ability to reply to posts on the web portal on Ares is one of the BEST BEST things.

Also? It's hilarious to me that we're talking about people not being bothered to learn the commands, when for YEARS I listened to MUSH players complain endlessly about MOO's mail system being different. We're like the most set-in-our-ways community and we're bitching about people who don't want to adapt to /us/?

Right, just as funny, +bb boards are just a plugin to emulate forum posting so we can communicate on forums in the game. We decided collectively that +bbpost worked, cause of the softcode and no one ever changed the syntax even.

Technology isn't the issue, @ThatGuyThere noted it, it can help/hinder, but really its the players; players and admin alike?

I think that's what I was after. There are tons of places for immediate on-line text based RP. IRC places, IRC like places hidden as places for RP. Chatzy, Omeagle, Roleplay.me, RP Nation. In the three to four day spectrum, there are a lot of forums with way more players already, RPoL, RP Nation, etc. All with more players with more immediacy of getting RP.

People start on those places and go to messengers on site and off.

What is updating MU really doing to bring them into the fold. Its not the technology, its the admin I think - Arx uses Evennia and the web portal, but I'm more certain its the combination of the admin there helping to bridge the gap into learning to MU.

I honestly want to know, what are 'we' doing better that will lure the numerous on-line RP'ers from those places to MU. And inversely, what is it we're gaining by taking the limited number of MU'ers and trying to get them into a new environments? I think that's a design 101 idea, purpose to provide direction?

It goes back to what OP was asking, what other forms are out there were a persistent game can exist? I think on the options for on-line RP (Chatzy and talkers to forums like RPoL) persistence of world without a hundred other games competing for attention is a draw certainly, but can't it be done on a site using chat windows dedicated to a sites persistent world were logs could be stored with simple clicks, or character data stored.

Multi tabs in one window, one is the IRC, the second shows char info, the third a clickable map to get around the 'grid' which is just rooms to RP in that can be locked to X number of users for events as needed? I think this is all stuff already out there without re-inventing the wheel?

As noted by someone else, the other places have draw backs.

Some places have too much RP. Forums where people expect 5+ paragraphs of pose (miss the '90s when pose bombs to take up someone's buffer was like some weird competition?), which needs to use forum cause partners walk away and come back when they have time read all and pose.

Or not enough literacy. IRC with too many trolls or dealing with txt'ng sp3k3 or too many one-liners that is supposed to be RP and we, MU'ers only, prefer a little more in our immediacy of RP.

In some ways I feel the barrier to entry was what sort of what got us at least near in terms of preference of play as MU'ers with each other somehow? I don't know though. Literally, that one barrier: read the text on the screen. From 'create guest' and 'type 'help' for help', one can learn everything right there by just taking a couple minutes to read. Does everyone but us have short attention spans and won't read the text or skim it or tl;dr tell me how to play now please? Are we trying to take out a lot of the reading part to learn to play to draw in better writers?

I don't know, just food for thought maybe, I'm probably way off base, and still bad at articulating. I love Ares and Evennia; of late, I would give kudos specifically to Arx for their ability (not Evennia, but the admin of Arx) to draw in and retain new players. Of places I've seen where people say I'm new to MU*ing, Arx was their gateway drug, so yes, something new is needed to breath more life in, I don't disagree.

Sorry for so much spam.

My apology, I think I'm failing to articulate, its just me. I love Ares by the by, and Evennia, I just suck at expressing myself.