Posts made by Lotherio

@ganymede

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, or could predict when Bryan Marchment might want to collapse one of your lungs.

I'm indifferent, but props to the reference to Crosby being good without enforcers (or the potential to maybe be better with one) and compared to the era of goon squads. Pens have a hitter this year though, with some PIM on the ledgers (just under 10 minutes a game in the box). I lean towards the showmanship of fights post goons days lends to distracting from the game and slows down play time, could stand to still see less.

@auspice said in Make MSB great again!:

WTFE has to buy more alcohol

Someone has to support the spirit business. With beer sales down (.6 percent worldwide, 1.8 percent in the US), and spirits in general only at a .3 percent growth rate compared to a consumption growth rate of 3.6. Someone has to keep the industries alive. This could be fake news, its just the first quick find on a stat showing a decline in the sale of some alcohol.

@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:

But you can't legislate that any more than you can legislate Bill & Ted's Prime Directive.

You can, its the future, its the totality of future law. We totally saw it when they went to the future. Be Kind To Each Other & Party on Dudes.

@Thenomain may be grumpy at times, but part of the 'reform' should really look at a few words from the grumpmeister that has come up a few times late.

Wrong Fun. Some cute gif of cheering fans while one fan looks in disbelief at the camera like they're in the wrong place all together with that caption; I'd rather type then use gifs.

When a critic comes on and spouts off nonsense and hate from some rhetoric that is easily seen through by some basic fallacy learned in some rhetorical writing class, its just what it is and easy to look after. But under the veil of flames (or vitriol which is a word enjoyed about MSB), there seems to be lots of wrong fun laced into things lately too. Don't mix OCs and FCs, don't use that system, the timeline is wrong, if I did that canon it would be X instead of Y because Y ruins it.

I don't mind hearing that as a reason, but when that breaks into a catfight, it gets Ludicrous (insert a gif of Ludicris with some lyrics or something, 'Get Back You Don't Know Me Like That') . Maybe the wrong thread for it, I'm over wrong fun arguments though.

Secondary to this, Ice Guardians (documentary about enforcers) is on Netflix now, just saying. Getting word out there as far as skilled veterans go ... early on there is props in comparison between Gretzy and Crosby, noting with a good enforcer how many less concussions would Crosby had suffered (or how better he would be) to date. Maybe with Reaves, Crosby will play a full season this year.

My favorite Marvel (disney) multiple alts actress, Alfre Woodard. Miriam Sharpe in Civil War (she lost the son in Sokovia) and my favorite, Mariah Dillard in Luke Cage. And a few voices I think in animated Marvel Series.

My favorite things about comic genre mu*s. A fair number have remained systemless and maintained civility. Most have fairly open policy on PrP, don't break the sandbox and have fun. Most players get the old shared game mentality, everyone takes turns in the spotlight.

What ruins it for me, theme debates, fc vs oc debates, right timelines and wrong, whose game police's better than the others.

I like to think as creative individuals we could have more original themes and homes fit original characters with less shoe boxes and monitoring. As a comic fan I feel @Thenomain 's sentiments. I am staying away from canon games.

@thenomain said in FCs on Comic MUs:

So here is a good way to tie up superhero comic fans for hours, if not days:

"If you had any one super power, what would it be?"

Eventually the conversation would come around to: "What is 'one power'?"

The Flash has super-speed, but does he have a second power that increases his response time, and if so then does it also keep him from experiencing the world over 100x faster than anyone else?

What is it in super-strength that also keeps your bones from being crushed from the equal force pushing back against your body when you punch through a wall?

You get the idea.

I support this exercise. For a couple of reasons.

OCs are not bad, but do believe some folks feel they are a catch all with some players aiming them to be better than FCs and a way to showoff, or they are some attempt to be super versatile in an ingenious way so as to be nearly unbeatable somehow.

Some folks choose FCs that are indeed 'one power' only but have developed a crazy bag of tricks from that one power so as to be better than others and are used as a way to showoff , or they are some attempt to be super versatile ...

You get the idea. I like FCs and OCs (comic or other genre). With an FC, they can have one power and be super versatile though through years of developing tricks that spin off that one power, with an OC individuals try to be just as creative. It gets right back to limit powers on OCs to make FCs better or how to make everyone feel on par, etc. etc. And its comics, really, take turns in the spotlight, take falls from time to time.

And to get at a lot of the topics that have come up, who likes FC, who likes new spins on FCs, who doesn't, who likes to see FCs in new story arcs, who likes to replay old story arcs with twists, whatever ... I'm would rather see more original theme OC places than multi-comic inclusive places that try to merge timelines. I tried a few throughout the years, never my cup of tea. Yet, inversely, more preference is to FCs with spins, twists, new takes, new stories.

@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:

There is no "MSB Effect." Any claim thereof is simply untrue.

I find the inverse seems more true. Initial critique of a game tends to drive up traffic. People go to see just how 'true/untrue' a claim is, and barring that its more untrue than not, I've seen this increase populations. There is no such thing as bad publicity.

@jennkryst said in Make MSB great again!:

@lotherio said in Make MSB great again!:

Oh, wait this takes work, and history has proven that any monitored list is just a lot of work that either is dropped by the roadside or just months behind like mushcode.com's list. Not monitored is just free-for-all on the mud sites (top mud sites, mudconnector), that while folks on those sites can critique and criticize in the their respective forums, there is no way for potential players to get freely offered critiques and criticisms.

You seem to forget just how OBSESSES MU culture has become with wikis. This will go amazingly.

Prove me wrong, because I want an honest place that is up-to-date with active MU's that does not include a bajillion MUDS to swim through to find places.

@ganymede said in Looking for potential staff for a Colonial Marines (Aliens) game:

@jennkryst said in Looking for potential staff for a Colonial Marines (Aliens) game:

Throw it into the BattleTech MUX engine! Because that will never go wrong, right?!?

Do you have access to this? Because I would so run a Battletech game in a second. Kind of.

I suck at searching here, but there are links to the BTech Mux Engine fork in github somewhere on a thread here ... I loved the BTech battles on the old BTech 3065 Mux.

@thatguythere said in Make MSB great again!:

@misadventure said in Make MSB great again!:

A link off any advertisement to a thread where people can go wild. I'd like to be able to find both the ad content and updates with ease, and make it easy to find the discussion about the given ad poster or place.

If we do something like this can we also put the add as on opt in group like Politics and various other things because if all the ads threads are is a set of commercials I do not see the need to read them here since I can read the same commercials if I care to on literally every game I play.

Some genius could combine this with @SunnyJ 's suggestion of a list of games. Opt in to see active games, a link on each one to any critique in mildly constructive or amusing constructive insights via the hog pit.

Oh, wait this takes work, and history has proven that any monitored list is just a lot of work that either is dropped by the roadside or just months behind like mushcode.com's list. Not monitored is just free-for-all on the mud sites (top mud sites, mudconnector), that while folks on those sites can critique and criticize in the their respective forums, there is no way for potential players to get freely offered critiques and criticisms.

But if someone could though ...

Three things.

Easier to fork threads. One, as @KDraygo suggests, a thread in the pit or mildly construction from when its posted. Linked so folks know where to go to reply. Two, a category between criticism and hog pit, to have constructive, critical and outright flame (though it will just go as things go now, adding something this much extra will be ignored). Three, let folks rate on critical vs constructive instead up upvote and downvote, if folks could ignore the highly critical somehow, might lead to less mud slinging outside the hog pit.

Then again, it is what it is, you can add all the tools you want, but the history of here and its splendid predecessors, it will revert regardless. Look at recently, past few weeks sort of slow, then finally UH blood in the water pans out to something more concrete and its a feeding frenzy with more posts in less than 12 hours than the totality of a week or two combined and continuing. You can change the format but you can't truly change the community, though currently you have many lurkers and folks who would never post coming here, MSB gained some credibility, though the UH horror show (both staff side conspiracy, cover ups, and then the disgruntled players with pitchforks attacking anything remotely sympathetic to a 'hey, lets see what's going on'). The middle ground is often easily lost in favor of some level of sensationalism fed by hyperbole.

@faraday said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Heh, that's been around for close to ten years.

I'm old, Sweetwater Crossing feels like yesterday; but that in itself is like half a decade+ ago. Old age is settling in ...

I"m in the boat, camping is a problem. Whether you're on 'Any character ever is welcome' the Comic Mu or the X-Men Blue and Gold that only allows Blue and Gold FCs from ancient times, someone is going to camp on Rogue and someone else is going to camp on Gambit. No matter how many rules and safeguards are in place, they'll figure out how much they can camp (TS) while meeting minimum requirements.

But, an appeal to reason, Comic Mu*s are one of those last places that can still be played, generally, as open sandbox (have fun, fight enemies, don't blow up the walls without staff approval because we don't want to lose the sand). Lets not try to tuck them into the fold of police staff states, more code to control things like monitoring activity more and more, or relying on player favoritism of who plays who; I mean voting, which isn't much different than staff friend pretendy fun time.

Really, please, if a place sucks and is police state or whatever, please, open a new place. You can get space on the cheap, I know of at least two boxes that remain free if you ask the owner for space. Codewise, you can find all the old standard global that every place has on github or Mushcode.com or from others if you just ask nicely (BBS, CRON system, player request/staff jobs, misc global (+who/+where/finger code). Not to call her out or drag her in, @Faraday has, just prior to AresMUSH go-live, consolidated a lot of standard global features and add-ons that players have come to expect and enjoy all in one location as a Softcode Core.

The appeal continued, dislike a game for staff or staff implementation of some system or whatever, but I really want to see some return to a flourish of options for places to play rather than one basic standard for each genre (ie, this is the one place for oWoD, this is the one place for nWoD, this is the place for Supers, this is the one place for L&L). We can determine if staff is good or bad, they can even learn from mistakes and become good, or continually be bad and called out for it. But I don't want to see advocacy for just more lock down and state control.

The players don't order the state, its not Nazi Germany, they are free to leave, and there is room for other states. We're not in some closed society here. Ref: Hitler propoganda: The state does not order us, we order the state.

@Misadventure said in Adapting FATE for MU*s:

Some players have a problem giving their own or other players creations the same authority as that of staff, even if the same level of record keeping is used (either none, or strong documentation). This is a weakness that will affect FATE and Powered by the Apocalypse games online.

This right here. Sadly it seems its bleeding out of most Mu*'s, including the MUSH where it was far more common. Comic book venues that stay diceless are still a draw, using age old concepts like take turns winning and losing, work without needing hard rules, but outside the few remaining 'accepted' locations for same authority to other players vs staff (and vice versa, staff trust to players) it seems its a dying concept. I'm oddly curious, since most games have moved to clamp down status on this, including removing building rights and quotas, has led to less interest in coding in general too?

What if points were weighted and monitored?

The plan already includes the automatic gossip from the points transfer that can be played out. Thus if someone takes a 1 point sucker punch in a bar before security jumps in, or a 1 point social disgrace at a party (more than ops I spilled my tea on my shirt reaching for the coffee cake; I imagine a social disgrace at a party for even just one point is like the cheerleader putting the nerd in their place for showing up at cool kid party and it going out on twitter), the act is listed in finger notes or some place visible. Just a one line blurb, 'At club eXtasy, Joe was knocked down by John and left stunned, black eye for one week.' And others can react to it to lengthen the effect of the fail; 1 points is one week of lingering affect. Everyone can say the usual stuff 'nice shiner' 'hate to see the other guy, har har' 'who cleaned your clock' 'etc', it should stimulate more RP (again the Gambit Rogue TS scenario can abuse this if they stay locked up for a week at a time; and this will require staff policing, but policing requires players reporting too). It, the failure, has to be shown that it quantified its value which plays into monitoring by both peer group and staff as police.

This can be furthered, PrP points can be of less value (4:1 max, 2:1 if being nice, but less value than a staff or event generated fail point). I like the idea of quick blurbs that can be submitted and coupled with @Sunny 's idea, the weight can be heavier, up to 1:1 with GM points for approved PrPs.

Secondary to this, the exchange of points can be monitored. Joe writes the blurb for points transfer, the system can calculate the weight, John has to appove it (the loser determines the outcome, to the winners satisfaction); once accepted by John, it needs a third approval from staff even when weighted?

I'm leaning towards GM story points and separate PrP points, just curious if there is middle ground based on what I just wrote.

A few quick things from my perspective.

I'm looking at an opening up of control, harping back to earlier days in MUSH'ing specifically, not MU*ing in general. I'm reluctant on GM points for several reasons.

First, it mandates staff must run lots of plot to feed points to the players and run the secondary plots to take in the points in spends. Most places when staff starts running regular events, it tends to reduce non-staff RP and plots, or management code to track all of this, increasing complexity of knowing the code for players and staff monitoring in some context. It also encourage the sandbox mentality for players who can't get into staff plots for various reasons.

Two, it creates hurdles to RP by making official points staff only, and leaving player only as a sort of fluff. Is a player run bar scene with sucker punches less valid than a staff run bar scene.

Also on meta, I'm not a fan of heavily directed staff run meta. It leads directly to the complaints that we see on this; staff favorites, limited connectivity for player base to times staff run things, a finite beginning and end even with story arcs. I have never participated in staff meta plot, once this starts happening and the only value is staff run plot and meta, most players gravitate towards that. The staff plots and events attract players, who ignore Joe's plot even though Joe's plot could be a damn fun story.

Is there a compromise to validation of points entering the system without heavy handed staff involvement. The situations I provided, the space race, the shoot out, the territory control. I see those as easily player motivated and initiated without staff involvement. Are player votes just discouraged? It reads as staff shouldn't trust players, vs staff can trust players until proven otherwise (and then police)?

@Ganymede

Exactly all this, sans a mechanic to control each. Sorry, it was less questions vs offering options, the more options and creativity the better I'd hope. Its in the hands of the players to decide any approach they find feasible. Its up to them to role-play that out and, in the end, take their gained character points and spend them by contributing to a resource pool in which the biggest spender wins and sets the rules of territory and such.

Determining the nature of the reward and the context of a big conflict or challenge plays at the genre selected.

If its Space Opera game, and two players want to race for the rare Quantonium, how do they hire crew or helpers (basically convince others to support their side)? Racer 1 wants a faster ship, RP's with mechanic Joe on Planet X, Joe throws some points up to his mechanic (3) description. Racer 2 is more a corporation, so he has to figure out the price to buy the contract on Buck Solo, the Ace (2) Pilot (5), so that Ace can kick in 5 points to his side by piloting the ship, doing some fun asteroid navigation scenes at some point (heck, even taking a few bangs to the ship in 'fails' to gain the points to spend, and their on-board mechanic risks their neck to repair the quantom drive, one point the air hose being bumped off by debris (a loss to gain repair points for that moment)).

What if its Horse Opera high noon showdown come next monday. The kid needs to take some punches from Biff O'Bannon, to spend his points on spiffy duds to help for his part, Doc McSmith is awkward with the lady, but it nets him some points, he comes up with using an iron boiler plate as armor against Biff's weapons. Biff steals the guns from the snake oil merchant.

These conflicts are where points are ultimately spent in direct roles or in support roles. All the politics (OOCly, the social interactive part of the social interactive medium) is used to convince players to play out parts and story on one side or the other that leads to the points being spent on winning or losing.

Edit: This leads to the exploitation or abuse side as noted though, what's to stop OOC group Y from manipulating enough to just transfer points and try to buy the win (GM control of points, public listing of points gained/lost, log requirements, etc), and how much police'ing should be done before potential exploitation vs afterwards (hey staff, Rogue and Gambit never RP, but everytime there is an X-men Team throw down, they are always full of points ...)

@Thenomain said in Swashbuckling and continued success:

@Ganymede said in Swashbuckling and continued success:

@Apos said in Swashbuckling and continued success:

I think anything that's very episodic in feel has some issues translating to MUs, since it takes a lot of work to make an environment that can sustain itself between episodes that highlight the kind of high adventure vibe you want to capture.

BSG:U has a good way of doing this by moving the Dauntless (the ship from which the PC crew is based) from system to system. Faraday then posts a "setting post" to remind everyone of the crew's objectives at the system, and the general feel of being there.

If I create a major game system again, it will be a scene system, where a scene set is the room description, and when the scene moves locations the new setting information is posted for everyone there. This is halfway done for people who run big scenes already. A scene system would do much more, but the times I’ve used this before it got very good reception.

The room-lite grid coupled with the scene system is one big thing I love with AresMUSH. They ship moves, and if someone wants XYZ beachhead, they open it as a scene, it acts like a TP room, others can join and it goes away when done with it.

And back to OP real quick, I recall DragonFist, the 2nd edition game released for free by WotC prior to the launch of 3e. One of the things was once folks started getting into Wuxia and explaining their awesome moves, it increased their chance of success. The first session we played we did the fight in the paperhouse sequence, the enemy was knocked off their feet and more easily returned fighting by back crawling between the legs of their counterpart. The bar scene included a chopstick fighting player who managed to get in the chopsticks nose grab and head to table, and the end scene included standing on bamboo shoots. It handled it pretty quickly using 2e rules and not all the features and mechanisms of 3e.

@Seraphim73 & @Ganymede
I completely agree with this, it can be exploited for gains. I am not set with the flow of points mechanisms, and if some measure of policing/control of the points gain is a measure to be taken now to give some incentive as a buy-in for others to try the system later, it is definitely worth considering. I do want to give it some practices, its not code-heavy mechanics wise, just want to see more of the criticisms like that, the potential to be broken and exploited.

The bigger buy-in is the stat-lite near system less approach I imagine, and I don’t want to change that part. I’m taking like 20 steps back with the philosophy, MUSH is aimed at storytelling for me, I come from the time when MUSHes were mostly system less and used the honor system. If a player wanted more players to play with, they learned to take falls and let others shine around them, they took turns in the spotlight. Its just a slight step up from that by putting in a few easily shifting points.

As for the honor system, it can be easily broken, but is it broken? Ultimately I’m looking at the end result of point spends and rewards. There was a quick mention of resource gain/loss system that we had @Ganymede, a few broad areas of resources. I loved the simplicity of it, it boiled down to Catan in a way for me. While most people will look at PvP potential and how points are gained and used, I’m looking at faction and group conflict overall as the bigger spends and collection of the points that go out, a way to bring them in for balance. Between players, its an agreement to exchange points, the spend for those gains is faction conflicts and group challenges for the rewards those bring.

I’ll use an example to maybe help a little. Lets say its Vampire Politics setting, nearly the same concept as WoD. Clan 1 and Clan 2 want a certain parcel of land for their private use. New zoning laws have increased herd potentials here, or some misty artifact lures in gnomes who have the bestest blood ever, has happened. Both Clans intend to compete for it. So there is a big faction conflict here, some time limit is chosen (4 weeks), at the end of that time, the side with the most points spent on the goal wins. Each side now has to figure out: 1) How to get the most points to their clan from other players so each member can contribute; 2) How to convince other allies and groups to contribute as well if possible; 3) How to harangue the opposition to get them to not have points to contribute; or 4) Just give up cause too much work and they don’t want to play.

While in the end, its having the points gained from playing at the system, all that politicking is very much a Diplomacy game to me and will require trust and interaction OOCly. Yes, it comes down to honor system for how points are gained, but the secondary affect would hopefully be the story creation that is generated from it for RP potential. If they get support from politicians in approving their members for buying businesses or partnerships in the area, it should be played out and then politician Y chips in their Charming (4) points once they have those 4 points to the conflict resolution. Or if Vampire Brute is intimidating folks so they don’t support the other side, there is some RP (and log cause I enjoy reading, its why I play MU*s) relating to him kicking squatters in the pants to incite the somehow. Could easily be various spends in direct combat at various locations, the players are working to make the story more than some planned event I think in this case.

The points are sort of ephemeral for the point of reasoning out a story to explain the flow and use of them in some context, less in defining the RP. It comes with the potential for abuse, a group of players doing everything OOCly or through tea-party private RP (but sustainability of lies and cover, other players will realize and avoid, and staff can police this more easily as its sustained).

All that said, sorry again for verbose, if it can be better policed and tracked to ensure quality and merit in the way points are gained, which would help ensure more buy-in to what basically amounts to a point driven story telling system of play, I’m all for it. I am enjoying the suggestions so far too, just offering explanations and reasoning’s for going towards such a system. And indeed @Ganymede’s territory system is in part inspiration for looking abstractly at points to help spur some creativity, hopefully, two thumbs up to that system. I like @Seraphim73’s original ideas of GM generated points vs fluffy PC points that could be swapped at tea parties, I even more like the idea of the building of the trust, harder to net points to give around earlier but as trust is built, the flow increases. In the end max points would be very limited, much like the description points, to keep it locked down, but hopefully spending would be enough that its hard to keep up with where to spend them so no one is sitting and banking points.