Posts made by Nemesis

@bored said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

@nemesis said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

The fact remains that a lot of people are asking for a single social roll to have the same impact on the opposition's intentions as a bullet would on their health. They've even suggested a separate health track for socials, just to make sure we all knew that's what they were talking about without any room for confusion or debate. That's what most of the pro-social stats folks want: A manipulation-machine-gun that never breaks or needs repair and maintenance or runs out of bullets, and ultimately a bullet hits your player's active decision-making ability and innate intentions as opposed to their desire to follow a course of action they've already decided on.

So... if you were familiar with anything about one of the systems being talked about for 'social health' (FATE), you'd realize it doesn't have to be this way at all.

So here's just a perfect example of a WORA user not reading anything but the first paragraph, quoting it, and then proceeding to make a whole other post completely unrelated to anything he quoted or anything in the post he quoted.

The only thing I ever said about FATE is that I don't need to look into it to know that it doesn't work this way, so if you were in fact reading anything that was written then: Thanks for pointing out that I was right.

@lithium said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Also, no, I am not asking for social rolls to be like bullets, and I am /tired/ of that bullshit that the 'player agency' people are putting forth.

I just want social characters to be able to influence people socially, because, that's the point.

I just want everyone to play by the same fucking rules and quit trying to cheat.

(ETA) Now if a game wanted to give social stats a price break, both in chargen and in xp, and say they only functioned as guidelines against PC's but functioned fully against NPC's I'd be fine with that. Because that's playing by the rules of that game. I'm a coder, I like rules being followed. Without rules we have Anarchy.

The fact remains that a lot of people are asking for a single social roll to have the same impact on the opposition's intentions as a bullet would on their health. They've even suggested a separate health track for socials, just to make sure we all knew that's what they were talking about without any room for confusion or debate. That's what most of the pro-social stats folks want: A manipulation-machine-gun that never breaks or needs repair and maintenance or runs out of bullets, and ultimately a bullet hits your player's active decision-making ability and innate intentions as opposed to their desire to follow a course of action they've already decided on.

That, in my book, is cheating for a lot of reasons I've already laid out. It ignores the target's background, it ignores any rational expectation of backstory which we can assume amounts to someone else's extended social successes to convince them to do what they're doing right now in the first place. So now everyone's supposed to stat out the attack/defense/health points assigned to every single facet of their personality modified by exactly how every event in their background influenced their present state of mind? I've been playing RPGs since I was 12, I've been GMing since I was 16, I've been doing both on IRC and MUSHes since within the same timespan, and I'm a coder too. I wouldn't want to have to play in this ridiculous-ass system, I wouldn't want to have to GM it, and I sure as shit wouldn't want to have to design and maintain code systems to support it. That's a completely second chargen and sheet for your character's mind and mentality. The whole idea is insane.

Players know what's IC and what isn't for their character. You're not going to seduce a gay guy to sex with a woman unless his own backstory has him as bi-curious. That doesn't mean the same woman can't seduce the same gay guy to betray his government for a fat cash payout, if he needs money to live - especially not if he has any particular leaning toward greed - being sexually disinterested in women does not by any stretch of the imagination make the gay guy immune to seduction attempts by women.

I realize that most people on WORA don't really bother to read a whole post - someone above just quoted 1 paragraph of my prior post and his response had nothing to do with anything I said, unless that 1 paragraph had been all I said. Those people might accuse me of going back and forth between pro-social and anti-social skill usage at this point. Those people would be retarded. I'm all for the appropriate uses of social skills in the appropriate contexts.

Giving people a price break on social stats is bullshit. Just make people figure out wtf social skills really are and what they represent, or advise them that they really aren't prepared to engage in any type of RPG except the MMO that gave them the idea that you should be able to socially derail the psychological equivalent of a speeding train with a single dice test and without supernatural powers.

@the-sands said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Not true. You want a social combat system where I am 'intimidated' and the rules say 'this is how it is handled' then I'm all for it (assuming I feel the rules for how it is handled are reasonable. After all, I would certainly object if the rules say I keel over from a heart attack because you got 1 success on your Presence + Intimidate roll and I have no chance to resist).

But it has to be a system that I feel takes into account the complexity of a character. Suzie Social fluttering her eyelids might be able to make Billy Badboy knock over a coffee shop for her but she should have no hope in Hell of making Gary Gayguy (and I hope no one takes offense at that name) kill his partner because Suzie Social isn't offering anything Gary is interested in.

OK so, yeah, common sense is actually neither of those things because Seduction isn't necessarily sexual in nature and getting Billy Badboy to knock over a coffee shop is something he's likely to do anyway, so good job identifying that as a good and reasonable use of social skills, but there's absolutely no reason that a female with high seduction can't charm a gay guy by some means toward any goal at all unless he actually literally has a stat that allows him to ignore Seduction.

If the Seductor scores high rolls across several meetings, drawing the Seductee into a close personal relationship or making them lust after money or power or sex or whatever, it's perfectly reasonable for a priest who's never killed anyone and truly believes he'd go to hell if he did to promise the Seductor that he will do anything they ask and then simply not follow through when they aren't standing there goading him into it later on.

That's the big problem I see in this whole conversation: Everyone who's pro-social wants social successes to affect a person like a bullet or a knife wound that needs treatment and active reversal to be undone. I say again: Unless it's a power, it's not meant to work that way. I don't even need to look into the Fate system to know from the jump that it's not meant to work that way by the developers of Fate who aren't delusional - although it could certainly work that way if someone wanted to make their own custom RPG using Fate and say so.

Can social successes accumulated across a dozen or a hundred scenes amount to cult-level "indoctrination" that needs treatment and active reversal? Absolutely, yes. Fluttering eyelashes? Flash of cleavage? That might get you out of a speeding ticket if you weren't doing something like weaving in and out of traffic or doubling the speed limit (which may be treated as attempted vehicular manslaughter whether the speed limit is 10 or 60 m/kph), or to make it clearer: If the cop you're flashing your tits at isn't so pissed off at your irresponsible behavior in the first place that he'd rather shoot you than cite you.

Thinking that a 1-off social win should be as psychologically damaging as a bullet is physically, or that anyone should be completely immune to someone else based on gender or social tactic type, is completely insane.

Probably better advice for a Windows user is to just get xVM VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/ and install linux on it so you actually run your server stuff in a virtual environment on your Windows desktop. This converts your linux box to an application that you start just like any other application in Windows, and you can stick a shortcut to the vbox definition into your Start Menu->Programs->Startup folder to make the linux box start up along with your Windows box. Totally free.

Just make sure you tell vBox to use a "bridged network adapter" when you're creating the original machine, so the linux box can have its own unique IP Address instead of sharing one with the host OS, and enable virtualization extensions only if your CPU supports them.

After that you can install linux and make vBox take a "snapshot" so if you muck anything up you can roll back to that and start over again. Then you get your lamp stack working right, take another "snapshot" before you start trying to install addons like your wiki or bb, so you can roll back if you break something. vBox is a great little tool.

Edit: Forgot to mention that with this setup you can install samba to configure filesharing between Windows and Linux, then as long as your samba user/password matches your Windows user/password you'll be able to access any shares you define through Network->SystemIP->FolderName just like it was any other Windows box with filesharing enabled.

@sonder said in NodeBB installation:

I went to follow their install directions here: http://nodebb-francais.readthedocs.io/projects/nodebb/en/latest/installing/os/windows8.html

However, the third and last links are broken or have nothing to download on them. I also do not have that redis icon either.

...Sooo, I have a feeling I'm doing everything hilariously wrong.

This is extremely common when people who don't really understand the internet or webservers (such as DreamWeaver and cPanel+WordPress and Visual Studio/ASP.NET "developers") rearrange their site in the IDE and don't have the simple sense to recreate the original page as a symlink or redirect in IIS or Apache or whatever their server platform is. It's the fault of the people who built/host those websites.

If you just cut everything but the domain name out of the third link you'll find that imagemagick.org is still a thing. The download you're looking for is now at imagemagick's current downloads page and then you have to scroll clear to the bottom for the Windows port.

In the case of the last link, anything that is or was ever downloadable from Microsoft will typically have an associated Knowledge Base article with the same id number and/or will be referenced somewhere in the MSDN Forums. This one used to be a link to MS Visual Studio 2013 Express.

As of 2018/03/01 you'd want VS 2015 anyway. I suspect that the real intention behind this link is to get you to install Internet Information Services (IIS - Microsoft's webserver) or maybe MS SQL Server Express, so make sure both of those are included when you install VS 2015. There's no Express edition of VS 2015. Just download it. Be careful you don't get VS 2017 by default - it's garbage (lots of stuff doesn't work yet).

Apart from the support-side crap that comes with it, VS2015 is garbage too though. If you're going to do any real code editing and you don't want to litter your desktop with NetBeans and PyCharm and a dozen others (or you don't want to throw down some cash on a customizable text editor made for programmers) you'll be better served using Visual Studio Code (downloadable from the same page as Visual Studio 2017).

I managed to ID this link from a forum post at MSDN where somebody referenced it a couple of years ago.

@munsell https://github.com/tekmunkey/ubuntuMUSH

If you're using Ubuntu 16. It may also work on debian but I've never tried it or worked with optimizations for it there.

Start with ubuConfig.sh which will re/install your lamp, probably add some CGI options, mail handlers, and most importantly all the prerequisites for PennMUSH or TinyMUX which aren't in either platform's documentation (or if they are then the package names are completely wrong). Read the comments in the script, especially the instructions at the top about usage and troubleshooting and toward the bottom for which answers are good ones when the script begins mysql_secure_installation.

Then there's installPennMUSH.sh and installTinyMUX.sh. Obviously use the one you need. Read the comments in the script. Use the right version of Penn or TinyMUX. If you change the name of the package you download from them, change the filename target in the script. These scripts fully automate the process of building Penn or TMUX with MySQL support.

The only thing that will be left for you to do is create a schema and a user for that schema in mysql, then plug the appropriate information into your netmux.conf or netmush.conf depending on which platform you're trying to set up.

@mietze said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

I’m just saying I do not understand why loss of agency is not decried in the case of combat—but any attempt to use social skills to mitigate things (not reverse or dictate per de) is treated as if that means someone’s character is being puppetted.

Because you're confusing social skills with social powers. Strength, agility, stamina, these aren't skills - they are powers or if you prefer forces which affect the real world through physics. Charisma, manipulation, wits, these aren't powers - they are skills which affect nothing but the perceptions of others based on your employment of tactics, whether you learned them from reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or just lying to parents and teachers your whole life.

Firearms and melee, again, relate to the handling of physical objects that affect the real world through the application of forces. Intimidation and subterfuge, on the other hand, relate to particular forms of social maneuvering.

Your argument is literally identical to the argument that you should be able to mathematically win a gun or a knife fight by rolling Intelligence or Wits and some appropriate science or math skill, or that you should be able to punch a hole in a brick wall by succeeding on a Small Unit Tactics check.

Social skills are designed for use in situations where your target is unwitting or undecided. Charisma helps people like you better, which is fine if they just met you but if they're a cold-blooded assassin sent to kill you by a religious cult then why should they spare your life when the cult probably prepared them for this by making them kill their own family as an introductory task? Manipulation helps you lie better or convince somebody that your way of doing things is right, but using the example of the religious cult they have a whole mountain of indoctrination on one side of the scale and no matter how well you can possibly roll you can't amount to more than a few pebbles or maybe a rock on the other side without a months-long dedicated de-programming session first. Even intimidation, if somebody has you on your knees and a loaded gun to your head and some kind of payday waiting after they pull the trigger, isn't going to make any difference - they're already risking life in prison or the death penalty, and if that isn't incentive enough not to start out in the first place what on earth is begging for your life going to accomplish?

You see these things happen in movies because it's in the script. There's always some backstory explaining how or why the assassin was already willing to turn their back on their government or cult or occupation, and the begging is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Trying to replicate that effect in an RPG, with no backstory against the opposing character at all, is insane. It's an MMO or a MUD mentality.

If the assassin was your best friend since childhood sent to kill you by your mutual mob boss? Totally different conversation. Social roll it up.

If you're on Windows and connecting to your droplet via SSH, toss whatever you're currently using and switch to puTTY.

Then whatever you copy in Windows you paste to puTTY just by right-clicking in that terminal window. To copy out of puTTY back to Windows you just click and drag to highlight in the terminal (don't do anything else) and then go paste into Notepad or whatever text editor you're using.

If you're not on Windows, just ignore me.

@mr-johnson said in Comic Noir Game:

Edit: I'd also like some feedback on a little grid thing I added recently, Every outdoor room on grid has 3 ratings that go from 0-5 *'s with 0 being non existent and 5 being the other end of the spectrum. The ratings are Crime, Pollution, and Wealth, with a fourth not really a rating but more useful bit of info in the form of Zoning. Just wondering what people think of the idea, if people think it's worth the effort to give more info for people to work with.

These are great when players and staff actually use them, and then it doesn't matter whether you make it a numeric index system (which is easier to read at a glance) or make it part of the room desc, or tuck it away in +views on the room, or newsfiles about Zones, or whatever. If they aren't used or enforced either then you just wasted time and effort.

All of the best MUs I ever played on had these types of rankings on at least some IC rooms (or every IC zone, with certain rooms getting much higher ranks than others such as "under the bridge" in a bad part of town getting a high crime rating that guaranteed you'd end up in an NPC timestop if you hung around/idled there or if you and a friend scened there, or other locations getting you harassed by NPC police or private security if staff noticed you on +where).

I started out saying I'm not sure what the Pollution rating specifically would do for you but then I realized that Even the Pollution rating's kind of a cool idea, because even if Captain Planet or the solar-powered Nuclear Man from Superman IV aren't playable characters, somebody might come up with an OC or PrP idea that can be affected by it or where it can be used as a foil. But Crime/Security/Police Patrol, Wealth/Poverty, and that type of per-room or per-zone ranking system have been making MUSHes awesome since the 1990s so I say run with it.

https://github.com/tekmunkey/ubuntuMUSH

Start with ubuConfig.sh

Works great with Ubuntu 16

@jamie said in Star Trek: Typhon Accords:

@nemesis Looks like that error comes from a DNS issue. Only thing I can really do is suggest using a different DNS server, like googles or opendns. As far as I know there's nothing I can do about it on the game's end.

Been using 4.2.2.1 and .2 since before Google DNS existed or hotmail was owned by Microsoft. I wasn't posting a bug report for your consumption anyway, I was posting an IP address for everyone else who might have this issue.

Since you're actually monitoring your thread: An 11002 is a DNS timeout so it actually is on your end. If you're hosting your own DNS servers, you might consider letting your registrar do it for you.

@jamie said in Star Trek: Typhon Accords:

For further information you can connect to startrekkin.net port 1701 or you can point your web browser to http://www.startrekkin.net

MUSHClient says:
Unable to resolve host name for "startrekkin.net", code = 11002 (Non-authoritative host not found)

Ping resolves to 69.60.124.201 and I'm able to connect to that just fine, same port.

@surreality said in Good TV:

@lithium said in Good TV:

I still dislike the change to klingons, but if you can get past that, Discovery was actually very well done imho. Enjoyed it.

As in, it's the kind of stylistic choice that seems to pick them up out of the 'barbarians with an honor code' sort of feel, which is how the old version used to seem to me, to something more akin to samurai composing battle poetry in their heads and so on. Which is neat, sure, but it is a big change and more importantly, it's not necessarily one I'm convinced they intended.

@surreality Klingons from ST:tOS were modeled just after the ancient Mongolians. It showed in their skin tone, style of hair and facial hair, attitude, even costumes and accents to some extent... right down to that little round 'hat' on the prow/bridge of all their ships. The Klingons of ST:tNG got Viking trader and imperialism added on with art and music and western-friendly religious sentiments, but a lot of it was less "the actual culture of the ancient Northmen" than "the way Vikings are presented in Wagner's operas" such as "Ring Cycle" and "The Valkyries." That's where you get the opera and the battle poetry etc.

I also loved the whole Stargate catalog except SG1 after it turned into Farscape SG1, I never liked Atlantis, and maybe I could have done without a few episodes of Universe where it turned into a big soap opera in space. I'd love to see new material.

Recently got back into Babylon 5, which is some of the best sci fi ever made.

Even though I'm not a user of this forum, I've had 3 different people outside this forum come to me asking me to help come up with a new Fallout MU. 1 of those was even clear back before this thread ever started. Whenever I check the ads listing on this forum all I see in this thread is people sticking their heads in periodically and saying "Any progress?" and no evidence of any real project or team actually working to create one.

I'm willing to host and code and my experience in both areas in MUSHing goes back to the 1990s. If anyone here is actually serious about seeing a Fallout game happen, I expect somebody else to step up to the plate as Administrators, Human Resources, Public Relations, Theme, and Building. I'm also not going to register or maintain domain names for the site so somebody else is going to need to handle that. I'll just take care of the server, the lamp stack, the MUSH, and the softcode and that's it.

I have no intention of playing "game god" and I'm not going to deal with any other assclown who wants to either so anyone who wants to become part of the staff team is going to become part of the Administration team. I have problems making decisions, like deciding between PennMUSH (which offers great features like simplified coding features, advanced coding features, and MXP support but has godawful bugs in search() outputs and other areas that have to be worked around) and TinyMUX (which offers great features like asynchronous SQL queries, a simplified hardcode modding interface, the best online documentation of any MU, advanced coding features but nothing like letq() or attribute trees, high security and high performance) but which is shit for MXP (so far as I can tell you can really only do MXP by emit, so you can't customize your @exitformat with your own MXP styles, or inject custom MXP tags into your room descs, which you can do with Penn via built-in functions for that express purpose). Left to my own devices on a project like this, I would literally waffle back and forth week to week, getting nothing done on either platform, working with Penn for a little while and then working with TMUX for a little while. So what I need most in development is people to help me make decisions.

I had previously posted to this forum as tekmunkey, while having an episode, and completely ruined an ad thread created by a friend by posting random bullshit into it. The diagnoses are PTSD and temporal lobe seizure disorder so "episodes" are something like a cross between a seizure and a psychotic break, where a seizure entails weird behavior brought on by hallucinating anger and fear and a psychotic break is pretty self-explanatory. At the time I was on half the medication I'm on now, and I was self-medicating with alcohol when I started experiencing intense seizure auras (about 80-90% of the time, in those days, I was able to successfully knock myself out before an episode actually occurred, the other 10%, an episode would happen anyway and this forum saw what happened). This information is offered in the spirit of full disclosure.

What happens now that I'm on medications and off alcohol is that while talking to people, both verbally or in text chat, I ramble. I just go off on a tangent, or I start giving lots of extra unnecessary detail, or I get really angry (at the subject matter) and say a couple of things, and then I'm back on track. In most cases I'm not aware I've done it until I look back at it later. It comes off as really weird. People need to not be judgmental asscrackers with me if we're on the same chat channel. It's just that simple.

falloutmu@tekmunkey.com