Best posts made by Ninjakitten

@Halicron said:

remember the Oxford comma is the difference between helping your uncle, Jack, off a horse, and your uncle jack off a horse.

...while I agree those are important commas (although when writing you can generally get away with helping your Uncle Jack off a horse without them if you capitalize, and could solve it entirely by helping him down off a horse or off of a horse), they aren't actually examples of the Oxford comma.

The Oxford comma's the one before the 'and' (or occasionally 'or' or 'nor') in a list. A traditional why-you-need-it example would be "I'd like to dedicate this book to my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

I've always felt social abilities/powers should affect PCs the same as NPCs until and unless physical abilities/powers stop doing so. That said, I also think they should work as written: if the power says it can make someone DO something, it can. If it says it makes them feel or experience X, then they get to react to that however they feel their character would react to feeling or experiencing X.

Once upon a time, I had a character for whom keeping secrets was a big part of who she was. Someone rolled an ability to persuade her to tell them one of them, and they won. So she told them. I couldn't come up with any really fitting reason she would have, so later, when she had to explain why (which was a pretty good scene also, actually), she basically said she had no idea, it just kind of came out and she had no idea what she was thinking. It's possibly not something that would have happened if it were full consent, but it wasn't, and the other person spent the points to be able to do that, and that's the way the dice fell.

The same character on the same game had someone else's fear and pain from being bullied and beaten dropped into her head, as if it were her experience. The player was very upset at me that she didn't collapse weeping, but that's not how the character would react to those feelings... so she didn't. His power didn't include dictating reactions, so he didn't get to.

I'd be okay with both the idea that a player can have a short list of things that are off the table and the one that certain subject matter are officially consent-only, as long as neither list is so long or broad that it basically makes it all "victim's choice" again. I also think it's reasonable if the difficulty or number of successes needed are raised for things that should be harder (depending on the system). But it really annoys me when we act like points spent on social abilities and powers don't matter and aren't equal to physical ones. If I want to spend my points on being Massive McSmashsmash, then I need to accept that Crafty von GoodIdea may come over and talk me into beating that asshole in the corner up for him, just as much as Crafty needs to accept I may hospitalize him if I don't like his hat.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

So far this is probably the biggest source of MUSH-related culture-shock for me, I think. I had my character react a certain way to something they found off-putting, for very IC reasons (though I found it great) — and received an OOC apology for the off-putting behaviour, with a clarification that it wasn't intended to be off-putting. Is this normal?

I know that I've run into this fairly often where the person (or once in a while me!) is just making sure the misunderstanding is IC, not OOC. Sometimes it isn't and once it's cleared up the player doesn't want their character to have reacted that way, but I'd say the more frequent response (whether the misunderstanding was purely IC or also OOC originally) is something along the lines of, "it's all good, X just took it the other way." Which is to say that the person may not be trying to avoid the IC conflict, just clarifying and aiming to avoid any potential OOC conflict.

@aria Surely this should have been the Harry Pottery Barn collection.

@Derp I have been asked to pass this on: "It should run pretty nicely under wine, you can even set the UI font to something nice in the preferences dialog. There are Wine specific fixes and features in the code just to make Wine work nicer. And if anything is ugly or weird, I'll fix it. Wine needs more love :)"

Messenger service complete! o7

Oh hey, nice bandwagon you got here! ::climbs on::

1990s, in approximate order:
TNG TrekMUSE:
Random
ATS TrekMUSH:
Random
SW: Brak Sector:
...Lilith, I think?
SW: Minos Cluster
Probably also Lilith
Pacifica:
Tyche (Bagheera Bastet)
Hel (Walker[?] Kinfolk)

I know I'm forgetting several games entirely, mostly Star Trek and Star Wars ones. Probably not that big a loss.

2000 onward, alphabetically:
Ashes to Ashes:
Ivy (Walker Ragabash, 2000-2001)
Bright Future:
Serendipity (Nuwisha kin, 2003-2004)
Cajun Nights:
Fiona (Mortal, I think? 2000)
Dark Dominion/Downward:
Liz (Gnawer kinfolk, 2000)
Tuesday (Walker Galliard Metis, 2000)
Denver:
Eve/Scott (Mortal, 2004-2005)
Dragonlance:
Baub (Gnome, 2002)
Iason (Human, 2002)
Due Rewards:
Willow (Giovanni ghoul, 2000-2001)
Emerald City:
Zephyr (Mortal, 2002-2003)
Fear and Loathing:
Jeremy (Euthanatos Mage, 2001-2002)
GarouMUSH:
Bernie (Gnawer Ragabash, 2000-2002)
Raphael (Fang kinfolk, 2003)
Izzy (Strider Philodox, 2012)
Felix (Gnawer Galliard, 2015-current)
Haight-Ashbury:
David (Satyr kinain, 2002)
Ineffable Game:
Legato (2004)
Mariner's Tale:
Zenobia (Nuwisha, 2000-2001)
Masquerade:
Adrian (Fianna Galliard, 2002)
Jai (2010-current)
Nightscape:
Cordelia (Some kind of psychic? 2000)
Northern Lights:
Ivy (Walker Ragabash, 2000)
Northern Rage:
Zoe (Corax, 2001)
Paris LFDM:
Etienne (Mortal, 2002-2003)
Santo Domini:
Ivy (Mortal, 2000)
Shadowed Isles:
Aidan (Psychic, 2005)
Star Trek: Darkness Within:
...I can't remember. Probably Random again. (Vulcan, sometime between 2010 and 2014. No logs, see what happens?)
The Dreaming:
Hegemony (Coyote Pooka, 2006)
Trinity:
Jeremy (Euthanatos Mage, 2006-2010)
Hegemony (Coyote Pooka, 2007-2009)
Drew (Mortal, 2009-2010)
Matt (Mortal, 2010)

I'm pretty sure that's all of them (not counting a few games so small I already know where all the other players are) since 2001, anyway. Before that I wasn't logging obsessively and therefore have almost no idea anymore what was going on. Which may be for the best...

I can't seem to remember half my staff positions anymore (see: not logged), so eh, screw that part.

@runescryer I think Calaveras has that kind of code too. (Well -- coded phones, not the tap-to-talk thing.)

@surreality I want to read this eventual butt-dialing. Well, no. I want to read the character reactions. It sounds fun.

Actual topic participation: a couple decades ago, on a Star Wars game, I mavved TS to Public. And promptly logged off and didn't return for at least three days, when the blush had finally started to subside. I seem to recall people were pretty kindly silent about it, but wow.

There've been some pretty great typos, too, but I can't think of any of them off the top of my head....

@Seamus
Little Shop of Horrors - Mean Green Mother from Outer Space

...and 4.00.289!

• Added /ping command to measure time from command send to server response (useful to measure network latency and server perf)

• Added 'Test Text' field in the triggers dialog to allow easy testing of what the Matcharoo will match on (with regex variable hilighting too!)
  
  (And if you hit the Regex 101 button, it should transfer your matcharoo and test text to the Regex 101 site so you can do more intense testing if you like.)

• Added File->'Load backup configuration...' to load the last backup configuration made (backup configs are made each time the app is updated)

• Added 'History Window - Toggle' to keyboard shortcuts

• Added 'Imaging Window - Toggle' to keyboard shortcuts

• Fixed extra 100ms network send/receive latency issue on the store version (not sure when this started, but it's gone now)

There's no patreon or similar at present, but since it's been brought up several times, he's currently thinking it over. Meanwhile one could use the store version to give encouraging numbers, or drop by the Discord and say thank you! The github version is, of course, here.

@aerianyx I don't have a lot to contribute that hasn't been said, but just figured I'd +1 to the set of people with the same sort of anxiety/issues. I've been actively working on it for at least a couple years now, and still kind of suck at it, but some improvement beats no improvement, right? It's slightly less terrifying than before... Good luck!

@Auspice said in Wildly Out of Context:

"Every jacket's a party jacket if I've got it on."

I have definitely played that character.

Happy New Year and happy 4.00.292!

Lots of small improvements and at least one bigger common request...

• Found a way to disable the OS default beep sound when going out of bounds in the input window (either delete or with the cursor) (so those of you who were bothered by it, here you go!)

• Switched to the modern OS visual themes; dialogs shouldn't look like they're from Windows 95 anymore!

• Added '/newedit' to create a dedicated editing window (with a few options for it, like having spellcheck enabled) (This has been a frequent request, so if it was one of yours, please try it out and see how you like it!)
  

• Added character notes window (Options->Show Character Notes Window) to easily edit existing character info field
  

• Added crash detector that gives the option to generate a mini dump to send in (to make it much easier to share crashes) (Please do send them to the dev if you hit any!)

• Added spawn trigger option 'Copy line instead of move' so that a copy can be left in the main output instead of only moving

• Added 'Set Background Color' option to stat windows

• Added Logging->'Starting From Top of Window...' menu item to start a log from anywhere in the output history

• Changed tab colors to be saved per character, not per tab visible at shutdown (behavior with puppets might be weird, let me know what it should do)

• Fixed spawn tab triggers to now honor the "Don't show as activity" setting

• Fixed a bug in smart paste where it was adding an extra line feed per line, resulting in LF CR LF sequences instead of the correct CR LF.

• Fixed the tiny drag image in the Worlds dialog, same issue that the trigger/macros/aliases had when dragging an image, forgot to fix this one too

• Fixed a hang when sending enormous blocks of text (>64K) and using restore logs (if what is sent is larger than the restore log size it would get stuck trying to make room forever)

As usual, using the store version is favourite -- if you're currently using it, you can hurry up the update by opening the store app, going to 'Downloads and Updates' in the upper right three-dot menu, and then clicking 'Get Updates' -- but you can also grab it from the github here. Why not drop by the Discord and say thank you or ask about the enhancement you're dreaming of?

When I end up reading some quite old logs and see that not only did that story really work, but I'm still pretty happy with my writing and characterization in it, overall.

@mietze Depends how baked you are.

Smol update! 4.00.293, spotting and squashing bugs:

• Added '/ansireset' command to reset the current ansi state. (this one's actually a way to handle an occasional server-side bug rather than a Beip issue.)

• Fixed a docking layout restore bug, where horizontal windows could shift slightly.

• Fixed a crash when using Find in the main output window.

As always, you can grab it from the store or from github! Updating right away is recommended if you ever use the 'Find' feature, this time.

Man, depending which philosopher or ludologist you ask, MU*s aren't even games, or at least the story-constructing, collaborative, don't-play-to-'win' version most of us here play aren't.

By my lights, they're games, but no, they're not video games. Computer games, I'd say yes -- like the old Infocom-style text adventures, which are also computer games but not video games IMO, but which also fit into more of the definitions of 'game' than a MU* does. Online games, certainly -- you could still argue 'game', but 'online' is pretty definite.

If you play sudoku on your tablet instead of the newspaper, has sudoku now become a video game? Is it even a game, or is it a puzzle? How about solitaire on your laptop instead of with a deck of cards? Poker or mahjong against the computer? If two of us decided to write a story by turns in a shared google doc, which we could even have open at the same time, would that be a game, let alone a video game? If not, and if a MU* is, what makes the difference?

There's not going to be unanimity on much of this, because even the academic definitions are several and varied. Why would conversational ones be clearer?

@Ghost I mean really, no one's stopping you doing that for free.

Something currently in the works...

I rarely start a scene if I don't have at least 3-4 hours and I'm perfectly happy to have them go on all day, assuming I have the day and things are interesting. I don't often do anything under 2 hours at all, because it feels like it doesn't get anywhere. So... I guess I'm just really out of sync with everyone else these days, unless there are a bunch of other people who prefer longer ones who aren't chiming in.

@macha Y'know, the rest of that line I knew (organizing, which I'm not so terrible at but it has to be its own Thing I Am Doing, and estimating time which I am virtually incapable of) but somehow not the 'getting started'. It makes sense. I just never put that one together.

(Similar situation with seeing 'sustaining processing speed' there in 'effort'; that hits me right in the RP and I really want to smack the 'I'm in this photo and I don't like it' image here now.)