Best posts made by OldFrightful

@surreality This thread has been pretty uncomfortable to read. I'm sorry you're going through this but I really don't think this forum can help you figure it out. You've made a lot of vague posts about this in the past, I think, that it seems unlikely things are going to change. If it is affecting your real life, you need to go to real people, whether that means the relevant law enforcement, a therapist or counselor.

The only element you control here is yourself. Get away from the people causing you stress. If that means leaving a game you like because you can't avoid them, that's a small price to pay in the long run for your mental health. The same goes for mutual friends or chat groups. And frankly, I would strongly consider what you get out of this forum VS what affect this forum has on your wellbeing. Your interactions and relationships with the people causing you stress are unlikely to change and they are unlikely to remove themselves from here. Again, you can only control yourself.

Is this really a 'MU' problem? Legit question. I'm a MUD-playing heathen and I've probably been exposed to four different MU(sh/x) games at most.

To me, it seems like the problems addressed in the OP are about genre saturation. Someone found something that works decently well (White Wolf system + bureaucracy) and made a mold for it. Other people took that mold and ran with it. It's not like 'World of Darkness MUSH' is the end-all, be-all of the genre. It's a lot harder to go out and make your own game versus sit down and build your own IKEA WoD playpen, sure, but it's not impossible and there are clear-cut examples of it working (Arx, BSG, Transformers: L&F - I'm sure there's way more). Just stop using the mold. Make something new and divorce it from the sticky ideas.

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't see how this is any different from being a game admin. I don't expect to have to use "Staff Voice" "Not Staff Voice" on my game's channels. When I correct somebody, they know it's The One Me correcting them because they stepped out of line. It's not like I'm gonna fool anybody if I say "Hey knock it off" from my PC. (Oh, that was Fara talking with her not-staff voice, she didn't really mean it. No, that's just not how people read it.) And yeah, there's a burden that comes with that, because it can easily make people uncomfortable like @Tat said about their bosses. It just comes with the territory.

This.

The whole MOD VOICE thing is well intentioned but should be completely unnecessary. The NOT MOD VOICE thing honestly comes off as passive aggressive. If you want people to have confidence in their moderators, they need to be moderators, not plainclothes detectives randomly slapping a pair of sirens on their car whenever they feel they need the extra authority. Can we please stop it? It's ridiculous. Imagine a game owner tromping in and going NOT STAFF TOTALLY ORDINARY PLAYER OPINION ON THIS STAFF THING. Establishing consistency would go a long way.

yay 2.94

@caryatid

but make the potato peel an upvote, okay?

As long as micro-transactions remain profitable and unregulated, this sort of thing just gets worse, not better. The line betwen 'p2w' and 'freemium' is honestly a lot blurrier than we'd like to think.

RPI (roleplay intensive) games are basically 'always IC'. If you're logged in, people can interact with you. Coded actions are considered roleplayed actions (i.e, if I walk into a room and use the 'punch' command on @Arkandel and don't emote about it, I'm still ICly punching Arkandel). Limited in-game OOC communication, usually just a 'help' channel, a local OOC command, and something to communicate with staff. Out of game they usually have forums with user, not character, based identities.

MUDs and MUSHes are two sides of the same coin! I'd just take 'social MUD' to mean 'code heavy RP game', but @Streetwitch may have their own idea about what it is.

@kitteh Yeah, @Pyrephox is spot on. One of mine is about the death of a prominent NPC, for example. All the clues attached to it say 'JEEZ, THEIR DEATH SURE WAS FISHY'. The revelation, paraphrased, says 'WOW, THAT IS DEFINITELY FISHY' without actually going into detail about why it's fishy.

It's pretty nice to have it as a sort of confirmation, but it's generally not current or super relevant information or something determining decisions/actions.

Theories are tricky. I've written concise ones that (I feel) relay all the relevant information, which tend to result in anyone who reads it having 4-5 questions - which in turn kind of defeats the point of a theory for me, because I'm already doing 2 to 5 scenes a night and don't really have the AP or time to share clues and fill in the blanks for everyone. A lot of people don't like the longer ones. I've taken to just writing my theories out as lectures and arranging events to talk about them/get people to chain share the clues and that works pretty okay for my usual purposes.

I'm definitely apprehensive over the idea of tying them to org briefings, since there's no guarantee the person writing the theory will actually have sensible context in the first place. There are some BIZARRE ideas floating around out there, and no werewolves are not the solution to every plot in the game please gosh leave werewolves alone leave them alooooone.

I don't think there's a really good way to contextualize clue briefings, but I think it would help if there were more organizational tools for it.

Moreover, once they exist on their own to be shared about the context, circumstance, and so on of that original investigation is generally lost. And then all these factors put together leaves you with this old RPG saw in semi-fresh memetic form:

Also this, a lot. I'm pretty concerned with the 'rumor' system they've been talking about (being able to get clues lots of other characters have) since there's definitely no context coming with those.

Addendum: I really think someone should kill the heck out of the briefing perm and make it rank 2+ or 3+ only. I also don't think it would be a bad thing if briefings were removed entirely. Cool idea, great in moderation, not super practical.

@thesuntsar I will kill you.

@Ortallus He could tell you or just link you this helpfile, which would be the equivalent, and this map for a rough idea. These are both things a newbie could reasonably stumble upon too, it's not very hard to find on the site. It's not actually secret information. When he says 'the digs' he probably means things like lairs, secret watering holes, super exact directions, etc. And like I said in my last post, it is super easy to learn about those things ICly. Your character would not necessarily know about them for being a 40 year old hunter, because a 40 year old hunter probably doesn't know everything there is to know about the super dangerous world. They got to 40, after all!

Also he'd probably tell you that one of the staff members in 1995 really liked Alien and literally the only forest your character conceivably knows about is filled with Totally Not Aliens monsters.

(totally not an alien, this is a kryl, do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise)

@Pyrephox +1. My character is just shy of 400 with 14 revelations, and so much of it is tangential stuff. If I cut out everything except what's attached to those revelations, I think I'd have 80~ish.

@fortydeuce One thing to keep in mind is just because you have a clue doesn't mean it's true. That took me way too long to wrap my head around. <.< Historical accounts can be inaccurate or get details wrong, there could be red herrings, stuff like that. But it's a good RP motivator to link up with other people and try to figure out how stuff fits together.

Criminal (Investigative 'true crime' journalism! Interview heavy. Starts off w/some murders, but quickly moves into bizarre and interesting crimes/law bending. A++++)
King Falls AM (Radio hosts dealing with supernatural in small town America, 80:20 comedy/drama + personal favorite)
Crimetown (On hiatus rn, but the one available season is an interesting look at Buddy Cianci, super corrupt mayor of Rhode Island w/mob ties)
Pod Save the World (US foreign policy hosted by Obama's National Security spokesdude)
Stuff You Should Know (Two hosts examining a wide range of topics)
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know (Conspiracy nuts, mysteries, etc!)
NoSleep (Creepypasta readings)
ID1OT with Chris Hardwick (Celebrity interviews)
Last Podcast On The Left (Comedians being extremely offensive about crimes, mysteries, etc)
Crime in Sports/Small Town Murder (Comedians being extremely fucking offensive about ridiculous crimes)
Casefile True Crime (HOSTED BY AN AUSTRALIAN his accent is so good ahhhhhh)
Critical Role (D&D played by professional professional voice actors, just started new season)
The Vanished (True crime on missing persons)
Sword and Scale (Probably the best produced true crime podcast, host prone to overstating things)
Thinking Sideways (Irreverent unsolved mysteries)
Astonishing Legends (Irreverent unsolved mysteries)
Undisclosed (Wrongful convictions)
Serial (Wrongful convictions done by investigative journalist Sarah Koening, finished now but really well done)
S-Town (Looking into a wrongful conviction, produced by the same team as Serial)
Black Tapes (Horror docudrama)

(i can go on <.<)

If you do try out Arm, keep in mind it's more like... an IC D&D MMO than a roleplaying MUSH. If you've played an RPI, that's what you're going to get - it is one. The RP is going to be pretty fast-paced and combat can pretty brutally lethal. If you end up in any kind of PVP, it becomes twitch reflexes. You can die in some very stupid ways as well.

I played it for about 12~ years off and on. I don't think it'll really appeal to most of the crowd here, but if you're okay with the above caveats and up for trying something new, it's worth a shot.

always dog actor???

I'm streaming Dead by Daylight regularly if anyone wants to drop in!

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

The argument has been new players are punished for mistakes and no they aren’t. If that’s the circular argument then yes it will continue to rage on, because the people that play now say it doesn’t happen.

Here's the actual issue though, this is one of the main arguments being repeated in the thread:

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

you might call someone the wrong title - generally they'll correct you. it might be mean, the way they do it, but they will correct you

@kanye-qwest said in Armageddon MUD:

ok but why though

Like, that does not sound welcoming. None of what you said sounds welcoming to someone new to the game, except that someone might deign to answer ooc questions on an ooc discord.

You're not going to reconcile those two opinions. I definitely don't think someone being mean about a minor OOC mistake IC is a huge deal in a game like Armageddon, it is deliberately a drab and shitty setting where you need to roll with stuff like that to play it and enjoy it. If someone knows they don't want to deal with that kind of thing, it's way better they're aware of it than try the game, have a shitty experience 2 weeks in and leave. Better to just let it lie, you know? Neither side is really wrong (edit: whether or not the example is exaggerated and assumes there's a really shitty player involved).

@thesuntsar said in Arx: @clues:

@oldfrightful I'm pretty sure becoming one/fighting one/obtaining an army of them would solve a lot of my problems.

This is the instrument of your destruction. Beware.

If you like League but haven't given Dota a shot, try to catch some of the International games August 20-25 (this year they're hosting it in China, so VOD might be easier). They can get pretty wild with how deep the game is, with the hero balance strong enough that there's usually only a handful of the 110~ not picked during the tournament. The competition is healthy, too; in nine years there hasn't been a single repeat champion, and not for lack of qualifying.

It's also looking like the prize pool will be $32+ million.