Posts made by Paris

@tinuviel I imagine that if you have a lot of automated systems and design a game around them, you're going to invest your time in what people are actually playing. Especially when this is unpaid volunteer work.

@three-eyed-crow Re: code, that wasn't necessarily true, H'kar coded most of the systems for my old game and then made that available to others (we were basically his test platform), so anything on MUX (especially in MUX's early days) had access to pretty much a full suite of pern-oriented code, channels, mail, etc etc etc.

@three-eyed-crow I think that it being an older property (where are all the amber games, etc), combined with Anne passing away and the books by her son being pretty bad, is part of it. WoD has been updated over the years, and nWoD gave it new popularity; iirc oWoD was starting to decline, too.

Pern could be kind of problematic re: LGBT issues, too, since Anne's concept initially was pretty forward-thinking for the time (a mostly gay airforce in 60s fiction?), but became pretty outdated over the decades (you don't become gay from bottoming, and you couldn't have a leadership role and be gay). I don't think that was the main reason but the grumbling about it increased over the years.

I really miss Pern games. I don't miss the politics and how weyrs could turn into little feifdoms, but there was a cyclical rhythm to threadfall games that always gave you something to do. A dragon needed healing, a fall needed fighting, weyrlings needed training, etc.

I don't think a letter to the MU* community would help with some of its more intractable problems: the people causing the issues know what they're doing and don't care that it bothers reasonable people. And the staff letting them get away with it ultimately don't care, either. There are low- or no-drama games out there, play on one of those or try your hand at running your own.

• I am a reverend, and I do minister to people on the street, sometimes simply by offering food and water and/or someone to talk to. I have found over the years that people in need will often approach me without any effort on my part, and have never been in danger despite folks often being considered 'sketchy'. Randos in general, however, also frequently approach or accost me, and sometimes grab me. It happened before I became a wheelchair user, and I don't look exceptionally unusual, so I can't really explain why it happens so often. I have never experienced the invisibility that people get as they age.

• I am intersex, courtesy of a hormonal disorder. I have always been infertile, and have at various times passed for male or female. Hormone disorders run in my family, and may have contributed to my late-stage cancer, from which I experienced a spontaneous remission after a chemo regimen that was designed just to make me more comfortable before I passed.

• I am a street artist, along with my SO. We make enough to live in a nice condo apartment in a gated community and to live independently as two quadriplegics, which is pretty unheard of for two quadriplegic artists; despite this, we are often thought to be homeless by cops and tourists because street = homeless in many people's minds, whereas locals know better. We are usually treated very well by locals. I am also a published creator, but being a street artist pays more-- and more consistently.

• I was homeless in my mid-teens to my early adulthood, however. This has given me serious impostor syndrome.

• I live in Las Vegas and very close to the Strip, so my daily commutes are often very odd, and my tolerance for weirdness is very high. I like it more than any city I've lived in, as I am often not the weirdest person in the room here. (However, see point #1.) Surreal shit happens every day here, I love it.

• I was homebound for 16 years or so, and completely bedbound for 6, before I relearned to walk again. This has resulted in a few quirks: I look about that much younger as I have no wrinkles or gray hair at all, due to getting no sunlight during that time. (Thanks, lupus!) I also had the interesting experience of missing the proliferation of mobile tech, so emerged into a society full of smartphones and covered in flatscreens. When I became homebound, most folks only had pagers, laptops and cellphones and TVs were unwieldy bricks, and most folks' experience with the internet was AOL. The music in restaurants, however, is still the same.

• I have been MUSHing since 1993. I don't claim any seniority or anything about anything, but I feel a kind of responsibility to help keep perspective in the hobby and help where I can if I can, which is part of why I'm still on MSB. Roleplaying is my favorite hobby, even though post-chemo I rarely have enough energy to devote to it as I'd like.

• I love gardening, even though it's physically taxing. I especially love tropical plants and fruits. My microclimate is subtropical even though my zone is technically high desert; the good thing is that I can grow bananas and birds of paradise, but the bad thing is that all the bulbs I planted are refusing to flower two years in a row. -.-

• I read about everything online. I find new things fascinating, but I also love history. I used to read more fantasy and sci-fi, but find it harder to find books as most bookstores are gone.

• I love korean bbq. Unlike a number of posters here, if I eat the same thing more than twice in a couple days, I develop allergic reactions (thanks, lupus!), so a monotonous diet is impossible. The exception to this is meat (but not fish or seafood)!

I think that by mid-1990s standards MU*s counted, especially MUDs, or places like Arx. There were games like Nettrek that were effectively MUDs, accessed over the internet, were entirely text-based, with economies, ship battles, etc, and IIRC they were called video-games.

I attended a conference in the early 1990s, as well, where people were trying to convert MUs into graphical games-- this was also a pivotal moment (IMO) in the creation of MMOs, which were not quite there yet but folks were trying to apply text-based roleplaying into a graphical medium, both with an arcing plot and personal mini-plots. There was a debate even then whether MUs were videogames.

The pushback from the MU* community was hard: they wanted it to remain text-based, with graphics supplied by our imaginations, as this was considered more immersive than the shitty polygons and awkward interfaces that had currently been sort of available. There was skepticism that you could convert MUers to a multi-gamer entirely graphical system: the beauty of language and creativity would be lost.

Fast-forward to today, and MMOs usually have one RP server where most folks use a mush-like post format to play. It reminds me of early pre-TF posing because of the lack of a larger TF-like and client-like buffer. People sometimes use mods like MRP in WoW to give themselves a description, background, +finger/wiki type deal.

So I'm not sure if by today's standards a MU* is a video-game anymore, but IMO it was by the standards going around back when we first started, especially, as mentioned earlier, heavily-automated formats.

@arkandel Yeah, I have several collection agencies on my ass about my emergency cancer surgery. Part of the cost was waived but I got hit with a susprise 10k fee. I am uninsurable in my state. There are a number of ambulance fees as well, at a few thousand each. My cancer fundraiser raised about 30k but was not able to cover those fees, too, as most of the costs went to covering my chemo.

So we get calls every single day about my medical debt, which means we screen all of our calls and only pick up on numbers we know: the latest thing now by collection agencies is to imitate in-state numbers to try to get you to pick up.

Oh, and emergency Medicaid used to cover my ER visits as an ongoing cancer patient, but since the change in presidential administrations, suddenly my case kept getting dropped and payments missed. Now I get to wear the 'indigent' armband and have the exact same conversation with the billing folks, and the main billing person in their office is so disgusted at how I've been treated (I have to go every few months) that they just wave me through or make sure I get discharged without having to do the outgoing rigamarole.

@apos This is actually false, a number of disabled folks play videogames through modified or special equipment, visual enhancements, etc. I am legally blind and play MMOs. I used to have a friend spot things for me when I played games like Katamari Damacy.

What I do is stack most of my information stuff on the left side of the screen, as I am fully blind on my right. I play with my head a few inches from the screen as I have no peripheral vision. I know a number of extremely visually impaired folks who play who use various mods, UI enhancements, or just positioning to play.

I also do the same when I MUSH: my window is on my left, and my font (I wish there were better fixed-width fonts for visually-impaired people) is big enough for me to easily read.

I would use e-readers but they read too slow. I learned to speed-read as a young child and my reading and writing 'voice' is extremely sped up. I also tend to create poses in a few fragments that I then refine, and having it be purely audio is a pain in my ass. I ALSO like to listen to music when I MUSH just to keep my energy up.

This reminds me, however, to go make some spawns to highlight my name, I get nervous in bigger scenes and worry that I will miss poses at me as large, fast-moving blocks of text are a pain even for me to plow through.

@aria Yeah, we are in a food desert and do all of our own shopping, so we bus/drive our wheelchairs out to the places in reasonable distance-- vons, albertsons (super basic), target, ranch market; and in the opposite direction on occasion, Whole Foods. I'd love to have better access to an Aldi's or a trader joe's or a sprouts or costco, but they're all in other parts of town/places where the sidewalks are not accessible or we'd have to do bus transfers. As it is we're gonna have to do Walmart way over yonder just to get my insulin. >< So we plan carefully to shop on our days off. I need to start looking up delivery, that might widen our options.

Also, I really hate being the guy who responds to suggestions with 'that doesn't work' or any variation of 'no'; it's just that Bot and I have a few fairly specific types of challenges that come along with being very disabled and without family support or an aide. OTOH when money gets a little better, we can simply buy some appliances to improve the situation, like a new toaster oven and crockpot + liners. We should thus be in a better spot in a couple months.

@aria

I've explored some of these options, yeah. The basic issue is that I am diabetic and Bot and I are both in our 40s, so we need to really watch what we eat; and we're both disabled and winter's the lean time of year money-wise, so I can buy one rotisserie chicken or a week's worth of meat at 99 ranch market. I buy fresh veggies but what I usually end up doing is one-pot meals, so it all gets cooked in the same time anyway.

This does mean no pre-prepared lasagnas or the usual default stuff. I do pick up potato au gratin or hamburger helper or instant-nuke rice and some kind of sauce, though.

What I need to get is some kind of crockpot as my old one went missing in our move. Just throwing meat + sauce + veggies in a pot and leaving it to cook overnight so we can have it for lunch and dinner would be super duper helpful.

I've also been making a point of stocking good bread, lunchmeat, and green leafies for sandwiches. A lot of our budget goes to whole foods (the actual food, not the chain) and so far that has paid off I think in that our heart health, cholesterol, etc, has been very good despite she and I being very sedentary because we're quadri- and paraplegic.

The diabetes is from the chemo, that's just now starting to improve after two years of high numbers that wouldn't budge; before the chemo I had it completely controlled with diet and the occasional shot of insulin. My weight is starting to drop as well, though, so the diet changes we've been making have helped. Trying to take shortcuts resulted in numbers in the 400 range, so instant potatoes/too much salt/prepared pasta/etc is just too much.

My suggestion to you is that when you have more time and energy to cook, look for a 99 ranch market in your area. Their produce and meat is usually much cheaper than buying from the usual chains, as they work directly with american farms. xD

Alas!

I do have to say that one of my most satisfying character arcs was on PernMUSH, over the course of about,,, 15 years? 17? Something like that. He went from a young man to a battle-scarred veteran in almost real time. I find it a shame that current games rarely ever last that long.

@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:

You can get a similar experience in MMOs with guilds, but MMOs are grindy and guilds are more hit-or-miss than MUSH communities.

I have an AMAZING guild right now, and they're all solid MUSH-quality fantastic roleplayers; I wish I could get them to MUSH, but they like the graphics even if there's a disconnect between the pose and the visual on-screen. They're also incredibly patient with my health woes and inactivity. I still hang out in the discord even when I'm not up to RP and sometimes do small scenes in Discord to stay current.

It's an offshoot of a guild I used to run and that split after I stepped down, so it's been in some form or another for about five years now.

I really wish the MMO and the MUSH community overlapped more, though I know some people feel otherwise. But it would bring so many new, enthusiastic roleplayers into our hobby, especially since MMOs are descended from MUSHes to begin with.

@cobaltasaurus This is a very low-effort attempt at assuaging one's own feelings, yeah.

A lot of us MUSHers are disabled or struggle to get out of the house in general; and it's also nice to be able to portray things without struggling with the outside appearance, either (which can be an issue in TT and LARP).

I was homebound (and then fully bedbound) for years because of a broken back and lupus, and RP (and then MMOs) saved me from losing it. Being able to set goals and achieve them, being able to interact with others, and getting to play someone who wasn't me and didn't deal with my real life problems and limits, was literally life-saving.

Initially, it was the ability to play a character in a world that I loved, while interacting with others who did the same, whilst writing. I had tabletopped for years but felt most creative when writing interactive offline stories with friends-- we'd literally pass the notebook back and forth, a lot like MUSH posing back and forth.

A high school friend of mine showed me MU*s after his family needed a house-sitter for two weeks and I had been kicked out by my family and needed a place to crash. He figured it'd keep me busy, since it was the very early 90s and all I'd do otherwise was watch tv.

I was immediately hooked. There's nothing as immersive as MUSHing, though some MMO RP has gotten very close, as it's very similar in format. Roleplaying was always my jam before I'd gotten onto the internet, but I, like previous posters, did not like the meat market aspect of 90s fandom. I was also more introverted at the time, and felt better able to articulate things through text.

Nowadays I'm much more extroverted, but I still prefer text-based RP to tabletops.

@sparks I used a surface pro 5 for over a year as my main computer and it handled everything pretty well, I MUSHed, colored several comic covers, and ran guild wars 2 on it with no problems.

If you can afford a windows-based tablet, I'd suggest that instead, since you can game on them, mush on them, and in many cases now, draw on them. Getting a clip-on or bluetooth keyboard is not very expensive.

@tinuviel This has been a consistent issue with dealing with services for the disabled, most of whose providers just assume that we're home all day and ready to receive anyone. 1) I'm the one who gets us up and we're both disabled so that's twice the morning work, and 2) we get our own groceries and sundries and everything else, and 3) we work. But trying to get wheelchair repair people or aides (until we started directly paying one out of pocket) to come at specified hours has been a recurring issue for years. I've always been surprised at how hostile folks in industries catering the disabled are to actual disabled people (with opinions), they really do try to infantilize you-- home nurses are often the worst about this. Becoming more self-sufficient has been a real pleasure.

Today's gripe is the rodeo that invades town for two weeks and books up every hotel room on (and off) the Strip. As street artists, we are heavily reliant on tips and on-the-spot commissions, and cowboys offer neither, whilst crowding out every other type of tourist, who can't book anything in the meantime. Instead, they stare at you like you're circus freaks, are condescending and insulting, and spend almost nothing while they're here. From waiters to bussers to valets to performers, basically anyone who relies on tips for their wage, WE ALL HATE THEM, and it makes the two weeks before xmas a real financial struggle. The religious judginess about how we're all sinners (who should get 'real' jobs) is just icing on the shitcake.

IE, instead of eating out at the usual spots, I have to cook, and since my kitchen is not accessible, I try to limit that to a couple nights a week instead of ALL WEEK. I risk a fall or a faint every time I stand up for too long (this is how I broke my back to begin with), as neither my legs, back or blood pressure are particularly strong, and as our only aidecare now I've already got enough to do.

We have tried pre-prepared meal services (kind of glorified MREs in a giant box that gets delivered to your home), which were available for free when we used to go through aidecare agencies, and that ended up as a wash because, to save expenses, they ALL use soy protein in everything as an extender for meat-- and just one small shot of soy protein triggers my ulcerative colitis. This boggles me, because they charge you about 8-10 bucks a meal if you pay out of pocket, and their ingredient list is shittier than a two-dollar Michelina's frozen dinner and the portion isn't much bigger.

IE, cowboys suck. The hotels make money on them and the rodeo venue makes money on them but everyone else struggles at the most expensive time of the year.

Editedit: the extra workload means that I have been too tired to RP in almost two weeks. :<