Best posts made by Rook

In this vein of RP (long-term relationship) all of the OOC things come to bear, and more often than not, disrupt or eventually ruin the best laid plans of both people involved. Jobs interfere, schedules shift, and so forth. That's a large chunk (largest, easily) of why any LT RP I had going tapered out and ended.

The second largest reason would be storyline death, where you run out of things to say/do. A good portion of THAT is because you learned all each other's secrets, removing all mystery of the other... and let's face it, a huge draw to such RP is the mystery and discovery involved.

Rushing into revealing things is a sure-fire way to make sure that you reach that entropy point faster than you might otherwise. Draw it out, make it last like a nice batch of homemade fudge. Take little bites.

Early morning tea, amazing music, and a flood of creativity that Gets Things Done on your MU design, revitalizing your craving to Do It again.

@Arkandel
I just don't see the difference between typing things out and filling out a webform, when it comes to making a MUSH character, other than the UI. You still have to write up a description, you have to select all the nibbly bits of Stats, Attributes, Powers, Weapons, Merits, blah blah blah...

That is work.

An incoming player dabbling around might toy with it, but if they aren't immediately hooked by the potential of great depth, the storytelling, the new venue in playing a game... the UI isn't going to snag them in, in my opinion. I may be wrong, I often am.

Pile on top of that the two biggest fun-killers present on almost all MUSHes out there:

1. Waiting hours or days for CharGen approval, not to mention any back-and-forth YouNeedToFix,
2. Going IC and finding that no one is available or interested in RP because this new player has no idea what they are doing, where to go, how to find that RP.

You really think that a player sitting on a webpage is going to sit there and wait for hours and hours for this? I don't.

Once again I state: UI is not the barrier to entry, nor is the back-end protocol.

MUSH is just not a venue for the short attention span, those that are lazy or those that have a very low motivation to learn something new. I put my money on that statement. You all disagree, and that's fine, I'm just stating repeatedly that I don't think that UI changes, protocol changes, or whatever, will fundamentally change MUSHing past some sort of invisible tipping point of ease-of-use.

Please retain all aspects of the system that would allow me to force NPCs into TS. kthnxbai!

@dontpanda said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I terminated someone with cause today. That sucks, even if I've done it a dozen times before.

I hated doing it, but it had to be done.

If you terminated this person a dozen times before, then it sounds like that's your fault. SHEESH.

<jk>

@meg
Believe me when I say this, because I do mean this with the utmost of curious sincerity:

I want to see it.

Start a thread, post images or give links. I want to see what you envision here, as it will likely greatly shift my perspective in this conversation! I am entirely open to that, and would be happy to alter my own thinking and vision.

RE: Descs
I commonly write a desc about details, not clothing. Height, weight, general build, characteristics of hair, face, any distinguishing marks... that sort of thing. I will touch on basic clothing, to give a general idea of what type of clothing that the character wears, but otherwise I pose my clothing in the scene set if I think that it is important.

Most people that I see nowadays just skim descs, searching for the details. You can tell this because if suddenly your clothing is important to bring up in the scene, ICly, they will 'look' at you quickly to see what you're wearing.

@auspice I think your interviewer was multi-mushing, if the interview scene got so slow and distracted. You should have said something OOC and bailed. Rewarding that sort of distracted play is a waste of your time. You should raise a complaint to the staff of the place. Do they have a +gripe command?

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@Rook One day, I will. But that day will be when I am much further along to where it isn't really fucking shitty when I start that thread and get a bunch of people not suggesting improvements or possibilities, but just 'this is a horrible idea; it will never work for MU*s and you are horrible for wanting a web-based UI'.

You know, I liken this thread to someone walking into a developer meeting and sitting down, raising their hand when the team lead says "We need innovation. What are everyone's thoughts on how we can spice things up, punch it up a little?"

There's going to be some pushback from those of us who don't immediately glom onto your vision. Someone's going to hand you a marker and say "Whiteboard this for me, I don't understand."

If you want to find allies in bringing an idea to life, you're going to have to endure that. It's no different than someone going into the Announcement forum and starting a thread where they say something as ground-breaking as: "I'm starting a MUSH where everyone gets Wizard bits, there are paid, professional Storytellers and it'll be free for the first 100 players to get through CharGen."

People are going to clamor with questions, nay-saying and demands to discuss how you plan to do all this without fundamentally changing How Things Work on the game. It's a fair and valid conversation to have when you're designing something new.

Conversation is needed to sow the seeds of any new idea, especially here. Someone has stepped up in front of the Shark Tank and proposes a New Way to MUSH. We? We are the Sharks. You are the one with the idea, and if you want buy-in, you have to convince at least a few of us that your (not @Meg specifically) idea has merit from a feasibility and viability standpoint. I think we have the opportunity/audience standpoints well laid out, at this point.

EDIT: Also? LOE vs ROI is a real thing.

RE: Systems being too complex or too bland.

Pick one. Either you want the system to do the work for you via coded decisions being made on outcomes, or you trust each other to story-tell in a fair and exciting manner.

It's like the adage for many things: "Fast, Cheap or Good - Pick any two."

Sciatic pain can die in a fire.

I am going to post here that I am nearing a point where some light alpha testing of the game will be starting soon, and some people have asked to be updated when I got to this point. So, before I get deluged with WTF posts, I'm going to be very straightforward about a few things.

Umbral Shards is:

• Original Theme, Original RPG System. It won't be perfect. It will have flaws. I expect that iteration and fixes in the RPG rule stuff will be required as we find issues and problems. The RPG system is built to be fast and super-flexible for character-building and NOT to be rules-heavy. If you are looking for minute crunchy-bit details, this is not the system for you.
• A cooperative style of roleplay.
• Intended to be very different. It does not follow 'standard convention'. In fact, I openly state in several threads on this board that I have gone out of my way to turn many conventions on their ear, or have simply discarded conventional thinking.
• Intended to be a small, table-top style MUSH. I very highly doubt that this will ever be a 'large game'. It is not meant to appeal to the masses. The approach would simply break down.
• Intended to be gritty and very horror-based in the styles of modern-day occult, with Lovecraftian and Gigerian influence, etc.
• Very R-rated for violence, danger, occult themes and obviously adult language and situations. It is written to be dangerous and deadly, where characters will die, and likely in gory and horrible ways.

Umbral Shards is not:

• World of Darkness. We don't have vampires, werewolves or any of their ilk. Characters are normal people who have occult-based supernatural powers. Think "The Magicians", "Constantine", and their like.
• Not a high-powered game. Characters will never reach "superhero" levels of powers. The RPG system is designed with a logarithmic progression, each "level" of things on your sheet doubling in cost to get to the next level. Specialization will cost you.
• Designed to be PvP in any way. It is a table-top, cooperative, PvE style of game.
• Not designed for "bar RP" style of play, nor will passive player types thrive or enjoy the place. If you are not a proactive RPer who can generate activity with a handful of others, then this is not the place for you. You won't earn XP and you won't be catered to.

In addition, I am only going to be playing/running things during the daytimes, weekdays. It's my MUSHing playtime window. I won't be on in the evenings or most weekends, except on rare exceptions. So, until some other Storytellers get up to speed and we're all on the same goals/style page, it'll just be me.

I'm not going to try and sell the game to people. I expect that it MIGHT appeal to 5% of the MUSH community types out there, if that. As stated, this isn't a game made to be a popular type of game. I cannot stress that enough. If it works out, awesome. If not, it was a fun building and theoretical project.

With all that said, if you're still reading and in any way interested in poking around, I'd welcome constructive feedback and criticism. My writing sucks, but a first pass was needed in order to get anywhere. Policy files, Info files, even RPG elements could use a constructive, critical set of eyes (or five) on them.

STATUS: CharGen is 40% done, the Grid(s) are, at best, 20% done. There is still a lot of work ahead of me, but I am anticipating and looking forward to plenty of coding time over the holidays.

@Paris said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

@Rook A lot of F&L's mushers are completely new to MUX, though many of them are MUDders. We try to help folks get over the learning curve, and have been really happy with what they bring to the game-- several have gone on to staff and it's been great.

But then again, @Paris, you've demonstrated in a few ways that your game is not like other games. So I haven't, myself, lumped you into that same-ole-same-ole pile.

@HelloProject
MUSH and MUX were both written by coders, it is true. C/C++ coders who wanted to create games, and make them better. I daresay, gasp that so did TinyMUD, AberMUD, Diku and all the other flavors. Writers didn't sit down and suddenly come up with a game.

A huge portion of the MUSH and MUX help files are code commands. That is why +HELP exists, traditionally, on these games. Most players barely read the help for @mail, ANSI and Channels. Past that, they are baffled by the help files.

Any conversation around here will tell you that coders are rare, when compared to number of Game Owners, Storytellers, Sphere Wizzen, and the like (simplified: non-coders). In a lot of cases, coders are told by Game Owners what they want, how they want it, and that is what coders are expected to deliver.

When it comes to my code, I simplify as much as possible, not just the commands and help files, but the code itself so that bug-hunting can be done relatively easily by a new coder. My code files are heavily commented with logic explanations, function call help and so on, so if I get hit by a bus, someone else can take up the mantle and not feel stranded on an island.

I thought you couldn't play WoD without bars and coffee shops? That setting clearly wouldn't work.

@thebird spams the +1 button

Explain something to me, please, because I'm one of the slower people around here. You propose the OR to be a site to be:

"dedicated to text-based RPGs, not just MUDs, or MOOs, or MUXs, or any of the various sub-genres that we’ve divided ourselves into over the years."

Yet, your words and discussions here have made it sound like you foresee very few MUSH/MUX games actually qualifying as such.

"Our community is for any text-based game that is focused primarily on role-play, has coded support for player activities, and includes permanent character death."

These are your requirements, as pulled directly from the OR site, not discussions here. You write these words as guidelines for inclusion, then you seem to be tightening the limits on the processing part of the application end of things.

So, really, you say one thing, but end up doing another. That, sir, is pretense, and this is (ironically) the historically WRONG place to out yourself as someone of that nature.

But more importantly, you yourself are excluding a large demographic of games that you purport to wish to include. That is self-defeating. Further, it seems that you are doing this out of sheer ignorance, since you are continuing to learn what MUSHes are, given your other thread and your own comments within.

I recommend that, given the feedback that these MUSHers seem to be giving you in resounding shovelfuls, is that you re-evaluate your criteria for listing if you truly want to service the Roleplay-centric community of text-based games. By and large, and correct me anyone if you feel that this statement is off-base, MUSHes tend to be far more roleplay-centric than roleplay-intensive games. We have described to you why we feel that way. We are so roleplay-centric that we do NOT code automation, and leave arbitration to player interaction. If you feel that coded automation is required for listing on your site, then I recommend you reword your article on the purpose of the OR site to state something along the lines.

Doesn't matter @HelloProject why the coder is coding, just that they are coding. The audience doesn't change - you're always coding for the users of your code, not yourself. That's the point.

You can code up the coolest cockamamie thing that no one uses, and guess what, zero people still use it no matter what the command interface is.

Functionality will win over people, who will deal with complexity when they understand that the complexity is needed.

I know that you think that this is shocking (if you are not being sarcastic or facetious), but it is much more common than you might understand. It happens a lot of WoD/CoD games that I've tried joining. Make a new character and make some page-contacts, looking for people who might want fresh RP in their circles, and almost every time I get asked who I am.

I can somewhat understand fear of inter-Sphere spies, but god damn. When I state that I am new here and just looking for RP? I'm not giving up personal/identifiable information to sate someone's fears. Sorry, I'm not who you suspect I am, but thanks anyway, I'll look elsewhere.

Back to Arkandel's shock, however, it no longer shocks me to get this sentiment from MUSHers. It just doesn't. It may be inflammatory, but I think that many long-entrenched players on a game absolutely feel threatened by others. This is a game, people. It isn't your job, your livelihood, or your RL relationship. And right now? All those "But Rook"s on the tip of tongues out there just, to me, prove my point that Ghost is right.

If the OOC Game means that much to you, you are part of the problem.

@Roz said:

I know how to fix anxiety issues! Just stop being so anxious!

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! We have spent BILLIONS on this research, and HERE YOU ARE....

To the hapless would-be player that goes to BoD: Read this thread carefully and understand what you are getting into.

This discussion is for you. It is a warning of what sorts of people the owners of this game are, how they treat their players, and how they expect to be rulers of their little fiefdom in kind. In this thread alone, Balerion has been called out for his behavior both now and before, as has his wife and co-owner. He has been called out for lying to you in this very thread.

Do not reward this unethical, self-centered style of staffing from your games. Demand higher ethics. Reward those that try their damnedest to deliver it, despite their shortcomings. Most games at least TRY to do the right thing.