Posts made by Rook

It would be cool, if the game was approval-less, for a group of us to ninja the game and play. Get back to the roots of MU*ing, as it were.

Just collaboratively work with a group of people on a series of short stories, with the aim of publishing them within a singular world or setting.

If you just crumple everyone's RP into a cobbled-together "story", it will be as disjointed as reading logs on any game site. No continuity, mistakes in continuity, and clearly flawed perspective changes constantly. Not to mention that, even with the sign-off of everyone involved, the writer will come off as a plagiarist to the readers.

I believe that the global approach might mirror the Flag's behavior for the reasons outlined. Having one or two troubled players do this on their local character object should tell you if the approach is separate enough, and player-"involved" enough, to trick the connection into staying open.

I have had this work when KEEPALIVE wouldn't, myself. It is why I offer it.

Have your players do this:
&TR.ANTIIDLE me=@@; @wait 60=@trigger/quiet me/TR.ANTIIDLE

Then, in their @aconnect, or manually, do this:

@trigger me/TR.ANTIIDLE

Recently ran into this webpage (caution, slow to load) on The Laws of Online World Design, with a distinct lean toward MUDs (and thus MUSHes), and it is a very interesting read. Lots of advise delivered in one-liner, no-nonsense sort of format, designed to be thought-provoking instead of lecture. Ultimately, it is a collection of wisdom from various people, sources and experiences.

I found that most, if not all of these, can be useful information for a MU Owner or Staff, especially if just starting out. Several of the contributors are seasoned MUD developers.

https://www.raphkoster.com/games/laws-of-online-world-design/the-laws-of-online-world-design/

What if you DID cut out all social interaction skills? What if you just replaced it with another system instead of +roll?

Give players a pool of, I dunno... Influence and Resistance (marketing team working on a better pool name, TBD). From that pool of points, players can exert pressures of any social sort. Resistance is spent equally from the same pool, but here's the trick: Comparisons on spends are not revealed until both have decided, so it is a blind system.

Bob wants to intimidate the Detective, so after his amazing pose, he +spends 5 Influence points. This spend is NOT echoed to the room, just Bob. He has to give a reason and a 'target', Jane.

Jane the detective has a <Feat|Merit> that grants her +2 to resist any sort of Influence. But, reading Bob's pose, she realizes as a player what he is doing, and she decides to spend 5 points, because she knows that if Jane gets caught doing what he is demanding, she'll get prison time. So, with her +2, she has a 7.

The two players, having done their spends, get a reveal showing that Jane withstands the attempt. Now, Jane the detective proceeds to smirk at Bob and reach for her radio to call him in... <or whatever>.

This pool refills after a scene, every day, however works best.

EDIT: The key to the mechanic here is that the spend by Bob is silent. Jane only resists because her player cleverly reads the pose in question and realizes that he is likely doing some sort of Intimidation on her. If Jane's player missed that nuance, then she wouldn't resist... and only her +2 would apply and Bob catches her off-guard.

Of course, this would require a social contract on poses matching expenditures... but I think the community can sort that easily enough.

Someone pointed out that these little boosts were why Willpower expenditures were around in WoD, that pool slowly refilling over time. I think that is when we sort of abandoned the idea. There was also the idea of using Luck Points as roll boosters, and those only being refilled by giving back to the game, the story, something... not just XP votes (though we were allowing people to buy Luck Points with XP).

Interesting thought. It came up in a conversation once about balancing RP-vs-RollPlay by doing some sort of MMO cool-down mechanic on social skill rolls. It was intriguing, and if I recall, we couldn't think of a good way to balance things properly code-wise, but the idea was this:

1. Goal: Player with tendency to rollplay a lot needs to be curbed. Solution: Each use of a "social skill" kicked a timer, and outside of any sort of timestop/combatstop scene, is tracked. Every subsequent usage of that "social skill" incurred a penalty until the "cooldown timer" reached zero once more.

2. Goal: Players that only use rolls sparingly (with the assumption of 'correctly', whatever that meant) would instead build a buffer between long RP droughts of that usage. This is where we ran into logic issues on how to figure that out, mind you. But on first usage, that bonus would indeed be manifested as a +2 bonus (or equiv).

The whole idea was exciting to think through, and while certainly gameable (what mechanic isn't), it was impossible to come up with a way to code it that didn't just end up being fruitless in the end.

The idea was kind of cool, though. Bob never uses intimidate, even when given a chance or three to do so... instead saving it to that One Time when he really pulls it off to high character effect and story impact: browbeating the detective to let them go.

I am of mixed emotions on this. I've always sort of noticed when people cannot RP their Amazing Stats and Skills at all, instead relying entirely on dicerolls to do the brute forcing for them.

A character with a very high Dex + Firearms roleplaying out a scene with lame, ridiculously overacted and over-the-top poses of backflip shots and leap -dive shots at the local kid's shooting booth at the county fair... it's just as eye-rolling as someone with a high App + Seduction roleplaying the slinky, smoky-eyed nymph who wants to be all Jessica Rabbit/Marilyn Monroe while serving coffee in the college Starbucks.

I don't care if you rolled 10 successes. Your pose is ludicrous and scene-breaking.

Oh, wait, this was about other things, wasn't it.... damnit.

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

It is the singular one thing that I'm asked about when I list the systems that I've coded. Allowing people to auto-roll successes and create objects that can then be sold, given away, and +equipped as +sheet-altering modifications (think magical sword adding to-hit bonuses, magical armor doing it's expected adjustments).

Again, it isn't meant to supplant RP but to enhance it. RP the scene making the order, discussing and haggling... then make a roll and give the resulting object in exchange for the requisite coin, and keep on RPing.

That sort of idea ballooned into an economy system request/interest where non-combat characters could use non-combat skills to set up interests for their character that they utilize off-screen to generate income. Tailors tailored and gained income, miners mined and gained income - or simply gained minerals that they could sell into the planned economy. Players could have a mini game for a stock-market sort of economy, shipping minerals from port to port, buying finished goods and so on... all for the backstory of their profit, their fame, whatever.

The idea was that shipping lanes affected by war at sea would affect costs, could effect economy, and non-combat ways of taking out your enemies was "born". All just facets to a game. Optional, absolutely, but there if a select group of people wanted to play with it.

Well, for what it is worth, all of my coding notes for this MUD-like combat support system are entirely centered around, and limited to, enabling players to handle the mechanics of the monsters/baddies in a way that absolves them of choice-making or decision-making, so that any one of them can 'run' the scene with full transparency.

Nowhere in my code notes for this system is anything subverting anything that is remotely considered Roleplaying. It is just the combat code, the equipment/crafting/sale code, that sort of thing.

Drive the speed limit. It helps save on gas.
Use that nervous energy to clean tonight.
Tomorrow is the first day to the rest of your life.

I think that device was something designed to provide some sort of electrical therapy for ...hands? I seem to remember something like it, and the remote sort of makes me think of intensity levels.

I agree with @Caryatid here. It shouldn't be swept under a rug. And no, I don't care about ruination of characters, either. As I said before, you are responsible for your actions at all times. If that one time where you got accused and reprimanded by staff was truly a misunderstanding, then you not throwing a fit, stomping off the game, speaks positively of you. Maintain your innocence, take the incident as a warning, and move on. But if you never show up on that board again, people see and recognize that.

It's fair to say that someone, at the beginning, will be an example. It is fair to agree that somewhere along the line, an innocent person will be reprimanded publicly. However, those with integrity (IE: the players you want to keep) will stay, hold to their innocence and eventually prove themselves.

I am a firm believer that the truth always comes out eventually.

People RP something that they are not all the time, so the 'what' of whom they are playing is pretty cut-and-dried.

I think the better questions to ask here is this:

• Does your enjoyment of the game come from your character doing <X> to PCs?
• Do you get just as much characterization from doing those very same things to NPCs, or to PCs off-screen?

I personally think that, if you are going to set yourself aside and play a character, then you also have to set aside your own goals and motivations. That is the essence of what "setting yourself aside" means, to me. If you aren't doing that, you're just fooling yourself and playing a character you are really invested in emotionally and claiming that you're just playing a role. That's wrong, it's dangerous territory, and it smacks of psychological something-something.

Maybe some would call this playing an NPC, and to that, I disagree. A Non-Player Character is someone who is a filler, an extra on the set, a non-+Sheet individual generalized in the background of a story/scene. You can play a PC who is entirely intended to be a foil for heroes. I have done it many times, making a character entirely geared toward giving someone a villain to best and take out.

But, to whit, that is not specifically what I was considering as a change in direction for MUing. I was thinking more along the lines of changing the culture of MUSHes, changing the status quo of the /how/ things are done, and the /why/.

This has actually been a subject of a fair amount of thought, back when building a D&D-based game. The code involved in random encounter triggers, timestops, automated combat choicing and so on... it is a FAIR amount of work. I think it is doable, more simply, via player-DMable scenes.

Template the monsters, give the DM a transparent randomizer for actions for monsters to take, and let them trigger decision rolls, combat rolls/choices, etc... and it absolves them of being the DM from a decision-making standpoint. Thus, they can participate and have fun, without a huge ton of the paperwork.

There is a few steps a game can go TOWARD MUD-like operation without becoming what is commonly considered a MUD (despite the recent emergence of RP MUDs) which is mob-driven solo play without much other-player interaction. The game I envision would be group-oriented.

I think that people view the best interactions as fleeting. Rare is the opportunity for a true LT sort of friendship, let alone torrid/tumultuous relationship of any structure. Life just gets in the way or people get bored.

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.