Best posts made by Roz

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@glitch said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice Yes, your anecdotal evidence is the correct basis for all the factual statements you've made in your posts so far in this thread. The sheer disrespect and dismissiveness of those not in this hobby, but perhaps interested, matched to the misplaced sense of writing superiority, is infuriating. I'm obviously of the belief that telnet is no longer where I'd like to see the hobby go, but when you adamantly state it's not for you, I can't say I'll be sorry if that turns out to be true.

Someone more even-tempered at the moment might suggest that they hope you're so impressed by new developments that you change your mind, but I think your attitude toward new people will only ever be detrimental. And I'd rather take my chances with them.

This is the most politely worded "Fuck off" I've ever received. Thank you for your time and effort

I support Faraday's efforts on Ares and the web portal. We've had arguments on it, yes. And some things still frustrate me. Even with the web cg. I wish that was all on one page or didn't require reloading between tabs, but it's getting there (I know it's still in development, after all).

But a lot of her work is actively in support of RP and not just for the shiny. That's what I'm trying to say. I don't want change just for the sake of change. I want to see things developed that encourage and enable rp.

I hate logging. I always have. I do not log. I do not edit logs. I do not post them. You have to really pressure me. Except with her scene system. I love it. I sing its praises. And that love goes beyond the logging. I hate big grids. I think people need more freedom to pick where they rp. More flexibility. I get lost on grids and when there's only a few rp rooms, all full... It's like fuck, now what? I'll lose my desire to rp before I ever get oriented. Her system gets rid of that issue.

She's made solutions within the framework that has encouraged more role play. The thing we're here for. I support this.

Honestly, my impression is that you believe Faraday is doing work to help encourage RP because you've experienced her stuff after the fact, but you're characterizing other discussion about new platforms as "just for the shiny." And I don't know why. I feel like the people who are trying to discuss how a new system could look have been doing so from the stated perspective of "how can we make MU* RP more user-friendly and intuitive," which I would say are goals to help encourage RP. To have you repeatedly characterize things as us just chasing shiny or doing new for the sake of new is the reason why I've been so frustrated -- and, frankly, insulted. Because you've been insulting. (I mean, saying that new efforts want to exclude people with disability? That just wasn't necessary.)

It's one thing to bring up "Here are issues that I worry would get left behind in new development," it's another thing -- well, say it how you said it.

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

You're right, but if we're honestly talking about something to replace telnet, I think that our 'core' needs to be broader than 'every game uses this'. It needs to have a full enough list of features that people go 'that looks better', and that's going to include, IMO, logging and conflict resolution.

Point of order... I am confused by the constant usage of the word 'telnet' in this conversation. Telnet is a protocol, like HTTP or SMTP or SSH. This misunderstanding has clogged a lot of this conversation from a technical perspective.

I think the better term to be using here would be 'server codebase', which is the application like PennMUSH or RhostMUSH or TinyMUX or AresMUSH that people are logging into. That is what provides the features that you are discussing.

Not picking on anyone, but please. Unless you are speaking to the specific carrier protocol that people use to log into the server, don't use the word 'telnet'.

When I've been using it, I have indeed been speaking about the specific carrier protocol, which is one of the things limiting development.

@Arkandel said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Ganymede said in MU and Alternate Channels:

This isn't an issue of proof. You have to presume that it is true because the issue is: should staff take action if a player is telling truths to affect another player's RP.

But that's reframing the issue because my - primary - concern with it is the lying part; of course I want to know if a guy is Rex. I wanted to know Max was Custodius when I was told.

Circumstances do matters, but up to a point. For example if I'm stalking you, and you go to a new game hoping to keep a low profile but @Meg outs you to me then it's a nasty thing to do, but I wouldn't say it's an actionable one - unless she's staff, and she abused her position to do it.

Man, idk. If someone literally knows that Player A is stalking Player B and purposefully provides them information to help them do so? With full knowledge of what's going on? That'd be actionable for me, probably, depending on the circumstances. Because stalking is gross and shitty and people who help others stalk are also being gross and shitty and I wouldn't want that on my game.

@thatonedude said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Also I changed the color of text in between quotes.

That's a huge one for me! This works for a regex highlight on Atlantis:

(["])(?:(?=(\\?))\2.)*?\1

And if it's a game that supports Unicode where people might accidentally smart quotes, I also add this one:

“(\s*?.*?)*?”

If it's a game with tabletalk/whisper, I have a highlight to try and catch the starts of those poses. For Arx, mine looks like this:

(^At the [\w\s']*,|^Discreetly,|^You posed to [\w]*:|^\(Also sent to [\w]*.\) Discreetly,)

I staffed and helped create focused, single-faction games with overarching and eventually seasonal metaplot from about 2009-2016. (X-Men Movieverse MOO had turned single-faction by the time I came back and started staffing, then Mass Effect: Alpha & Omega, then Transformers: Lost & Found, then X-Factor. The fact that there are two X-Men theme-based games in there is definitely an indicator of my support of mutants being awesome and fun for games.) It is a successful model for game creation. You start with the question of "why are the PCs interacting" and you build from there. The people I've created games with have always started asking questions early about how to focus theme, setting, and the grid itself so as to build in and maximize reasonable overlap of PCs. Thinking about ease of entry, ease of finding RP, ease of not having to try too hard to have reason to interact with other PCs, etc., are all questions to keep in mind very early in the game build process. Not to come in later when you've come up with most of your theme ideas. Use those question to help build your theme.

@dreampipe said in Dreampipe's Playlist:

I heard cool people hang out here.

Good lord, who told you that?!

Sounds like a legal nightmare tbh

@Sunny That makes me so happy just because I'm like SO SICK of horrifying articles about women who live with emergent conditions for days or chronic conditions for years and have permanent and preventable damage because doctors wouldn't listen to them. That is: I'm sick that the articles still need to be written. It's good that they are being written so long as this remains a problem.

That got a little RL Anger there, but the point is GOOD ON YOUR GP. FOUR FOR YOU, GLEN COCO.

@Arkandel said in How much plot do people want?:

@Sparks said in How much plot do people want?:

Focusing on a specific goal is always great for character motivation, but it's particularly useful on games with multiple plots running like Arx.

I mean to each their own, but I avoid playing characters that focused on that one thing, not because I find it's limiting to my roleplay but because it doesn't lend itself to three-dimensional characters. If I had PC obsessive to that degree I would need to go in fully aware I'm actually playing someone who has issues, and although that can be rewarding on its own, it isn't something I would choose to do as a general principle.

I think there's a difference between having a very clear focus and having a PC obsessed with one thing and one thing only.

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

GoT Season 7 Finale SPOIIIILERS.

... Still here?

Did anyone else get annoyed at the kangaroo court they had for Littlefinger in there?

Um, no, it was the most satisfying part of the whole episode.

Sansa and Bran were both witnesses to his crimes. When the noble family in charge witnessed your crime, it's not that strange for them to move swiftly to execution in a feudal society.

There's no innocent until proven guilty here!!

@tnp Jesus Christ, this. Like, bisexuality is a thing that exists and it's a thing that plenty of people IRL discover and explore later in their life, it doesn't have to be an invalidation of previous canon relationships they had.

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

@Cupcake said in RL Anger:

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

@Cupcake said in RL Anger:

So someone - a woman - on my Facebook posted this video of a woman being held down in a chair by a handful of men while they rubbed her lips with lime and then force-fed her a shot of tequila. According to my friend this "how the family plays" and that it was because she'd agreed to do the shot but then backed out.

She could not understand why I had such a horrified and angry reaction to the video.

...was it expensive tequila?

I'm glad you can find the humor in women being physically assaulted! There's not enough of that kind of humor these days.

Right, because I was clearly joking about the abuse as being something hilarious.

Don't start with the high horse thing.

I don't think that you think abuse is actually funny, but you did opt for a joking response to a post about an abusive event. It's not that weird for people to be put off by that.

@arkandel said in Staff and ethics:

• 'Professional' behavior; this can include language, tone, spelling, etc. Is it better for staff to be aloof or to be chat with their players?

I actually find your expansion on this a little odd. When I think of staff professionalism, I don't equate that with whether or not staff chats with their players. For me, professionalism when it comes to MU* staffing is about a certain level of civility in terms of tone and communication. If a player calls you an asshole, you can firmly shut down the conversation, but you don't get to sling curse words back at them. This is not about "the customer is always right." It's about "we don't drop to an abusive or rude level of discourse with problem players, even if we're disciplining them." (And even if they may honestly end up deserving to be called an asshole.)

For me, this has little to do with how chatty you are on public channels or whatnot. Be chatty away! I'd rather be friendly and approachable than aloof.

• Communication, following up on promises. How much transparency is a good thing? In discipline cases how much should be revealed about what happened (or the reasons nothing did)?

More communication is better. IME players are much more comfortable being patient if you just respond to let them know that you're working on something. I think this is especially important in situations where a player has submitted a complaint about another player's behavior. Serious complaints take time to properly deal with, but if someone submits something awful like "this player is harassing/stalking me," please please please respond promptly just to say "we're taking this seriously and moving on this."

• Playing their own game; staff not playing alts or revealing their names, or not permitting those PCs to attain important positions.

I think the idea that staff can't play on their own games is dumb. I do understand that it's probably best on games with competitive spheres that maybe they should staff and play in different spheres, but my WoD experience is very limited.

• Protecting 'appearances' by not ruling on issues close to them (friends are involved, etc); what happens in small games, or if the staff is small and everyone is involved with everyone else? What are the limits?

I've staffed mostly on small games, and it would've been impossible for me to recuse myself from anything involving someone I considered a friend. I've had official "your tone is getting out of hand" staff conversations with friends -- who were also on staff. We had to staff for each other, because there wasn't really another option.

There were situations people did recuse themselves. Like a staffer recused from handling the app from her RL brother, or people would recuse from apps that were coming in with a strong connection to one of their PCs or if maybe there was a situation where they were directly involved in whatever events were going on.

To a certain extent when you have a small game and a small staff, you just have to try to do your best.

@dontpanda Usually I'm all aboard the METRIC TRAIN as far as thinking the US should convert, but honest to god, Fahrenheit is one that I cling to a bit. Because its standard is what feels hot to a HUMAN. 0 is REALLY COLD and 100 is REALLY HOT and that's the scale. WHO CARES ABOUT WHEN WATER FREEZES OR BOILS WHEN I'M TALKING ABOUT WHETHER I NEED A JACKET. FU WATER.

@arkandel said in The trappings of posing:

• General spelling and basic grammar

Have a good, solid grasp. I will generally prefer people with a better than solid grasp, but I'll happily play with people who flub a little bit. Once it starts getting difficult to read, I'll tend to steer clear of the player.

• Pose length and detail

One paragraph. I think that one-liners have a very important place, but a lot of my favorite scenes end up more like 3-5 sentence poses. I generally only do multi-paragraph poses for things like big scene sets or maybe a big speech or something.

• Tempo - posing regularly at whatever time interval you prefer

I'll get antsy at 10 minutes. I really like 4-6 minutes. If someone is a poser who regularly takes 15 minutes, I generally will just direct myself elsewhere. It's not my bag.

• Personal peeves (wiki codes, %t tabs, whatever they might be)

UGH TABS. I hate them. I don't mind wiki code like * * or / / or whatever. I'm already using / / to emphasize stuff. Or _ _ is fine. The only thing in the world I prefer about Wikidot is some of their formatting code just because it works a lot better in actual posing. When I've played games that use Wikidot, I'll just double up my usual / to // and it'll italicize it in the log, which is nice.

If a game has an +autospace option, which a huge amount do, please do not add extra line breaks at the start of your poses!!!! DON'T FORCE ME TO HAVE AUTOSPACE IF I DON'T WANT IT. JUST USE THE CODE OPTION.

• Pose ordering such as not using (or using) three-pose rule over round-robin, etc

I'll auto-3pr at like 4-5 characters. 3 or less I'll generally do strict pose order. I don't mind people breaking it for special occasions, but I would mind if two players kept posing between themselves in a three-person scene.

And anything else I forgot, of course.

DO. NOT. THOUGHTPOSE. AT ME. Please don't explain motivations. I will use metaposing to 1) make dumb jokes about my own characters being dumb, or 2) give some explanation of body language stuff so that people can react.

@Ganymede said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

That's when they learn to go to the farmer's market by themselves.

I get groceries on my own. I do errands on my own. I go to work on my own. And when the partner is in bed, and the kids are sleeping, I MU* on my own.

People need to learn to do shit on their own. Doing shit together is fun and all, but I hate people who can't do shit on their own.

+11111111111111111111. Last night I was hanging with friends for a birthday celebration, and today I'm on my own, running around getting coffee, grabbing some awesome tacos, and then catching a movie. IT'S OKAY TO DO THINGS BY YOURSELF.

In one of the many (many) threads on MSB about social systems/combat over the years, someone had what I felt was a really great analogy in regards to combat systems vs social systems and the amount of consent overall. (Was it @surreality?) I can't remember all the specifics, but -- it's not really equivalent to "someone posed their gun the wrong way" for the instances people have issue with. It's more like "someone swatted my character with a stick and expected them to die." And that's really what people object to. If you point a gun at someone's chest and fire it, even if you're posing something wrong about the gun or how the character is holding it or WHATEVER, we can all still understand that a bullet to the chest means serious injury. To me, that's more like -- someone had the right idea in how to approach a persuasion, but had some small details off. But issues come up when one player decides what their social weapon is without any real thought or consideration for how incorrect a weapon it is for dealing with the other character.

I mean. Do people realize that the Millennial generation's upper age limit is now almost 40?

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@thenomain said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

make every part of the system important

So then you want Pastry Making to be important?

That's actually a semi-serious question. The point of asking is to illustrate that you simply can't make everything important, nor do I think should you. If I want to make a character who isn't particularly good at combat I should be able to. In fact, that's the whole reason some people argue for social combat. My character should not be badly disadvantaged by the fact I didn't chose to spend points on Pastry Making. If I want to make a character who is good at combat I shouldn't be completely ineffective because I didn't take social skills. I shouldn't be any good at social activities, certainly, but I shouldn't be in the situation of 'this character is worthless' because I am not good at social.

I think you're misunderstanding what "make every part of the system important" means. It means that if you have standard stats/skills that everyone is taking points in, there should be places for all of those skills to be important in the game. If you have social skills, there should be places in the game to use them mechanically. Don't make standard skills and let people put XP into them and then refuse to let them ever be useful in a situation. This comes up a lot in discussions of social combat/systems, because it's fair to say that a game shouldn't make social skills part of the overall package of what you can buy into if you can't actually use those skills mechanically in the game. (Of course, things like Background Skills in FS3 are freeform/user-generated, so there shouldn't be a guarantee of their mechanical importance. They're often about PC color. But, in FS3 terms, the Action Skills the GMs choose to include in their game should all be skills that are going to be used in the course of the game.)

Maybe a better way to think of it is "every part of the system should have places to be used/effective."

@derp A few things, really. It's bad because it actually supposes an innate monstrosity in people that is independent of society and upbringing. It assumes a generally stark view of sexual assault as it appears most often in our cultural imagination: a villainous stranger in a dark alley. Far more often, it's someone known to the victim. Sexual assault is about power and, very often, about misogyny. Misogyny is not an inherent aspect of any person. It is taught. Yes, there may always be rape, like there will always be other forms of assault, manslaughter, murder, etc. But it is undeniable that this particular crime thrives in a society that teaches us not to respect the bodily autonomy of women, and then blame the same women when they're assaulted. I think there's a significant failing in how we teach people about consent, and it begins at a young age, telling a girl that a boy is just pushing them because they like them. I for one believe that our culture can take steps to improve this.

Additionally, "don't get raped" really means "make sure he rapes someone else." And it then fuels further guilt to victims with the whispers -- or, let's face it, shouts -- that they should have just done something differently. "Don't get raped" places the responsibility on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Yeah, it really just is a matter of boundaries. The real difference between players who tend to find themselves caught up in a shitty game relationship versus those who don't are boundaries. People who have good boundaries will do what @Ganymede says: tell people early or immediately to stop doing a thing that's inappropriate or uncomfortable and, if they don't stop, excise them from your RP fun and, where appropriate, report to staff.

I know this isn't easy for everyone, but it really does come down to being the only answer. No one else can create and enforce reasonable boundaries for you; you have to do it yourself. Players with good boundaries don't just have the magical luck to never come across crappy players; it's just that they don't generally end up entwined with them.