Posts made by Roz

@surreality I'm not sure what you mean? The stuff I was describing was all done in MW. It just doesn't come in Evennia's website package.

@Sparks said in Web-based MU poll:

@faraday said in Web-based MU poll:

@Miss-Demeanor said in Web-based MU poll:

@faraday I wouldn't say they're content with the wiki... given that they felt it necessary to make their own wiki, since the one provided didn't meet the needs of the players.

Oh did they? I didn't know that. (I don't play there, just chat with folks who do.) Curious what needs it didn't meet.

Inability to add pages as players, mostly.

Arx has the Evennia webserver set up to show dynamically generated character profile pages, organization pages, to automatically log public events (and also store logs of private events you can view if you were invited to or attended that event), and so on. You can view a lot of the help topics and other theme right there on the website as well.

However, other than the journals, there's really no way for players to edit content there. Want to write a guide on "How to use the +task system?" Can't do that. Want to make a reference page for public knowledge on a given historical event (like the Tragedy at Sanctum, or the Battle of the Night's Grove)? Nope. Want to write up random additional player content like, for instance, "A Comparative Summary of the Types of Cheese Found in the Lyceum"? Also nope.

That's where a wiki comes in handy: you have much more freedom for guides and other pages beyond what just the staff want to write.

As one of the folks who made the player wiki, this is generally correct. We wanted to be able to host player-written guides for systems and whatnot. But also, I wanted to take advantage of Semantic MediaWiki to build out dynamic data relationships between different items. I know these relationships exist within the Arx code, but the website isn't set up everywhere to sort of easily traverse between them. Like: if you're on the org page for a noble house, there's no easy clicking through to their liege lord or their vassals on the Arx website. We set up stuff like that on the player wiki.

The other big thing that at the time wasn't available that we did is set up public journals in a way that could be easily searched. This is, thankfully, redundant now, as Arx added this to their website officially and it's great. But before, there was no way to just -- go look at one character's journals, or look at journals about a specific character, etc.

And another benefit was just, uh. Searching capability in general. Which the Evennia website build doesn't have, and Arx hasn't tried to add itself yet. (My understanding is that it's a lot more intensive than anyone would like to think.)

@Sonder She actually never came after Steel & Stone, though we always expected her to.

Anne McCaffrey was infamously involved in setting rules for what Pern RPs could or could not do back in the day.

Bill Paxton at only 61. What the hell.

Well, for the record, @Meg just started a player-driven cleanup of helpfiles with @Apos's blessing. So we're definitely in the midst of trying to help address this issue from the playerbase.

@Tempest said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I just have a hard time remaining interested for long if you can't /at least/ give me 2 paragraphs every pose. Because, tbh, you're probably not giving me a lot to work with. And honestly, that might be more a flaw with me. Or it's just different tastes.

I mean, that is a hugely variable measure. Two paragraphs can mean something very different across players. I tend to do one paragraph poses, but they can be bigger paragraphs than some folks who regularly pose multiple paragraphs. So. YMMV. I would object to the idea that I don't give people stuff to work with in 4-6 sentences, though.

@Tempest I'm sorry. If it makes you feel any better, your grammatically incorrect version is one of my pet peeves.

But yes, the rule is that if you're using a comma to introduce or close dialogue, your verb has to be something that can actually speak the words. Says, yells, exclaims, murmurs, mumbles, etc. Otherwise, it should be a period.

@Tempest

@Tempest said in Roleplaying writing styles:

She smiles, "Hey Jane." She looks around, "Where is everyone?"

That isn't grammatically correct. You can't actually just make those into one sentence because you can't smile words. Or look around words. Your pet peeve version (the first one, where it's four sentences) is the one that's actually correct.

@Tempest said in Roleplaying writing styles:

Random pet peeve. People who don't seem to understand that you can combine an action and dialogue into 1 sentence with a comma.

She smiles. "Hey Jane." She looks around. "Where is everyone?"

She smiles, "Hey Jane." She looks around, "Where is everyone?"

Something about that genuinely bugs me and will make me think less of you.

Um that's not grammatically correct though.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Tehom I would posit that if people are struggling with current systems due to poor documentation, then clarification of current systems to ease use WOULD be more important than implementation of new systems that will suffer the same problems as the current systems. Ensuring that your players know how to easily navigate systems and files is probably one of the bigger things that should be prioritized (and often isn't).

I have to agree here. Commands and systems shouldn't actually be considered finished -- or ready to launch -- without good documentation. It should be considered one complete package, not an addition.

That said, we're now crowdsourcing writing up clearer documentation, so.

@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

(I hesitate to call it a wiki)

It's not a wiki at all, so you shouldn't worry about hesitating.

@faraday said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

With Penn/Tiny you can't get away from @desc versus +desc, or WHO vs +who or help vs +help. It's just a legacy suckage you have to deal with. But why is Arx saddled with the same problem? I thought you could just override commands in Evennia like you can in Ares.

Most of the commands on Arx have @/+/no prefix all aliased, but it seems to be something that has to be aliased manually, and some of the commands are missing one of the prefixes. The fact that there's a time/@time difference and a home/+home difference is really weird and I'd say probably not a great idea as far as consistency goes. Everyone is kind of taught that everything is aliased prefix-wise but then there are these two random examples that are actively different commands.

I haven't actually figured out the particular rhyme or reason for which commands get added as @ to start or + to start or -- what.

@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I think this is partly on Evennia, not just the Arx staff. (Sorry, Griatch.)

Specifically, Evennia generates a lot of the documentation automatically for each command; in a lot of ways, this is great; you include the documentation in the command source code, and a helpfile is made for it. No worries about documentation being out-of-date; you edit the command, you edit the description RIGHT THERE. I wish more things supported this.

But conversely, if you alias a command to another command then 'help' for both commands will give you the same help text; this leads to the home/+home, time/@time versus guards/@guards/+guards situation you describe. And additionally, since the coder is writing the documentation right there in the command, you... well, are getting coder-written documentation. Which (as a coder) I must admit is not always the ideal; sometimes you want an editing pass by someone who doesn't think in terms of code.

(That said, I object on general design principle to having command, +command, and @command do different things.)

I would say that it's really still a documentation issue, no matter where you put the documentation. The fact is that everyone playing the game -- including myself, who really loves it!! -- basically are muddling through, in a lot of cases, really unclear or confusing documentation. I know it's because of limited time and the fact that systems still change and develop regularly, but honestly they could use some dedicated to just cleaning up documentation. The team seems to lack a cleaner/organizer/admin.

@Faceless said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Roz said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

This this this. I've seen big stoic characters forced to react appropriately in certain GMed scenes because of composure checks.

Likewise I also enjoy seeing those players who take the initiative and just force themselves to make a Composure check. It's not common, but when I do see it I always get a little smile over it. To me it shows maturity and recognition that it's less about winning and more about making for a potentially interesting story with some random, unexpected twists thrown in.

Oh yeah, when players do it of their own accord it's even better! But if people are playing the whole cool cucumber game, it's totally fair to call for a check. (Then again, Unflappable Cool Cucumbers are like one of my least favorite things ever on games. You know the ones I'm talking about: players who never want to lose face at all in any way by being less than Perfectly Cool.)

@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I would say at this point in the game there is great urgency based on rank (High Lords have a huge advantage) and soldier ability. The more you stray out of these two niches the least involved you can be in cool things.

I don't know if I agree with this? I can only speak from personal experience, but my character is neither a High Lord nor a combatant. Granted, she is well placed in society and has a lot of ears willing to listen to her, but a lot of my engagement in the game has come from her secrets, the written in desire for social justice of the character, and my own penchant for world building. There are quite a few pursuits to be found for people who are in neither of the above categories, but some effort on the player's part has to be included in that.

My commoner alt is in fact super combatty, but the vast bulk of his engagement with the plot hasn't actually come from that. But he's actually doing a lot more than my noble alt who has far more military power.

@Packrat said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

There is the system were costs build as you spend xp but I am not sure how this interacts with training, I actually feel it makes the problem worse because from what I recall hearing it increases the cost of new skills based not on your skill levels, but instead on how much xp you have spent. Raised skills without training? Welcome to being permanently inferior. I might be wrong about that but it is still a lot easier for somebody rich to get that training and thus save xp.

I can answer this one: it's based on the original cost of your skill buys. So training doesn't actually reduce your XP tax.

@saosmash said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Start demanding composure checks from the blase. Bet you half a dollar they aren't sheeted for it.

This this this. I've seen big stoic characters forced to react appropriately in certain GMed scenes because of composure checks.

@Nein said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

This has answered my questions for the most part, so thanks to everyone that replied.

I've been on a non-superhero game run by Roz, Tez, etc, though I think Roz retired from it, so staff competency may vary. It was unpleasant and dull. I had at least two people trying to force unwanted relationships on me (no means maybe, apparently) and then watched half the playerbase ostracize a player for being male in RL.

I'm betting Roz's superhero game is probably much, much better. Players are usually not a reliable indicator of staff quality.

OH HILARIOUS I almost forgot who you were. I need to make a mental note somewhere.

@Ghost said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Roz AAAAAAAhhh I getcha. I was thinking PvP as in characters waving consent and rolling dice to try to permaKill the other player; I wasn't think PvP in the more holistic sense of players competing ICly, not necessarily including combat.

Using the latter definition, then fuck yeah PvP causes a smorgasbord of issues.

Yeah. PvP crops up pretty much any time you have player factions working in opposition to each other, because, as @Arkandel said, players don't want to lose. (This does crop up in PvE games, because there's always conflict and conflict is interesting, but certainly not at the same rates as it does on PvP games.)

It's also true that PvE games require a lot more staff time and energy. If they don't have enough of either, the game's going to stagnate. (Or just devolve into PvP anyways.)

@Ghost said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Roz said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Arkandel said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Nein said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Roz I probably run in different mu subcultures, because I've rarely heard of PvP causing drama.

What?

That was my first response, too.

I think he has a point: I would equate drama surrounding PvP as rare due to the absolute rarity of players risking their character's lives to series of dice rolls. The last time I heard of a PvP death was on Fallcoast, and even then, I heard 4-5 staffers say things like "holy shit, a PvP death???"

So, yeah, unethical staff and IC fuckery channels far more drama than PVP, IMO.

My statement in no way argued that unethical staff doesn't cause drama. Also, PvP is more than just PvP death. PvP brings with it an intrinsically higher level of IC fuckery because players are literally being pitted into competition with each other.

@Arkandel said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Nein said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Roz I probably run in different mu subcultures, because I've rarely heard of PvP causing drama.

What?

That was my first response, too.