Posts made by Salty Secrets

From experience, TMC's forums empower game owners to silence criticism on their games and that's never a good thing. I recall, without naming names, one incident where someone posted in a thread with several logs as back-up about a case of harassment coming from an admin on a game to warn prospective new players of this abusive staff, and the game owner made noise until TMC mods silenced the conversation and things went back to the status quo of the game owner posting ads and patch notes for their game like nothing ever happened.

Perhaps the most damning thing about it is that it hadn't devolved into what we'd consider Hog Pit material immediately. The person voicing concerns about harassment and providing logs was civil and polite, it's the game owner that went straight into Hog Pit mode. Unfortunately, TMC's policies are basically that game owners are always right about their games. It's not the greatest environment.

This is pretty interesting. What kinds of systems are used for characters interacting in competitive manners? Typical combat system, dice, coin flips, free-form? Do characters have special attributes set on them to determine how strong and weak they are, or is everyone assumed equal due to dream-world madness?

My experience with multi-themes is that people like going for the craziest most powerful characters they can get away with, which hurts players like me who prefer to play more mundane existences, so I'm curious to hear what your approach to this is.

@ping Coder advice, if you don't know what to do about a file type and what should and shouldn't be in a file, make the file plain-text, only include the information you'll need in it, and handle formatting and prettying in the GUI or program itself.

If you end up incorporating more fields in a later version of the file, just host a second copy of it and leave the old one for people still using the old client. Plain-text files are small, won't clog your bandwidth or storage space up, and reading from them is painless in most languages.

I understand if you'd still rather have a file people have to update, just thought the suggestion was worth a shot. The advice to use Mud-Stats stays though.

Your best bet for a nearly complete list of currently active and populated games is to just check out Mud-Stats:

http://mudstats.com/Browse

Sort the games by number of players, make sure online status is set to UP, set a world-type if you only want a certain type of database, and the first several pages of results should be accurate. Not fully complete by any stretch, but it's easier to use Mud-Stats to build your list and then ask people for games that aren't on Mud-Stats.

Here's a suggestion for how to handle keeping the list up to date: instead of a file downloaded and included with the client, have the list of games hosted on your own website and accessed through the BeipMU client. Add a "send report" button either next to each world or at the top of the list, allowing users to send feedback if a world in the list is dead, or if they want to add their world to the list because it isn't in it already. If necessary install a security check so people don't spam the report function and make your lives unpleasant.

That way, even if someone doesn't update BeipMU for a long stretch of time, the list of worlds will always be up to date. Since BeipMU isn't a program you'd use without an internet connection, the list being online doesn't disrupt anything, and being something you can store as plain-text, it won't eat people's data either.

I can't vote on this poll because the options aren't comprehensive enough.

Basic character information and stats should always be fully visible. This not only helps prevent problematic builds but in the case of character versus character interactions allows better "pairing" of folks who are at similar combat proficiency levels to ensure nobody gets taken out after one round of throwing dice. It also helps you spot people who might be sitting on five years of XP and who exclusively target weaker characters for combat. I've seen that happen often enough, even on games without XP systems where "power levels" were fixed. If I play a combat-focused guy I'd prefer to fight another combat-focused character, because odds are the social manipulator won't make for a very fun fight. Not for him, not for me. By the same logic if I play a scientist who happens to have a gun but isn't great at using it, I'd prefer as much as possible to engage other similarly-skilled characters unless on that particular day I'm up for being chased through hallways by Pyramid Head.

What should be hidden is stuff people should find out in-game. Secret contacts, backstory, plot hooks and the like. Characters shouldn't be open books because then there's no sense of discovery and mystery. Their capabilities and what they can bring to any given scene or event, however, should be fully revealed.

I'm deleting my entire reply because I came up with a better one.

What if instead of a MU Wiki we had a MU review site.

We could call it Rotten ToMUtoes.

@zombiegenesis If you intend to have closing periods, then you want some way for players to contest closing characters and try to compete for them. What method you use for that is up to you and every method has ups and downs.

Proper applications are seen as archaic and tedious but will get you the best results.

Short pitches are fast and easy to manage but give you a worse idea of who should get the character, and can be prone to people who put no thought into it.

@tnp Party hosts do get to eat at the same time as guests though.

And staff should get to pick FC at the same time as players.

Your equivalency is false, you talk of an example where staff would have selected their FC and closed them before the game even opened. As long as it's done at the same time players can, with the same application process, where's the injustice?

Staff signed up for months of work before opening and possibly years of work after opening to keep everyone happy, free of charge, at the expense of significant chunks of their free time, what's the harm letting them pick characters at the same time as everyone else?

@ixokai If you asked me to make a MUSH and then told me my reward when the MUSH finally opens is to not be able to apply for a character at the same time as players, potentially not even getting a chance to try out for a character I really want to play... I wouldn't make the MUSH. That's just a really bad setup.

I agree there needs to be oversight so that staff doesn't first pick all the interesting characters, but surely there's a better way to do it than that.

@bored Tier 1, to me, is any character who has their own comic. Titular characters. Characters whose names you see on the cover of comics to attract people. Those are universally the characters you don't want someone having multiple of. This doesn't work 100% of the time because some really weird and obscure characters got their own titled spin-offs but as a rule of thumb it works. Needs a bit more work to identify Tier 1 rogues and villains because they don't tend to get their own titled spin-offs though.

@surreality A temporary limit makes the most sense yes. If I ever went through with my idea for a comic game, that's what I'd opt for. First month or two, two characters, only one FC. I might give leeway to people who want to play two minor FC or whose second FC is a minor villain. I probably wouldn't stop someone from playing Jubilee and also Captain Boomerang if they were promising me they'd be an active producer of role-play. These types of games tend to be made or broken based on villain population and activity, so it makes sense to make concessions for people who want to pick up those mantles. I'd still stick very firmly to "no two titular characters" as a rule, even after the initial launch period. I don't think anyone should ever be able to play Superman and Spider-man or Superman and Iron Man, etc.

@surreality The issue with a "1 FC" rule is that comic games will frequently have over a hundred different FC and anywhere between twenty and fifty players at most, some of which will have gone for OC instead. If you want a good part of your roster played, unless you have a small roster, you can't do that.

It's better to limit FC by popularity and importance. If you play Superman then you can't play any other titular FC period. But even this isn't foolproof, as was seen with United Heroes where some members of staff would change the tiers of characters so they could play all the ones they wanted. You'd need a bulletproof fair and square staff...

@surreality What I would recommend is to split games as Tabletop, Media, Original and Adult, then in each category have subcategories. Tabletop splits neatly between things like WoD, FATE, Exalted, DnD and so on, Media can be split by Anime, TV&Movies&Books, Comics, Crossover and Other, Original can split by genre so say Fantasy, Horror, etc. and Adult probably doesn't need subcategories.

Mahou MUSH, MultiVerse Crisis, Dream Chasers, Match of the Millenium etc. fit better under a Crossover header than anything else so that solves that problem neatly.

@gilette No, @ThatGuyThere is right, that sort of stuff does happen in the real world too. That doesn't make it right, but it does happen.

Student bodies and clubs are the best example I can think of, as by their nature they'll rotate membership every three to five years as people join and then graduate. The identity and purpose of any given group of students can change entirely based on the agenda of new students joining.

Back when I was still in college, I joined the "Japan Appreciation" committee/group/hangout/student body, whatever you want to call it. It was basically a private room with a TV and a huge library of anime and manga on shelves. When I joined, it was still true to its roots. There were only about twenty of us, so between classes maybe only four or five would ever be in the room at the same time.

One year before I graduated, freshmen showed up with a Nintendo 64 and asked if they could use the room to play Smash Bros when we weren't watching anime. They paid their membership fee and all so we didn't see a problem with it, so long as it didn't disturb the people who came to watch anime or read manga in peace.

Over the next few months, those freshmen lured in more and more of their friends and would spend increasingly alarming amounts of time playing the game. The ones in charge, like me, were too busy with graduation projects to settle disputes and through our neglect the anime and manga club became the Smash Bros club, unofficially. Old members left over it, new ones looking to play the game came in droves.

By the time I'd graduated, one of the freshmen had become head of the club due to there not being anyone else with the drive to do anything left, and policies changed drastically to put a bigger focus on gaming than the club's original purpose.

If they'd followed proper procedure, they would've made their own group/club by going through the school's administration. With their own room and TV they wouldn't have had to disrupt another group. But: the application process for getting a new student group approved and funded was notoriously harsh at the time, not to mention unfriendly to people who just wanted to play video games while at school. It was easier for them to invade the one club that already had a TV.

Aside the times I've left games for personal reasons, like lack of time, playing on too many games and needing to cut back so I can give specific ones the fair shake they deserve, and so on, almost all of my leaves have been over unethical staff behavior.

I'm right there with @Gilette giving Multiverse MUSH as an example of so many things being wrong in one place it's a wonder we don't have more of their former players here. Staff abuse of the suspect flag, staff targeting players for posting here, discrimination by staff and "elite" players of the lesser folks, loud minority players making the game unfun for everyone else, a staff member (Lord English) being caught having modified gripe logs to alter their context and outcome being protected by current and former headwizs, whisper campaigns being run by staff and high-ranked players alike, the promotion of unsuitable, provably malicious players to positions of power (Priscilla etc.), staff favoritism and the list goes on.

I left Brave New World and Fallout: El Dorado over Elsa being Elsa. I think that's a sufficient reason.

Sexual harassment being tolerated by staff is also something I'll leave a game over. United Heroes comes to mind as the latest instance but I feel every other WoD MUSH ends up going that path for some reason.

On the subject of WoD games, I've been known to leave ones that start relatively small or constrained, i.e. Vampire or Werewolf, but then decide they want to introduce three or four more splats in one shot in an attempt to attract more players. Speaking more broadly that's a red flag for me. If your game has a "soul", a "feel", and you throw it away in a transparent attempt to appeal to larger masses, I won't stick around. I only ever join a new game when the core idea appeals to me. If you discard it, you've taken away the reason I joined, and I find it an almost universal fact the new core of the game won't be as thought out as the old one.

@tnp From where I'm standing most of those make complete sense.

Let's look at Magneto and Professor X first. These guys are so incredibly powerful and important that whenever they do come out, they make the story about their involvement. You can't have them side-lined without asking them to limit their involvement in role-play. Sure, you could ask Xavier to stick to school role-play, and Magneto to stick to politics, but that's no fun for their player. Having them casually out and about on random missions doesn't make much sense, either.

And that logic applies to a great many others on the Banned list too.

The other category they already talked about in this thread is neutral characters like Deadpool, Jugger or Grrtooth, and characters who lead their own individual factions, like Shaw. Since the conflict is meant to be about the X-Men and the Brotherhood it'd make sense to keep those characters off-limits for now.

I'd ban Deadpool if I was running an X-Men game too, anyway: the kinds of players who are attracted to playing him don't tend to know how to control themselves.

Which of the decisions are puzzling you besides those?

@alzie Fate's Harvest: beware of Spiders, consult Hog Pit.
F&L: quite good, actually, some drama threads on here aside. Would recommend if their NPC system doesn't offend you.
Eldritch: haven't tried.
Dragon Age MUSH: read through their news files recently after playing through Inquisition, it's on my list of places to visit. Nothing seemed out of place at a glance. Are they still open, though? I'm hearing conflicting things about that.
Battle Fantasia: unsure, magical girl isn't a genre I think works as a full-fledged MUSH but if it's still around it must be doing something right for fans of the idea.
Dream Chasers: recently applied, staff and players were extremely friendly and welcoming. Haven't spotted problems yet, lots of role-play to be found. Code use might not be for everyone, but since I originate from WoD games I'm quite comfortable with heavy code presence.

I'm wary of supporting positive reviews remaining in the ad threads if negative ones are being put elsewhere, especially with the risk the negative reviews could be hidden behind the membership wall of the Hog Pit. It might be easy to join but it isn't something a new member will know to seek out unless someone held their hand into discovering it.

I think keeping the ad threads for Q&A as well as for linking to revelant threads, whether in this subforum or the Hog Pit, is the correct course of action to avoid bias.

@lithium said in Is there a MUSH/MUCK out there with an incredibly active population?:

@salty-secrets Don't forget Tapestries. It has hundreds of people at any given time too.

I always forget that place exists, probably because unlike the others named I've never been interested enough to try it.