Best posts made by skew

Status Update:
If anyone didn't see my "Shout in the Dark" post, @AlexRaymond has went MIA. I last heard from him 2 weeks ago, with no indication he was leaving. I am decidedly worried, and if anyone knows this person IRL, or has another means to contact him, please let me know. I've hit him on Discord and on the gmail account he used for our GDocs collaboration and received no response.

All that said, there's a whole lot of effort that's been poured into this game. I have root access to the game server (given to me by @AlexRaymond ) but I do not have any of the Digital Oceans information. I'm getting worried that something could happen and I'll have no way to fix it.

As such, I'll be standing up my own server today, and copying everything from Chontio onto that server. @faraday has agreed to help, so I think it'll all go smoothly.

I wanted to post here publicly, if @AlexRaymond does return, I'm more than happy to hand over the keys, to move Chontio back to the original server, to do whatever so he can have his game back.

In other news, if anyone does want to help, please let me know. I'll be looking for Alpha play testers next week. I need some rooms desc'd. I need Roster Characters written.

Also, I've invoked Alex's name 3 times in one post, so maybe that will summon him.

Also, also... The City of Davotay, based on Jedha City, with enhancements by @SunnyJ :

Using a non-FS3 system on Ares (Star Wars RPG by FFG), I've found Ares is quite versatile and easy to work with. There's tutorials and examples that go through how to add things, and there's almost surely an existing something you can borrow from.

For example, I wanted to add a statement that players make from the perspective of their character. Part of the application. I added a new command to do it, so I could make sure people didn't miss it. I'd say it was as easy to add that command as it would have been add similar into TinyMUX or Rhost (which I am way more familiar with).

All that to say... it's adaptable. If you want to do something far more free-form, it would be quite easy to do. A few dice rolls, a few pools to keep track of... easy peasy. Plus you already have all the other stuff, like forum chat app review, etc etc.

Alpha is open! I've got a few players poking at the game, running through cgen, etc.

If anyone wants to join, please just DM me. Atm, I don't think there's any RPing, but I am hopeful to get a little bit of that going next week.

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@skew said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Ex: Replies to advertisements should be things like "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join" and other positive, helpful responses.

So this was suggested once before and the utter lashback ("How dare we not be able to say negative things about a game!") was enormous.

I'm going to be undiplomatic here. I know I'm speaking in a tone that isn't exactly nice, but I'm going to anyways.

The people who are upset they cannot talk trash about a game are the reason MSB is not a more useful tool. Many of the people who post the most are the worst for a productive, useful, positive community. I advise you not bow to the pressure of the very loud minority. I am all but positive the majority of us would love to see an advert go up and not have to slog through the "yeah but this other game is better" posts.

Further, no, I don't think it would be a lot of work. There's not a lot of posts. If you need someone to delete the "Macs are better" responses to my "Here's how to use Potato" post, I volunteer. I can totally handle it.

Just a quick update... In some of the previous drafts the game had included some references to the native species of Chontio in terms that were fairly racisty, and the ties between the Ushawbay and Native Americans was pretty direct. That's been changed.

The native species of Chontio, the Ushawbay, are still known to attack settlers. There's still conflict, and still questions of how to handle this violence, but the terms that are used are less weird.

I voted not to bother.

But.

I will, of course, help as I have before. And if you make the project 2E only, and don't wedge in a bunch of 1E material, I'll help a lot.

By popular demand, and thanks to the work of Xango@Chontio, we are now using Edge of the Empire instead of Age of Rebellion.

Age of Rebellion focuses on the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire, where you play on the side of the Rebels. Edge of the Empire is more about surviving on... the edge of the Empire. Considering Chontio is about surviving on the edge of the Empire, it's a natural fit. The reason we didn't have this from the get go is because AoR is what was coded and I frankly didn't have the time and energy to put in EotE. One of my alpha players did it, so there it is!

AoR has careers that are military focused, like Spy, Soldier, Ace. EotE has things like Colonist, Explorer, Smuggler. I am quite pleased.

To be clear, we are only using EotE and no supplements. My goal is and has been to keep this game a one-book game, to ease the burden of players that would otherwise have to get many books.

Edit: I am putting in more species. One of the joys of Star Wars is all the species that you see, so I definitely want that in my game. These species, though, are just starting stats. Information about their culture and the like can be found from the various Star Wars sites, like Wookieepedia.

I've been totally impressed by how well this has worked so far. With some 10-20 actively RPing was night and the story decidedly collaborative, I have had no trouble finding RP, nor engaging in the story. After taking the weekend off and missing some big stuff, random players were more than happy to catch me up to speed.

Really, it's been a blast. And the feeling of being in this "together" has been truly wonderful. Every RL day, something new that we are all going through.

Would recommend.

@tragedyjones said:

My team is fucking awesome.

That's true.

I wanted to provide a little bit more feedback... mostly for anyone that's considering jumping in but not settled on it.

I do not play this game as much as others. I have Public chan off half the time. I do not go to the Observation Deck to watch other people's scenes. I even showed up late to the "big important scene". And through all that? I feel like I'm part of the story. People are more than happy to page you a synopsis and get you caught up. The Director is very easy to finding an explanation for why you missed something.

And maybe I'm misreading the situation and people are frustrated I'm not around more... but hey, I'm enjoying myself! So, thank you all! And don't let the pacing scare you!

Well if @Thenomain likes it...

I was new. Potato has a "Text Editor" or some shit. I didn't realize the editor was tied to the "window" you opened it in. I was in the middle of one romantic encounter ... and using a proxy login for a second romantic encounter.

iirc it was Jimi Hendrix lyrics used in the romancing of Scene A that got input into the text editor of Scene B.

It wasn't TS, but if was thoughtful, just-for-you, special words... that got sent to the wrong person.

If either of you are here, I apologize. Again and forever.

For anyone who is interested in seeing how BITN "ended", or sharing some details about your character's story, or their epilogue, or whatever else, I've put up a game in a play-by-post format. At present, there's just the two closing logs, but I'll be adding more details as I have time.

To "play", you'll need to create an account, a character, and submit for approval. Characters only need like 3 details, so... it's easy!

http://www.ongoingworlds.com/games/2612

We still updating this list?

Chontio: A Star Wars MUSH http://chontio.aresmush.com/

Star Wars, FFG Star Wars RPG system, AresMUSH

I am now in the 'turn off gifs' camp.

The gifs here are awful.

@rucket said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

I've been trying to think up some concepts, but it's hard!

I'm thinking something medical-related. Anyone have some ideas?

EMT! Great concept overall in a MU. Easy to explain you ending up just about anywhere. Great skillset. Odd hours allow for odd things. Could work with the other emergency response folks.

@RnMissionRun Maybe you should stop living such a boring life and go buy some drugs and hit the pokegym.

@auspice It's because it started with "Put Mage in there, and I might be interested.", not "Are Mages allowed?"

@Zaroot's tone reads to me as demanding, not a simple request for information.

I'm not trying to fight, just pointing out why it mattered to me enough to comment.

@derp said in Mage for Multi-Sphere WoDv2 Games:

You just need a better class of staffers

Emphasis mine. I think on the one hand, this is laughable. On the other, it really is the truth of it. Mage is exhausting. You need a group that's very committed to keeping the story going, so, just like Derp said, you can hit that sweet spot. Just, finding that group of active, motivated, creative staffers? Well...

When @Coin @tragedyjones and I were working on a new CofD 2E game, I did put together some house rules.

1. Paradox: As @Auspice says, paradox really lacks teeth in a game where there's so much downtime. We came up with a new system where each time you contain paradox, it doesn't go away, but stays in your pattern. Each time you would roll paradox dice, they get added to your personal counter, and you roll dice for each counter you have. This continues to build up until it's released.
2. Arcana caps. Like we did in FW, I think a hard limit on Arcana by Gnosis is a great idea.
3. Spirits and ghosts need to withstand with resistance stat, not rank. Rank is just way too easy, and a baby mage can toss around massive spirits with ease.
4. Magic items... need to be deal with in some way that we never finished dealing with. They can be a serious pita.

No one should have to deal with misogynist assholes, so I'm giving this a bump.

I'll add a bit of a "quick version" for TinyMux...

@boot *Idiot would get the hypothetical horrible person off your game. You can then @newpassword *Idiot=newpassword to effectively stop them from connecting again. Though if you're feeling extra petty, you can instead give them the @Thenomain special, and do:

@boot *Idiot then @aconnect *Idiot=think Why am I like this?; QUIT

This is super fun because every time the person connects, it'll send the message after "think" to them, then they'll quit, all before they have time to do anything. If they want to waste your time, you can waste some of theirs!

Now, should said misogynstic asshole (who will remain totally nameless) think he (usually he) is particularly clever and start using VPNs and the like to change IPs and sidestep your ban, you do have the option to "require registration". To do this, you'll want to go into the netmux.conf file, just as Ashen-Shugar has outlined above, and add register_site. You should end up with something like this:

# Sitebans
#EXAMPLE: forbid_site 123.123.123.123 255.255.255.255
register_site 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0

If you do this, the "create name password" option upon logging in will be disabled. If you do this, you should update the register.txt file located at <game>/etc/text ... this is the file players will see upon connecting. If they have an existing player/staff bit, they can log right in. Otherwise, the file will tell them to e-mail and ask for an account. You then only need to do @pcreate name=password from a wiz bit and send them that information. Yes, this is likely a hinderance to new players, but as a temporary measure it's very effective.

Finally, I just want to note that when you use who or +finger to find out the address of an individual, it often displays like 123-123-123-123-theirhost.net or something. If you're entering that IP as a ban, you need to convert that to 123.123.123.123... and JUST the numbers, not the "theirhost.net".

And as a final, final note... No one should have to deal with misogynistic assholes making threats and causing stress. PennMUSH and Rhost have active communities that are very willing to help. Ares and Evennia are still "new" and all have discord channels and test servers. If you're on TinyMUX, please feel free to reach out to me or @Thenomain. Someone you know surely has our contact information, or you can message here.