Best posts made by SparklesTheClown

@Rook While there are certainly quite a few WoD MUSHes, there aren't anywhere near enough WoD MUSHes to say that most MUSHes are WoD. Out of the 200 something MUs I've played, I think only 4 of them have been WoD, five if you count Windy City as a glorified WoD MU.

@Ganymede

I'm a bit confused about your point, because my entire argument is "make shit simpler" and "things could be simpler". What is there to disagree with? I'm not saying don't add new features, don't innovate or try new things. I'm saying that if you're gonna do it, don't make it a complete mess that needs 5 help files to explain how to use something.

I would assume that if you logged into a game that you want to play, and you thought it was way simpler than previous games you've played, while having the same basic functionality, you would think it was an improvement. I highly doubt you or anyone else would go "Well, shit, I miss when my syntax had needless complications".

edit: @Tempest

Fear and Loathing is so far the best WoD game I've played, because shit actually happens that isn't just one person's explosive drama and OOC bullshit leading like every single thing. And the game isn't sectioned off like it's multiple MUs, it actually feels like a community of people who want to play together. Like, seriously, if people want a Mage game or a Vampire game or whatever, just make one. If people are gonna make a multi-sphere game and section it off, requiring mountains of untrustworthy staff members, people should just freaking stop.

@dontpanda said in RL Anger:

I think the spark that ignited the movie theatre debacle was that there appeared to be inconsistent standards applied. Where the theatre originally just had tickets for sale to a "women only" night, they weren't for a specific cause - it wasn't a closed event. So, the fellow bought a ticket because he's legally allowed to do so. Contrast that with bakeries who have been sued into the ground for not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding (for that specific event), and you see that there's an inconsistent standard. No one's suing Muslim-owned bakeries for doing the exact same thing (you can check Stephen Crowder's video on that topic - he might be a troll at times, but the video doesn't lie). No one's demanding that mosques allow them to have their rainbow flag-waving, bacon-laden wedding reception there, but churches are getting sued for that same practice.

I know I've harped on this point a lot, but this entire section of the argument, again, just pretty much entirely ignores literally all context surrounding things. Now, I'm no stranger to Libertarian ideology, as I looked at most of the major popular ideologies before realizing that none of them really fit me, due to largely ignoring the world in favor of a convenient way of thinking. I'm saying this so that you understand that I have a general grasp of the ideological perspective.

That said, ignoring all context is pretty much 100% just pretending that all the situations are equal. It's basically equivalent to looking at a house, and looking at a house on fire, and then going, "These both look like houses to me, I don't know why the government has people wasting water on that other house and giving it a wash. This is special treatment".

Libertarian ideology in particular is very prone to mental gymnastics, which are largely centered around convincingly giving people the foundation for believing that we live in a society where inequality is a personal failing, and holding two very different things up and going, "These two things look perfectly even to me, I don't see what the problem is".

So it's ultimately difficult to address, because depending on what camp of Libertarianism you're from, I know that most responses to what I'd have to say are things like survival of the fittest arguments, "this research I read says what you said are factually not true" arguments, and other things. It's an ideology I have difficulty explaining things to, because it is very much built on a foundation of reaffirming feel-good mental gymnastics.

Though if you do have a solid argument for why context doesn't matter and we need to be robotic in making sure that all decisions are exactly the same, I'll read it. Just keep in mind that it's very difficult to make people accept an argument that a burning house should be treated equally to one that isn't on fire, and all decisions should be handled perfectly the same.

If the system literally says that the social combat rules aren't optimal for PVP, then they really aren't even necessary as anything more than a novelty, which seems to be what @surreality did.

That said, if the system is in a PVP environment where people have stuff like XP and other resources that can be gained through dice mechanics, then me, personally, I'd go with a different system entirely. What system, I have no idea, since I'm not sure what theme you're trying to use the system with.

@Paris said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

@Rook said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

. They use the same systems, the same code, the same OOC grid layout, the same CharGen...

The fact that our chargen doesn't need a specific room in which to do chargen has confounded a lot of folks. Some folks like that you can just work on stuff while chilling in the ooc room; others hate it. One simple change threw a lot of people, even though folks adapted.

Personally I think it's a pretty interesting innovation that I liked, without the hassle of going back and forth through rooms to change things, even though I think a walk-in chargen is a bit more newbie friendly.

@Ganymede said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

As far as I can tell, I've only been addressing coders, so what is the problem?

You don't see it? Okay.

You're not an experienced coder. I don't think you ought to lecture coders on their practices, as if they had not thought of it already. Because you're not an experienced coder.

Don't piss off the coders.

Instead, focus on what you can fix. Like policies, communication, grid design, administrative systems, wiki entries, etc.

Or, just design your own codebase and fix this whole barrier of entry thing through your own efforts.

I am, in fact, making my own game that addresses these issues, and am coding the game myself because I have my own ideas about how things should be done.

I have absolutely no qualms about pissing people off by saying unpopular things that I believe need to be said, because I'd rather be loud about what I view as detrimental stagnation, than quiet in the hopes that I don't piss people off who I might need a favor from.

If people are so vindictive that they won't work with me because I said the current state of MUSH code design is pretty much trash, then I quite honestly would not want their help to begin with, and will just figure out how to do something myself.

I don't need to be an experienced coder to see with my own two eyes that things are needlessly complicated and could be less complicated, just like I don't need to be an experienced film maker to say when a movie is trash, or an experienced writer or literature expert to say that Moby Dick is a trash ass book and that Herman Melville can't write for shit.

If you're not up for opening a dialogue and your entire point is to silence when people speak out on something they have an issue with, then I would argue that you are not being constructive, but needlessly detrimental to potentially productive communication.

If you don't have anything to add except "Be quiet because people might get mad", then you don't have anything to add except attempting to silence what I believe was a fairly constructive criticism on my part. And considering that you yourself are not a coder, I don't really see why you're getting all into your feelings about something that was not even addressing you to begin with.

I try not to apply the term "Nazi" too liberally, because I think it lowers the impact. I also think that a lot of people are kind of new to the levels of racism that are currently in the media (even though most of it isn't particularly new). So it's easy to freak out and go "The Nazis are back". This kind of shit has never been particularly abstract to me.

I remember when I was about nine, and I was homeless with my mother and stepdad. We stayed in a shelter in a small town, except it was a town with KKK activity. So I was literally not allowed to go anywhere or play on my own, despite being used to that in the big city I grew up in (Philadelphia). A lot of people in the news, like Richard Spencer, are so fucking many layers removed from the kinds of groups I'm actually afraid of, that to me calling that guy a Nazi mostly shows that, despite everything, the country at large doesn't truly understand how bad things have always been.

People are so new to this kind of shit that what is essentially a rather meh level of racism compared to a lot of the racism in this country, seems as bad as literal Nazis. That's my whole perspective on this.

Now, if you punched Neo Nazis or the KKK, I might think you're onto something. But when you punch actual fucking terrifying groups like that, not some fucking nerd-ass "White Nationalists", you're straight up risking your life. That's why these "White Nationalists" are starting to clash with legitimate fucking white supremacist groups and are getting their asses kicked. These "White Nationalists" themselves don't even realize how racist this country can be, so they think that actual fucking Neo Nazis and KKK aren't going to kick their teeth in when they try to go "Wait we don't want anyone to think we're evil, let's calm down and be reasonable!"

"White Nationalists" and the alt-right are basically internet tough guys and entitled gentrifiers who are now entering into a world they didn't know existed, and I'll be damned if I use a power word like "Nazi" for them. The actual Nazis are kicking their ass.

I imagine the "PHYSICAL COMBAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR!" is probably some outdated vestige of olden times that tabletop MUs haven't moved beyond yet. Tabletop MUs, in my experience, are a bit like a third world country in terms of how quickly they progress compared to literally every other part of MUing. Christ, even MUDs progress faster than tabletop MU* culture and practices.

I feel like this, especially in the case of WoD, comes from a general dislike for change and risking failure or backlash. Especially true when you consider that WoD was tied up in WORA for so long. Trying something new and failing at it is like trying to feed a two year old vegetables and then getting hot baby food thrown at you (I might have no idea how two year olds work). I can imagine that there was a real fear of getting your game torn apart if you didn't just use the same old standards and practices.

Now, I will say that code-wise, WoD has pretty much stayed top notch, because of all the talented coders around here. But I think people need to be less reluctant to experiment with policies and game making. Like, I understand that it won't get you 1048610482 players, but why not build a solid theme around just one or two spheres?

Not just "Alright here is WoD, here is the city, GO!", but an actual freaking theme around a sphere or two, with a fleshed out city, NPCs who are running said city to bring it to life, and, like, stuff going on. Stuff that's really hard to do with like 8 different spheres in a single game. Doing something like that, and I'm not even saying it hasn't been done before (I have no idea), is a -great- vehicle for introducing new standards and practices for STing. You do something new, people -expect- new.

I feel much the same way about Pathfinder and D&D MU*s, but they have other things that need fixing first, which I won't get into in this thread (It'd be a bit off topic).

@Paris said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

There is an issue of Mux/Mush having hardcoded and softcoded commands, so redundancy in 'help', '+help' and '@help' comes from that. I may at some point go over help files (I am not not not a coder) and try to update along the lines of 'to get syntax, type x, to get an explanation of the function, type y, etc'.

The hardcoded commands of like MUSHCode and MUXCode and stuff are some of the most confusingly written files in the goddamned universe. Definitely written for coders by coders, not the end user.

@Rook said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

I think that there should be new ways of doing things, absolutely. Things like helping non-MUSHers learn how to MUSH, for instance, on your game is a very valuable thing that might not get used but once, but making a new MUSHer is the holy grail of our goals as game-runners... or is right up there. So I'm all for teaching someone who is excited, curious and willing to take on the slight learning curve because let's face it, the mechanics of MUSHing is miniscule once you've MUDded.

It's learning how to Roleplay that most people have the most trouble with.

Yeah, that's the thing, the mechanics of MUSHing are significantly simpler than MUD, which is why it's outrageous that MUSHes often have more difficult to figure out commands than a MUD.

If we're fighting for Meg now, I should let you know that most of my hand to hand combat endeavours ended with me being restrained by a large group of people.

While it's true that I'm working on a rather elaborate game right now, there's also a few I wish I could make but for one reason or another, I decided not to.

The Toonamu game, where it was like, a multi-theme kind of deal, primarily centered around anime. I mainly didn't do it because I realized that I didn't really enjoy mashing together so many things that didn't quite fit seamlessly, and I had trouble envisioning where I would take the game if it did get finished.

A Power Rangers MUSH is another one I always wanted to do. My main reason for not doing it is mostly because it's such a niche thing that I don't think most of my friends would play or be interested in playing. I'm sure plenty of people would, but when I make a game I really like it to be something that all of my friends will play, it's just how I am.

I also always wanted an SCP game, but I just feel like I'd run out of steam for running it quickly, I don't know. It was always kind of a shaky foundation (ha ha) to build a game on top of.

And lastly, I'd say, a big one I always wanted probably more than these others. An L&L game based entirely in Hell, where people are denizens of Hell doing L&L shit. I think a lot of people would enjoy and play that, and it lacks most of the problems of these other concepts. But my main reason for not making it is mainly all the OOC drama that comes with running an L&L game. Though I have considered secretly building this MUSH and paying for the server space, but giving it to @Jealousy to run, mostly because I think it would be hilarious to see her run a MUSH.

@Paris said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

@Rook A lot of F&L's mushers are completely new to MUX, though many of them are MUDders. We try to help folks get over the learning curve, and have been really happy with what they bring to the game-- several have gone on to staff and it's been great.

Yeah, I spoke to Wildfire when he was STing a thing for me. His style was so different I was confused for a moment, then he explained that this was actually his first MU. It's interesting what new players can add to the hobby.

Though, compared to most people here, I'm still pretty new to the hobby myself, it's just that I spent a ridiculous amount of the last decade doing very little but this hobby.

I see that this thread still has an unstable relationship with context.

HOT TAKE: MUSHers should just start making MU*s out of open source MUD code that literally already has the equivalent to Firan's bullshit already done.

@WTFE Oh, I've 100% been on MUDs like that. Especially with eating and drinking code.

Eat/drink code is the bane of my existence and I pretty much started to leave a place as soon as I realized they had it, because "YOU ARE HUNGRY", "YOU ARE STARVING" prompts got annoying as shit, especially on places where you don't even die and it's just there for no reason.

But you likely do have a point with the resources. I guess this is why Evennia exists now. I'm making my game with Evennia.

Dragon Ball Super compared to Dragon Ball Z is like joining a ten year old MUSH where everyone's stopped giving a fuck and now anything goes.

Keep in mind that DBZ was an anime with a pink indestructible magic construct created by an alien wizard that turned people into chocolate.

Super is its sequel that gives even less fucks than that.

The scariest stuff I've ever seen in MU*s were not in WoD games. Honestly I've never really experienced any particular horror in them.

I think the most emotionally intense games I was ever on were X-Men Movieverse and String Theory (The Heroes game). Characters, both established and new, died at pretty dramatically appropriate moments in a lot of plots. The deaths were typically planned, but they were always kept a secret. There was an air that people your character loves could die, it made everything way more emotionally intense.

You wanted to be involved in plots to try to make the world better, you genuinely felt that you wanted to protect people because if you -did- save someone from dying, you might genuinely be altering the course of losing that person. It didn't feel empty, the dark moments didn't feel forced, and I felt like there was a legitimate emotional investment. It's not just about death, it's about feeling an emotional connection to the world, like, the world is alive and you want to interact with it.

When a world feels alive, when it feels like you can go out there and actually change it, like investing in it isn't just an empty roadblock of GMs being overly protective of their world and plots, then it can also be scary. When people have a reason to care, they also have a reason to be afraid. You can't expect to run something in a cold, lifeless shell of a game, and also expect people to be as invested as they could be if the plot actually mattered.

Of course, that's not really the GM/ST's fault, that's more about how well staff works with STs (and vice versa) to run meaningful plots.

Also don't suck at writing basic horror, that's pretty important too.

@Rook I feel like most players would know what they're adding together though. Like, even though I'm shit-tier at WoD, I generally know what my stuff is even if I don't usually remember all the numbers.

Is it usually the reverse and I'm just weird?

edit: Also you mean in most WoD MUSHes.

I have no idea where else to put this.

LIFEHACK: Don't open the lid of a trashcan during a heatwave in your tiny room if you're 99% sure a mouse died in it.

@Roz said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

While differences of IC opinion provide fantastic fuel for RP, acting IC like something was a total disaster that was actually presented by the GMs as ICly successful is...deeply aggravating. RPing from totally different OOC realities is not fun.

To me it would depend on context. Like, some people/characters would have their own idea of success and failure. Like, if multiple people died for example, I'd say it'd be perfectly acceptable for a character to not consider that a success, despite it being technically a GM success.

@Jim-Nanban

The dude from Extra Credits said the same thing.

I wonder who originated the quote, or if they're the same person (I've never read The Angry GM, but heard of them).

Either way, yeah, this is advice that I think people really need to keep in mind.

@Thenomain

Even something as simple as taking walks every now and then, making sure to get up and do something as frequently as possible rather than making it easy to sit forever. For example, buy small bottles of water instead of one large bottle of water, if you drink bottled water. It means you have to get up more frequently to get more.

Do some easy arm exercises, you don't even have to get up, just move around a bit for like 15 minutes a day or so, get some basic cardio in without even standing. Every little bit counts.

I say this as someone who very lazily lost a ton of weight, doing little things help you at the very least maintain your weight. I haven't changed my diet dramatically since I stopped constantly eating junk food and drinking sugary drinks, so I don't lose a lot of weight unless I do a lot of drastic physical activity, what I do now mostly just keeps me from becoming huge.