Best posts made by SparklesTheClown

Listen, I know that I'm not some ridiculously experienced coder, but this is a talk that needs to happen. I decided to make this post after I responded to a comment Thenomain made.

For years, since I even got into this hobby, I've noticed just really monstrously shitty design practices. One of the most grave shitty design practices is just what I can only describe as a complete disregard for UX design.

Coders, time and time again, seem to code things that are simple to coders. Rather than simplifying the code or looking at a more efficient way to do things, they write like 4 help files on how to use one feature. I don't care what anyone says, 4 help files is a manual.

Players should be focusing on ways to apply a tool, not spending forever figuring out how to use it. It should be in some way intuitive how a piece of code works after a few short lines of explanation. Anything further than that should be advanced functionality that builds on top of the basic functionality, and this itself should also be intuitive, not confusing syntax that takes forever to remember.

I'm sure plenty of people are gonna go "But that's impossible!", especially considering how many times I've talked about how complicated a piece of code was, and a coder was like "That seems fine to me". Well, no shit, you're who coded it.

To anyone thinking like that, I say play literally any MUD. Even the most shitty MUD has common sense UX. You can typically get basic functionality with very minimal file reading, and more advanced functionality over time, as you need it, and then it just becomes intuitive.

Where initiating combat in the average MUSH with a combat system requires knowing like a million goddamned pieces of syntax, in a MUD it's like "attack <thing>", then something like "kick <thing>". And more advanced things build on top of this common sense syntax and functionality. Some go so far as to even have an intuitive text interface that makes it even simpler, where the average MUSH requires you to know even more syntax to do something like check your health or whatever.

The point is, the more stuff you're gonna pile into a game, the lower the difficulty of actually using and figuring out how to use it needs to be. Think about how someone who has never been in a MU before would interact with your code. My first MU was Dragon Ball Evolution (they named it that before the shitty movie came out), a MUD. Everything made sense after a very short while.

I didn't get into MUSHes until possibly nearly a year later, because the barrier to entry just seemed massively higher. Huge, intimidating apps, the idea that some stranger was going to tell me that I sucked and can't be in their game (this is not the case, obviously, but outside of MUing the RP communities are far more brutal). Syntax just seemed like this crazy confusing mess to figure out, where in a MUD I never really thought about it. In a MUD I focused on what to do with the tool I was given, I didn't spend forever trying to figure out how to use it.

I'm not shitting on MUSHes and saying "Fuck you guys I'm going back to MUDs", what I am saying is that we can do better, and there is precedent that we can do better. Are we going to let MUDs beat us?

Do you realize that in MUDs they think that all people in MUSHes do is sit around is talk, and that we don't RP? They have the same stereotype about us that we have of them.

Don't take that shit laying down! Let's show that we can do better.

I'm ready for the flames.

I mean I hear cis lesbians talk about diversity all the time without sounding terfy. But like the way you word things is extremely confusing. Like, it's not as if there aren't good points that you make (I've literally never seen someone play a butch lesbian in MUSHing in my entire life, which is a perfectly valid concern), but then there's other stuff that you say where, like, obviously Rinel is gonna go "well uh what do you mean by that then".

Like it's just really difficult to get clarity from you about certain things, and then it just kind of keeps going in this circle where it feels like you're avoiding giving an actual clear response to stuff, which just kind of keeps it confusing. It feels like when you respond to things you're somehow simultaneously giving shitloads of detail about what you mean while also being vague at the same time.

If I were talking about black issues and a Chinese person was like "whoa wait a minute" because I said something that sounded really questionably racist against Chinese people in the midst of me talking about black issues, I'm not gonna be like "wow I guess I can't talk about black issues now", I'm gonna instead get an understanding of either how I fucked up or where the misunderstanding happened instead of getting incredibly defensive about it, which obviously is only gonna make things worse.

I don't think a single person is disagreeing with you about lesbian issues, I literally backed off my stance on lesbian portrayals many pages ago because I'm pretty sure it was literally you who made a counterpoint that made me reconsider what I believed.

What some people are questioning, I feel, is the weird squirrelly language on the topic of trans people, in addition to the questionable male socialization thing. Like, that's the stuff that comes off as TERFy, not the talking about lesbian issues. I don't get why you would dig into being defensive about it instead of trying to get an understanding of why people are saying what they are.

I agree with @Cobaltasaurus to be honest. Multiverse TS game just feels really fucking played out. We need an actual theme to invest in, I'm kind of tired of the sex sandbox backdrop. That's why WoD is the most enduring TS theme in my opinion lmao.

Like damn, let me be a wizard who does sexy wizard things, but also I can do other wizard things, and Doom Guy won't suddenly walk in like "I'M GONNA FUCK YOUR SEXY WIZARD THINGS!!!"

edit: By the way, probably a good idea not to let people make characters under 18 and such. While this might seem obvious to many people, a lot of people seem super keen on the right to play and fuck child characters, and I'd just like an alternative where that is not a thing.

It's difficult to identify problems across the hobby as a whole, because I find most problems to be game specific. But lemme see...

1. Unwillingness to remove problem players or take steps to give them a limited number of "strikes" or anything. While this certainly would probably have gotten me booted off some games in the past, I think it's a huge mistake to allow one or two players to continue poor behavior to the detriment of the rest of the game. There has to at the very least be an effort at changing behavior.

The reasons people don't usually do this is because often staff can't handle the emotional stress of removing players, or because there are friendships they don't want to damage. Weighing personal feelings against the emotional health of the game as a whole is difficult, and there's no easy answer for that, because staff aren't robots. However, I consider this to be a serious problem.

2. Lack of foresight and proper planning. When people open games without really thinking them through or considering the implications of various elements of their games. I've said this before, but decisions like if you have a combat system, your policies, how you handle plot running, if you have a metaplot or not, all of these things affect the quality of your playerbase in various ways. Not necessarily always in black in white "good and Bad' terms, but you can craft a game to appeal to and attract a target audience. A lot of people think that the theme is enough to do that, but it's not.

3. Quality control. Different from above, a lot of games don't make sure they're fully polished before opening. First impressions can impact if people are going to actually even login to your game. You have a player look at an unfinished wiki, and how long do you think it'll be before they come back to check when it is finished and has the necessary information and polish? Or opening a game without the core aspects of your game in place. I also think that PB policies need to be a thing in more games.

This isn't to say that you can't open a game in beta, but this is to say that you need to make sure that your presentation is complete before you do that. Having low player retention and negative word of mouth in an open beta is definitely going to have an impact on your game by the time it's actually finished.

4. Lack of outside advertising is also a problem, I feel. People usually only advertise within the hobby, and this is a huge mistake. It's something I still consider to be one of the largest reasons that the hobby's influx of new players, while it exists, is slower than it could be. Walling ourselves off from the surface world of RP is something that someone needs to take proactive steps to prove is a mistake (I intend to attempt that when I open my game).

5. Lack of confidence. While being humble and not a complete goddamned madman is important, it's equally important to be confident. If you aren't passionate in your project and you're easily discouraged by other people's criticisms (rather than taking them with a grain of salt and considering what you can constructively do with the criticisms), then you should probably not bother opening a game, in my opinion. Like, sure, we all doubt ourselves, and it's good to fight through that doubt, but if you're ready to abandon your entire project at the slightest negative opinion or someone saying it won't work, you won't be able to take that project as far as it can go.

If I listened to people, my highly successful Momoiro Clover Z wiki wouldn't exist. Back in 2012, people in the idol fandom said "but the company only has like two groups, they don't need an entire wiki! And they're not well known enough!" Well, I predicted their rise to power and that their company would create more groups, and made the wiki anyway. Now I have people thank me for its existence because it used to be the only English source for information about the group that was anywhere near up to date, and it is now considered an essential source of information within the idol community.

http://momoirocloverz.wikia.com/wiki/Momoiro_Clover_Z_Wiki

Don't let your dreams be dreams. - A Great Man

I've played multiple games where a player was just a disruptive ass and then bitched and moaned on WORA and got immediate sympathy and people believing everything such a player said, because they said it angrily enough. Like back on WORA there was this dude who got banned from X-Men Movieverse for what I can only describe as racist metaposing, and literally spamming the RP channel with a bot asking for RP, because no one wanted to RP with him.

So he came to WORA and lied out of his ass with no evidence, and everyone was like "That seems legit and we support you".

While MSB is definitely different from WORA in many ways, I think it's good to keep in mind that this is not exactly an isolated incident. I came to generally perceive WORA as a place where problem players go to bitch and drag a game's reputation through the mud, and get sympathy, because that's been the case so many freaking times. So I'd honestly keep that in mind for MSB, for the purposes of not ruining games or players' reputations without hard evidence of whatever bad shit is being spoken about.

I will say that it's a valid concern to not know if you can play a POC properly. There's the equally valid concern that people will accuse you of playing one improperly for the most minor of reasons (this is why these days I make a point of stating that I am, indeed, a black person, so that people will stfu and not say I'm playing my race "wrong").

On the one hand, I would rather someone just straight up not play one if they're just gonna pile on a bunch of stereotypes and play a gross caricature. I've seen this shit in Shang's square, back when I used to play Shang. You'd see a black dude walk in and then start dropping all sorts of N words and basically straight up doing some crazy ass text blackface. I didn't even know it was possible to do text blackface, but goddamn that player sure as hell did it.

I do know plenty of white people who play black characters and are respectful and even acknowledge the culture, because they take time to understand it and such. I don't think it's necessarily difficult. Hell, binge watch The Get Down, Luke Cage, and if you really wanna go for extra credit, every season of A Different World starting at season 2 (Entirely ignore season 1 and Bill Cosby's bullshit).

Things to stay away from: Tyler Perry movies, most things by the Wayans Brothers made after like 1995, The Cosby Show (This is not a 100% bad show re: black culture, but it has a tendency to uh, well it's a complicated topic but basically it's not a good reference for authenticity), pro wrestling (it's better now, but let's just play it safe).

Things you may have seen that are a good reference of depth: Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Attack the Block (it's a movie, go watch it, it's important, it has aliens), Living Single, Blackish, Doctor Who (Doctor Who is fantastic with their black characters), Creed (that Rocky movie).

But overall, the reason I suggested The Get Down and Luke Cage is because these shows combined kind of illustrate the overall heart and soul of black culture, in my opinion. They both illustrate positives, problems faced, and negatives in the culture in a way that isn't hamfisted, because there's still a very interesting narrative beyond these things. And also because they're both on Netflix.

Not every black person is going to agree on what is "proper" black culture, because lots of black people come from different backgrounds, but I do believe that there is an essence of the culture that the majority of people would agree is the culture. You don't have to grow up in a neighborhood like Luke Cage's to understand that it's places like this where the essence of the culture comes from (Though I certainly grew up in multiple places like Luke Cage's setting, which is why it hit me as authentic).

Doctor Who, particularly the Martha Jones seasons, are a great example of the fact that you can still pretty authentically write a black person even if you aren't necessarily touching on their culture. While the current season is doing a good job of touching on culture (even if it's British culture), but not making the character secondary to her culture (IE: They treat her like a person rather than just a bag of cultural traits).

The ultimate thing to remember is that every character is, at their core, a person, and we all generally like and do a lot of the same shit. Culture is more something like seasoning that paints our unique experience and perspective. A white woman might cite Sex in the City as her super feminist adult awakening show, a black woman might cite Living Single or Girlfriends. (I've never watched Sex in the City but people always say these are basically the same shows but culture/race swapped)

One last note is, like, while I don't police people's language, because I am very much an advocate of freedom of speech, I do get uncomfortable when people use the N word in RP, regardless of the context. I don't even use the N word irl. But, that's just my two-cents on that.

Have fun! I hope everyone learned something! I hope this was more helpful than the average Cirno post about race.

I'm inspired by Cobalt's numerous posts looking for RP and such.

I kind of want to experiment, as a way of driving myself out of habit and having some new experiences, and also to test out a solution to a problem I've been having.

I want to join a new MUSH, but with the caveat that you're recruiting me to join in an RP thing of yours. Like, say, a group, a faction, a personal connection, whatever. The point is that I'd be joining to support whatever it is you're trying to do (while also trying to do my own thing of course).

Hell, if you happen to mention a MUSH that I'm already on, I'll make a new character there if I like the idea.

I'd of course be choosing what kind of character I'm gonna play, but I'll talk to you about it.

Anyway, I'm open to some pitches! I know this is a weird idea, but I don't know, I'm a fucking clown, let me be whimsical.

edit: Also you can ignore any past preferences or opinions I may have had in other threads. I will be ignoring that for the purposes of this idea.

@Ganymede I remember Roc being pretty solid! I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I recall it being very working class black American when I saw it, and it seemed to be very down to Earth and not too heavy-handed in a way that I would complain about. I might take a look at an episode or two again just to refresh myself, but that's my memory of it.

@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Rinel Also excuse me, I totally tried to bang Rinel.

Wait... what

Theo totally tried to make moves and Rinel shut him right down lol.

More substantively: your post is really good. Playing a black American is probably the thing I'm most afraid of doing. Living in Louisiana and seeing secondhand how fucked everything is just makes me feel like I would have to do a prohibitive amount of research on almost everything. But I am probably oversensitive due to working in one of the worse environments as regards racial equality (criminal law).

And as someone else pointed out, even good faith portrayals can call to mind blackface if you stumble.

I can understand your concern here, certainly. But I do believe that the fact that you're even concerned about it to begin with generally means you've probably put significantly more thought into it than even people who probably already play black characters well enough. For African-Americans specifically, they come from such an overwhelming amount of backgrounds that portrayals really can bounce around greatly. I do think that there are a lot of shared experiences and such, and those little nuances can be tricky to capture or portray, but you also don't have to do that either.

A good exercise I recommend is watching some media with black characters where them being black isn't necessarily the central point of the narrative, but is an important aspect in making the narrative work. One of my favorite examples of this is The Last Dragon. It's a bit of a campy movie, all things considered, but the main character is a black guy who is somewhat of a weirdo in his community for basically being a proto-weeb, even though he still has friends and stuff. And this movie portrays a rather large variety of black people from different backgrounds. And yeah a lot of this movie is over the top, but I think it's over the top in a way where it's obvious what isn't realistic (like the Shogun of Harlem lol).

I think it's a good example because it is fundamentally about African-Americans, and is generally set within African-American culture, but it's just kind of very chill, is basically urban fantasy, and I think that the vast majority of the characters in that film could be RPed by anyone without really thinking super hard about it.

Not sure if my point gets across here, but maybe it'll make sense if you watch the movie!

@Arkandel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I've always been hesitant since I tend to play flawed characters, and I wouldn't care for anyone taking my takes the wrong way.

Fun fact: I actually pretty much never play black characters with gang type backgrounds, or anything like that. Not because I don't want to, because I think it's worth exploring, but because I just feel weird about it due to not being from that kind of background myself.

It's me.

I released my first EP (which I am now embarrassed about because creative insecurities). It was a very educational project that pushed my skills forward a lot, but I realized I wasn't entirely being myself. Like, the dubstep type stuff wasn't necessarily bad, but I feel like I was trying to be popular or sound like other people. The best parts of my EP were the parts where I really embraced myself and my uniqueness.

Either way, I'm working on a new project now, and trying to push my compositional skills forward, not being too worried about making dancey songs or whatever (though I do like dancey songs so you never know). I also have a Japanese idol type pop song that sounds like an anime opening coming out soon, that I made for this American duo (it's their first original song).

I got very focused on music and music composition/production, I somewhat stopped pursuing code because it didn't really make me happy. I've also started studying 3D modeling and 3D animation because it's really fun and I want to have a cool visual. 3D is much easier than you'd think, though that might just be due to all the time I spent on Second Life. Also I got into Japanese studies 日本語を勉強しました。

Oddly enough, while doing research for my branding aesthetics, I got super into learning about clowns? But this is a more recent development. Where that will go is still pending.

I spent most of last year going to therapy, both private and various group therapy sessions, spending nearly every weekday doing -some- form of professional therapy. While I still deal with a lot of stuff, I have much better coping mechanisms and levels of control than I used to. My current diagnosis is ADHD, major depression (with psychotic features), PTSD, and generalized anxiety. Many people around me suspect that I'm on the spectrum (primarily old mothers with children on the spectrum), and a few other friends, so gradually I've stopped ignoring this and started actually taking that seriously, which is why I plan to find an ASD specialist soon to diagnose me and see if there's anything to that.

Uhh, in other news I'm also trying to remodel the house a bit. Nothing intense, mostly cleaning up my parents' neglect since they moved out a while ago, then will gradually do little things here and there. And I'm gonna try to raise money for a new music project I want to do but don't have the cash for yet (I need to buy some specific synthesizer plugins).

I guess that's most of the important positive things!

Here's my regularly updated pinterest board that I use for working out my branding aesthetic and also what I give to artists for inspiration when they do commissions and design stuff for my music!

https://www.pinterest.com/DuanSparkles/my-aesthetic/

@Arkandel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

It's like this: If I play a white dude with ties to gangs then I don't care what anyone thinks of it, as I'm a white dude. If I played a black dude then I'd care.

It's not that anyone would think it's wrong let alone say anything about it, mind you. It's most likely all in my head. But it's been enough.

I definitely get that. For me I've never quite been able to resolve if I can do it in a way that would truly add something to the narrative I'm playing in. Like, there are things I want to explore, but also I think "okay but would this add anything". There's so many narratives like that out there already, so I've taken to just exploring new and unique things, or things more close to my own experience when I'm specifically exploring possible racial stuff.

I'm honestly very inspired by movies like "Attack the Block" (the first time I ever saw John Boyega in anything and why I really wanted him to be a Jedi), because it entirely subverts the idea of who is and isn't allowed to be a hero in a film, and really subverts your expectations in general. But I can't really bring myself to actually do anything like that, it just feels so tricky and a very fine line on the risk to reward spectrum.

@Auspice I haven't, though I do think your concerns are warranted. I've met quite a few white writers who asked for my opinions on what they were writing, but what they were writing was such a tapestry of bad shit I could barely unravel it, or they got defensive about certain things. I could take a read of one of these Peter Grant books some time if I find the premise interesting though.

My friend took a drunk selfie of me that I only recently learned exists.

During my mutton chop phase where I couldn't accept that my sideburns simply don't grow.

@Pandora said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Exactly this. I'm not going to lie, the idea of a bunch of white people sitting around chatting for 20+ pages about how to artificially inflate the diversity in games makes me nervous for what that artificial diversity will look like, and the continuing chatter about how the community is too insular to invite in minorities so it's better to pretend to be them instead is tragic as fuck.

Fix the culture if you want diversity, and if you can't be bothered, leave us out.

I do think that there are a surprising amount of minorities in this hobby, but I think they tend to congregate around certain places, or stay under the radar. Like, Mega Man MUSH and String Theory (even though ST is invite only now) both have more minorities than the average MUSH. The concentration of trans people on Mega Man MUSH is higher than I've seen anywhere else, which is a part of the reason I've been trying to talk non-MUSHer trans friends into giving it a try.

I think this thread definitely has value, as I'm a strong advocate in I'd rather white people or straight people or whatever have some kind of place where they can ask sincere questions and sincerely educate themselves on things. I think it's more helpful than not.

I've been planning my own MUSH for quite a while (taking my time this time, which is why I haven't mentioned it), which I hope will be a fresh experience that makes POCs and LGBTQ people feel welcome and such, and obviously everyone else. There's certain MUSHing cultures, by no real fault of their own, where a minority would just not necessarily feel like they belong to that OOC culture. It's not anything malicious, and I'm not gonna start dropping game names, but some MUSHing cultures are just culturally not somewhere a minority would feel all that comfortable on an OOC level, just on the sheer fact that they can't relate to the OOC culture. Which for me is more of a neutral statement than "this is good" or "this is bad", just that I want to try to encourage a larger variety of OOC MUSHing cultures. They definitely exist, Mega Man MUSH's very leftist minority friendly culture, String Theory's very family oriented culture where literally the whole MUSH is friends, they're very different from each other, and are also very different from other games.

I've talked a lot in the past, even in my batshit insane WORA days, about how you can build and run a game to encourage a particular kind of culture. And I think that beyond honestly simple to avoid things like toxicity and such, it's definitely possible to build a game that feels welcoming to minorities on an OOC level. But what I failed to understand in the past is that it helps to bring people along who will actually help encourage your game to be a certain way, which is why one man shows aren't great. That's why I'm bringing so many friends along when I make my MUSH, to help me turn it into what I want it to be.

I don't think creating a particular OOC culture is a simple feat without starting out the gate with that plan in your mind. Like, those games I mentioned, they're at a point where their culture likely isn't going to change very much. Arx's culture is unlikely to change, any MUSH that's established itself at this point is not likely to change. Ultimately, if you want big cultural changes on an OOC level, you've gotta make a new environment for it.

That said, encouraging minority options in a roster game and making the characters feel more diverse, both in culture and as individuals to be honest, is one thing that can help an already existing game with this. And yeah, I do think that actually playing said characters helps, but again don't force yourself just because of that.

I've legit seen people outright not bother joining a game because it was like "ugghhh another New England/Maine game where everyone has a mansion and is a white CW character". And I've personally played countless games that take place in an urban environment but it's obvious that the people who made the game have never lived in said environment or even seemingly watched media that took place in said environment, so the characters live in this bizarrely uncanny way because there's no one to creatively drive the game to actually feel like what it's supposed to be.

And by bizarrely uncanny way, I mostly mean everyone is rich, which is so tired and overdone in modern settings. "I live in Hell's Kitchen please come hang out at my 100,000 square foot apartment with my baby, it's so rough here". Honestly, nearly every character not being rich would go such a long way in making settings feel more relatable and down to Earth, and not like a soccer mom power fantasy.

In Arx it makes sense that people are rich, since it's a game mostly focused on nobles. So I just wanted to point out that this complaint excludes Arx, as everyone being rich is narratively appropriate and serves a purpose (plus people choose to be things other than rich).

Lmao I was just remembering that years ago, WORA people told me I couldn't make a tabletop book, and now I have both an official Paizo and Green Ronin project coming out.

I know plenty of actual lesbians in MUSHes who play lesbian characters, and people who are men playing lesbian characters.

Like, the difference is kind of staggeringly obvious.

For one, usually dudes playing lesbians can barely play women to begin with, let alone lesbian women.

Plenty of lesbians I know play sexy characters who are seductive and all of that. It's 100% different than when men are doing this, as men tend to universally play the same lesbian personality and character, while women play their characters as actual people with a personality.

I missed someone making a strawman argument at me fuck.

Anyone I'm drunk 'cause of some girl shattering my entire soul, so here'a picture of Chris Jericho champaign that he isn't legally allowed to call champaign.

Now as far as diversity goes, like, okay so first of well you gotta chill.

Second, don't RP with strawmen and you'll be good to go.

@Ghost said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Actual Cyberpunk
Battletoads
Cows of Moo Mesa
Captain Power
Farscape

The preview thing mashed this up as "Actual Cyberpunk Battletoads", and I was like "huh???"

@surreality I feel like this should all be a given. I don't really understand why all of these exceptional circumstances keep getting brought up. It makes me feel like the discussion is kind of missing the forest for the trees.

There are literally so many games that have worked like this for years, this is all super basic stuff. I don't know why people think this is controversial and untested territory that is a threat to our basic rights to do fun things. Like, giving people options and tools to communicate better in a hobby where people have so much trouble communicating does not seem even remotely like something that causes more problems.

@Paris Mostly because, while this is definitely a terrible thing to happen, it's an incredibly exceptional case. It's kind of like not going outside because lightning might strike you dead.

The only explanation I can come up with for why this seems to be a problem I've only seen mentioned here and on WORA, is that I'm guessing at some point WoD games used to do emails and a bunch of predictably batshit crazy stuff happened.

Hell, I've used my email on games with batshit crazy staff when I was younger and didn't know any better, who I pissed off, and I still didn't even get so much as a peep by email. A lot of big games use email for apps and it's just considered totally normal in a lot of places, while some places don't use email because they've moved to fully coded chargen apps. In my opinion it mostly comes down to personal preference.

I will say that when I started back in 2005, I could have definitely imagined it being a higher possibility that people might abuse email and such, even though I never saw or heard of it happening outside of these forums, but like, we're such a different hobby now that it wouldn't even close to be my first concern.

In my opinion, the modern prevailing trend seems to be very anti-meta plot, and as long as that's the case, I'm of the opinion that people aren't going to be particularly invested in the IC trappings of the world.

If the world isn't moving and evolving with stuff happening in it, and people just make a game and go 'This is the world, this is how it is, and this is how it always will be', why should players care about it?

If staff don't want a game to be treated like a sandbox, then they shouldn't basically create a glorified sandbox to begin with. Effort has to go into making the world feel like a living and breathing thing. In my opinion, most other solutions are just a bandaid that ignores the root cause of the issue.

When a world doesn't feel alive, it's going to either be treated like a sandbox or as unimportant in general. Even in the case of staff not wanting to GM things, and want things to be PRP focused, if they want a game to feel alive, then people have to be allowed to run actually important and world affecting PRPs. Staff have to support and and treat PRPs as important and perhaps even allow players to create their own world affecting metaplot if you want a world to feel important while not GMing yourself.

I'm sure that my perspective on this will be unpopular, but if literally no one is doing any sort of important plot that has any particular consequence beyond that plot , no real staff endorsement, and no real feeling that one can affect or sincerely interact with the theme/world? People are going to treat it like a sandbox.

And I firmly believe that there's no way around that unless you make your world so small in scope that it's very simple to perceive change within one's environment without plots.

For example, a school based RP, like, an RP based around a single school, a single small faction, a single superhero team who has a base and leaves that base to do stuff outside of it even though the grid itself is mostly the base? Much, much easier for the game to feel alive with minimal staff intervention.

In my honest opinion, the larger the scope of the world that you want players to care about, the more necessary plot about that world is going to be. The smaller the scope, the more people feel that their day to day RP is a part of the world, with the option of going out into an even larger world.

I know that this might sound like I'm pulling shit out of my ass, but consider this: In, say, an anime high school RP, how difficult do you really think it would be for people to do PRPs that they feel invested in without staff putting their approval on it? Not very. It's also, in my opinion, much easier for players not in said RP to feel like it's something happening close to them, a school is a very tangible thing, people know that they know what's going on because their characters are in that school, even if they aren't in the plot.

A school, or really any particular interior location, is easier for people to buy into as important, as something capable of being tangibly affected, as feeling like a part of the same world as the other players. A city is a significantly harder sell. Because that is what you're doing, you're selling your location as something that should be invested and bought into, as something to care about.

The larger the location, the harder the sell, the smaller the location, the easier the sell.

I hope this made sense.

(If you're looking for information on the company instead, please go here and scroll down to the latest updates: http://helloproject.wikia.com/wiki/Hello!_Project_Wiki)

I for a brief period entirely quit MUing because I've been having possibly the most elaborate emotional breakdown of my entire life, which I am still partially in the middle of having. However, unlike usual, I didn't just fuck off to Shang or learn a new language or any of the other random shit I do when this happens, I've actually gotten a job.

I'm working retail, and hilariously after a month I'm kind of close to getting a promotion. With the way things are going, I could be making like $12 an hour in a few months, over my current $8. Though I'm still trying to do music shit, as my intent is still to become a music producer/DJ person maybe or whatever. tl;dr Make music money somehow.

I've also gone through my usual start stop business on tech career shit. I can never seem to maintain steam on pursuing a tech career, I always just end up wanting to spend my time learning and producing music shit, so I don't know, I guess we'll see what happens.

Retail has been interesting. Yesterday I basically had to live through a glorified episode of Death Note, but it all worked out, kind of. I mean, if that lady continues her current behavior, pretty sure she's going to jail soon. But either way, that's fine.

My intent is to go to Portugal for a week in January, for my birthday. But outside of that, I'm more or less saving money and trying my best to execute my plans. We'll see how far I can ride this retail train and where I can take it while I try to get my music shit off the ground. All else fails I'm still studying IT on the side when I feel motivated, even though I already know a lot of that shit already.

Oh and I reached enlightenment for an entire day and discovered the meaning of life, and then was like fuck it I'm good.

tl;dr: I'm still alive even though I'm in the middle of a very elaborate emotional breakdown. But at least I'm not ridiculously broke anymore.