Best posts made by Sparks

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

By and far, college kids aren't reading and writing like they used to. This is fact.

Except I've seen plenty of studies that say the reverse. Sunny even quotes one a step or two above. College kids aren't reading print books like they used to, but they read on iPad or iPhone or Kindle quite avidly.

We're standing around trying to design a new logo for an outdated product when they don't want the product to begin with. This is Marketing 101 and we are failing. If they want our product, they will find it, regardless.

Except, as Roz has pointed out, there are many demonstrably excellent RPers doing journal RP, Tumblr RP, forum RP, and so on. And as both Roz and I have experienced, if you point them at a MUSH, they go "Wait, I have to download a special program? Okay, how do I set this up. Okay, what's this +cg/adjust stuff I have to do? This is weird." and go back to the familiarity of something in a browser they already know how to use.

We mostly know how to use +bboard, though as Tat has pointed out, folks sometimes still have to check the particular syntax, especially for +bbnew, +bbsearch, etc. type commands that tend to be custom per-game. But you know what? Everyone pretty much knows how to use a web-forum when it comes to bboards.

The core of MU is roleplay. None of this enhances or speaks to that core. What would bring people in for roleplay? What are barriers to roleplay? It was brought up earlier, a few things:

People complain the hobby is dying. That we're RP'ing with the same people over and over again. That there's no new blood.

If we assume "there's no new blood" is a problem, and that new blood is something that infuses new life (and thus new RP) into the community, then making MU*ing more accessible to people absolutely enhances that core.

As was pointed out by several others already, T:L&F made a huge concerted effort to find RPers in those environments, to handhold them through the adjustment period, and get them into RP. As a result, it's a fairly large, active game with a lot of young newcomers to MU*ing.

Now, if you don't feel that the hobby needs new blood that's an entirely different matter. But it felt like that was one of the premises of this thread to start with, and the question was more "If this is true, how do we make it more approachable?"

• Difficult CGs (a web form only gives this a new interface; it doesn't make the core of CG easier)

I disagree completely, and I have my own personal anecdote to back it up.

I recently tried my first WoD MUSH. I found the chargen system impenetrable and confusing. And I'm an experienced MUSHer (and codestaffer!). But the chargen just... having never played WoD, much less used that particular chargen system, it felt alien and off-putting to me. I nearly gave up right there in chargen.

And then I realized, hey, I could make my character using the character sheet plugin in Roll20 and copy it over. And now I had something that did the math for me, which let me pick things and read the definitions from the books as I did so, etc. Suddenly making my character was a great deal easier.

Those are just a couple that have been brought up in this thread. Once people get past the 'shiny and new,' what's going to keep them around? It's not the bevel on the buttons. It's the roleplay and the people on the game.

But if they can't get through that initial push they're not going to be on the game in the first place to stick around.

@saturna said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Imagine a space game on Arx code.

o.o

Honestly, the Arx codebase wouldn't be ideal for it. We don't handle ranged combat terribly well in the combat system at present, and space/SF combat usually is based around ranged attacks. Plus, there's no spaceflight code, and nothing you could repurpose as spaceflight code. So for true hard SF, you'd almost do better to just start coding a new codebase atop Evennia, or write a space plugin for Ares. (Because frankly, Ares' scene system is amazing, to a degree I want to write an equivalent for Evennia someday.)

That said, there was an SF campaign I wanted to run, where the players would be colonists who discover ancient alien ruins on the planet they've settled. And that you could do with Arx's codebase; the magic and exploration systems could be repurposed for exploring alien ruins and learning how to use alien tech, avoiding security systems and hostile local life. And the clue/revelation system could be used for uncovering more and more of the alien Precursor culture's history and secrets.

But "I fly around in space and shoot things pew pew" vs "science fiction Indiana Jones [cue triumphant adventure music]" (or throw in a hostile force that wants to control whatever ancient tech is found in the ruins and has thus seized the colony and go full Tomb Raider reboot, where you want to find and repurpose the alien tech to free your friends and family still stuck in the now-occupied colony) are very different things.

(Dang it. Now I want to run space Indiana Jones.)

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

@sparks The reason so many find combat integral to plot fu, is because it is the one thing that doesn't seem impartial. Stats are on the sheet, dice are rolled, system is consulted, results are given. There are no vagaries to it. When a plot is more social, it is really easy to feel like someone doesn't matter at all.

I do agree. It's one reason I think any social combat system should be equally straightforward and clear, as much as possible. It's not an easy design to do, but I think it can be done right.

But what @Apos was proposing earlier in the thread wasn't even social combat between PCs right now, but giving a measurable, consistent system of social influence which can be used to influence NPCs on large-scale actions. Making social mavens useful to people, and making it worthwhile for families to let their social mavens spend money on being social mavens, because there's a measurable benefit to it.

If your pretty, popular princess cousin can use that popularity to sway the NPC masses to your cause when you need it, it's harder to begrudge her the money for that fashionable new dress before a big party!

It's these kind of situations that burn people on social plot fu, and it totally is a once bitten twice shy situation for many people because as we all know, people remember the bad much more easily than the good.

Sure, but I'd argue that just because a few people may react badly to something isn't necessarily a reason to get rid of it.

I mean, I think the same is true with some people when they lose a fight they think they should win in combat code. And then they get angry at the person they were sparring with ("clearly it's just because you have better gear!") or if there's no combat code they get angry at the GM who was arbiter of the fight ("clearly this is favoritism!") or otherwise obsess over why they lost their fight. I'm sure we've all seen that.

But that's not necessarily a reason to get rid of combat code and just do all combat or duels via consent and pre-arranged outcome.

Similarly, I think just going "some people will react badly to social stuff" is not a reason to write off an entire class of character from having a coded utility in the game.

Man, I'll probably regret this. Never admit to your sordid past!

A few off the top of my head...

CURRENT
Arx: Pax (staffbit), Hana, various plot-NPCs
Spirit Lake: Summer

PAST
Aether, Aether II: Alida Dimitrius
BSGU: Hallie (the second one, I gather)
CotA 2: Sparks
CotA 3: Firestar, Jubilee, Singularity (coder staffbit)
Fear and Loathing: Aleyna
Firan (just the highlights here): Sabinus, Soffie (the original one), Fida, Chinnon, Jana, Gemella, Sarina, Sabiana, Jeanne (staffbit)
Mass Effect: Alpha & Omega: Locke, Naren, Doyle, Lizzie, Cada
Noble Ends: Althea, Corbendt
NorCon: C'stian, Katriona
OutremerMUX: Floris d'Waymel
PioneerMUSH: Edward
Robots in Disguise: Nautica
Transformers: Lost & Found: Nautica
X-Factor NYC: Orianne, Kaylee

Also, just plain Sparks on a hell of a lot of testbed or general gathering games (BrazilMUX, OGR/Gateway, etc.)

This has gotten so wildly off-topic from Arx. I should start an Atlantis thread for folks.

That said, I think since A2 is taking a while, I might make one more build of A1 that adds a couple features (like the second input window).

@thenomain said in RL Anger:

RL Peeve: I pull off the impossible and nobody is around to appreciate it.

Okay, so it was just a moderately complex SQL query, but it's still damn impressive. I'm running it over and over in different ways to amuse myself.

I will not lie, I've had moments doing complex database queries where it finally comes together in and in a moment of sheer victory I find myself quoting Josh from West Wing: "I drink from the keg of glory; bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land."

So, celebrate that moment.

@roz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@sparks I think that uncoupling -- or reducing -- the connection between house prestige and house income would go a long way as a stopgap. I think that's a really huge area where it kind of comes down to people feeling a lot of pressure, and I think it's a really big area in which the "prestige is a minigame" intent can fail. (Then again, the potential pitfall of that is then it becomes -- what value is social stuff bringing the house at all to encourage houses to support their social PC projects?)

This is something I've already discussed with Apos. I think we're going to integrate it in dominion down the road, rather than trying to graft it into the current bits of dominion.

So instead of affecting income, having someone with high prestige as a sort of 'spin doctor' to assist with any dominion rolls will lower the difficulty of dominion rolls by an amount based on their prestige. Thus making having a social maven in your family—or hiring a Whisper—still have a lot of value, but hardly something that should feel "required".

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@dontpanda said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

When someone tells me they can fold a fitted sheet:

I CAN.

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

So we could. We tried that. And yet we still heard all the time that it was happening, and the people who DID want fashion felt bad enough that they might be keeping someone from getting THE BEST ARMOR to help the House that they wouldn't even ask, or - and this is the worst part - it was just accepted as the Way Things Were and that's the culture that was spread where staff wasn't aware of it.

Which is why the goal is—as I noted earlier—to make all the player archetypes have a potential use to the other archetypes so that this sort of blocking doesn't happen, because there's always a benefit to facilitating other people's RP.

So we want things for combat characters to do, and we have some; Champions can duel, and people can spar, and combat will be important in Shardhavens, and combat can sometimes be fairly important in GM'd scenes that turn to conflict. Non-combat people have reasons to seek out combat characters, and their families have reason to fund their gear and training.

And we want things for crafters to do. We have some, yes, but we want the things they make—not just weapons, but all the crafted goods—to have relevance to the game world. Which is one reason modeling is actually a potentially important system. When the crafted goods are useful, non-crafters have reasons to seek out crafters.

We want things for mental characters to do, so we have the investigation system, helping to solve puzzles in Shardhavens, and such. So people have reasons to seek out mental characters, good investigators, and to help facilitate their RP avenues. This is one we could possibly add a few more hooks for, but the investigation system is a pretty important avenue; it still gives a good reason for non-mental characters to seek out good investigators.

We want things for social characters to do... and right now, this is one of the places where things fall down. Without value to the prestige system, there's little reason for the non-social characters to seek out socially-focused characters, or to facilitate their RP avenues by giving them money for clothing and jewelry, or to host events, etc. Hence why prestige tied into other systems.

@Insomnia we held an impromptu memorial service for the rover at work today. (Engineering companies, go figure.)

Sitting together with the rest of staff to plan a number of interesting reveals for weeks ahead of time, having most of staff running NPCs simultaneously (some handling several at once!) for four hours, and watching the playerbase lose their minds (in a good way) over the results. That was a lot of work, but the payoff in player enthusiasm made the work well worth it.

(Though I am now fully expecting a ton of IC messengers asking questions of those various NPCs over the next few days.)

ADHD medication.

I'm only on the first day of dosage testing, and my dose is still super-minimal, but I can feel my brain shifting gears. I was able to (mostly) focus in an hour and a half long meeting this morning; I did drift twice when a chance comment set my brain a-wandering into unrelated things for like 5-6 minutes, but I didn't have to dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand to stay focused!

And then I actually cleaned and organized my desk!

(Sadly, I can already feel it fading a bit, and I don't get to take another dose for two and a half hours...)

But just... holy shit! Is this what brains are supposed to be like?? Because even this little taste of partial baseline human functionality is amazing!

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Players of NPCs shouldn't have an agenda beyond "play fair and tell a good story". Of course your NPC ICly has an agenda, but the minute the player becomes too invested in that agenda, they're being played like a PC.

I'd also say the other defining trait is that the NPC does not get to be the protagonist. The story you're telling is not their story; they're not the hero who saves the day. They're the ancient sage the protagonist seeks guidance from. They're the powerful antagonist the protagonist has to overcome. They're the mentor, the teacher who helps the protagonist master a skill and helps them along their path. They can play a major role in the plot, but it is not their plot.

If you were playing Star Wars: A New Hope as as a plot on a game, the NPC doesn't get to be Luke Skywalker. They could be Obi-Wan Kenobi, however.

As such, an NPC should never roll in to save the day; even if they could, you find ways to let the heroes resolve the plot. Obi-Wan Kenobi fights Darth Vader to buy the PCs (Luke, Han, Leia) time to get away, but dies. Whups, now the PCs are on their own; the NPC helped them along the path, but the big hero moments—like blowing up the Death Star—go to PCs.

The spotlight, the real star moments, the 'big damn hero' beats... those should go to the PCs. The NPCs are there to help the PCs get to those.

That's my take on NPCs, at least.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER DIS-COURSE DIS-COURSE

***=Spoilery spoilers!***

@surreality said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Sparks One of the things with this that I think is quite relevant is that these are scenarios that are easy candidates for FTB.

I suspect that if these things were off-screen, or handled by rolls in an FTB, the issues would be negligible at best.

I can see a corner-case argument for the assassin scenario I described not being FTB, if they're planning to poison them in the throes of passion; playing it out it gives the PC a chance to spot what's happening in the poses and react. The NPC just rubbed that ring she's wearing across her lips? Sure, it could just be flavor—"I kiss the ring, and now I'll kiss you intimately"—but maybe the PC goes, "Wait... why? That was odd, and now I feel vaguely suspicious of this person..."

But yes, you could also probably just FTB and resolve it with rolls, too. And honestly, that would be my personal preference!

But I admit, I also am not the best judge of this scenario; I'm ace iRL, and the actual "place Part A into/against Part B, perform repetitive actions that make various organic noises and theoretically elicit physical pleasure" portion is as uninteresting to me online as it is in real life. I genuinely do not understand—on an emotional level—the people who consider a four-hour scene of things squishing together or being licked to be the end-game scenario they're aiming for, or some sort of perk/benefit to be aimed for.

Lucifer's been renewed for a fifth (and final) season. So, they'll have a chance to end the story the way they want, rather than leaving it on a cliffhanger when it doesn't get renewed at some point.

@Auspice said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

I've tried to bring this up before, but I sort of feel as if the last time I did it sort of delved into a 'but because I was burned by someone I know giving people any sort of leeway is how we end up with Spiders and Cullens'

I should note I think there's a difference between "pattern recognition" and "regarding things as absolutes". It's the difference between "Jed has been shacked up privately in a room with that NPC every other evening, and now suddenly he has the Shiny Thing (a new spaceship/a magic sword/private training in dark magic from an abyssal mage thousands of years old/an experimental rocket launcher that normally costs more money than any PC can muster); I have seen this before elsewhere and it Does Me A Concern" and "I hear Jed slept with an NPC for some reason; clearly there are Unethical Shenanigans going on, and it must be stopped!"

The line between the two is, admittedly, both fuzzy and impossible to define universally; it is very possible (and common) for people to try to justify the one as the other. But I think it's safe to say if your "pattern recognition" is based on a single broad criteria ("is staff" or "is an NPC sleeping with a PC for some reason"), it's really more trying to define an absolute. And that's the part I find worrisome.

@Groth said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

MU* is similar in that if you have the perfect staff, they dont need rules to tie them down since theyll always do the right thing to make the game better for everyone. In reality though most staff are just normal people trying to have some fun with their hobby with others and there's no reason to expect them to be saints.

Good rules and policies makes the hobby better for everyone since it makes the expectations clear and you put less pressure on the staff to always make the right judgement call. Sure at times they might feel cumbersome and unneccesary if you have a lot of trust however I think it's on the whole better to lean on good policy rather then trust.

I don't think we can expect people to be saints, no. And I agree rules can be great. Clear expectations are wonderful!

Is it fair to go "a benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient form of government, but people are human, so it makes sense to have checks and balances over whatever person currently sits in the chair where they control your entire country and potentially therefore the actual lives, health, and safety of everyone in it"? Absolutely!

And even universally applied regulations definitely do have an important place in some things, not just nations. Is it fair to go "these handful of investment banks have engaged in shady shenanigans; we should impose universal rules to prevent other banks from doing this?" Yes, because—leaving aside the possible degree of damage—I'd argue that we have no widespread practical way to opt out of the free market economy; we're stuck with those banks. (You could also argue you're still only really applying rules to one thing: the financial sector. The banks are more like the factions on a single game, bound by the game's rules.)

I think trying to apply universal rules to MU*s, though, is not really in the same vein. Sure, you can make an analogy and claim that a MU* is like a tiny nation, and that the people 'living' there should thus enjoy an established, formal system of government. Rules for staffers that they must follow. But I feel like that's a flawed analogy, in part because of those words you use in what I quoted: "the hobby".

Saying "I have expectations of a MU*" strikes me as much more like "I have these expectations of a tabletop game." Wonderful! Those are your expectations; you can have them; it's good you know what you want in a tabletop game, it probably helps you find a gaming group and GM you can enjoy. More power to you!

It's also fine to say, "this particular tabletop game I'm in is not adhering to what I want." It's even fine to tell your benevolent dictator (the GM) your opinion and ask if they can take it into account! But if the GM says no, you have the option to leave the tabletop group and find another. Unlike the free market economy—or a nation which is oppressing its citizens—you are completely free to choose whether to leave or stay; your choice either way does not endanger your life, health, or finances. (Or if it does, I am deeply concerned about what you consider baseline acceptable for a tabletop group you join in the first place.)

You probably don't want to leave, of course; your friends are there, you have time and energy invested in that level 11 half-orc barbarian (and potentially some emotional investment in their story arc), etc. But you do still have the option to walk away; no one's holding a gun to your head and saying you can't. And sure, you can attempt bloody revolution and overthrow the GM to impose the rules you want, but a) that seems like a lot of trouble for a hobby, and b) if you overthrow the GM or otherwise make them feel like their own players are against them, I feel like your campaign has by default ended. Which is arguably not going to bring you an appreciably different level of enjoyment than just leaving the group would've.

And given that tabletop gaming is a hobby, I'm not sure I can agree with "These expectations I have for a tabletop game should be rules that all tabletop games adhere to universally, because that way it removes the pressure from the GM to decide whether or not a given choice—like whether or not to allow this house rule, or if it's kosher to give the party a DM-played cleric as a party member after the existing cleric's player has to leave the campaign—is the right one or not. GMs shouldn't have to be saints to keep their players! Making these the universal rules improves the hobby!"

If your specific tabletop group has rules written up stating explicitly what the GM can and cannot do? Hey, fine! But saying those rules should apply universally to all tabletop groups that you might ever join because that removes pressure from GMs by not forcing them to be saints, and therefore and improves the hobby? That just seems off to me.

PRPs are a great way to keep things active, but as others have said, you need the tools to make them as effective as possible. As called out already, Arx had a ton of PRPs during the siege, but they all felt sort of self-contained; no one plot actually felt like it affected the siege as a whole in a meaningful manner, which I think contributed to player fatigue by the end of it.

In hindsight, what I might've done there was give a weekly update of the 'state of the siege', detailing how frequent the incursions were and how thick on the ground the army appeared to be outside. If players did a lot of PRPs and succeeded well, I'd probably have the number of off-screen attacks in that report have gone down, or see a decrease in the troops encamped outside the walls. I might even have included a 'Silent Army Strength' metric, and used that for the final battles; run enough effective PRPs of people doing things against Brand's forces, and you reduce the difficulty of the final battles. Then folks would've probably felt fairly invested.

(Admittedly, I think another problem was that the siege PRPs became a lot of 'something happens, and suddenly Bringers!' and people fighting them; there were lots of well-run combat scenes, but it was almost entirely combat scenes.)

So that said, here's the things I try to keep in mind to make a PRP engaging enough to keep folks really interested:

• Players always want a chance to shine; I try to write plots such that everyone who's going on them has at least an opportunity to really do something in their wheelhouse. Every character has something they can do well—if they don't, they probably aren't going to be super fun to play forever. It can be something with no plot relevance (see: Hallie's tattoo skills over on BSGU), but there's going to be something they have. It might not even be a skill, just a particular knowledge or interest; I had a player once send out, "Does anyone know any dialect of elvish?" and boy howdy that was right in my character's little linguistics nerd wheelhouse, so I got fed a little more information. If you give them a chance to use this in a plot, they're probably going to be happy. I tend to look at players' rphooks, or wiki 'Interests' field, or whatever before finalizing a plot's details for that reason.
• Players do want to feel like they affect the world. Obviously, you can't really have a PRP let someone blow up a prominent building or assassinate the king or whatever, at least not without tapping the staff in at some point and going, "...help?" But if a PRP takes place entirely in its own little pocket, they will be sad. Give them something to take back, whether metaphorically or literally.
  • To use Arx as an example again, the clue system is great for this, now that you can create PRP clues yourself. I've also let people find old objects—not artifacts of power, but things they can take home as a remembrance anyway.
  • I've also tried to leave at least one hanging plot thread from each plot, so that players can pick it up and run with it themselves for more PRPs (or I can pick it up later). The demon-tainted shavs who got away during the Hunting the Beast plot, the one mural they couldn't decipher in Choose Wisely, the whole lingering question of "where the hells did he go after he did this" for the villain behind The Forgotten City, etc. Even if it doesn't affect the main metaplot, feeling like it wasn't just a self-contained one-off—as if it's part of the world, and there's still consequences and things to look into after they get home—seems to help player investment, and keeps it from feeling like it took place entirely in its own little pocket world.
• Thematic consistency is important. You might be GM'ing this PRP separately from Tony's PRP, and both of you are doing things entirely separate from Staffer Julie. But for the players, it's all the same world; people are going to take whatever you did and bring it back to mainline plot stuff. If I make a demon in my plot who can be defeated by one specific means—say, they cannot tolerate the presence of one specific plant—and the players defeat the demon that way, I guarantee you that the players are going to share that info around, and the one player from my PRP who is later on some other plot is going to want to try that plant against the next demon they face.
• Obviously, it's easier to run PRPs within a narrow thematic channel ("a skirmish with the Cylons", "Bringers in the city again") and fit it in to ongoing things neatly than it is the overall wider world and entire theme ("I'm gonna run a big plot involving Ha'la'tha smuggling!" "I'm gonna have you all face a Demon Knight who enslaved a village!"). Give players hooks to hang their PRPs off of where you'd like to encourage RP—carve those thematic channels for PRPs to flow through—and you'll see it happen. Witness, for instance, the sudden spate of "I'm gonna run a PRP!" during the siege on Arx.

If you can hit all those points, you can keep players engaged, and the PRPs feel like something that actually ties into and effects the world.

So I feel like one key is to facilitate that. Make a PRP GM interest group, a channel for players to trade GM tips and tricks; GMs love to chat about things they're planning, even just in the abstract. Make tools to help them; I know Arx is working on +goal and +prpgm systems, which should make it much easier to hit those points. I know FS3 games allow players to setup and run the combat code just like a staff GM would, which hugely facilitates things like players running skirmishes on BSGU. The more information they can get to plan PRPs, the better; the fact that @faraday posts the goals for a given 'campaign' helps players GM stuff that feels like it fits into that specific campaign.

And if you make it possible for PRPs to feel like a living, effective part of the world, I think you can keep the game fairly active even without staff having to kill themselves or end up run ragged trying to GM or oversee everything.

That's my overly-lengthy $0.02, anyway.

@Testament — while not everyone seemed to like the shift to open world in Inquisition, the main storyline got generally good reviews, (especially from the people who didn't like that DA2's storyline was built around stakes whose scope was more personal than global). And I'd argue that the game launched a lot more smoothly than any BioWare game has since.

Not everyone liked it, no, but that's true of a lot of games. But Inquisition came down the off-ramp of the development freeway actually still looking like a car. Whereas Andromeda came down with one side panel missing and half the car just unpainted primer, and Anthem had a flat tire, no brakes, and was actually on fire.

(I really enjoy Anthem, but I am under no illusions about the state of the game on day one.)

@Scorn said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

"It's okay to say no."

Why do I sense like half of my friends staring pointedly at me?