Best posts made by Sunny

I like it if roster PCs already have PBs as long as I can change them. If I can't change it, I'd rather not have one chosen, and I wouldn't pick up a character that I didn't like the PB for at that point if they already had one.

@auspice Yeah, can do the same on both Arx and M1963, too. Choose the colors and so on. It is one of my favorite new options people make available.

OH OH OH OH OH OH OH.

EMIT LABEL IS THE BEST THING EVER.

It puts [name] at the beginning of an emit for who did it.

I don't mind it. We're here to have fun, and if someone wants to readjust their character for WHATEVER reason, I don't see a problem with it. Pretty much everything can be explained in a reasonably IC fashion. The only thing I really care about is that it not happen every week/month -- having some sort of 'you can do this 1 time per 6 months' or w/e, just to keep the work involved low and to keep it from going from 'redo the character to make needed changes' to a way to actually play (these stats for one month, then those stats for another month, etc.).

@faraday Same. I am building my game with the intent of educating people on source material I do not expect them to be familiar with. It's my job to teach this stuff, if I want to draw people in who aren't already part of the culture.

Clarify for what type of game, maybe? My answer is not one size fits all.

Honestly, I think you should double your prices aside from the $20/hour for debugging.

That said can you give an idea of the amount of hours related to each of the projects?

@arkandel said in Open Sheets?:

@sunny said in Open Sheets?:

@cobaltasaurus

How much PVP do you intend for there to be?

I literally have no answer for 'games in general' beyond 'it depends'. Specifically for Sacred Seed, if you're planning on discouraging PVP completely, then I think Open Sheets are the best. If you're going to allow any PVP at all (including allowing for political action against one another for rank/reputation) then semi-open.

I think full transparency is a great thing for PvP games as well - as it removes any appearance of wrongdoing, favoritism ("staff like X so they gave him more stuff"), etc.

To put it a different way, a bad player will figure out a way to deduce information using OOC means one way or the other. They'll analyze someone's dice in PrPs, ask innocent sounding questions and file the answers away, etc.

Open sheets ought to flatten the field and remove a vector I always thought was ineffective - the OOC masquerade - from the equation completely.

That's nice. I prefer not to spend hours adjudicating whether or not so and so came by the knowledge of a secret IC, or if they read it off of somebody's secrets part. There's no reason a couple of key factors cannot be hidden (perhaps with a /share command) to prevent many hours of stress, drama, and headache on staff's part. If you are including PVP in a game, you are already requiring a lot of trust and cooperation on the part of the players. I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to give them access to one anothers' story secrets in a PVP environment, because now not only do you have to add an extra thing for staff to police (and it sounds like such fun, doesn't it?), but your players now have to be absolutely SURE they came to the 'right' conclusion, because they had OOC knowledge of the situation, rather than legitimately being able to put information together.

Completely open sheets in a PVP environment adds an enormous staff overhead.

Here's a wayback snapshot of Electric Soup -- you can get a sort of idea as to what I am talking about by looking at this. It's not exactly what I'm talking about, as I think that a vital component of the success was the partnership with Gateway/OGR, but:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080321194939/http://www.electricsoup.net:80/?q=taxonomy/term/18

https://web.archive.org/web/20071217183843/http://electricsoup.net/ES/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=18&Itemid=29

https://web.archive.org/web/20080321194041/http://electricsoup.net:80/ES/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=5&Itemid=29

I feel like people who are not Buffy fans and are not interested in Buffy as a project (save in being invested that it's not another WoD game) are trying to turn it into something that it isn't. @ZombieGenesis has a good, solid idea/plan, and I don't know why the waters need to be muddied, why 'we want buffy but not...' is a place people are going to. @ixokai sums up my viewpoints pretty much entirely, on what appeals to me about this genre and why, and while I can see other interpretations, what he's pointing out as important to him, Buffy-wise, is where I am at as well. I don't see a conflict between Buffy and Angel, they're the same setting/story/world/lore, just slightly different takes on tone that can (and do) absolutely co-exist without any sort of difficulty. Saying it's a difference between HS and college is only accurate if you discount the final seasons of Buffy AND disregard Angel's actual setting (which wasn't monsters going to college, I'll note). There is a huge cosmology. There is a huge amount of lore. There is very distinct stuff about this setting of interpersonal drama against the backdrop of saving the world.

@lithium said in Let's talk about TS.:

@sunny Then you do not want to communicate about a potentially sensitive topic.

IC is IC, I get that.

It's not impolite to ask someone before getting into a potentially intimate scene what is good for that person anymore than it is asking someone you're about to create a conflict with what they are ok with happening.

Communication is important.

Absolutely! And I don't mind the asking, at all.

It's when I say 'this is my preference' and that answer is not good enough, that's where my issue comes in. My answer of 'I have no limits, I will let you know if I get actually upset by something that happens as a natural part of the RP' should be enough. If I then get upset/offended/bothered by something at this point, it's on me.

@Ominous

Yeah, I'm way more interested in narrative buy-in than I am in code-enforced "buy-in". Personal preference, but that sounds like a nightmare to me, and I love system heavy games.

@shincashay said in Let's talk about TS.:

It's OK to say no and FTB the TS.

If they don't respect that you either have a conversation with them or involve staff. I don't give a fuck any more.

This this this this this a million times this. If all they're interested in is the TS, then they will go away on their own, or staff can step in and handle it for them not being respectful. It's a great way to handle this particular type of thing. Low drama, low headache.

Never underestimate the power of using the right tool for the job. Using the correct technology can cut a job's time exponentially; using the wrong one can increase it in the same way.

1. Can I use it?
2. Does it do what I need it to do?
3. How much work is involved in making the answers to 1 and 2 both 'yes'?

Suggestion: Design document. List what features are necessary (for yourself, not us), including your own ability to learn it. Once you have in hand a definitive 'this is what I need the platform to do', picking it becomes easier.

@cobaltasaurus said in Let's talk about TS.:

@arkandel Joking aside, I completely agree here. If I was on a game where staff let that happen, I'd be out the door in a heartbeat.

Me too.

@bear_necessities

I understand that you really genuinely don't see the difference, but I am going to reiterate that for those of us who do really register the difference, it is a big deal.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Pyrephox said:

Although the biggest reason why I've become wary of being the Active Person in the scene is because, unfortunately, then people come to expect it, rather than being inspired to reciprocate. I /like/ to run things, to get things moving, to pose fun little world-bits...but when it becomes the expected thing that I Will Entertain You, it's no longer fun. That's not what I'm here for. And worse, because I always sideline my PC when having those things things happen, I don't even really get to play my character.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I have also kind of become this (though maybe I'll be less embittered about it when my latest hiatus from MU*ing comes to an end, as it always inevitably does). It just gets draining to be That Guy after awhile if your fellow players are too many Not That Guys.

What I've found that helps me a lot is straight up telling the people I play with: 'I am tired of being That Guy. Can you please do something for me? Otherwise I'm going to burn out.' It's an entirely active process; you need to balance your own needs against others'. Sometimes I ask, and the person just isn't comfortable running stuff, and I say 'that's okay'. Usually, whomever it is will be all sorts of happy to look after me a little bit.

This is actually why people such as Spider or The Clique that Shall Not Be Named are as successful as they are. They run a lot of things that make specific people feel really special. They include them, gathering up a bunch of people who start to rely on them entirely for their fun, and thus when the crazy starts to get out, you have a choice: leave ALL OF THIS RP FUN behind, or put up with the shit?

Scene systems run on OOC engagement to find RP. I ask other players for roleplay.
A grid-based system runs on IC engagement to find RP. My character asks other characters to speak with her.

That is the difference for me.

It's not active/passive -- I promise, I am very active in sending an IC letter or phonecall out to seek a meeting with the characters that my character needs to speak to -- it's how the game itself evaluates where and how I should be looking to engage with other people. Am I using my character, her factions, the grid? Or am I using the channels and boards and OOC areas to talk to the people I'm playing with first to arrange the thing?

@Silver said:

@Thisnameistaken said:

And I hate the Unfindable code. Personal peeve.

Unfindable code is great. You don't need to be able to see that I have a secret room or even a base on-grid by using +where. Nor is it necessarily anybody else's business who I am having secret meetings with. people can and do use that knowledge OOC.

Can we PLEASE stop making rules based on the very few bad apples, and instead start getting rid of the bad apples? This isn't at you, @Silver, but an illustration of the trend.

@Arkandel

Yeah, I think it's very important to frame this sort of policy as what's possible, rather than what's not allowed.

"You MAY use up to X or Y" rather than "You MAY NOT use over X or Y" provides the framework people need without being discouraging.

eta: (NO guidance is far worse than BAD guidance; choice paralysis and having absolutely no idea if staff is going to come down on you for something because you're guessing -- oh boy)

@apos said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

I'm optimistic, really. We have challenges, both cultural and technical, and an often hostile community that doesn't really provide a good foundation for games to succeed, and knowing all the shortcomings, I'd expect I would be pessimistic about the future, but I'm just not. There's a lot of roleplayers out there in newer generations, and MUs as a format still offer some things other games just can't. Brand new players are rare, but they do happen. I'm newer, after all, relatively speaking.

Yeah. Can confirm, new players incoming. I need both hands to count the number of actually new new players I've met in the last year or so, and that's just me personally having directly spoken to them. I've heard of a bunch more. They're out there. It's not in the numbers it used to be, no, but it's not the molasses trickle some people seem to think it is, either.