Posts made by surreality

@GangOfDolls said in The 100: The Mush:

The art of magnificent assholery is poorly understood and the players who are taking it too far, who think they're building an air of mystery that's meant to intice us to come back and peel away more of the onion? They are often creating a bar so high that not even the people that can sing the high note in the Star Spangled Banner can get over it. And the reality is -- no one with a little self-respect for the way they want to spend their limited free time to play in a game after a certain point is going to enjoy bashing their head into the same wall over and over and over again just to flatter your mean as fuck with no apparent upside PC.

This needs to be bronzed. Bronzed and quoted in every CG room or newsfile or cg-help wiki page going forward until the end of fucking time.

No, seriously, I may want to steal this some day for exactly this purpose. May I? Will attribute however is desired if so.

@TNP Not quite.

I suggested they ensure they have support for the 'strike off and get the thing done on one's own' thing that happens frequently on the show (because it has to due to the kind of characters doing... exactly what you're describing, really).

...and brought up exactly the problem regarding something involving a small group of authors and a collaborative group like a MUX, actually.

As a suggestion from someone who was considering playing there, it's worth noting that at least in terms of the show, even the assholes tended to know they needed to get over themselves long enough to get things done once in a while. They might have been making bad decisions, or being grumbling grudging jerks whilst doing so, but they did, on the whole, seem to realize, "Hey, we're going to starve to death/die after a raid/etc. unless we stop arguing with each other long enough to actually do something about the problem."

One of the other notable things in the source material is, unfortunately, that yes, there are indeed a lot of people so invested in being irresponsible dicks that Protagonist/AntiHero/PersonWithTheClueAtTheMoment has to strike out on their own and Do The Thing That Needs Doing because not even a cattle prod to the nethers will get everyone else on board/out of bed/over themselves long enough to get it done. This is hard in a MUX environment, which is why I dub it 'unfortunate'. Players want in on things, which is good -- but that's not, actually, how things are always handled in the source material, because of the kind of characters present.

This means the balancing act for a collaborative environment here is going to be a little harder than it would be for a screenwriter; it's basically just something to keep in mind. Basically, you'll want to either add in some support (if it isn't present already and I'm not going to assume either way on this front) for people striking out on their own in this way To Do The Thing, and/or more collaboration to allow for more inclusion needs to be encouraged OOCly.

@faraday said in The 100: The Mush:

I feel an air of WrongFun on this thread that rubs me the wrong way.

I do, too -- thing is, it's 'anyone who doesn't want to deal with 24/7 antagonism is doing it wrong' wrong-funning, along with a side order of slut-shaming and wish-fulfillment special snowflake accusations raining down at someone saying 'the uniformity of this experience is not one I enjoy'. None of which is cool.

It's head-scratch-worthy to me because white knights and black hats can just as easily be any of the above as the other.

@Miss-Demeanor said in [CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.]:

Yes, it was called The Greatest Game, it was made as a 'fuck you' to TR, and was Victorian Age Mage/Proximi/Sleepwalker/Mortal. And yes, it was created and run by Spider and Shaft.

I love how crystal clear their opinion of themselves is, right there in the name.

That quite literally got a spit-take out of me.

@Kestrel I don't see how I have in any way implied anything only goes one way.

The 'don't come over here if you're a warm and fuzzy TSer' retort is, in fact, exactly what has been mentioned as horribly problematic. This assumption is, bluntly, something that smells like it came out of the back end of a horse and sits in a fly-luring pile.

What you're doing right here is assuming that anyone who doesn't feel like dealing with constant aggression 24/7 with zero reprieve is only after warm fuzzy TS and perfection, is a nasty-as-fuck thing to sling at someone, and that is what creates the hostile environment full of negativity that @mietze is describing as hopelessly counterproductive to both their experience and yours because you are the one who has decided: "This is how all the things are going to be and you're all just going to have to live with it."

That is not sharing space. That is 'my way or the highway'. You can warning label the shit out of it all you like, and yes, people should respect that, but right here, you're actively demonstrating a complete and total lack of not only respect for what others may want to do or be doing in the shared space, but zero inclination whatsoever to find out what that actually is because you have a hostile pre-conceived notion of what that must be if they aren't on the same page as you at what might be at a single moment in time.

@Chime We were probably there around the same time.

...and if you ever do something with MOO to make it, well, workable? (As in, there's some hint of a clue how to even get it running... ) Oh, gods, please let me know.

@deadculture said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

As you mentioned, my latest foray into the MOO had two characters meet an abrupt end by a guy I have described (and I did point this out to a staffer as to why I thought it wasn't a right fit for me) as an elementary school bully with an automatic shotgun. And this guy monopolizes a lot of the game resources and can easily outlast most other people except other veterans.

Not exactly conducive to new players.

^ That. That kind of behavior wasn't tolerated quite as much 'back when'. It's the kind of thing that'd guarantee I wouldn't bother further with a place, too.

@GangOfDolls said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

people who RPed the shit out of their goofy as fuck PCs

This reminds me of someone whose name I sadly forget, but dammit, they were just too cool. Many late night conversations about tarot imagery and Clive Barker were had.

Dammit, random stranger, you were fucking elegant as hell.

@faraday Pretty much, yes. No one should be forced to play baseball if they only like basketball.

They shouldn't, however, turn every game on the playground into a basketball game, or anyone not keen on playing basketball is apt to leave the playground, and rightly so.

@mietze said in The 100: The Mush:

It sounds like you're doing the good things like bothering to check (either overtly or not) if your partners are enjoying themselves. It's the people that do not that make folks leery. Or when someone cannot express that they're finding constant unprovoked antagonism tiresome/stressful/unfun and they're told that it must be just because they don't like anything that doesn't make them perfect. That's not true for a lot of people (I know it is for some!); sometimes they mean what they say--that they're just not finding constant personal antagonism that fun when it totally dominates everything they try to participate in and is directed at them.

Bolded for emphasis.

Anything that is 'all you ever get' IC gets tiresome. All tea parties gets tiresome. All TS gets tiresome. All high-octane no-time-to-breathe, yes, gets tiresome. Even for the few who genuinely can't ever handle not being perfect, I'm betting endless people telling them, "You're so perfect!" gets tiresome.

A varied experience is important to continued interest.

A balanced positive/negative experience can also help, but isn't quite as necessary (IMHO); heck, studies have shown the reason people gamble is because out of the twenty tries, that one win keeps people coming back despite the nineteen losses (and those are odds way better than people actually tend to get in gambling). So you don't even need to have a balance in the win/loss columns, because the wins count for a lot.

If you don't ever have them, though, you're back to the point above: there's no variance. There's only losses. That is going to make someone lose interest much, much faster.

And this goes for a 'win' however that person chooses to define it. It may be coming out on top in an IC argument. It may be saving the day and being the hero in a combat. It may be getting one over on the hero and luring them into a trap. It could be someone, yes, telling them once they're the prettiest princess ever -- even when the other nineteen times they're totally ignored.

That variance is essential. If people don't find it, boredom sets in fast.

If everyone is fighting to take on the starring role of 'king/queen asshole', yeah, you're going to have an issue, because that's a take-take-take environment, not a shared space environment. IC, everyone may absolutely be out for themselves and themselves alone, but that's not really an appropriate attitude for players to take. As players, we need to remember that we are sharing space with other players, and that means sharing the resources of that space -- be it in the form of attention, the hero/villain roles, the IC resources of locations or GM time, slots in limited events, etc.

Edit: This really, really goes back to a 'playground rules' thing again. It's been a while for all of us but we learned 'em all a ways back, y'know?

@deadculture Yegods, they have a wiki now? (This may demonstrate how long it's been since I was there. I have not actually been back any time this century.)

@bored nWoD Changeling's Dark Ages thing was more Era of the Sun King, I believe, so a ways before this. (If that's what you mean. I dunno if someone made a Victorian era Changeling MUX.)

@Coin It does, yeah, but it isn't using percentile to accomplish it though.

@Coin That gave me a weird idea, though, for something regarding extended tasks and potentially also team mechanics.

Percentile could prove interesting for multiple days/hours/etc. work -- roll with any mods, add up; this gives you 'how far you get on that task'. If you hit 100%, you made it. If not, you still have something. Could use the skill rating or whatever for the number of times you can roll.

What could be additionally useful with something like that would be for team mechanics; if someone else wants/needs to complete the task later, they may end up with a negative mod (for picking up where someone else left off/not necessarily knowing how the other party was going about it/etc.) but they would only need to fill the gap between wherever the first party left off and 100%. Teams working together could potentially just pool the rolls somehow, 'many hands make light work' and such.

@faraday You know, that is actually a good idea. It could be handy to set up the exit parent to actually just note <OOC> [name] has arrived [optional: from direction]. for odrops, and <OOC> [name] has left [optional: via exit]. for osucc.

That could clear that confusion up pretty nicely, and auto-loggers designed to strip OOC comments from logs could automatically remove it as needed, provided it uses whatever the standard OOC text prefix is.

@Gingerlily said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Had to pause though to offer a huge 'screw off' to the people who turned the convo to 'muds are rp lite, players don't care as much' Come on guys be cool. It isn't a contest.

I think it's more a translation issue really, or a 'how people approach the idea'. I suspect since MUD folk are (historically at least per the forum) less numerous here and more or less starting to come by more often and what the unspoken assumptions are are starting to come to light. Which is actually really a good thing I think, because in either group, there are buckets of them.

Weirdly, after the awkward poo-flinging awkward phase, I think a lot of good will come out of this. If nothing else, it'll bring out some clarity on various perspectives and hopefully get a lot of the unspoken stuff... well, spoken. Maybe even articulated clearly enough to go into various newbie guides and such. All of the unspoken rules tend to be something of a barrier to entry for new folks, in both mediums, I'd gather.

@deadculture We should have referred the recent goon squad there. They probably would have fit in great and had a blast from what it sounds like. (There really is something for everyone!)

I may have to poke this a bit more when I have time, though. If I can figure out how to get it running (since MOO is kinda ancient and not so maintained and... yeeeeeeeeah) it may be worth tinkering with.

I always felt Ghostwheel and Cybersphere had a good blend of the various game elements, on the whole. There was stuff to do even if no one was around, but it didn't bleed over too much if at all into RP-focused areas, and the over-wrought creepy sexual code from things like Haven were not in place.

@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

It's funny how many spinoffs came from Cybersphere, isn't it?

HellMOO, Ghostwheel, and Sindome all got their starts from Cybersphere players leaving to form their own games.

Almost with a bunch of others, too. It's a shame to see the game in the sad state it's in.

Uh, no. Ghostwheel was Quinn's baby. Quinn's code was what allowed Cybersphere to happen; he was more or less the official original psychocoder for MOO. Got the order a little backward there on one of those. It was not remotely a spinoff from Cybersphere.

@deadculture http://www.lisdude.com/moo/ has an archived version. Apparently the original site is down; it's a shame, since it was up about a year ago or so. It's listed as ghostcore.

Seconding @Lithium on this; I've gotten no end of nonsense horseshit for telling people this.

@GangOfDolls Oh, definitely so there. I actually still really like the balance they struck there and on Ghostwheel.

It's partly why I wish MOO was a more viable option to work with these days. (It was a lot saner to code in, also, in terms of wrapping one's brain around it.)