Topics created by surreality

Well over a decade ago, at some supers MU* I can't recall specifically, there was a dude whose character was named MAC LAW, and he was a sentient truck. Not a transformer, just a sentient truck. He was hilarious and the concept worked fantastically with the crowd of people playing as Nextwave. I loved every second that guy was in a scene.

@Seraphim73 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

Oh god yes. I agree 100%. I wish very much that more people would keep RPing after the "end" of a GM'd scene rather than just being like, "Welp, we killed the bad guy, and even though we're at the bottom of a collapsing mine, knee-deep in acid, with wounded to carry out and prisoners to rescue, we're gonna log out for the night and not worry about it."

If I run a scene which the PCs see no reason to play about after it's 'over' I consider it a failure.

I'll play. I play because of nostalgia, pretend, being creative. Those are all really good answers and they all fit.

I started Mu*ing back in 1994, on Gemstone while I was still in high school. I was into tabletop RP in college and Mushes were a natural extension of a "sometimes" thing I enjoyed. I never got into WoD because, my TT group was mainly a D&D Shadowrun group. College had to end eventually and real life(and a kid) set in. So I gradually stopped.

While in college, I minored in theater. So yeah, I've always kinda been an attention whore and had a weird enjoyment of being other people. Mu* always kinda scratches that itch. I can think up an entire character background and description in minutes. Yeah, I even have an alter ego like Beyoncé in real life (let's keep that between us).

I've always been kind of arty. I went to a technical high school and did graphic design. I was the girl in the back of the class drawing instead of daydreaming. While I don't write creatively, I do play around with it and I even have a dream book--that I actually use. This just seems like a hobby for someone like me. I'll probably be doing it off and on until I'm an old lady.

Why don't I play? The simple answer is real life. When I graduated, I became a teacher. Those first couple years as a new teacher are intense. I just didn't have time to do it. Then it turned into having a baby, which rapidly devolved into single motherhood. But now my son's a preteen and doesn't require(or want)as much of my time, but I got married and I have a new big baby to take up my time. Along with football practice and basketball practice, plus work....well, this hobby takes a backseat a lot.

So often I envy the people that have a lot of time to sink into Mu*ing. I only have a sliver of time to put into it and most of the time it's really late at night, so even when I get into it again, it doesn't feel like it's worth my time like it used to. That and I don't bounce back from staying up late like I used to. So I play for a little while, then I pull out because it kind of becomes a little much.

Run everything on an old server. Not only will all your function calls be delayed, but everything else will too! It'll be just like the 90s, only with better hair and no shoulder pads.

And there there is the cousin of the telenuke, which is a well prepared sniper, either with supernatural bonuses or not. Not quite as guaranteed but equally lacking in RP.

There is a slim chance that it could be done, so long as all the faiths have at least a decent foothold and some real power. Thinks 'Christians v. Pagans' via 'The Mists of Avalon'.

There would still be a lot of dickwaving, of course, but if neither side has the option of just completely eliminating the other, it could be done.

I know it's been forever since I asked about this, but I finally got this all set up and working and wanted to pass along a thank you to @Seamus and @Ashen-Shugar for their help.

I was able to tweak it just a teensy bit and work a title change for the room in to adjust how it displays on +where and in the room list, too, which I'm hoping will also be helpful.

Thank you again, this was enormously helpful.

@Meg said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:

@Thenomain

Eagerly awaiting the ending. You have us all in suspense.

This web site is horrible on the iPad. I tried very hard to cancel the post, but I guess it went on without me.

Now I can't remember what I was going to say. I think it was essentially an extended "me too" which is why I canceled the post.

Just as a general note, there's still a couple of things in here that I haven't answered yet -- but did notice and am thinking about. (The 'underdogs' one in particular; that's a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng answer with a bunch of stuff I think is worth the time to give in full, a lot of it open-ended enough that there's some input very desired there, and time's been super limited because...)

...we're heading out for a 24 hour drive in a little while to the (oh so fucking needed omg) yearly vacation. I have no laptop, so, uh. While I may be able to check in from the tablet, my finger-typing-fu is the ultimate in weaksauce. (No, really, I just got my first mobile phone on Friday, y'all, this is going to be funny as fuck, feel laugh at me and know you are laughing with me here at the same time. ❤ ) So please don't think I'm ignoring questions or concerns -- I'm just way less connected than usual for the next two weeks.

YES! Thank you! ❤

I knew it'd be something simple that I was just completely and totally missing. Thank you many times over.

Thank you for this. I am trying to teach myself how to make wiki magic and stuff like this really, really helps me out!

Kudos to you on your awesome.

@somasatori
I wasn't offended or anything of the like. Just amused at the expression. I believe it even came from TinyMUSH code re: SQL and its implementation.

More on-topic though.

@surreality
Quirky timeouts? I presume that means you're using async SQL for TinyMUX?

@surreality said in What themes and subjects do you look for in a game?:

@Coin Thank you! You know I ❤ you, but it's in like ALL THE THREADS lately... and seems to turn people away from universal contributions once it seems all WoD-centric. 😕

I'll help turn it back by responding to @Coin's comment (ie It will all be N edition soon, prior edition no longer accepted).

I think that creates a hard line, another reason I'm not a fan of cannon source (movie- book-verse)/game material (specific rpg). I just spent some ducats (cause I'm Roman, not cause I'm gangster) on N edition books for a good read, but its a year or two later and the new books are billed as N.N edition. I don't want to spend more money to play the game. I don't want to wade through the virus infested swamp that is 4share or some other file share on-line. The kind folks that love that specific game or cannon have taken the their valuable time to enjoy all the books or supplements and decide which is the most fun for their game, but then I have to look through the list to make sure I have the sources material specific to what I want to play or just not play it.

10 pages of wiki for original theme (which is light for some places we can agree) is a lot less reading I have to do to get into something.

Now, I do agree with @Arkandel, I don't want to read all that original theme to discover I'm onto some personal meta by the staff which is really running through the course of some unplanned book they want to write and everyone is just some pawn in the course of them revealing that story to the audience, which is the 10 people remaining on the game after a year who have all been promoted to staff.

This gets into other realms I've brought up, how much needs to be meta versus free form. Any grand meta sets the life of a Mu* to the extent of this great arch, even if it includes dozens of people, there is an end. Any lack of meta means lack of long term interest too. As it comes up a lot and a few WoD have run the course lately of being active with >dozen folks for multiple years running. The old standard when places ran for 5-10 years, just cause we thought they'd never close and the purpose was to stay open forever (SW1 is still running around, bless their soles).

I prefer original theme cause recurring genre like WoD is just a rehash of stories already told it seems. Its white washed and run again. Didn't @Thenomain just comment in another thread, if you have a great game running that eventually 'dies', just white wash it and run again with new name. I don't want it white washed, I want it painted. System doesn't matter, say its historical western. Don't say its small town Colorado again in 1868, the last frontier. Move it to 1842 New Mexico pre Mexican-American War. Do something new. WoD, don't just move city and let it be similar stories. I just want something original. That and a mix of adventure, where I know what the adventure is that I can do on a personal level because I'm never on when staff are around, with social between the adventure bread so I can mix peanut butter and jelly all I want.

Augh, good reminder to unsub from threads.

It's something that has been going on here on MSB for some time now. As was mentioned by someone in the VASpider thread: people don't see it because they don't want to see it.

It's pointless to go into it as the mods are not interested in doing anything about it. The people doing it are deliberately going after RL triggers and have been doing so for months in one case, over a year in others, to cause maximum real harm.

It sucks to lose a hobby I've been deeply involved in since 1996, but it's become dangerous to my health to be around this crew, and it's not worth it. Just leaving the board won't put a stop to it as the whisper games and provocations have been extensive and long-term.

I don't need to be around people who find it a happy funtime game to see how many panic attacks they can inspire in a day any more, and think this is 'righteous justice' as they do so. This isn't pit behavior, it's pit behavior outside the pit, and has been focused most egregiously in threads involving wellness and emotional support to engage in attacks. This is a transparent tactic of deliberate emotional abuse: to cut people off from any forms of support for whatever issue they're dealing with, but they sincerely believe this makes them good, ethical people as they engage in it.

There's a lot more to it that makes me roll my eyes so hard it gives me eyestrain, but it's even less worth mention at this point.

All I can do at this point is shrug and vote with my feet. No, this is NOT something that happened on HorrorMU, so don't give them any side-eye; they remain awesome.

Unsubbin', so I won't see any further replies, and I'm back out. Be well, y'all.

@silentsophia I think he already wrote the MSB story... "Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt" 😄

I know Chrome has a built-in tool in their source viewer/element inspector where you can view your design on different devices right within Chrome. I'm sure the other browsers have something similar either built-in or through extensions. Might be helpful!

I work in marketing, and if there's one thing I know, it's that everyone looks at everything with their mobile devices nowadays. When I'm super engaged with something happening on a game, I queue up logs in different tabs on my phone for my subway ride to work. Strange as it sounds, it's a tool to keep players engaged.

I have been shoulder-deep in wiki design, setup and wikifu recently for the LARP I'm involved in.

Is there something particular that you are looking to do? I'm not really capable of, say, making a wiki work with a MUSH (I do not know enough SQL or the processes for that, even with various tutorials and theno's guides and such), but wiki setup, extensions, options and design I've gotten pretty good at. If you want, PM me or post 'em here.