Best posts made by Tat

@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The issue of people not wanting to type complicated commands, well that's a little different, but I look at it like this. You're communicating with others in a text-only medium. You're using words to convey visual information, emotion, sounds, moods. If you can handle all that, but are stymied by the syntax for the command to make a bbpost, then you're probably in the wrong hobby.

I've been M*ing for 19 years now and I am regularly stymied by the syntax for the command to bbpost. I have to look it up every damn time.

If that's not a sign that the tools are bad, I don't know what is.

I'd give a lot to be able to just post on a webpage, using clicky buttons. The ability to reply to posts on the web portal on Ares is one of the BEST BEST things.

Also? It's hilarious to me that we're talking about people not being bothered to learn the commands, when for YEARS I listened to MUSH players complain endlessly about MOO's mail system being different. We're like the most set-in-our-ways community and we're bitching about people who don't want to adapt to /us/?

I feel like one of the problems with trying to contain things to the Hog Pit is, as others have mentioned, that folks often do not even notice they're not in the Hog Pit. It's really easy to just adopt one voice on the forum because you have to go out of your way to track the area you're in.

Have you guys considered styling the Hog Pit threads in such a way that just LOOKS different from other areas? Maybe I'm being super optimistic, but I feel that it might help those who do want to be good citizens and self-police to do so more effectively.

@apos said in Charging for MU* Code?:

To me it just sounded like you didn't want to feel like you were being a huge dick by saying no to people you wished you had time to help, and putting up costs would help reduce how much you're asked. I think it would help a bit, but yeah you then might get way more stressed out and feel a lot more guilt and obligation for the ones you do take. Hard to say, since I mean really only you know you and this sounded not really about money at all but for your peace of mind.

I kind of suspect this could backfire, too. Like, if I could pay for code to magically appear, I'd probably do it. But not knowing Theno really, I'd never be like 'hey, dude, could you do this for me for free?'

One of the things about the hobby growing up is that many of us have more money than time to throw at things these days. Just something to keep in mind.

@auspice

For the record, I did not take 'people aren't writing' and 'they don't exist' literally.

I did take them to mean that you think there are not ENOUGH people writing and interested in RP to be bothered with. If that's not what you meant, I apologize for misunderstanding.

And it changes nothing about my reply. There are forum games out there with far more complicate CG processes than many M*s. Journal games, too.

So perhaps we have a disagreement here. You don't think there are enough to make an effort to bring into the fold. I do. I've had a couple on a game I run, and I enjoyed them, and I felt continually bad about how hard it was to learn things I've taken for granted for decades.

But again, let me reiterate: I want these fun toys mostly so I can use them myself.

So many good thoughts in this thread.

I've played a few games where people were generally pretty okay with 'losing' in some sense (losing an arm, having serious injuries, occasionally a death), and also games where people really weren't. I've never played a game where EVERYONE was okay with the losing, or even where most people were okay with ALL SORTS of losing, so I think one thing to recognize is that there's a sliding scale here.

Not all losses are created equal. I'm one of those players who generally does NOT want my characters to die, unless I'm just done with that character. CG is hard for me and I tend toward slow burn on character arcs and hate when they get cut short. But I'm pretty okay with big injuries and setbacks.

The games where people were more okay with losses tended to have certain things in common.

• Culture. Most of them were started with groups of friends who lean heavy on the story side of things instead of the game side of things. Having a solid core of players who are willing to fuck up sets a tone that makes it easier for new players to also be willing to fuck up. This is a hard thing to accomplish if you don't just happen to have a fuck-up-okay core playerbase sitting around, but I do think that it's worth thinking about how one sets the culture and tone of a game on opening.

• Smallish. I think that in many ways, several of these games had a similar feel to the tabletop stuff @faraday is talking about. We're talking probably 25 or fewer players, 35 or fewer active characters, and a ton of GMing work. The sort that is not really scalable to bigger games.

• PvE, single faction. No PvP in sight, beyond personal disagreements. Everyone working toward the same goal. Factions WITH a goal to work toward. This means that the group could have a success even while an individual had a failure (Incidentally, the bigger pushback on these games tended to be when the group had a failure). The single goal also means that there was a group sort of trajectory toward winning, even if this specific event was a set back or a loss.

• Largely consent. Some had no system at all, one had FS3, where the results of combat were in the hands of the dice, but death and permanent maiming were consent-only and generally you assume that the dice are going to be /largely/ in your favor. Being able to choose when and where and to some extent, what, makes it easier, I think. This is how you get players going 'YES CUT OFF MY ARM PLEASE!'

• Failures and losses get attention, and sometimes badass compensation. None of these games had coded rewards for these things outside of attention - but man did you get LOTS and LOTS of attention. Kill off a character? Watch people RP about you for weeks! Cut off an arm? NEW METAL ARM + lots of meaningful RP around topics like identity and loss. I'm someone who, as mentioned, HATES killing characters, but I killed two of them in this way, because both times it felt like it MEANT something. It did not pass unnoticed into the night, it generated a lot of RP. Technically it was a loss, but for me it FELT like a win.

I'm painting a bit of a rosy picture here, and I'm sure there were losses on these games that did not feel meaningful to people and did not result in the attention they may have craved, and that there were people who hated having them and who preferred to win all the time (in fact, I know there were, because sometimes they complained), but I still think that overall, there was a trend toward feeling comfortable doing stuff that was fun story and not just winning.

I'll also note that I think generally it's easier to take a loss that isn't your character's fault than one that is. To have your arm blown off or to lose in combat because that's how the dice roll than to not save your friends because you made a bad decision. Those sorts of failures do show up, but not nearly as often as the others. It's way less fun to RP for months about your bad tactical decision that got all the NPC kids killed than about how sad it is that you have terrible scars on your face now.

@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:

@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:

Because if you fail your character doesn't typically end up in jail (fatal or truly bad endings don't happen very frequently) but there's a worse hell than that for PCs to end up in; irrelevance.

And there's an even worse hell than irrelevance: embarrassment. Because @Apos is 100% correct that the overwhelming majority of players would rather be banned for a meltdown than see their character suffer a humiliating setback. Which is ironic since many of the heroes they're emulating did just that in the stories (Luke in Empire Strikes Back, much?)

I think part of the key here is that I think the issue is OOC embarrassment - that is, as @Apos says, something that is not a part of the story YOU want to tell.

I've seen people take on IC embarrassment because it fits their version of the story they want to tell. Usually they do this because, as in your example, they know that the setback is not the end of the story, but merely a beat on the way to some larger win or growth. They trust that they are going to be able to get to the point beyond that poor decision. I've mostly seen this on games where I think players feel like they aren't going to get the rug pulled out from under them, RP and story wise if they choose to do this. It's a hard balance sometimes - consequences vs keeping things playable and fun.

@faraday I think there's something to be said about the OOC shift of names too, though. It's one thing I really like about Ares - the handle system.

There is a group of players I've played with for a long, long time, and we've all sort of adopted handles for each other. This can be super alienating to new players who don't know that 'Tat' is just my OOC name and everyone else just happens to know what characters that refers to.

I think there is something real and tangible about losing your OOC identity when your IC identity dies, to an extent, and I think handles is a great way to help cope with that.

PS: SORRY @Roz I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU TOTALLY CUT OFF YOUR OWN ARM AND IT WAS BADASS.

@goldfish said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:

Can I make an unlikeable character?

Yes, but you have to be very, very careful. These characters are best done, in my opinion, when the players KNOWS they are unlikable and manages that carefully. An unlikeable character probably shouldn't be unlikable to EVERYONE. They should have some likeable qualities. They should have some characters they can mesh with. Otherwise you're just going to have a headache all the time trying to play with people.

They are also best done within some context wherein other characters have an excuse to interact with them. That is to say, they work in a job, they are in a faction, etc. So that if my character suddenly realizes that yours is, surprise! unlikeable, I can still manage to RP with you, a player who presumably I like playing with.

PS: If you play an unlikeable character, it's super important that you be pleasant, realistic, and willing to do a bit of extra labor to make scenes 'go'.

Can I make a low activity one?

I mean, I think also yeah, but you probably are going to get left behind on plottage a lot. If I were doing it, I'd make up a reason for a character to be in and out a lot. A busy job that has them traveling, a demanding family, or something along those lines.

Hi all! I'm excited to see so much interest in Spirit Lake!

As people are working on and thinking about concepts, I wanted to add a point of clarification. Spirit Lake is a game about discovering magic - and that discovery will be slow-paced.

For example, potion-making is a level 4 spell. You can only spend 1 XP per week on a spell, which means that the absolute fastest anyone will be able to learn potion making is 12 weeks. Familiars are a level 6 spell, so they won't show up until week 26.

I know that this slow pace probably isn't to everyone's liking, and that's okay. I just want to be sure everyone is clear that you need to be just as into the 'weird things happen to small town people' aspect (in fact, probably MORE into it) as into the 'I can cast magic!' aspect.

We'll be happy to workshop concepts and character specifics extensively when we open on Wednesday (ahhh, that's tomorrow!), and look forward to seeing you!

I love watching players make hard choices or dig into some deeper aspect of their character.
I love high-emotion moments.
I love love LOVE watching the fallout from something. Even if the ST'd scene itself was kind of meh (we killed 10 giant bugs!), watching the characters COPE with the injuries or surprises or aftermath of action is the best reward for me.

When you watch a scene's rolls for days, desperately waiting for the amazing thing you know will be the log to appear.

And then it does, and it is even BETTER than you expected, and every single pose is a thing of pure 'yes, and' beauty and joy and you spend the whole time laughing.

God. Sometimes RP is just chef's kiss.

I've been using Google Draw (as @Roz mentioned) for so long that I literally can't imagine not using it anymore. Sometimes I'll have a small scene and think 'nah, let's not bother', and then halfway through I end up throwing one together because both players and GMs want one for clarity's sake. It's so valuable that sometimes we'll be in a big party scene and someone will request a map so they can know who's where.

I think it saves a lot of headache in terms of trying to get everyone on the same page and helps keep the focus on RP. I love Google Draw because you can make lots of shapes and colors, and everyone can edit at once and move themselves. So you can easily tell bad guys from good, dead bad guys from alive ones, have special icons for turrets and drones and giant moving mutant puppets - whatever you want.

I've also sometimes screenshooted locations in Google Earth and used them as my BG to draw on.

ETA: Some live links in case anyone wants to see what it looks like at play (I turned edit off, sorry):

• https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1U9oJvdLjX0uRJhPGYpuT9PJliPjiC0f44qWECFb1IfI/edit?usp=sharing

• https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1aBPSlBUjlNWv1Q2o0y8_n2jwXp-L7PeKjmHVhmzbRoQ/edit?usp=sharing

@Rucket For what it's worth, Spirit Lake's code is all viewable on git and I have no issue with anyone snatching what they want (with credit), if it works for you. Though fair warning, the magic code I've done has its sticky fingers all over FS3 plugins and some other core plugins and at this point I couldn't even tell you what they all are.

That said, one of the reason Spirit Lake's magic works on FS3 as well as (I think) it does is because we wrote the world and the magic to fit how FS3 does and does not work. There ARE some things that just aren't easily accomplished, so that's a thing to keep in mind.

Anyway, I'm happy to answer questions if you get to a point where you have any.

@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@sunny said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I honestly do not think that simply moving from MUSHcode to Python (or Ruby) will make it 'orders of magnitude' easier.

https://codecombat.com

This exists for learning Python. I have used it to teach teenagers, and I do not code. This truly is orders of magnitude easier than how we had to learn to use mushcode. This isn't even considering the fact that I can literally go take a class from a professional instructor, do a coding boot camp, buy any number of hundreds of books, watch instruction videos on youtube...and I could continue going on listing ways to learn, NONE of which exist for mushcode.

Motivated learner, apparently with the aptitude for programming and with access to quality instruction tools. Results not typical

Results way better than motivated learner with access to 'where the hell is the 'Lost Library of MOO' these days anyway?'

I mean, yes, you have to be motivated and have some aptitude to code. But coding in most M* languages requires MORE motivation and MORE aptitude, along with an insane level of tenacity just to find resources.

Plus, something we haven't mentioned yet: coding in languages that other people know opens up the possibility of outsourcing your game building. In these days when some of us finally have more money than free time, one could /hire/ someone to code a system.

@faraday You undersell your system!

It's true that FS3 doesn't work for ALL mutations/powers. It worked for us at X-Factor largely because we were a PvE game and weren't using it to settle player disputes. We used it in a few ways.

• In general, you were required to take your mutation as a BG skill. This skill represented the finesse with which you used your mutation (IE, how well you could control it) and NOT how strong it was. We had a lot of conversations over how to use that stat and what it meant, and this turned out to work pretty well. Strength was determined in your mutation write-up, so when you rolled your mutation, it told us how well you used what you were in theory capable of.

• Combatty powers like super strength, claws, explosions, even fire-creation, all got their own customized weapon, allowing them to use it in +combat. This took some trial and error, esp with things like penetration and lethality, but honestly worked really, really well.

• Powers involving speed got their own stance. It took me a while to come up with this and I'll be honest, I'm really dang proud with how it turned out. This also allows the player to use their power in +combat.

• Powers that didn't fall under any of these categories could get a plain old roll to see their success/failure. Again, we were looking for how well you did with what you've got, not how strong your hit was or something.

• Finally (and I think this is seriously key), we GMed with flexibility and a grain of salt. There were times when it turned out that the custom weapon I made was clearly underpowered (hello, armor blocking adamantium). So we just ignored the +combat and I posed the NPC dying and knocked them out. There were times when someone was so OBVIOUSLY possible that we didn't bother to roll. I didn't make someone roll to take flight unless there was an obvious impediment to it, or to phase through a wall unless there was an obstacle. Etc. Honestly, I think in ANY system that tries to tackle flexible powers of any sort, mutation, mystical, or otherwise, this is the absolute key to making it work.

We really liked FS3 for this game because it let us add a degree of suspense and surprise to combat scenes, to handle weapons and armor, but also gives you the tools to flex what the dice say when they are clearly wrong. I know some people don't like this kind of GMing when dice are involved, but I feel like it worked pretty well for us.

@faraday said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@Tat I'm glad you made it work to your satisfaction, but I know from our discussions that it was not a natural fit and it took a great deal of finesse, as you say, to get all the combat stats tolerably balanced. I'm not a comic book person, really, but I don't even know where to begin setting weapon values for Superman's laser eyes or Captain America's shield, for instance. Also the stat values are geared towards normal human abilities (with max attribute representing Albert Einstein, where does Professor X fall?)

Well, to some extent you hit a point where all that matters is /relative/ power/smarts/skill. I mean, if you have adamantium claws that can cut through literally freaking anything, you can just crank the penetration and lethality up to insane degrees and you're fine. You don't have to know where exactly the math makes sense until you find something that it /can't/ penetrate.

Similarly, if I knew that one person's superpunch should be able to damage another person's super rock armor, I just tweaked numbers and sat in a room using them til it looked 'about right'.

I mean, you're right that it's not a 'natural' fit. I did sit there and roll things a lot and calculate rough percentages, and I screwed things up, sometimes massively, and sometimes to really freaking hilarious effect. But my players rolled with it pretty well.

Which brings me back to the flexibility thing. At the end of the day you really have to just accept that nothing is going to do superpowers perfectly because there are simply too many variables. I think this was a pretty good approximation, though.

Oh - I also think that we chose to not mess with attributes when it'd be appropriate (say, strength) and instead added bonuses to rolls or just ignored them all together when the scene called for it. In many cases, mutation use doesn't /realistically/ require a roll because look, if you're THAT strong, yes, you can knock down the door. Etc.

But we also have a more permissible GM style that tends toward the cinematic rather than the nitty gritty numbers, and I don't think it would have worked for someone who wanted that more 'realistic' level of code regulating combat or RP.

@Pyrephox said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

I'd love it if room descs and locations in a WoD game really brought in that kind of stuff. Pointed out the places where the police just will not arrive. Made mention of suicide rock in the park, where every year on the longest night, someone kills themselves, and somehow, the police are never in time to stop it or able to keep it from happening. The other 364 days of the year, of course, it's a LOVELY place. Here's Compton's Vegan Delites, and it's got great selections; let's just not talk about the fact that the last restaurant in this spot closed down because the proprietor was found adulterating the hamburgers with bits of his missing wife. But the fried tofu is fantastic.

These are my favorite kinds of room descs. They don't just tell you what's there, they give you suggestions to fuel your RP. And sometimes they turn into plots.

I've found this thread interesting because, although I have played with and played characters who have held varying degrees of discriminatory views, I've never really thought about the degree to which such might make someone uncomfortable, so it's been very educational in that respect.

There has long been a policy on games I've helped run about the way in which we expect our R-rated, limited consent games to deal with violence. It says:

The game is rated R for in-scene language and adult situations. Also, be aware of the general tone of the game. We do deal with some darker subject matters, however, we ask that you be sensitive to other players and be sure that violence and explicit situations are a part of character development through RP rather than incidental, gratuitous, or continuous.

Additionally, we ask that out of courtesy for your fellow players, you place a warning on any explicit scenes or text, particularly in issues of abuse.

We wrote this policy after we had some players RP violence and abuse sort of as an offhand 'I'm bored let's do something' type of situation - no follow-through, no character growth, no real consequences of any sort. That's not the sort of game we were, or wanted to be. But we also didn't want to say that you couldn't deal with those themes at all, so this policy grew.

For me, adding 'discrimination' to this list seems like a good start in terms of addressing how I'd expect to see it handled. Don't walk into a bar and start spouting off racist terms for shock value. Be sensitive to making other players uncomfortable, both in language and in content. Clearly label logs that deal heavily with this subject matter. Subtler forms of -isms should lend themselves to character and story growth and should have consequences (for both sides of the equation) and should not exist in a vacuum. And it shouldn't be something that comes up almost every time you RP a scene.

Some of this is easier for me because I don't run historical games, where the consequences or frequency might be murkier, but I think the people who have been saying that there's a clear difference between an asshole who insists on their right to use the n-word or refuses to off-cam scenes and the person who plays a character who wants to play off the tension and struggle and drama the presence of an -ism sometimes provides are in the right ball park.

Re: Creative Outlets

I once played a character who was a somewhat serious amateur photographer. This was a game where a lot of people wrote IC journals (another creative outlet I LOVE and wish more people loved as much as I do), and I used to write a journal for almost every scene and then find a picture to match something about the scene, a picture she could have taken.

I had a lot of fun combing through the internet for cool looking pictures of everything from IC locations to like. Laundry baskets. I probably put more thought into what sort of picture-mood she was in during that scene than anyone ever realized, but it was a lot of fun for me.

I'm someone who also really can't handle bending my continuity very far (I regularly get frustrated if I don't know where text scenes fit in the scheme of the other scenes I've had in a day). BUT.

I also think that this is a really cool thing and one of the real strengths of Ares. I'd probably never run one that went more than a couple of days, where you could REASONABLY be paused if you wanted to, but we've used it to good effect to run scenes for players in differing timezones over the span of a day or two. Stuff that might take two hours in real time, but spread out.

Also, because the portal isn't reliant on a telenet connection, you can throw up a quick pose around chores or work or kids, or even on the bus on your commute via your phone.

I used to be someone who truly hated slow scenes - and they still aren't my favorite - but as I've gotten older and busier, I have REALLY come to appreciate the flexibility this gives me as both a GM and a player.