Best posts made by Tat

I feel like some past games I've helped run have had some luck with encouraging player run plots. I think a few things have helped.

• A theme in which the space for relatively stand-alone plots consistently presents itself. I've run.. gosh, three games now. Where the characters did jobs, and those jobs were short plots. The ability to run a plot that is limited to 2-3 scenes is REALLY helpful for new GMs, or even just people who don't have the time and energy to commit to something that might spiral into long and complicated. It's lower effort, lower risk. This structure also really helps with ideas, as it presents a straightforward framework for the sorts of plots that fit easily into the game AND a straightforward reason for most, if not all, characters to participate. It's PRP'ing on easy mode, which I think is super important for giving people confidence, especially if they've never GMed before.

• A culture where PRPs are regularly and clearly asked for. Not just encouraged in a theme file, but a post saying 'hey, is anyone willing to run something this month?' Sometimes even saying to a particular person 'would you be willing to run a scene?' Sometimes people need to be asked.

• A clear method for running plots. Do you have to take everyone who wants to come, or can you limit numbers? How do you resolve conflict? What rights do you have as a player GM to make things up? How are off-camera actions handled? What needs to be RPed vs not RPed? I think a clear game philosophy to GMing helps with this, too. Does your game trend toward letting players succeed, or do you rely on dice, even when they're brutal? Is your system the final decision maker, or can GMs say 'no, you aren't really knocked out, let me undo that, it was stupid'?

• A game commitment to supporting new GMs. One of the best things for this, in my opinion, is to team up for a PRP. An experienced GM, or even staff member, and someone who's new to it. Brainstorm together, outline together, run scenes together. I've run a LOT of plots, and teaming up is still my #1 favorite way to do it.

We've tried other things, like idea banks and story ideas, and they have been minorly helpful, but I think those things are mostly only helpful when you already have culture aimed at supporting and developing GMing ability and confidence in people.

@Groth said in Evennia (Arx) webclient feedback:

It could probably be a useability boost even for non-mobile clients.A command like 'replay' that resends the last X outputs would be pretty awesome for people changing computer for instance.

This is, IMO, the really life-changing thing about Ares. It unchains you from your telnet connection - you can change computers (or devices, really - phones and tablets just as easy), stop and come back, lose your internet and hop back in when it returns, etc. It's so incredibly freeing that I couldn't imagine its impact on how I play before it happened. There is no longer a need to be actively THERE - not just watching your screen, but being connected at all - in order to not miss things. That's a lot of what makes Ares so flexible for changing and busy lives, I think.

@skew said:

I'll also add that @tragedyjones came up with a pretty great game policy, called "Fake It".

On the opposite end of the spectrum from people ignoring your characters flaws, you should not need to possess every stat your character does. It is perfectly acceptable to fudge reality. If you want to play a doctor, you should not be penalized by a lack of OOC knowledge. Any time a character in a scene wants to fake it, they may declare so OOC and make an appropriate roll. People should endeavor to try and take the results of the roll into the pose. This is not meant to bypass RP, just allow a little fudging of reality. If the Doctor character wants to throw in some medical jargon, don't bite their head off it isn't real world accurate.

I like this a lot, and I've seen it often in play. We don't usually roll it (I play on very stat-lite or no stat games), but many times people will simply include in their pose 'She spends several minutes explaining the issue in intricate detail that's likely difficult to follow without a medical degree before turning to sum up, "You'll be in a cast for six weeks." '

Or something of that nature. This to me is an excellent way of acknowledging the gaps in your own knowledge rather than trying to stuff them full of things that don't make sense while still giving a nod to the skills your character has. It's a lot easier to googling treatment and healing times than the full understanding of the impact of a broken bone, because web resources are (largely) written for patients, not doctors, and that's the case in many circumstances.

@tempest said in Book Recommendations:

@arkandel said in Book Recommendations:

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson is the third book in the [Stormlight Archive]

FUCK WHEN DID THIS COME OUT

It comes out in a couple weeks - Nov 17. Sanderson is a BEAST.

To add to this thread, if you haven't hit up Leigh Bardugo's Grisha books and, even better, her sequel series starting with Six of Crows, you are seriously missing out.

@faraday said in Mass Effect MU*?:

@ganymede said in Mass Effect MU*?:

But FS3's combat engine seems to be a simultaneous-action-resolver, right? It doesn't lend to sequential events well.

No, there's initiative. The only thing is that KO's don't happen till the end, so nobody's action gets cut off. Of course if their damage mods get up to -10 from all the hits they took before their action, it's a hail mary but at least they get their dying gasp

And you can add initiative mods to weapons, if that's ever relevant to something you're trying to do. In terms of ME, I'd definitely think of 'weapons' not only as guns and ninja swords, but also tech and biotic things as far as possible. So if a biotic ability should take precedent (say, someone doing a biotic charge at superspeed), you could crank their init up to reflect that.

There really is a LOT of flexibility in the system once you dig into all the custom stuff you can change. The new thing where you can add specials to weapons adds a ton of options, too.

I will posit, however, that there is a pretty significant difference between watching a tv series or reading several novels and then finding a game set somewhere you love, and reading a bunch of wiki text explicitly to play a game.

One is something you did because it is entertainment in and of itself, and is probably of some degree of quality.

The other is something you'd be motivated to do... why? Personally, I'd probably only do it if someone I know and trust went 'read this, play this, it's AWESOME!' There's a super slim possibility that I'd just like the idea enough, but it's super slim. And on top of that, the wiki text is often (IME) not very entertaining, and sometimes not even very well written.

If, on the other hand, I spied a game set in a beloved franchise, I'd be interested in a moment.

Tabletop source books are not the same as wiki setting, in part because they have been heavily tested and have a reputation. The starting point isn't the same, and I think you really do have to consider that when designing games.

@Meg This made me literally lol. Like I wheezed so hard my boss stuck her head in to see if I was okay.

PS: We need a faction of lurkers. I mean mostly I just want a faction. I feel left out.

In terms of 'too long', you can actually cut a lot of length out of your individual rules, too. I once had a class about designing information for students, and there were a few rules of thumb that I always keep in mind when I'm writing policy.

• People skim. This means more bullets, fewer words.
• Don't be polite. This is informative, not social. Don't say 'please' and 'thank you'.
• Write it to say what you want, edit out half the words, then cut even more. No words that are not necessary. This usually means cutting adjectives and adverbs.
• Examples only when needed for clarity.

For example, I just cut that last bullet down by about 6 words. 'Absolutely no words that are not strictly necessary' is not actually clearer than 'no words that are not necessary'. It's just prettier.

So here's an example:

Rule 5: Don’t harass, stalk or abuse other players or staff OOCly.
If somebody tells you not to bother them with OOC communications, stop. If they ask you to stop page them, stop paging them. If a staff member makes a decision you don’t like, kick it up the line to the admin, if you must, but once that staffer indicates they are done discussing the ruling, stop. Don’t use alts to do this. Don’t use your wiki page to send snarky messages. Don’t continue the dispute on channels. Just don’t.

Rule 5: Don’t harass, stalk or abuse others.
If somebody tells you not to bother them with OOC communications, stop. In cases of conflict or dispute with a staff ruling, contact admin, who will mediate.

Literally the same policy, half the words.

Sometimes examples are necessary for clarity, as in your sexual policies, but most times they are not. 'OOC communications' covers paging, wikis, and channels. In fact, having too many examples often makes your policies have less bite, because people will say 'but it wasn't listed!'

@faraday said in MU and Data Organization:

I haven't had a game with actual in game news files for over a decade. People do just fine.

In fact, I'd venture to say that most of them don't even notice.

The last two games I built had code help on the game, but no theme stuff. Never once did anyone ask me about it.

Yeah, Ares has a custom_css file that you can throw stuff in to muck about to your heart's content, and it'll overwrite any of the default CSS. It also has a simpler color customization system for people who don't know CSS and just want to change basic colors, and I think the side the sidebar appears on.

There are a few places that you have to dig a little harder if you want to customize things, but I've actually been noting those for @faraday and she's been great about adding in classes and such where needed so that the skinning will just get easier and easier in subsequent versions.

There are a few wiki things it doesn't do (yet), but WOW does the stuff it does make up for it. For example, the game I'm working on has just decided to use web CG entirely instead of doing it in game, because it's so slick.

@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I have no philosophical objection to breaking out chat and RP into a separate stand-alone client, though there's a ton of work involved there when you account for all the different platforms. What I object to is expecting people to learn all these game-specific +-commands with crazy syntaxes.

Yeah, this is basically what I want to see, and where I think the barrier to entry is for people. Hell, I've been MU*ing for nearly twenty years (dear lord), and I STILL look up the syntax for how to reply to a bb or add a job to a certain category. And I HATE doing it every single time.

Give me GUI. Give me dropdown menus and submit buttons and edit buttons and reply buttons.

Re: grids, I think there's an interesting question to be asked about what counts as a 'grid' on a non-telnet game. I've actually had this conversation a lot with people. What are the key components? Is it being able to 'walk' from room to room? Is it being able to look from one room to another? Is it a sense of where things are located? Is it the descs?

I'd be happy with a clickable map with descriptions and have no need for 'walking'. But I also feel super strongly that I need both location orientation and descs. Some people have different requirements. But this is a great example of the sort of discussion needed if we really want web-based play, where there are so many possibilities telnet doesn't have.

@faraday said in [Request] Policy Template:

Just outline your general expectations, and beyond that, use "dinner party rules". It's my dinner party. I don't need to provide each guest with a comprehensive list of unacceptable behaviors. If you're being a jerk, I will talk to you about it. If you persist in being a jerk, I will ask you to leave.

Totally agree. In fact, I find that the more rules you have, the harder it is to police things, because people become rules lawyers.

I swear the policies we use get slimmer and looser with every game we run, and most of it boils down to 'play nice with others or we'll have a chat', with a few clarifications as to what that means to us.

Alternatively, learn to code!

Seriously. There's a hell of a lot of code that you can just patch in and tweak with a very small amount of knowledge. You'd be surprised how quickly you can move from that small amount of knowledge to a few cosmetic tweaks, and from a few cosmetic tweaks to adding a couple of fields to +finger, and from doing that to creating a code to list everyone's age, and then it's a slippery slope.

Your mileage will clearly vary according to the type of game you want and how many code-heavy systems you want, but there are an awful lot of games that can run almost entirely on code other people have already written for you.

Don't let the flowchart kill your dreams!

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

For example what I had in mind for a GM was to let them create a 'room' in advance or even on the fly; give them different terrain icons they can interject into grid squares, allowing for the visuals of combat to be complete clear to the players, and for ranged powers (including hitting people under cover) and movement rates to be handled automatically. Just point and click, zero need for memorization.

This is a SUPER interesting idea! We're been using Google Draw for years to have interactive maps during messy combat scenes so people can reflect where they are and see where enemies are. Imagine having that integrated into the ACTUAL game.

I think it's good to spell out things that are specific to your community. We actually have a bit that's sort of 'how we RP' that lays out some of the norms of our game that new players have gotten hung up on, but that fall outside of policy (for example, please ask before joining an ongoing scene, even in a public place).

When I say not to spell out every detail, for me that is less about these sorts of 'understood M* norms' and more about understood /being a decent person/ norms.

So I don't think you need to spell out not to call someone mean names and all the places you might do it, or to play staff against each other, or to tell lies about other players.

That's shit that I feel real comfortable giving you a talking-to for whether it's written down or not, because that's about being a decent human being, and I only want decent human beings on my games.

That said, we also always give people a chance to correct behavior, so the only potentially unforeseen consequence is a chat with staff. If it keeps happening, then it's not unforeseen, because you've been warned.

This is not about tone, but about accessibility to casual MSBers or perhaps (if they exist!) potential newcomers.

One of the most difficult things for me, as someone who swoops in and out of MSB as time and interest allows, is that threads are allowed to grow to GIGANTIC proportions - even when the topic has clearly changed. There is no start or end point, no point at which I can clearly jump in. I have to just click a page and hope I'm where something will make sense.

I know that there are threads where this makes more sense than others, but I think it's also really worthwhile to sort of 'reboot' a thread (you can always link to a previous one to preserve the history) if it's been idle awhile and you're coming back to it to re-start discussion, as on a game or about a person.

It is super intimidating to click on my unreads and see that threads are hundreds of pages - or even dozens, in some cases - deep.

@ganymede

I think one thing that is core to M*ing and the reason we're having this conversation rather than cobbling a game together out of a wiki, Gmail, and a chat client is that everything is COHESIVE.

I don't have to add a google account, I don't have to change what I'm logged into, I don't have to have separate log-ins for different things (mostly).

So when thinking about web-based alternatives, I think it's useful to think 'this could work like Gmail' or 'this would be great like google docs', but less useful to say 'just use google'.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@apos said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Right now I don't really notice which threads are where, frankly.

Do you think this is an issue?

Would it help if there were a separate "constructive criticism" area for game reviews?

I don't think 'constructive criticism' is quite right, but a 'reviews' section would be good. I don't think you should need to be constructive in your review, you just shouldn't be slinging Hog Pit level of vitriol. IE, I think it should allow for criticism without the constructive part.

Also: One thing that might help is if there were a way, design or skin-wise, to make Hog Pit posts MUCH CLEARER from the unread page. Yes, it's on us readers to notice, but... habits are hard to break, and I, too, have been guilty of not paying attention to where a thread is posted. I don't know if highlighting or bright tags or anything are possible, but I think it might help.

@ganymede

I would add to your list:

1. Private real-time communication between players

Really, there is no reason that mail and page can't be joined together. If you have persistent chat like in slack or google chat or facebook messenger, the difference becomes negligible. But I do think it's worth having the 'real time' addition.

2. Conflict resolution

Not every game uses this, but combat code or dice code built in is one of the reasons that just throwing together a wiki and a chat client is not awesome.

3. The ability to improve/grow/adjust your sheet

This would include earning XP, spending XP.

3. Logging/sharing scenes

Again, I know not every game does this, but a lot do these days. I really like the core of Faraday's thinking re: scenes for this, in terms of capturing just the RP bits and putting it somewhere, and then feeding it out in a list that could, in theory, be manipulated by different things. For example, sorted by date, or title, or character name. Searchable by the same. Etc.

I like enough code to support my story-telling, but not so much that it gets in the way of my story-telling.

The amount that this is varies from game to game and theme to theme. If there's combat, it's nice to have code to support that. If it's super important to the theme to know exactly how much money I have, same.

On the other hand, if no one cares how much money I have outside of extremes, then I don't really want to be bothered with it. I don't want to have to remember to eat or drink or sleep or go to work, ICly. Get out of the way of my RP, code!

There have been times that lack of code has really hurt my RP too, though. Like the game I played where I had to manually jump in dozens of space ships and fly each and every one of them to a location to prep for a battle, because there was no 'fleet' code or similar.

Code should be a tool to make storytelling interesting and easy.