Posts made by Tat

Evernote might work well for you.

@ninjakitten This is pretty much me, exactly. I threw things into my buffer with ctrl-b and got them back with ctrl-up (or ctrl-p depending on your settings).

I'm liking BeipMU pretty well, though. I've clicked links from it SEVERAL TIMES. I might finally switch.

So I've just figured out how to get channels, at least, to behave mostly like SimpleMU spawns in BeipMU, and guys, this thing is pretty great.

You can set triggers to send toast notifications. You can manipulate the exact margins and line spacing separately for input and output windows. It has a discord channel with helpful people who also discuss updates.

Pretty sure this is my new client.

@tat said in What's your favorite MU* client?:

@auspice So this looks... not terrible. I might like it.

But every time I drag my input window to a different size, it snaps back down to one line's height. Is that how it works, or is something wrong?

Ah HA, I have found the setting that makes it stop doing this.

This shows a lot of promise. I'll have to play with the 'puppet' windows later, which I think are maybe more what I'm used to spawns being.

@Altair

Most importantly to me, it is actively maintained and the dev responds to tickets quite quickly.

This is why I decided to give it a try. I looked at their git and saw recent updates and a link to a discord. Yes, please.

@auspice So this looks... not terrible. I might like it.

But every time I drag my input window to a different size, it snaps back down to one line's height. Is that how it works, or is something wrong?

My issue with Potato's spawns wasn't their organization (although they did take up an oddly large amount of white space), but the fact that you can't move between them via the keyboard easily and more importantly, they are really bad about activity notifications.

I hate all PC options for different reasons, and it makes me sad.

I want working links and pretty colors.

I also want spawns that function well, as I rely on them heavily.

If there is a magical client that does this that I'm unaware of, PLEASE TELL ME.

@bananerz said in Spirit Lake - Discussion:

Is there an opportunity for a signup list to be considered for future players? Asking for a friend.

Not at present, sorry.

@three-eyed-crow said in MU Things I Love:

I get frustrated with my fellow players often. It's easy to fixate on the irritants because they tend to be very loud in the signal-to-noise sense and drown out the more moderate average.

Sometimes players are great, though. Sometimes someone you've never dealt with before and have no OOC sense of takes feedback with a SHOCKING amount of grace and coolness and refines a character into something you're really excited about. Sometimes people suggest random connections that I'd never have thought of but that make my IC world feel fuller and me more excited to play. Sometimes you stare at channel chatter that shows an interest in theme and positive ooc community, or you get a simple private 'Thank you' and it's amazing.

Sometimes players are great, is the jist, and it's nice to focus on that amid the other things.

I just want to second this a lot.

@bobgoblin said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:

This is the real struggle, the carrots. What I find interesting is that XP is for character growth, but we often utilize it for player action. If you think about it, that's really not the goal. The question becomes what carrot can we offer to PLAYERS for PLAYER actions? Myself, I'd love to keep XP to Character Actions and some other sort of currency/carrot for Player actions. However, what that is? I don't really know, I think that's why XP becomes the default. There might be an opportunity here for some deeper delving. What would PLAYERS like versus CHARACTERS?

This is something I struggle with, too. I prefer slow character growth, so I'm not a fan of tons of XP generally.

I recently got into DND, and one thing that struck me as really interesting is the use of Inspiration. The GM awards it when you do cool things, and you can do a certain number of things with it - mostly things that let you choose a moment to be a little more awesome by rolling with advantage, shortening a rest time, adding an action, etc.

I'm currently experimenting with using FS3's Luck Points in this way. There is a list of ways to earn them, and said list is made up of things I want to encourage players to do OOCly. Running plots, updating the wiki, building, descing, etc.

Then there's a list of ways to spend them. These are mostly centered around letting your character be a little extra awesome. So bonuses to rolls, recovery from a knockout, rerolling and taking the better of two, getting a super lucky break/big piece of info in a plot, or getting some plot love outside of planned plot times. I think of Luck Points as sort of your heroic moments. You can accomplish the same things without them, but you're not going to look as cool or as instantly successful.

I think it's a pretty cool system, and I'm excited to see how it works out in larger play. It was fun in our alpha testing, but I was also handing out Luck left and right because players were doing a lot of OOC work for me. I really like the opportunity to award players for their OOC contribution without using XP.

ETA: Lol. I see @faraday got to this idea before me. I type too slow!

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.

@kay said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

I'm puzzled by the magical orders on the website. It does specify that anyone interested in fleshing them out should contact staff but would you be allowed to fundamentally change them? Is it just an alpha write up / work in progress? https://spiritlakemu.com/wiki/magical_orders

Magical orders are historical and no longer in existence - but might become relevant to plots. Since we expect to lean heavily into PRPs, players will have some leeway to flesh things out for plot purposes.

@Thenomain

Some of the spell descriptions have a symbol next to the name. Is there a help file about this? Thanks.

A potion bottle means that it can be made into a potion. The others are just quick visual representations of the info in the text - whether it is a single target spell or a multi target spell.

@cupcake You might find the info here useful: https://www.parkrangeredu.org/biological-science-technician-jobs/

Also: https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/management/staffandoffices.htm

Also useful to anyone else who might be thinking about working at the park.

@scar BEAT YOU.

@arkandel

Magic has begun to just barely slip into the world as of mid December. Which is to say that at game start, there is no knowledge of magic in the world by PCs at all, except for some people going 'wait, what just happened?' to something they accidentally did.

See the post here and the note in the world intro for details.

@meg This just in: HASHTAGS BANNED ON SPIRIT LAKE.

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!

@saturna Hey hey, my character ALSO moved away for artistic type school things, moved to NYC for a bit, then moved back home. Bit older, though - but we could probably have brushed shoulders in NYC a bit.

We do have a list of high school classes building on the Hooks & Hopes page if people are eyeing ages.

@cupcake The magic schools are listed here. In Alpha, we had a magical order from India (as well as China, Central America, Roman Empire, Wales, Central Europe, Scandonavia, Egypt, and Japan) , and there is a presumption that there were more scattered various places around the world.

There will be room to play with (and make up) the various historical forms of magic as we build metaplot and PRPs. Our hope is that you can find a way to make whatever you're interested in fit within the framework we've built.

@cobaltasaurus

Oh, another thing I'll mention is that in Alpha, we found that Ares is AMAZING for really adapting to different playstyles and needs. The ability to start a scene live, then hop over to the web portal for a bit, then restart live later, is just fantastic.

I had several scenes where I RPed for maybe an hour in real time, then slowed down to a play-by-post type crawl (sometimes posing from my phone) while I went home and got the kids in bed, and then sometimes moved back to real time later, or sometimes just wrapped up. I know some players had scenes entirely in the web portal as time allowed through the day, often from mobile devices. It felt very refreshing and freeing for someone with more time constraints than I used to have.