@Arkandel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
n a thousand people trying to get into MU*, could we handle that load?
Actually it was Apos who posited 10 percent of various other RP communities trying this one. I just pointed out how big that 10 percent was as a raw number.
And while i would be hesitant to have a thousand dumped in to the community all at once I do thing one hundred could be a workable number, since that would likely get split into different games based on taste.
@Arkandel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
Tue and things might work out well but I think that many new player would definitely change MUSHing as a whole in was we likely would not even think to guess at.
New players coming in is great but more new players coming in then currently exist all at once?
Sorry I am a pessimist by nature and have seen real life social groups destroyed by a large influx of new people.
I will freely admit a new influx could usher in a golden age must neither side has any sort of hard evidence to back up a positive or a negative outlook so I will stick with desiring small growth over large.
Oh I agree there is a lot of points where it does not seem like marvel actually likes it superheroes.
I complain about that a lot, and lay a lot of the blame for that at the feet of Joe Quesada who before working for Marvel, was not a big superhero person.
About your specific examples I am split, I hated the Doc Oc as Spidey thing the whole concept read like bad fan fiction to me, but I kinda liked the female Thor as a change, note if would have added her to the world rather then have her replace real Thor. Two Thor titles is double plus good. (I am biased here Thor has been one of my favorite characters since the early 80s.)
Though not on direct topic but OMG Kyle is so much better then Hal. But then I would take anyone who ever wore a ring over Fucking Hal Kilwog Killer Jordan. But then I tend not to like the classic silver age versions of many DC characters.
@Apos said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
Those are are definitely problems, but I don't think they are insurmountable ones. I think they can be addressed. But as much as I want to see the hobby do well, and grow again, and be in a healthy place, I think there's another problem any kind of next gen game would have to address- surviving it being extremely popular. There's definitely enough role-players out there, like just looking at a popular play-by-post forum I counted tens of millions of posts and they had around a hundred thousand users. An enjin website for guild wars 2 role-players had about 13,000 users. That's a niche community site for a single MMO that doesn't even officially support role-playing at all. What would happen if 10 percent of the population of either of those sites decided to give a single MU a try?
I hate to be the barer of bad news here but if 1,300 new players decided to give a MU a try, the sad result would likely be the collective MUSH staff of the world would collapse. This is not even a code thing but a people time thing.
Even if we figure there are 50 active mushes (not sure how many their are but I would guess that to be on the high side) that would be an average of 26 new players each. Staff getting 26 new apps all at once would certainly slow things down, but then you have the question of how many games could assimilate that many new players all at once into the culture especially if all were new to MUSHing in general.
At that was the mall side of your numbers example. If tens of thousands join then MUSHing becomes the side project of the play by post community instead of being anything that unique because the current players would be a small minority in the hobby.
You are more optimistic then I in the ability of games to handle large influxes, the hardest things to maintain in this hobby is the relationship between staff and player base a large influx not only changes the player base side of that equation but also the staff side as more staffer need to be brought in, some of which will be great at it some of which will be horrible.
@Arkandel
Might not be strictly maintaining it, but I would rather have that then the once a decade or so since 85 wiping out of continuity that DC does.
Not to say Marvel doesn't have their own issues, trust me those are legion, but I do prefer the ignoring of the stupid to the wiping out wholesale of everything.
@Autumn said in Comics Stuff:
I googled this and can't help feeling like I've read it before. Like when Captain America died, was resurrected by the Red Skull, teamed up with the Skull to do ... something, and then got stripped of his American citizenship by President Bill Clinton? That's still part of continuity, right?
Actually, maybe don't answer that. Either way, I'm not sure I want to know.
Technically yes, but hasn't been referenced in quite some time in the actual comics, but also never retconned.
That is the genius of the Marvel way of maintaining continuity instead of fixing things and retcons which angry up the blood of those that by. The ignore and let people online complain but those folks still tend to buy.
@Lotherio
But there is also a system the defines the time on a MUSH as well. At least on WoD games. If all your health boxes are filled with lethal then you start bleeding out at a rate of one box turning from Lethal to aggravated per IC minute. For an average human this equals 7 minutes, for a human with max stamina and giant size merit this would be 11 minutes.
Hardly any more arbitrary then one hour, the difference a MUSH does not feel the need to have IC time equal RL time.
To me having them separate makes sense, simply looking at combat, a WoD combat round is a matter of seconds much like that for any other rpg system. The actual time needed to play this out is well more then seconds, even in table top. Pretty much every RPG book I have ever read addresses the matter of IC time not equaling RL time. If MUDs want to say it is that is fine but then also to make sure that it takes longer to travel your grid during Rush hours at least on a modern game.
@Kestrel
Since you are so new to mushing to help understand hte openness i will give a thumbnail of what was before the openness.
Back in the day there was an Official OOC Masquerade on most WoD games. Meaning you were not allowed to talk about what you were, and by extension what anyone else was. This was done to promote mystery and IC secrecy. It failed mainly because it provided benefits to those willing to blur IC lines to come up with the answers they already knew through alts and the fact that in general humans are bad secret keepers, the other big effect was it monetized OOC knowledge, since the info about who was what could and was used as a bargaining chip on an OOC level.
So as a result it has been changed. How on a lot of other genres secrets still exist and happen. And keeping a secret is still doable on WoD you just have to actually keep it a secret. Expecting others to keep secrets about themselves however is likely not going to happen.
@WTFE said in Random links:
@ThatGuyThere: What are the "Big Four"? WWII, Napoleonics, Civil War, … ?
Roman, though admittedly it is by far the least done of the big four in recent years, though back in the 80s there was about as much Julius Caesar out there as Napoleon.
@Kanye-Qwest
that is probably fair enough. And that is also a point against it being arbitrary where a laundry list of things that are all an hour til death are not.
@Pandora
I don't doubt these numbers but I am asking the reason an hour was chosen.
Something can be universal and arbitrary at the same time.
Ninety feet is the distance between the bases in baseball this has been true for well over 100 years. It is also completely arbitrary since it was the number picked by Abner Doubleday when he first published a codified set of rules for the game. There were many other distances commonly used in play at the time but that was the local rule he was used to.
There were many other options, just like you could just as easily set the critical would time to forty or eighty minutes, to say something is not arbitrary you need to point to a reason it is not 40 or 80 but the sixty it is.
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
See, to me, this is a lost opportunity. I personally would so much rather have my character approach yours and say, 'Hey, can you teach me this thing?' To which yours would respond, 'No, I would not teach that to anyone.' We can then try and haggle with one another, or enter a political discussion about why your character is restricting the education of this, etc. If the goal is story, and not to just game your way to a win, isn't trying to control things first OOCly counterproductive?
To me the game is about story, but the story does not get added to much by the asking and the refusal. Like I said in the initial post I would have been fine handling the request as a scene. In this case the main difference would be the pages took about 2 minutes the IC would have been likely 30 minutes to an hour.
If I have the choice I will use that time on more meaningful scenes or rather for scenes with a higher potential for meaning since I actually have had characters lives changed by hey person I don't know lets meet scenes. In fact that is how my current PC met his best friend.
If the player asking would have said I really want to RP out the request cause I think I could ICly convince you. I would have done the scene. That could lead to interesting things possibly, but the Other player was like that's cool, and the matter dropped which is equally cool with me.
@Ide said in How does a Mu* become successful?:
With all due respect Theno I don't think you can say in good faith that mu*'s have already tried the changes Kestrel is talking about when those changes are locked behind the basic UX of mu*'ing itself. Look at a game like Storium or whatever it was called. It attracted huge interest and was a half-assed attempt at mu*, but with a contemporary UX.
Storium for me would never be a replacement for a MU. Yes I could get the rp there but the mechanics that were baked into the platform were Meh to me. And sadly to RUn a game there you had to use their mechanics. With a MU* you can use whatever mechanics you can find or write or have written code for.
It might be my age but I have gotten used to user interfaced being horrible. This happened when I was putzing around on a Tandy. I can handle a bad UX far more then poor mechanics in an on-line RPG.
Edit to Add: @Kanye-Qwest Oh hells yeah, I think Neverwinter Nights could be a great base for a MU*.
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
Even on a MUSH — if a player doesn't RP with me, I'd rather our characters just not have our stories be more intricately involved than, 'Oh hey, yeah, that guy John, I've seen him around'. I don't want that player sending me a page assuring me that John has been giving my character lots of personal one-on-one time if we cannot actually RP it out. Otherwise, it's as dull as solo-killing a player who's offline on a MUD and calling that 'story'.
Then say no when they page about the one on one time. There no rule on any MUSH I have ever seen that says you have to go along with with the other player suggests. Just be polite and say that you prefer to have important interaction on screen or however you want o word it and move on to the next guy person who plays the style you enjoy.
I was resentfully paged by someone asking me to if it was alright if we said that my char was teaching hers a skill. My answer was no he wouldn't teach that to anybody. Other player player said No prob and went on to find some one else to handle the IC teaching.
Yes for the MUD folks reading this, all this could have been handled ICly just as well. And honestly in this particular case I have no preference as to how it gets handled save that the OOC way was a bit quicker.
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
Also - if you need a doctor and one isn't around, you can absolutely go to the hospital and NPC doctors are coded to give you the gift of healing - but you're at the mercy of the person that wounded you actually getting you there on time, and no amount of OOCly paging/calling/seeking someone to save you via OOC means is going to help - you've got to navigate through the streets to the hospital and hope you don't bleed out along the way. (You have 1 rl hour).
Why 1 hour? This seems like an arbitrary number to me, and you were arguing against abitrariness for creating hard feelings. Even set rules can cause hard feelings. "I had only 2 points over lethal, while Bob had 10, and he had the same hour to get help as I did, that's unfair!"
And this is what gets me about Muds: All these systems are, in the end, arbitrary. Like all games, you pick the game you like and you play it, knowing that it's arbitrary. Saying "at least Muds do it differently" is the concession that different games are different. It's not a solution, and the way your particular Mud habit goes isn't better in general. It's better for you, absolutely, but I don't see this as being a solution to any problem than "one of a thousand ways to do it".
So no, I don't think your answer is a great solution. I think it's a concession to the people who like things that way, as opposed to people who like things, well, the Mush way.
2 points over...10 points over... whether your arm is severed at the elbow or shoulder - you're bleeding. A critical injury is one that, whatever the means of application, has shortened your lifespan to 1 RL hour without intervention. It's not arbitrary, it's the length of time at which you are considered in mortal peril, no matter your injury. you could have an injury that requires treatment within 12 hours, or 62. That's not considered a dire emergency by the game.
Then how was the time of one hour decided on? Just because something is the same for everyone does not mean it is not arbitrary.
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
I think at this point, there've been so many 'What Ifs' thrown into the equation that the message is lost.
No one is suggesting making up the IC narrative for another player, it's merely suggested that if they can't be around, it's assumed they have some reason, however good/bad that reason may be, and they can let us know later when they log on. Or not. Up to them.
If anyone is giving someone a hard time OOCly about any of this, they are the ones crossing an IC/OOC line.
There is no line crossing if I ICly stab someone, ICly look for the doctor, ICly don't find the doctor, ICly bury someone in the woods.
If that's crossing an OOC line on a MUSH, then there we have yet another charming difference between MUDs and MUSHes.
On most MUSHes even is the perspective victim is completely fine with OOCly with losing the PC, Pks have to go through staff.
Which could be a difference as well on MUDs code seems to be the final word, on MUSHes staff is for better or worse.
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
So this got me to thinking - how could A -ever- murder B and make it look like an accident if C is apparently omnipresent? I know if you stuck me in a cruiser with 2 people and I wanted to kill one of them I'd just wait until the third person is asleep or in the loo and I'd say afterwards 'I called for you, but you didn't hear me' and what are you going to say? 'No, you didn't call for me, I'd have heard you.'?
By making the appropriate rolls to make the would look accidental while Dr. C makes the rolls to notice if the wound look consistent to the story given.
Also you are the one assuming C will be successful in treating B. All the MUSH side of the argument says is that Dr. C should be allowed to make the roll. C could botch and quicken B's death, they could fail and all the efforts were in vain Or C could fail the roll to treat but succeed on the roll to notice foul play and we have an episode of Diagnosis Murder on.
@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
I like @Wretched's motto:
If someone is OOCLY unavailable, never give them dickish consequences or treat them like an abandoner.It's a nice motto, but I suppose I just don't see someone not being around for something as a dickish consequence? And at no point did I accuse C of being an abandoner. If B dies and OOCly blames/guilts C for not being around, that's B's inability to separate IC from OOC, aka B's problem.
You might not but considering the number of times I have seen just that when people have been not on for something, excuse my doubt in thinking it wouldn't happen more often then not.
@Arkandel
Our mileage defiantly varies in this case, at least with regard to xp justifications, unless the justification was a synopsis of something on screen mine have never been more then a sentence of PC has been practicing x and then if necessary adding by doing y then be likely forgetting what why is by the time the spend is approved.
I too like this idea. After all the purpose of backgrounds is to show the player has a clear idea of the character and that the character fits the game.
I think the concept of core memories/defining moments does that just as well as a story form bg would, and likely in less writing which makes the process quicker for both the player and the staff doing the approvals.