Rule Number One of Online Play: You are always allowed to fade to black. You may always log out. You may not always be given a pass to avoid the consequences, but you may always, always avoid playing them out.
Without this right, what we do isn't play.
Original Post:
https://github.com/thenomain/Mu--Support-Systems/tree/master/Weather
This is the code originally written for Darkwater years ago in order to pull real-time weather conditions around Forks, Washington.
Since then I've tweaked it, its source changed from Yahoo to Weather Underground, and given installation instructions that should make it a lot more accessible.
Please use. Please comment. Please enjoy. Thanks.
--
UPDATE FEB 24, 2019: This system is defunct. Please read this post below for more info.
UPDATE MAR 17, 2019: We're back on Dark Sky. Github has been updated with the new system and instructions.
Did You Know (
) that Fallout 1 and 2 were designed to be beatable without combat? Someone managed to take Bethesda saying that it was impossible to design a Fallout game without combat and managed a no-kill run in FO4. (He had to trick NPCs into killing each other a few times.)
And Now You Know. Yo Joe.
The purpose of this post was to let these people design the game they want to run, it to tell them what is or isn’t going to work. I can no longer tell how many times we were wrong.
Have people willing to answer all these questions on and active as much as possible.
Do not mock the questions people have; you can’t think of everything and almost all the time questions are asked by people who are looking for help.
I think these two things are critical, because there is not going to be any complete information, and a lot of people are not used to having agency within a certain role. Saying, “hey, as long as blah you should be fine” is one of the most helpful things I’ve heard people say about setting.
Or theme, if we’re also talking about that. 
Your answer is far more calm and logical (and more awesome) than mine, but I think we should both admit that we're saying this not to change his mind, but to educate others on @WTFE's flaws. He is shit-posting. He has said the hobby is dying for over ten years. Even as Wora and Soapbox have changed around him, he hasn't. The irony.
So my post was an Open Letter to Everyone: Read these posts, file away the information, ignore WTFE's cretin persona, smile politely and nod, continue with being constructive.
And that's where the game part of Role-Playing Game comes in. In fact I find MUDlikes to be the least immersive of these games, specifically because the code overrules the situation, but it's a fun part of a game. Full ANSI art is not immersive to me, but man it is fun.
@faraday and I were just discussing how code can easily push you out of immersion in situations where you have to stop what you're doing to remember the "IC" way to do things, when you have other methods already in your culture and the culture of most the people you're playing with. That isn't fun, and so it takes you out of the frame of mind that immersion is meant to bring you into.
So...yes. That.
--
edit, because of this thought:
Immeserive: Day/night cycles on games with vampires. But this was so annoying for so many people for so long that I personally celebrated the day that we stopped this. Now a scene is any time of day you want it to be. Someone might be able to tell that you're playing a vampire from that, but that information was never as secret as anyone wanted it to be. Now the onus is on the players to not abuse the knowledge, something supported by the current culture, and I hope always will.
21 hours in and whoa there is a very involved discussion going on. So I'm going to answer the original question instead.
@il-volpe asked:
What exactly is one, in your learned opinion?
The events of the greater world which go far in defining that world and much that happens within it. Some people might call that "setting", but the setting is simply where the events take place.
For instance, in one world, "winter is coming" is a meta-plot. It is an event that will be happening, but it's an event so large that it influences even small events within it, such as the event of, "better chop some more wood, then, and by wood I mean kill all Starks."
In another world, it might be "God is in a coma". The movie is not at all about God being in a coma, but the movie happens because of that over-arching condition of the world.
Addendum:
@coin said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
Pro-LGBT space marines are, dare I say it, a retarded idea.
The fact that you put "dare I say it" there kind of entirely turns me off this entire thing, because it implies that you are indeed aware of the offensiveness and chose to "dare" to offend anyway.
Also, there are badass LBGTQIAK+(XZMPRgoodlordwegetit!) people out there. If they want to be space marines, give them a gun and get the hell out of their way.
(SPHINX!)
Failing a project is just as important as succeeding at one.
You learn a lot and hopefully enjoy the trip.
@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Would it help if there were a separate "constructive criticism" area for game reviews?
This would be far better than forcing all game reviews to the "go ahead and eat where you poop" forum.
The ideology forming here from some (and I honestly don't know who; I've been skimming this thread because it's only cementing my desire to leave the hobby) that anything that is not positive about a game is inviting deeper and less constructive criticism is the kind of slippery-slope logic that I think truly constructive posts should be self-aware about not going into.
Punishing the self-aware due to the bad actors is crappy, and at least for me has a chilling effect on trying to be constructive unless I'm also being Kumbaya.
There's another thing that seems to bridge Mud and Mush:
People could RP the theme they signed up for. It’s a novel concept that would be helped by code and a fun mini game but let’s start there.
@meg said in Regarding administration on MSB:
@thenomain I will be moonwalking away again, and returning to deal with all of the shit I have to do offline, not considering /anything/ at all.
And like any voluntary part of our life, leaving and coming back as the rest of our life dictates is a good thing.
--
@saosmash said in Regarding administration on MSB:
@thenomain there's a difference between thinking that a staffer has made a mistake (or multiple mistakes) and finding them untrustworthy or unethical. Is that really the question here?
Reading the thread in one go, I have a problem finding any real question. The only one I see consistently is "Should Auspice Be Admin", and I again posit the parallels between doing that on game and doing that on Soapbox, that should someone openly challenge admin's choices on a game they would be asked--sometimes quite unpolitely, sometimes mocked--to either stop it or leave.
The only mistake I find @Auspice making was telling people not to do something before anyone did so. The mistake created a cock-up cascade of people taking what to me was unreasonable offense to the warning because that warning came without any context, and even here people assume that a staffer is going to abuse their power if they don't completely trust them.
Staffing is hard. Quelle surprise.
So while some people say "this was a mistake" others are exposing those mistakes in detail and some others are questioning her status as Admin. Regardless of this range, staff here is being far more open than any game or other forum would have the patience to be.
We are lucky to have here.
@tragedyjones said in I will design you a MUX:
The biggest problem with historical settings is that people such at research. You either care about historical accuracy and you stay a niche game, or you don't and you become a slightly larger niche game.
While I +1'd this, it used to be quite possible for people to find their game theme and then throw a historical veneer over it. The more fantasy or alt-history it is, the more people can click with it which is probably what you want.
I edit my stuff twelve times in a row because I don't revise in my head before posting.
Dog-Piling can happen when two dozen people go into a thread to say nothing more onerous as, "I don't like this."
Dog-Piling can happen when a vocal minority repeats the apparent offense over and over.
But it always happens to a single person, and it involves repetition of the same criticism to the point where it can be called an attack.
And attacks are something that should not be outside the Hog Pit. And I certainly don't trust most of you lot to not participate. Most of you.
#notallsaosmash
Even under the guise of "but I had a valid point", there is such a thing as context, a time and place and a way to bring it up.
I had more of a point here but I forgot what it was. Don't Participate In Dog-Piles.
<themoreyouknow.gif>
The cg/check command for Mage is now complete, and I'm tentatively giving it the sign-off that it's also bug-free. It will probably make its way to some other game(s), so enjoy the 4,000+ characters of code needed to make it function this well.
What I always disliked about the downvote is its anonymity. It's why I was fired from administrating here; I told everybody that I would out any downvote list and carried through on that promise for myself which was (quasi-understandably) considered an abuse of power. (It was more complicated than this, but it's how strongly I feel about this.)
Seeing who is dog-piling on whom in this community is important. I strongly believe that negative statements need qualified, and when anonymous negativity is allowed, you end up with...well, The Internet.