@Derp said in How can everyone play the same game?:
my default answer is 'no'
Not "no, but"?
Huh.
I find that players mimic staff. Their attitude, their considerations, their unwritten rules from how they react to various situations.
If "no" is visible to the game, then "no" will be its default too.
At least it's "no, and here's why". A lot of staff don't even go that far.
@Catsmeow said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:
I have heard free booze, Dayton.... now throw in free room, free airfare and free food... I'll be someone's bitch.
For that amount of money you'd better be!
@Ghost said:
The task at hand is to break down these behaviors to minimize damage to innocent people and maintain neutrality.
This was in the middle of a longer statement, so I wanted to draw it out.
I don't even think neutrality is critical. Neutrality in breaking down the noise, yes, but sometimes what is exposed is a problem that needs dealt with. e.g.: Venomous, not-cool people.
There is a picture in the new Mage book of a punk girl Libertine. She had shaved pits. I've never been so disappointed in someone not drawing a woman with unshaven pits before, but man I was that day. It just looks wrong.
Wonder Woman's lack of pit hair doesn't even register on my radar of critical gender politics. But hell, people wanted to boycott Rogue One because it was comparing Trump to the Empire, somehow. Which is to say: Everyone is kind of stupid.
Splitting off from the other recent discussions, what in general is staff’s job? Besides the access rights, what makes someone a staffer and not just a player?
Is a staffer a kind of player?
Being a Neil deGrasse Tyson-style atheist, I know quite a few christians who are kind and caring and as far as I can figure live the teachings of Jesus the Christ.
To keep on theme with this thread, they are RL things (people) I love.
Late to the clam bake, but:
I've been on many, many games that ask me to write short essays. It's called Chargen. And it also often had nothing to do with the character I eventually played.
Yes, chargen is the first punishment we are asked to submit ourselves to for a game.
Yes, I'm equating chargen essays to punishment because they are not fun and do nothing for my involvement to the game. And my background has been used twice in decades. Twice. (Once, believe it or not, was from @Wretched.)
I was attacked and killed when stuck in a conversation.
Now that's immersive.
Sounds like we're over it. 
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
No, it's not Witcher 3, and frankly, I doubt we'll see game in the near future coming close to how well done it was.
Every time Projekt RED says something about Cyberpunk, I feel a little funny in my pants region. For one, they say it's making Witcher 3 an easy project by comparison. Can't wait.
@Derp said:
I hear people talk about systems like FATE and hear things like 'oh it's so easy, it's a great starter thing, so quick and straightforward', and I'm the guy that just kind of cringes and fake smiles while thinking 'that's ... greaaaat. Come join me at the grown ups table when you're ready to learn DnD or WoD and pass into adulthood of gaming'.
Yeah, man, without structured rules for make-believe, it's so much more kiddy.
Huge Pet Peeve: When in the course of a discussion someone brings up an example, then the discussion becomes about that example and not about the environment that example would come up in.
For example, a discussion about staff needing course corrections but all people will talk about is how it's reasonable if staff doesn't want gunpowder on their game. FOR EXAMPLE.
@WTFE said:
I just find the concept of tying "elitism" to "pretendy fun time games" utterly hilarious.
Pretty much this.
'iconoclast' is a cool word, and it might even describe your character, but it is not a physical descriptor
I remember asking someone what "a bespoke gentleman" was supposed to mean, and got snarked at for being pedantic. I really had no idea how someone could look "bespoke"! None of us are made to order; you kind of end up with whatever you get!
It doesn't matter what the system is as long as it's playable. I'd love for every game to come up with their own simple, even broken system. Some can code a more complex system for all I care, but outside the box means stopping the idea that every Mush has to be based upon an established RPG line.
Peeve: There is not one America; North and South America are the continents. Central America is not a continent. So you can't say anyone is just an American, if we're using the continents to say why a USAer can't call themselves "American".
For the USA Irony, Mexicans are North Americans.
There are many ways to reduce staff overhead. If people switching up characters is too much, what is your alt limit policy? What is your game-line alt policy? What is your code for freezing and unfreezing? What is your attitude toward @Cobaltasaurus?
(Kidding! Kidding. Mostly.)
But is that what rollover comes down to? Administration work? If new character creation is this much of a drain, then you really should focus there first; XP Rollover is an enabling factor for another administration issue, not a drain on administration itself.
Good lord, I feel like I should be stabbing myself in the leg with a broken pencil for talking about the administration overhead of games. And yet, here we are.
Gentrification.
I may be white, male, roughly middle-classed, but man do I fucking hate gentrification.
That is all.
So this conversation deserves to be taken out of the Shadowrun! thread. Talking about Evennia started here :: http://musoapbox.net/topic/487/shadowrun/35
So I continue here.
@Thenomain said:
@Groth said:
Honestly I've always viewed softcode as a bug rather then a feature. Why would you ever want to insert code line by line through a chat client?
Those who publish, win.
If you're creating a new environment from scratch, why not <etc. etc. etc.>
That's something you should ask the Evennia guys. They have an IRC channel and I'm sure they'd appreciate the input. That's the impression I have gotten so far.
Me, I'm not here to imagine the perfect Mu* replacement. I just think that people who don't have access to the server code still need creation tools.
I realized after I posted this that I didn't pluck out something said by one of the Evennia developers:
As for softcode, it's certainly correct that Evennia does not support softcode out of the box. We choose to differentiate between using softcode for making the core of your game and using softcode for in-game building of cool objects etc. Our philosophy (right or wrong) is that the main game development is best done using Python, in a real text editor rather than inside a line-by-line mu* client. Today development tends to be done by smaller dev teams. Along with the advent of modern version control tools, this diminishes some of the old advantages of softcode, like not needing to give your co-coders access to your server.
For advanced building, Evennia usually recommends for your game to offer a suite of advanced builder commands for in-game users. There are no limits here though - you could expand this into a mini-language as befits your needs. We have a few MUSH/MUX developers developing using Evennia. So far they have all seemed happy to abandon the concept of softcode completely (or maybe this is a selection-effect since they are the kind of people who chose to use Evennia already?). What will rather come of their work is a group-building command suite. This will be made available soon(ish) as an Evennia contrib.
Now I sincerely doubt Griatch reads Soapbox, but it was probative to the whole Softcode thing.
Also, I'm pretty sure I agree with this approach. I certainly don't disagree with it. I use this a bit also in evidence that the Evennia group is reasonable about trying to be more than just a MUDlike. Maybe some day things will be EVlikes.
The whole point was to be able to afford college.
The 90s are gone, man. Gone.