@GangOfDolls said in NO-GO IPs for MU*:
White Wolf when it was White Wolf loved to go after people for sharing their IP online. But they seemed to leave games online alone, even if they were sharing the material at the same time. Does anyone understand the difference in their reasoning?
Many original White Wolf staffers were Mushers.
Last I knew, Steve Jackson Games was Mu*-unfriendly. I would consider anything from this company to be filled with land-mines for the online gamer.
He also played Tobias on Haunted Memories, where a lot of people enjoyed his RP, and Ouroboros over at Fallen World.
I understand that his hospitalization was a suddden illness last week. His contributions to this hobby were varied and he will be missed.
@Auspice said in Hyper Focused Game Setting:
Wasn't there a horror-themed show briefly about like, a haunted hospital?
Perhaps you're thinking of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? A spoof of 80s/90s dramas co-created by The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade.
If you like people making fun of VCR-era dramas (because most of them were horrible), it's a fun watch.
My favorite space setting is "space station". It's certainly small enough that everyone has an excuse to know one another.
I would be quite thrilled to see a game with a tight scope. I think that Lords & Ladies games have this advantage; the setting may be wide, but the pool the characters comes from is not.
@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:
@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
"Will Code For Videogames."
I don't believe you, mister "sure, I'll write documentation".
Note: Even to this day I feel bad about that.
I normally get the same effect by listening to the channel chatter, or usually also reading the boards. Sometimes people are not forthcoming with information, but I've also lived through the terrible time period where if you couldn't prove that someone RPd it with you, you couldn't know something. Maybe you didn't have to deal with "OOC Masq" hard-liners, but it wasn't fun.
Cue the "you kids don't know how well you've got it". Shake cane. Comment about lawn.
Again, I think that I mistakenly came across trying to say logs are pointless. They don't add anything for me. I don't enjoy reading scenes (mostly) and I can get a summary of anything important with gentle questions on a channel or via pages (mostly). I don't feel any desire to chase down xp (mostly) for reasons that can fill an entire other thread.
@Misadventure said in How do you make money?:
@hedgehog said in How do you make money?:
Also Bloodnut. Also Australian, if I recall correctly.
Oh man! Where are these folks now?
Having more of a life than we are?
Great, so there are three video games I want to play now.
The problem? I neither have a PS4 nor do I have a bajillion dollars to pick up everything that I want.
"Will Code For Videogames."
I think you missed the point, so let me try again: I'm not against things evolving or changing, but I don't see any personal benefit to logging everything, or much of anything. In my use, the game is just as good with or without it.
You know, that's interesting. I've never even done this. I am from such an older age of online text gaming that I find myself simply not agreeing with anything but the frustration of people who whip out logs to be pedantic.
I do take notes; oh god yes, I have a file for each character to take copious notes. I have seen people almost be removed from a game because they didn't log, the infamous "prove it" problem. (In most of these cases, prove that someone's not-logged accusation is wrong. So much irony.)
I suppose you could call my pulling information from infinite scrollback (because I use Atlantis, gush gush fanboy at @Sparks) the same as 'logging', but I don't like to worry that when I reboot my computer or quit the client that everything is lost. I want to know that I can say to someone else, "Oh shit, I forgot that happened," and I want to know that they will say, "No problem."
Also, I apparently know so many people who log everything that if I really need it that badly, I can ask anyone else. So I am logging after all, by association!
@Ashen-Shugar said in Logging your activity:
It essentially, if toggled on a room (requiring staff), logs everything that room hears. This means that pages and whispers or the like are not logged.
So ... you invented @ahear. Go you.
(I kid!)
What I was really trying to tell @Misadventure was that no amount of verification stamps can stop someone from faking a log. The only thing that could reliably validate the stamp is the game code itself, which ...
... well, I know I'm speaking to the choir, but others should know a little basic social engineering.
My life-long Mu* coding ideology is that if it's going to come down to: If the problem is a social one, you have to be very careful about applying a code solution. (Extension: Because a social answer to a social problem is usually the best one.)
I suggest that you represent the text sent as a series of UTF-8 characters that can only be unpacked by someone with intimate knowledge of the encoded language (let us for the sake of experimentation call this encoding protocol something like "English"). It should be hard enough to decode that anyone who goes through the trouble probably should pass the threshold of understanding it and be vetted that way.
@Misadventure said in Logging your activity:
We need a function, much like timestamps, where if you are flagged correctly (much like NOSPOOF) the server gives you something that encodes the time AND the exact letters etc of a text string. That could be used for evidence.
Extra points if the ID code can be unpacked into the given string.
If the ID code can be unpacked into a given string, then it can be faked.
Way back when, the headstaff and coders of Shadowed Isles tried to control bbposts from the game to SWOFA* by adding a verification field. They wanted to say that without the code, the bbpost was not legitimate.
Well at first they used the built-in pack() function, and someone using the unpack() function on it discovered that the code was "timestamp + the reader", essentially making the person who moved the post from the game to SWOFA was outing themselves. Clearly the attempt was to find out who was leak and quite probably deal with them.
The lesson from that debacle is that verification codes are only as trustworthy as the people who controls them and the people who uses them. The far easier answer is to be trustworthy staffers on a trustworthy game.
Shadowed Isles was none of these, though I met some of the best RPers I've ever played with there.
--
Not listed: I never log anything.
Sometimes I will grab information from my backlog, but I think the one time I logged a scene was the exception that proves my rule.
@Sonder said in Fate's Harvest BETA Live (Full Open Soon):
Best chargen code experience I've had in aaaages.
Is Reach/Fallcoast's?
I mean, you are high right now, right? Right? Because that's the only explanation I can come up with!
Yeah, but she decided to use Grump's WoD stat code Why? Dear god why?! (I know why, mind you, because it was gifted to her wholesale, but dear god, why?!)
@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!
Don't you have a "I don't fraternize with people I know online" rule? I'm hurt.
Mushes are more like Puzzle Pirates or URU; technically MMOs but not what most people think of when they talk about the genre. There are few "zones", and character ability does not unlock new areas, or at least no where at the rate that a game like Warcraft does.
Muds are the dungeon crawl that Lord Bishop turned into the MMO; conflict is programmed, automated, so a larger set of zones is critical. I can't speak for the RPI or cross-breeds where challenges come from mini games like crafting as much as mobs.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the more the game relies on social interaction, codified or otherwise, the smaller the grid will be.
I have run games with a moderate to smaller player base with a hundred rooms, knowing that most of the rooms would barely be used, because it set the tone and pressed home the setting. This happened slowly, over time, by the players' need.
I think pushing the wrong sized grid on the players can easily backfire, and stresses the importance of an aware build staff.
