By the time engineers get out of engineer school they all have the same handwriting.
And tolerance to alcohol that would make a bartender shocked.
By the time engineers get out of engineer school they all have the same handwriting.
And tolerance to alcohol that would make a bartender shocked.
Hey, hyperbole is my gig. I know false equivalence when I see it.
I deeply appreciate the load that most hobby coders face, but don't discount fellow staffers or, even better, fellow players. The number of people who are willing to do data entry for games they love is astounding.
@surreality said in How important are rooms poll:
I think, also, it might be good to give some examples of what 'big' and 'small' mean here.
I'd like to hear what people who voted them say they are, that way we could get a strong sense of what the hobby thinks when they hear these words.
I thought 5e got rid of the last vestiges of Vancian magic. No?
@Autumn said in Mobile phone usage poll:
@Thenomain Plus, that way you can use GNU screen! And it's easier to keep all your logs organized.
Some day I need to learn how to use screen
. That day will be when @Sparks releases A2. (No pressure!)
I have overridden WHO, and anyone who tries to use both +desc and @desc should probably change one or both for the sake of their new users. The necessity of 'help' is critical, tho in thinking about it, perhaps renaming it to @help would be a good move. I don't think this outlier case is enough to disrupt what people expect, tho.
@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I think this is partly on Evennia, not just the Arx staff. (Sorry, Griatch.)
Specifically, Evennia generates a lot of the documentation automatically for each command; in a lot of ways, this is great; you include the documentation in the command source code, and a helpfile is made for it. No worries about documentation being out-of-date; you edit the command, you edit the description RIGHT THERE. I wish more things supported this.
In before @Faraday: Her system does this. It's a drawback of the way Mu*s are coded that this hasn't become standardized. One can only hope.
But conversely, if you alias a command to another command then 'help' for both commands will give you the same help text
I think what you're getting at is that it's a good idea to provide a consistent pattern. For instance, I've dropped the '+' from all my help files, even if '+blah' still works.
I would disagree that all aliased commands giving the same help text is a bad thing; remember your data normalization! The more places data must be changed, the more likely it won't be changed correctly.
(That said, I object on general design principle to having command, +command, and @command do different things.)
That would just be mean to the players. It's unfortunate in Mush that we need 'help' and '+help', but is the only exception I can think of to these rules.
@Ashen-Shugar said in Mobile phone usage poll:
I use an ssh client to connect to my server to use tinyfugue
This is what I ended up doing. I had way more keyboard control than in Mudrammer (iOS app).
@surreality said in Mobile phone usage poll:
@Three-Eyed-Crow I am sorta lucky in that regard. The new mac keyboard (the 'magic' keyboard) is a wireless bluetooth one. It's slightly longer than my tablet but not by too much, and can pair with my tablet (or even phone) as easily as it does with the desktop. It fits in a purse about as well as the tablet does.
Look into the Logitech K811 for easy multi-syncing, so you don't need to constantly re-sync that keyboard. Also, backlit.
@Bobotron said in Plots for Spheres:
- A willingness to integrate personal plot/goals into larger, long-term plots IF they fit. Steal that shit from the players whose ideas are better than yours.
This.
It's difficult to develop that hard and fast and keep all the goals in sight, but the often confusing documentation was the first thing I asked about on the guest channel (and was called out for on it). I'm sympathetic, considering Arx's success and fan-base.
I want the grid to be as thematic and important to the setting as the room descriptions. Big. Small. It's important to me to have room objects as it is to have character objects.
@Misadventure said in Rewards other than XP:
I in no way wish for social recognition.
I've known people who were turned off by getting badges. Sometimes the only joy it brings is to the person giving them.
Aether was masterful at its social recognition. The twice-a-year Aether Oscars, the public posting of "best reccs this month", so on. These focus on players honoring other players.
I do like @Misadventure's ideas of what would make solid achievements (which is surprising, since he and I usually disagree about social systems!); they are all things that a staffer may be impressed with and have everything to do with the hobby. "You are a good RPer." / "You went above and beyond in making everyone a part of this scene."
@Lord-Renegade said in Plots for Spheres:
I hate railroading. If you cannot be adaptable to the whims of your players, you shouldn't be running a story. It's fine to have an end goal, but if you don't know how to direct people gently towards that goal without totally invalidating what they're trying to do... it's nasty.
In my instance, the players wanted to have one single resolution and I promised to give it to them, but I wasn't going to just say, 'Okay, you get to the bad guy, now have a combat.' I was going to throw morality, theme, Otherness at them along the way. The players were railroading; I was providing an interesting journey. They loved it. Win-win.
I think this is a fine storytelling technique. On Haunted Memories, there was a large battle against forces of Arcadia. It started this way, "Hey guys, we're going to fight against these forces that have been harassing us all year." It was broken down into: Organizing for the trip, making it there in one piece, scouting and planning, and finally fighting.
While IMO it was drawn out too long, and did what all war plots do (kill interest in the sphere), it was extremely linear. But then again, it wasn't. There was no sense that people who pushed in one direction had no effect on what happened next. Just because you know where you're going doesn't mean it's going to be a boring trip.
--
I know this isn't really what people think of when they say "railroading". They usually mean, "No matter what the players do, the outcome is the same." Having some sense and agreement on the direction things are going, or the goal, is generally a good idea. It's when staff or players are unbending that it all starts to suck.
Things that cannot be solved by rolling dice.
Leka's player (STing a small plot) once put us against a minion who escaped into a doorway that lead to the bottom of a lake. Water gushed out (would need to overcome that) and no knowledge of what was on the other side (drowning may happen). We chose not to follow, knowing that this is a player who would absolutely kill a character who hopped into an unknown portal into an immediately deadly environment.
Someone tried to ambush the friend of my character, and because we expected an ambush we went in an angle that the ambushers didn't expect and turned it around. (And paging the other players after was hilarious.)
My only successfully run plot was a railroad (everyone knew and expected it), but I threw so much theme and setting that the praise I got afterwards was enlightening. I think I asked for three dice rolls.
Rolling dice happened, but we were engaged as players of these characters. Characters were played. Fun was had.
Two links today:
The Trappist-1 site, now that they've found a solar system with seven Earth-sized planets. You've probably heard of this one by now, but it's still cool as hell.
An AP News article originally titled "Teen suicide attempts fell as same-sex marriage became legal". Also cool as hell.
@Sonder said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:
@Coin I need to listen to that. Badly.
Listen to it. Listen to it right now. Find a podcasting app. Sign up. I was hooked at "dogs are not allowed in the dog park". Paranoia, xenophobia, acceptance of the bizarre and macabre, the world of Night Vale is every bit of A Prairie Home Companion distilled by someone who loves HP Lovecraft.
@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
But when people believed @clues were meant for staff to track who'd been told of a given thing ICly, lots of players were still actively running around scrambling to figure out the shape of the metaplotāand the coming threats, which were hinted at but nebulousāand so were sharing @clues willy-nilly as topics were discussed.
But if this only a belief, what are "@clues"? Since that seems to be the point of confusion, both in this thread and apparently also on the game, rather than what people believe, what are they, systematically? Parenthetically, is it or is it not good that players are "sharing clues willy-nilly"?
Other than having too many clues is bad for the character, I can't work out from what you're saying whether or not sharing clues is good for the players and/or game.
@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
It later emerged that sharing clues should actually be more like a thesis defense; it's not just "here's the information" but "here's the information, all the footnotes, three primary sources, and why I believe this is accurate". Given that, limiting how much can be shared at once makes perfect sense.
I'm confused by this statement, because it didn't look like anyone was advocating not sharing as much as possible (though it appears some may be hoarding information). Can you elaborate?
@VulgarKitten said in Darinelle's Playlist:
@Miss-Demeanor said in Darinelle's Playlist:
@Coin said in Darinelle's Playlist:
@Thenomain said in Darinelle's Playlist:
@Cupcake said in Darinelle's Playlist:
And you love it.
You know that he's incapable of love, right?
Stop giving away my secret, robot.
I thought Thenomain was our Skynet?
He DOES sleep in his clothes. That's got to be a sign.
Only after a hectic night staying up and coding.