Posts made by Thenomain

That to me is like saying theme is just background noise. If you don't have theme, you really do have a sea of bland made of bland-atoms made of bland-quarks. Even a non-compelling theme is better than no theme at all.

@WTFE said:

@Thenomain said:

The metaplot had an ending, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot.

I'm not sure it's possible for me to disagree with something more strongly than I disagree with this.

Sorry, I was talking in context but using generalized terms. Anyone paying attention to me (why?!) would note that I earlier praise the Haunted Memories' Changeling plot for the fact that it could end.

The Reach's metaplot never should have ended. It should have evolved. Or its ending should have been a new beginning. I think this because it was so big and all-encompassing. Troy, Emmah and I talked from time to time about "what should happen next". In my mind, in this thread, that was us discussing what new metaplot would rise from the consequences of ending the former one.

But yeah, you're right. Metaplots should have the right to end. In the same way that "traveling to the horizon" should be a destination. Maybe my philosophy, if I continue to refine it, is: Never leave the game without something that drives it. Not "drives the players", not necessarily "drives the plots", but drives the game.

What @Tyche said. I've been using it a lot because someone on RenoMux told me it was stupid and that nobody would ever use it.

Only Potato on Windows seems to pass that information along, or TinyFugue if that's the way you roll. Atlantis (OS X) also sends it, so at the very least I can get the benefit of it.

I use my own width() function, too, so that can test how other clients see my code without having to physically re-size the screen. Just set your '&width' attribute to a new number, and viola. I hoped that people using the other Windows Mu* Clients would use it too, but it's very hard to break people out of 80 columns.

@TNP said:

I tabeltopped before there was an internet.

Since before 29 October 1969? I am impressed.

I am reminded of another situation where nested functions would come in handy for builders: width( [<target>] ), the current reported width of the enactor's (or optionally target's) client.

Mystery Science Lemuria 3000!

@EmmahSue said:

From the POV of a runner of metaplot:

• Documentation is a huge downside.

Over-documentation is a huge downside. I bet that somewhere it was written down what part the old Winter Queen had to do with the Night of a Thousand Knives on Haunted Memories. (I'm prodding Troy to see if she remembers.)

• You have to constantly work to involve as many as possible

The Reach metaplot was complex. Too complex. It would probably have been fine if it was just about the families, but it wasn't. It probably would have been fine if each sphere had their own tell-tale plot, but they didn't.

• I felt strongly at the time (and still do) that the metaplot on TR should have had more varied ending.

The metaplot had an ending, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then it tried to be everything to all people, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then we gave its ending over to the players, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot. And then we kind of ignored that and couldn't decide how to end it, which is where I feel it failed as a metaplot.

I agree with you that all of this was our fault, but because we agreed to take responsibility by being headstaff. But that not to blame yourself.

Things I've Learned and How I'll Handle It Moving Forward:

I agree with all of these.

@Coin said:

I wasn't talking about oWoD.

Well Changeling for nWoD2 isn't out yet, so I can't tell you whether or not I like it.

You said 1e. My brain immediately goes to the original WoD game lines when people mention 1e. Regardless, I will be treating CtL2 the same way I've treated VtW2 and WtX2; as someone who can recognize a game for what it is.

On a personal standpoint, I think what they did to Fairest is without consideration to a game in a world with the word "Darkness" in the title. I hope they clarify their intent, since their ability to communicate intent is going to tell us how to play. If they can't communicate how to play a nontrivial part of the game, then they have failed.

This has never been about old Fairest vs. new Fairest.

@Coin
I liked both oChangeling and nChangeling, so I don't think that this summary is correct. It might be correct for some, but I am willing to rate a game on its own merits and not solely when compared to something else.

Let's take one of the more dramatically changed games between oWoD and nWoD: Werewolf. We've gone from hippy-dippy stereotypes fighting a losing battle against the endless waves of an uber-spirit god, to more alien predators who are vastly outnumbered trying to fight both a battle of control against spirits and a more literal battle against their estranged cousins.

Both are good and horrible games on their own merits. Comparing the two would probably end in heartache, headache, or both. However, once you get past the ephemera of expressed theme, the newer game is a re-imagining of the older one: Philosophical groups of shape-shifters who are in a bad spot band together trying to protect the planet against spirits and corrupt relatives. Removing the Triumvirate is the only truly massive change. Push the underlying game of oWerewolf through the lens of nWoD and you get nWerewolf.

Okay, can the same be done for Changeling? Yes, only the massive change is that they flipped the reality/fantasy aspect. This makes the characters humans with faerie elements instead of the other way around. It was a necessary alteration to fit the game within the nWoD setting. There are no longer many layers of what nWoD calls "Twilight"; there is just one. No more near umbra/far umbra/blah/blah/blah.

And so forth.

nVampire2 is a refinement of nVampire. nWerewolf2 is a refinement of etc. nMage2 is a re-writing, but it isn't that far off what they had in nMage, so a more dramatic refinement. The essential feeling I get from nChangeling2 is that it is not a refinement, and therefore the project lead is doing his own thing with little consideration to the material. Will this be true? Possibly. Throwing things around like "well that's just your opinion" is just silly; my opinion didn't come out of nowhere.

@Derp said:

@Thenomain

Yes, but those same arguments have always been posited by people. They said the exact same thing about NWoD over CWoD when NWoD was the shiny new thing. It's just different.

Yeah, but in that case people would be wrong.

nWerewolf 2e felt more like some author read it, sighed as they hung their head, and tried to salvage a game out of what was presented. Having read none of the presented nMage2e, I already get the feeling that the same will be happening here.

Contrast: nChangeling2e (dammit this is hard to type; can I call it GMC Changeling instead? CtL2 would be technically correct but I can't remember the 'the Splat' part of each game line) is starting to feel like someone who changed everything for the sake of changing everything.

@Sunny
I think we can safely use Wikipedia for this, because there's probably no solid answer to it. So might as well go for a rough approximation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaplot

"The metaplot is the overarching storyline that binds together events in the official continuity of a published role-playing game campaign setting. Major official story events that change the world, or simply move important non-player characters from one place to another, are part of the metaplot for a game."

Huh.

The most important thing I notice here is that the definition is exclusive to RPGs. My computer's online-dictionary-lookup service (er, might as well be Google) has no other answer for it. This puts us in the interesting situation where it is anything we want.

This is going to be interesting.

I'm going to stick (loosely, like a cat to the curtains) to my earlier statement that metaplot is what drives the world, or that corner of the world, or what drives the direction of the plots. A metaplot itself is not a plot, and touching it directly would be like walking to the horizon. You can get there, but it takes dedication and when you get there you've discovered something else.

@WTFE

Fair nuff.

MST3king this one. Sorry about the mess.

@Arkandel said:

• Games without metaplot are too sandbox-y for my tastes. There's no direction or theme, people just do things which are forgotten because they're forgettable.

GM rule #1 from Apocalypse World: Barf Forth Apocolyptica. I agree with you here, but there are other ways to keep everyone soaked in theme. The easiest is to soak everyone in theme.

• Metaplot yields are based on investment. You can't just write stuff and expect that to be enough, you need to get your players to buy in.

See Above. You don't need them to "buy in" if they are soaking in it. c.f., fish and water.

... so they need to see and feel their actions deliver results.

Isn't this true of any game, ever? A game where you can't see and feel your actions is a bloody boring game. If you don't agree, let's play some of that card game known as "War".

• Don't bite more than you can chew. This is really important, IMHO. If you start a massive story

Okay, stop here. Now you're talking about plot. Not metaplot, but plot.

• Make it fun.

Your "metaplot" will probably be indistinguishable from "the game", so we can take this vague and subjective statement into something more actionable with something: Make it part of the game.

@WTFE
I agree with you 100% where I agree with you.

Why would %[...] be insane? I mean, I prefer typing %(...), but for me, visually, the hard edges of the [ are easier to see over the { and ( characters. I don't think %[ is used that often in the English language. By 'not often' I will guess 'not at all'.

I'll also agree with @faraday that some shortcut for ease of typing in situations where little things are little are perfectly fine. % may not be the world's best is not even remotely a sensible token, but having a shortcut character makes life easier on the author. And I'll admit, `|r<text>` is a hell of a lot easier to type than `$[ansi( r, <text> )]`. I'll live with escaping the occasional character for the usefulness of those shortcuts.

Maybe I can live with $(<ansi code>), but I'd also want shortcuts for carriage returns/line feeds/whatever, dbref of self, subjective form of the enactor's gender, and so forth. As I'll get into later, a lot of what I think Evennia is missing in the inline-code aspect is for the builders, not the coders.

Also, I see what you mean about `. I still don't think escaping is horrible, in small doses. Or bigger ones when it's SQL and I can't exactly complain to the ANSI committee.

@Griatch said:

I think @thenomain should probably have referenced this feature request which actually provides the context for the discussion.

I purposefully didn't. For me, the context was my bringing it up without realizing there was a feature request in. Then to throw that concept out into the mixed pool of Professionals and Amateurs, stir, and see what would happen. Which is why ...

We didn't have a compelling enough use-case to implement it since we don't explicitly support softcode and no user had so far felt that nesting was a must-have. With enough good arguments brought forward we might well expand the design to support it.

This is why I'm muddling up the discussion a bit by bringing it here. I was less interested in "would you solve problem x this way?" and more interested in seeing how Mushlike people would respond to "problem x".

I am overjoyed that people jumped on this with input from their own experience. <3s all around.

@faraday said:

@Griatch I think the biggest issue is that "builders" kind of straddle the fence between "players" and "developers" in terms of their use of inline functions.

Emphasis mine. I would make this 72 pt text and blinking bright red if I could. (note: I realize now that I can do some of this, but I'll be nice. you're welcome.)

While in #evennia chat yesterday, another user (acharles) was surprised that allowing players to use color codes was on by default. As a Mud developer, his viewpoint was valid and interesting and entirely backwards from mine. I was surprised that Evennia had inline functions turned off by default.

A good Mush builder is constantly asking me for code to allow for creativity, clarity, and organization. I would say that almost all of my non-RPG-system code is for builders. Yes, I will be doing a lot of that server-side with Evennia, but for example I can easily let a builder change small parts of the description of a room based upon the time of day. I don't have to do anything but expose a function I call `ictime()` and the rest is them.

@desc here=This is Thenomain's happy place, with one window looking out across the landscape. It is [get( me/desc-[ictime( time-of-day )])].
&desc-dawn here=dim and hopeful
&desc-day here=bright and cheerful
&desc-dusk here=maudlin but relaxing
(you get the idea)

I know Evennia is not geared toward coding inside the game, but the shortcuts available mean that the builders are enabled and the main coder is less depended upon. To me, this is a win-win.

Of course, this is only important to the games who give this level of control to the builders. I won't pretend that the Mush niche is more important than the Mud niche. I wanted to expand on Faraday's example with a 'oh god dear god yes a thousand times yes'.

Y'know, I don't think I've seen any discussion about the WoD editions devolve into Wars. Mind you, I've only seen the comparison and people offer preferences on Soapbox, and we know that we're pretty reasonable about our likes and dislikes.

For people reading this thread who are more softcoders, a situation that came up in the Evennia IRC channel:

In order to embed functions, you currently need to type {function( args ). Since my text editor wants to close all brackets, braces, parens, and so forth I suggested another character. They were already thinking about |function( args ), which while I think is better I don't think is very legible. For example:

This is a test|testfunc( me )...

I suggested fully enclosing for functions. The above might be:

This is a test|testfunc( me )|...

Someone mentioned brackets [], and as a Mush coder, this hit a happy spot. The above would end up:

This is test[testfunc( me )]...

However!

Evennia's lead designer wants a single token to mean all inline substitutions, both ANSI and functions. ANSI color codes would use the same inline token. For example: {r for red, {B for blue background, and so forth.

Why is this a problem? Because ANSI color codes would become harder to type if brackets [] were used. I mean, imagine typing this:

[r][h][B]This is really ugly text.[n]

Eugh, no. This would be a lot easier for everyone:

|r|h|BThis is really ugly text.|n

What I've pitched is a mix of both. @Griatch already knows this, so I'm pitching this to the rest of you, whether or not you're a real-world-coder or a Mush/Mux coder. What do you think of:

|hThis is hilited text!|n
|[500This is xterm256 red.|n
[rhB]This is really ugly text.|n
But [get_random_word( this|that|it, | )] is easier-to-read code.

While Griatch thinks about this, I'm wondering what future softcoders might think, and how current realcoders might react.

advanced note

In Mushcode, '%' is the prefix to 'substitution code', such as %n (enactor's name) or %xr (ansi red) or %va (the @va attribute). It provides flexibility and shorthanding. IMO, Evennia's {<ansi color code> is also shorthanding. What I don't know is if my understanding of Mush's % is biasing me toward a better solution.

I know I imagine that Evennia might allow me to code my own substitution code, such as: ||n or ||va or ||o instead of [name( you )] or [v( a )] or [obj( you )] respectively.

(note, obj() is for the objective form pronoun: him, her, it, them)

Thanks!

(tooltip text: If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.)

Haunted Memories' Changeling sphere had a metaplot that lasted from its creation to its demise, which is measured in years. This was the metaplot:

The previous Freehold died literally overnight. The old leaders of the old freehold scattered to the four winds, almost forgotten as legend but still around. Each one of the old leaders had an idea about what happened, but were either corrupt or refused to talk about what happened. What happened was that the highest level of government were (or became) Loyalists and betrayed the Freehold.

Nobody knew this coming into the game. It was both the set-up and the sword hanging over everyone's head. From time to time, the old guard would show their head and make something happen. Few PCs knew which NPCs were on which side, and fewer still would say anything.

It was fun and it worked because:

• It was straight-forward.
• It was truly meta; it wasn't plot pretending to be metaplot. The metaplot could be the cause of plot, but was itself not a plot.
• It was not pre-ordained, so doing nothing would not hinder it and doing something unexpected would not hinder it.
• Its focus was big enough that it couldn't be changed overnight.
• It was limited to the Changeling sphere. Not through staff enforcement, but because what it was. This means everyone in the Changeling sphere was a part of it. It was theirs, and I think players appreciated the sphere cohesion it brought.

It didn't hurt that the metaplot was everywhere, from the history to the mystery to the places to even the player characters. It was Fucking Meta.

Some RPG rulebooks might call it a "campaign", but without a goal in mind I don't think it would fit. There were multiple campaigns beneath that metaplot. Some even had something directly to do with the metaplot. Two at the end were paramount in ending it. (Both of the Chessmen plots, for those keeping score at home. The Jeder/Chessmen campaigns and the War On Arcadia, which finished it.)

@Coin said:

I mean, man, they're still publishing 20th Anniversary editions for oWoD stuff.

Because fans are still buying it. I keep hearing the theory that more people are buying the oWoD stuff than the nWoD or nWoD2 stuff, but I find that almost too hard to believe. Almost.

@tragedyjones said:

The dark has a purpose.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad news.