Posts made by Thenomain

@Jeshin said:

I think that Crayon (and some of the other OR staff) just question my insistence in dedicating time to musoapbox. Compared to every other community we have approached for advertising this one is by far the most "hostile" or at least the most suspicious.

I imagine you are used to communities on which sharing is their goal.

Not here. At Aperture Science Soapbox, we are a hotbed of debate. Most of us don't care if you can defend yourself because most of us realize that this doesn't really matter.

We are old hobbyists in the realm of make-believe. Who would take this seriously? Not us. (Note: Unless we're taking it seriously, in which case someone else makes fun of that person and all is well and good in the land.)

As for engagement, as community lead he is supposed to engage with you guys.

I dunno, he's calling us names now thereby helping me form a more specific theory that Mudders and Mushers are pretty much the same everywhere.

As to hostility, chest-beating, and elitism. I (for some reason) was accused of being snobbish or looking down on the community early in this thread

If I accused you of being elitist, I apologize. I can't remember at this point, and I would have been absolutely wrong.

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@crayon said:

There's a lot of hostility, chest-beating, and elitism going around

Hold on, I think I ... hm, yeah, sec...

@Thenomain said:

I would like to point out, right now, that "a pretty extreme MUSH perspective" is the kind of reason I don't like these discussions. I work pretty hard not to cast stereotypes even when I'm talking with my Mocking Voice. Look into the broader world to find examples of behavior.

Yeah, I'm going to say I called it.

@Thenomain said:

I would be tilting at windmills.

Whether you choose to tilt at windmills in a place in which you feel comfortable and secure, or elsewhere, you're still tilting at windmills.

You missed the rest of that paragraph. Heck, second time in your post that you responded not to the criticisms but to say "no, you". You may be throwing around epithets to the posting culture here, but I'll be the first to say it: One Of Us.

@Thenomain said:

It has an application process that I believe to be ridiculous and not at all representative of quality RP.

We're not looking to define quality roleplay so much as collect a group of similar games that happen to have quality RP.

Let me quote your mission statement, home page, first thing people see:

Optional Realities is dedicated to all text-based role-playing games of this nature [being RPIs].

Emphasis mine. There is no, repeat no indication on the connections page what the criteria are, but if they are not "all RPIs" then you're misleading—probably unintentionally—the community you're trying to form. If as you say here the goal of OR is to "play with people like us" then say that.

Please stop burning straw men, they can't fight back, you know.

Please stop cherry-picking your arguments to make your perceived opponent look bad. Also, the twee isn't helping the "finding common ground" part, if you're interested in one.

@Arkandel

That is an awesome story, especially the part where staff and players fell into mutual love with the theme regardless of the platform.

AetherMux did something very similar with their vote system. You wouldn't submit logs, but people would explain why so and so was awesome, it was made anonymous, and other players would vote meh, good, or wow, and that would award a ranked amount of XP. After the vote period was over, everyone could see the comments made about them that period.

I had one or two passive aggressive comments made at me through this system, but people were otherwise very well behaved and well handled by staff who wanted to see this work. Except for the lack of player density to make this work, I'd love to see it again,

@Alzie said:

@Jeshin Then perhaps you need to actually define automated systems beyond 'Whatever I want it to mean at any given point in time.'

Alize blunts what I was saying. OR is a personal curated list and little else. It has an application process that I believe to be ridiculous and not at all representative of quality RP.

IMO, OR fails at its openly stated goal of quality RP because of its criteria.

Because of the same criteria and the way it's been defended, I don't see a welcome mat to coming over there and saying these things. I would be tilting at windmills. At least here I have the chance of an audience willing to discuss the merits of Some Other Site.

@Jeshin

Clear or not, I still think it's misguided and draws the wrong conclusion.

It's not that I need the exposure. Whether I do or not is immaterial. This is an academic debate on the nature of quality in role-play. When cast in that light, "death only" is not something I can support.

Hello! I missed this, and will spend as little time as I can doing the dull back-and-forth and instead hit what to me were the high points. Please keep in mind that the post or one like it was marked as "obviously sarcastic". As in, much drama-rolling-of-eyes and deep-sighs that, in polite conversation, wouldn't appear.

@crayon said:

@Thenomain said:

A Mudder's Perspective. Really, 'automated conflict' is the second-highest kind of RP you can attain?
[...] The notion that automated conflict or interaction with automated systems somehow is inherently disqualified from being roleplay is a pretty extreme MUSH perspective

Hardly a Mush perspective. I remember a fairly amusing complete-freak-out from the VP of Blizzard North publicly (in an official blog post) defending Diablo 2 as "role-play" because of the number of people verbally chiding him for calling the game a "role-playing game". It is a perfect example of the extent of disagreement of what "role-playing" is.

The point I was making, however, was not dismissing it as a tool for role-play, but that it's number two on the list. I personally would put "Bar RP" higher than "typing automated commands at bots". This was as well dedicated to the differences in experience. As a Musher, I think pointing out a steel wall of difference of experience as not a negative.

All the extra, explanatory words were not in the essay. I was not the intended audience of the post, but @Jeshin wanted me and people like me to be the audience. My audience reaction was reacting to the lack of context that "#2: Pew-Pew!" had.

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I would like to point out, right now, that "a pretty extreme MUSH perspective" is the kind of reason I don't like these discussions. I work pretty hard not to cast stereotypes even when I'm talking with my Mocking Voice. Look into the broader world to find examples of behavior.

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Wide scope socialization generally involves player-arranged events, such as parties or other such affairs, which usually do a great job of getting players interacting and building interpersonal relationships but only rarely serves as a meaningful part of a character's story or as a springboard for a moving plot.

Ngh. That word. "Plot." I don't know what it means in the Mudder world, but here in Mush-land it means everything and anything but lately has meant "run things for me".

And to use a tinge of my Mocking Voice, I genuinely feel a little sorry for those whose socialization with a character isn't a meaningful part of their character's story. I also feel a little sorry that character-arranged events aren't seen as being meaningful. It seems hollow. Reason #23 I am probably not suitable for Muds.

I actually distinguish between 'Bar RP' and wide scope socialization in the article, with 'Bar RP' being what I typically class as a downtime interaction.

I have no idea what "uptime" is, then. See Above.

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Another quick pause:

What I'm really reading is that "I have different expectations on RP and have found the medium in which others and I can share this". It's similar to the idea that if you're playing on a MUCK, then you're a Furry. People congregate with others of like mind.

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MUDs tend to aspire towards creating an environment that will organically spur players

How?

Five million dollar question.

How does this work? Because if it can work for Muds, then I guarantee you that it can work for Mushes because we are, essentially, two parts of the same Elephant. Mind you, a lot of us probably don't want to come down from the top of the Elephant to do real work. Because it's fun up there.

@Thenomain said:

I still would like to see a Mudder approach coding the Storytelling system. This is not just a challenge, but to see how it would end up.

Haven's the only MUD that I've seen really approach this, if you're referring to player storytelling, though your emphasis of the Storytelling system makes me wonder if you're referring to a specific game's approach that I've not experienced.

There's a game line called "World of Darkness". The game system beneath it is called "The Storytelling System". Joe-Bob says 'check it out'. This was a challenge for Mudders to try and design a Mud from the starting position of a Mush. It's the inverse of my challenge above: Instead of being able to create a Mush from a Mud baseline, create a Mud from a Mush baseline. Since almost all Mush baselines are complete and full-formed Tabletop RPG systems, I was mainly saying: This shit ain't easy.

And there's something that I'm getting the idea that your long-time Mudder doesn't get about Mushes. All this "automated system" nonsense has me at over ten-thousand lines of code for the Storytelling System. On one hand, I want to genuinely see how a Mudder would approach it. On the other, it's my koan to the Mud community.

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I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to as Optional Realities' 'supposed goal'

This was my prodding at @Jeshin that he hasn't been clear, either to us or to himself or probably both, what Optional Realities is really about. A lot of us rabbled and roused at the notion that to be part of his curated game-list, a game must have permadeath. As the overtly stated goal that OR is for discovering quality RP, this rankles. His argument to the contrary, that it's how he feels, is not satisfactory at best and selfish at its most typical. You can have quality character development without a hint of death.

Castle d'Image is probably one of the more popular and still-discussed Mushes of ages past with no enforced, let alone permanent death. And so I more than rabble-rouse, I mock and satirize and keep the wound open because I genuinely feel that it deserves it.

I actually think the automated systems requirement is reasonably valid.

If anything, I found your suggestion that roleplay revolving around automated systems was not, in fact, roleplay to be exceptionally draconian!

And incorrect. Thanks for playing.

@BetterJudgment said:

I'm sure that Thenomain (who is, after all, a smart, skilled, and experienced game coder) was joking about not recognizing a prompt and not joking about having the character's HP etc. shoved in his face in a RP-centric environment.

Close to this.

Part of my argument with a Build Wiz/Imm/Whatnot (P-something) was this: How things are presented is informative, and by nature the consistency of those non-obvious prompts such as ANSI is educational.

I would expect a MUD to know this far more than a MUSH, as Muds are still using the Ansi-Hilite Standard. Instead what I found was a game where the coder(?) threw things at the wall and went, "Eh, good enough." This is in part how I could, in 30 minutes, get a pretty good idea that Mudders and Mushers have a lot more in common than I expected. We all be lazy, yo.

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@Ide,

Of my untested theories about RP-Mudders, I want to theorize that the severe stance on What RP Is comes from how these games grew out of the Mud culture. I mean, last I knew, a Mud was about running around killing things and having fun coding your own Mud macros, speed-walking, auto-mappers, so forth. The part of Adventure/Zork that became MMOs. I would bet small amounts of money that in there somewhere there were a few very bad years of us-vs-them mentality to those who wanted to "role play" on such a game, or that the RP fork of Muds had to combat people who were from the pew-pew fork of Muds.

This is a theory, mind you, as the Mush version of forks didn't create terminology or strict definitions about what "role-play" was. (That Muds categorize themselves as Role-Play Intensive, for instance, is kind of fun to think about on the heels of @Jeshin's "role-play is role-play" statement in his own advertising thread.)

Well, I might be blowing smoke here in my purple-skied world. Except for the existence of the "I" in the "RPI Mud" moniker. That always makes me grin a bit.

@Jeshin said:

That being said roleplay is roleplay.

I think it's pretty clear by now that roleplay isn't roleplay, that the differences are part of the definition. You can try to be Ron Edwards and come up with an academic, clinical definition of it, or Fred Hicks or D. Vincent Baker and try to make the game you want to play.

Thanks for the support, @Gingerlily. I am interested that in order to bridge communication gaps you have to want to bridge communication gaps, and that is understandably not something someone who has to deal with a newbie commonly wants to do. Changing your mental gears is tiring on both sides.

@kls,

Oh yes, this is not a builderbit job. It could be that there's something in Penn that's stopping you from setting ansi on exits. Have you tried the following?

@fo me=@name <exit>=ansi( xh, Exit Name );alias;alias;alias

That might be in your purview.

Exitformat is what you're looking for. While I don't know Penn, I will give you a Mux answer:

iter( %0, ansi( if( strmatch( <something about loc( %i0 )>, <is private> ), xh, n ), name( %i0 )), , %r )

However, again in Mux, rooms may not have permission to see if a room is or isn't on the main grid, so you may be forced to create your own "privileged" user-defined function.

&ufunc.room_on_grid: cand( hastype( %0, ROOM ), <however you determine this> )

Then your room parent's @exitformat can:
iter( %0, ansi( if( room_on_grid( loc( %i0 )), n, xh ), name( %i0 )), , %r )

n.b., most of this is from memory and may need tweaked.

(The possible secret: For exits, loc( <exit> ) returns the dbref of the room at the other end. For the room at this end, which is sometimes needed, it's home( <exit> ).)

I think I can get a pretty good idea within 30 minutes that "people are people". It's not a difficult thing to measure. It's not like I claimed to know where the cultures differed, just that the reactions of these people are those I'd expect from the average Mush and the average Musher.

The only thing I found different was the interface. Even the way people reacted to their expectations were familiar.

Nah, @Orpheus, that was an "argle bargle" thing, like my attitude about ANSI. Let me tell you about ANSI....

(I'm not going to tell you about Ansi. It's culturally important for your game, so I'll let it be.)

Things that convinced me that RPI Mudders are just like Mu*ers everywhere: I got kind of snippishly warned that talking about the codebase + Telnet was opening old wounds. (Kind-of-snippishly because it was couched as a joke, but in that way that said 'we aren't really joking'.) The people answering questions were helpful and very clearly had expectations that were second nature to them.

I will say that with the experience I did have with one of the wizards (immortals?), tho, I wouldn't be going back.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

calcified

I like this word to describe our expectations. "Draconian" was a word that was coming to mind, but felt too harsh. With the lack of a better term I left it in.

@Gingerlily said:

RPI is...a different beast?

The time (all 30 minutes) I spent on Burning Post II is that people are just people, and want to do things in the way that they understand. (I did get laughed at for saying that each game has a "culture", which made the rest of the conversation unplesant.) I just had a chat with @Orpheus that clinched it, that what we have between different games is different expectations, and no good vocabulary.

I find this lack of vocabulary to be the most frustrating thing about talking to @Jeshin, tho I don't hold it against him. We have to live with the differences between one another, either by avoiding one another or these topics, or trying until we get it right.

What I am discovering about people who are exclusive Mudders: They have a very specific, almost draconian idea of what "RP" means.

I will continue to observe and eke out nuances, knowing that there is no such thing as black-and-white, but the present image in my head is that Dr. Seuss story about the Sneetches.

Concerning what @Orpheus just said, I had a thought that I found interesting so I'm saying it out loud:

So, a tabletop session which uses OOC chatter, does not have a "sole purpose" of RP?

At what level does introducing OOC elements make game-play not RP?

How do you even define an "OOC element"? I would probably say "any element that does not directly portray the character's actions".

Obviously the one thought gave birth to a litter of related baby thoughts.

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So I decided to connect to this game, and did so, and entered a name, and then nothing I typed in did anything. I tried '?' and 'help' and 'out' and 'it will not fit here' and other hilited or emphasized words and nothing happened. This was using the most recent build of TinyFugue.

So I went to the web site to look for the "how to play this game". It was something that @Jeshin asked about Mushes: How do you introduce new people to the game, etc?

I was very surprised, in that light, to find nothing on their wiki for new players. Not even a link on "How to Play a Mud".

I went on to try the suggested Flash-based client, and it gave me a security error. As a last-ditch effort, I used raw telnet (MacOS X 10.10.something) and finally it gave me a prompt if my name choice, "Thenomain", was acceptable. It isn't, but I logged in anyhow.

I found the following message in the connecting room most striking:

Please use the visnet channel (visnet <message>) to ask questions of any
players currently online.  Feel free to contact an immortal or citizen via
the tell command as well.

Ahha, OOC commands! Not just entry-room OOCing, but game-wide OOC commands. The litter of questions in my head begin to stir and hunger for answers. Is this a scent of mild hypocrisy on the wind, or nomenclature that is not making the transition between a sub-culture and those not "in the know"?

Probably the latter.

This came up a lot, too, and was baffling :: <HP:perfect Mv:fresh>(!whererp)

I have stumbled upon something truly alien. I doubt there will be more to follow, as I was mainly looking for what an "RP-Enforced" Mudder considers "RP". It doesn't seem as draconian as roughly stated.

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Only one more small note: Two spaces after a period. @EmmahSue beat that out of me years ago. It's glaring to me now.

@HelloRaptor

No, not that kind of bow.

Better.

@Ganymede said:

The term "accuracy" in context refers to whether the opinion is a fact.

I'm not so sure; let's discuss this theory.

I bought FF7 during a Steam Sale because why not.

But it requires an account. Wha? Fine.

I make an account and validate it.

I load up FF7 again and enter my account information.

I gives me a "bad gateway" error.

So I can't play.

And thus ends my experience with Final Fantasy.

Reminder to self: Lock down SQL commands further, because as much as it pains me to say so, What HR Said.

Outside the code perspective, @Derp, you're asking staff to take on more administrative duties. This generally (generally, mind you) doesn't work partially because nobody has the time for that and partially because there is nobody with the authority to enforce whatever rules you might come up with except for, ultimately, the person who knows how to pull the banhammer, and that's mainly the person with the password to the #1 God Bit. Game culture starts at the top.

I know what it's like to see a purple-skied world full of sweetness and perfection, but as a constructive note, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Really you two, mashing your logical fallacies together like they're going to have logic babies. There's a reason logic incest isn't good for mankind!