Posts made by Thenomain

Nudge it aside with your cart and do not acknowledge sass about it.

@Sparks

volus

@Jeshin said:

I explained up there why I believe death is important to storytelling.

Which is why I see it as a vanity project. You choose the games. You choose the definitions. It's your world, and we are guests. If we disagree then we are wrong.

Benevolent Dictator isn't a bad way to run things, but the limitations are trivial and extend beyond the permadeath thing. As I see no invitation to seek compromise, I don't see much interest in the culture, save where it intersects with your preconceived notions.

Thus, vanity. Not vanity horrible, just vanity.

@Jeshin said:

I explained up there why I believe death is important to storytelling.

Which is why I see it as a vanity project. You choose the games. You choose the definitions. It's your world, and we are guests. If we disagree then we are wrong.

Benevolent Dictator isn't a bad way to run things, but the limitations are trivial and extend beyond the permadeath thing. As I see no invitation to seek compromise, I don't see much interest in the culture, save where it intersects with your preconceived notions.

Thus, vanity. Not vanity horrible, just vanity.

I think this comment wins the thread:

HaiWolfe said:

What I'm trying to get at is that there is a dualistic nature to the debate: (1) The level of roleplay enforcement, and (2) the coded features of the MUD itself.

I think I'm starting to see where the permadeath requirement comes in; a very, very MUD culture response, I'm guessing to problems they feel needs to be solved.

While here in MUSH land, we look confused with, "That ... doesn't mean RP? Wha?"

Hell, no MUSH would classify as "RPI" according to these people, even though we take our RP very seriously. 'WHO' is a tool, and if we don't have 'where' reporting then there will be heartache. Pages, channels, all ways to organize and table-talk things that need table-talked. I think half of any game I code is for player-tools and not character-tools. For us, this is critical, because we play the game as an extended tabletop.

Until someone comes along and tries to figure out the difference between Mush and Mud, there will be no synthesis. This is why I think Optional Realities' supposed goal is silly and comes down to, "It is what I say it is." As long as it isn't supposed to be about Mushes, sure, but the original post is all about the Mushes. Then isn't. Then is. Then isn't. Yeah. This isn't solvable without understanding and compromise.

tl;dr: Optional Realities == Vanity Project

The conversation had me going "Oh! OH! Which means that THIS and THIS and THIS" a lot. I completely tweaked Cobalt's design goal to include: Drop in code much easier. She pushed back with: Needs to be non-coder friendly. I think we came up with a good compromise.

@Jeshin,

Dear god, as long as you let him know I was being sarcastic out of posting here. Though re-reading it in a more sober state (not that I was drunk; I was just not being measured), I don't disagree with a less sarcastic reading of what I 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.

As the mighty starter of this thread, I bless anyone who derails it to discuss alternatives to aJobs. Because really.

edit: Belated praise, or re-praise: The jobselect system is the shiznit. It is non-stop awesome, and hooks in both easy and peasy, with some lemon squeezy.

Tetchy Theno's Sarcastic Overview:

@Jeshin said:

Crayon comments on Roleplay Culture

A Mudder's Perspective. Really, 'automated conflict' is the second-highest kind of RP you can attain? Automated Conflict is Role-Play? Described as "roleplay-focused player versus environment activities" I am fairly confident that this person either has not had a combat on a Mush, which is so roleplay-focused that it takes effing forever to get through.

I don't enjoy combat online, because on a tabletop it's abstracted enough that you get to laugh about bad rolls and cheer each other on. On WoD Mushes, this is discouraged instead for purple prose and taking 20 minutes to 'prep' all your stupid powers. It's not uncommon for me to wait an hour between rounds, and that's with a well-coded system.

I dare a Mudder to code a complete WoD system, by the way. I dare you.

I don't know what he means by "wide scope socialization", but if it's like most of the group meetings that I've played on Mushes then it's even worse, and I can't wait to get back into small groups. The way he seems to indicate it is something we call "Bar RP" and is no different than "downtime socialization". (The idea that Bar RP is always flatline-RP is a misnomer. It may provide important opportunities to catch up with plot.)

Crayon's solutions must also be a Mud-thing, because I don't know what he's talking about. It reads to me like "do things". Okay, I promise to do things.

With one exception: Incentives. We here in the Mush world have a love-hate relationship with incentives to players, because we are constantly fighting the "bloated character sheet" (aka Dino) problem, when it is a problem. A substantial number, but probably not majority, of us believe you should play games to play games, and agree to the setting and theme and rules of the game you log into. The only incentive I need (or, really, want) is staff giving a shit what I'm doing.

Optional Realities Welcomes No Return to our listings

Y~ay?

Optional Realities June 2015 short story contest continues

Hey HR, grab your roomie, throw a the topic of one of the listed games, and watch her collect $50. Tell her that Dr. Who can feature.

Do you want to contribute to Project Redshift's development in some way?

I already am, vis a vis this post. Obviously.

You know, I think that I enjoyed oMage the most when I ignored Paradox. The "taken to 11" thing people wanted to play (including, I think, the game writers themselves) were entirely possible then.

Not just pedantic, but aggressively pedantic. I couldn't think of a reason for it, either.

I may have taken it too far. Things have left me tetchy lately.

@HelloRaptor said:

I'm not sure why someone would brag about that, or why anybody else would feel like it was a bad touch.

Because when your thing is your thing, and someone else comes by and says, "Ha ha, I can do your thing," then why bother? As it was said earlier, people do like the powers. This is my incarnation of it.

Kind of like people who play D&D et al. and complain that 'Fighter' is no fun because it's not unique enough. I never felt that way, but I did see it a lot on forums. Or people who flip out at the thought that a Werewolf of a different Auspice using their Auspice Gifts. We got a lot of Werewolf players in Changeling who didn't understand how everyone could use everyone else's powers. I have some empathy toward it, but if XP didn't run like water then it wouldn't be a big problem.

OoH Fantards (not just players, but the people who gush over it) didn't play OoH as people interested in integrating all magic, but dominating it. Kind of like Techno players who took the 'Reality Police' thing way, way too far. You know the people I'm talking about. A lot of oMage players took the 'Paradigm War' thing too far OOC.

@HelloRaptor

Did Thenomain mention the Order of Hermes when I wasn't looking?

It's implied. I was touched in bad ways from people who bragged how OoH were experts in every other Tradition's area. This didn't happen occasionally. This happened with one out of every one OoH fanboi.

Pedantic != Helpful in many situations.

In a non trivial count, Pedantic == Argumentative.

My answer is a mix of the previous two: they didn't think it was needed, and when they put it in the default install they felt it was easier to run close-enough code than find all the places it would need changed.

I've been there. Very recently.

I'm still griping about it. I hate doing it.

C.f., what @Alzie says, below. HOOK_ADD is only used for comments like MAI is, so potentially would use it. PUB likewise.

On Eldritch, I am the first contact for code but not wiki, and I have a say in meta plot and I will probably be the changeling expert. I exist in only one sphere: the decision-makers. I am in this sphere because I am trusted to say, "I don't know, ask this person."

The problem I have with spheres in any sort is that the people in them feel responsible to come up with an answer even if they don't know. This too often means that they expect their answer to be the only answer, this creates fiefdoms, which precludes the conversation that is critical to the system of effective staffing.

It turns game running into political groups. Do you really need a law staffer? No, no, and hell no. What you need is communication among all staffers the kind of problems someone trying to break or even enforce the law will run into. Having an expert is good, but not critical.

The same goes for high society and streetwise staffers, which I think would be more critical than law/crime.

Anyhow, that's my thing,

Possibly, and that's what I would think too, but the system is based on triggers without semaphores which risks, slightly but still possibly, timing issues. The calling code knows exactly which comment number is being created. It makes me both argle and bargle.

I really can justify a lot of what the code is doing, and does, and I will not for a second say that my code is perfect either, but I feel that I have a light need to defend myself in thinking that some of what aJobs does is silly. Because some of what aJobs does is silly. Like not passing the comment number to HOOK_*, or treating a 'cc' like a 'bcc'.

Maybe these are only my opinions, as I'm not in the code team, but a coder without opinions is a drone.

Gripe gripe gripe.

@HelloRaptor

Conversely, if a system is so simplistic that there's really no wrong answer, it's probably not the game I want to play.

Agreed. It's not a fine line, tho, but a pretty big area between "too easy" and "minmaxer hell". I want the ability, even need the ability, to not solve the puzzle of what's best and still be playable. I don't want to have to know the subtleties of the system to play. I want to get close enough and just bloody play.

How close is "close enough" is subjective, because WoD is open ended enough that fiddling with he game mechanics is a valid way to play. It's just not my way to play. I don't want to be beholden to system mechanics. I want them to be guiding, even limiting, but not the be all end all.

This is why I think D&D and its derivatives are on the whole superior systems to Storyteller/ing. As long as you are reasonable with focusing on a move or talent, you're probably fine.

If the system is "meh, whatever" on the outside but a twisty maze of interactions on the inside, I will fuck it up. I will continue to fuck it up until someone takes my hand and says, Theno, Do This. I don't have the brain for it.

Where is the documentation for the code? Hell, I still have problems finding information in jhelp after how many years?

Again, I don't mean to insult anyone about the code, and I know how it is, but I always feel a weight on my chest when I have to find out what aJobs is doing.

For instance, HOOK_* finds out the comment it's affecting by picking up the last comment. The comment number is not passed. Why is it not passed?! I found this by accident, mainly when I needed to add functionality.

On the other hand, the job filter system is a thing of beauty. It's entirely internal to the system and is a breeze to work where to hook external code into. Another system was easy for this too--SQL archiving, I think--once I worked out what registers did what and what is passed to which.

"Once I worked out what registers did what and what is passed" is my years-long experience with aJobs, I start with '+job/add' and stumble through from there. aJobs is the boulder I keep having to push up the hill.

@Coin said:

maybe build the character you want to play, instead of playing without consideration of the mechanics

Not being able to see the higher level of mechanic interaction has been part of what's been keeping me from diving into RP for a while. If I have to be super careful about how I build the character, eh, that's not the game I want to play.

(Also keeping me from RP: Code obligations, no ideas that grab me, work constraints.)