Posts made by Thenomain

@Chime said:

@Rook said:

Side note: For the new to the genre? MUX is MUSH. It is just a branch of the codebase.

Right. They are the same thing; brought it up only because mudstats foolishly files them separately.

I appreciate that they do, because the differences in coding are still important. Not as bad as lumping Penn in with Mux, but the drift continues.

@Tempest said:

colors don't get used very much on 99.99% of MU*s and some clients don't support it.

Most clients don't. Atlantis, Potato, and TF is the complete list that I know about.

@Chime's descriptions of Mush is fantastic, from a coder/Mudder standpoint. From what I know about Muds, there is about as much a 'comprehensive Mush experience' as there is a 'comprehensive Mud experience'. Where I call most of that ilk 'LPMuds', people will 1) call me old and 2) chew my ear off about how Muds vary and a new code-base pops up because it's a Tuesday.

The same can be said for Mushes, only they do, as Chime says, share a common code foundation. Well, not so much share as they're almost functionally the same. And that's where it ends. Even two WoD games based upon essentially the same softcode (Reno and Eldritch) are going to come off as wildly different because, well, why not.

And yes, Eldritch is open. We've been open a month now.

@Ide said:

@Thenomain, my first thought was Castle Marrach, but d'Image isn't bad either (come to think of it, weren't Marrach and d'Image related somehow? I can't remember).

It's been too long, you know. Also, you're old.

However, what stood out to me about Usurper and what elevates it above those games is how the coded systems aren't just for +roll'ing or +sheets, but more a part of the game world overall.

Unlike a system that requires you to overcome an invisible barrier to move into the spirit world? All RPGs have systems that are part of the game world. While I too appreciate what appears to be an expression of an internal discussion ("I'd like to have this system, so let's put in this theme for it"), the game designer part of me wondered why this was so impressive. I mean, this should be standard.

Maybe it's my mush-centric view.

@Jeshin said:

The possibility of permanent and real death [...] is part and parcel with conflict.

And yet ... and yet ... most classic stories don't follow this rule.

I removed "or loss" because loss is a real threat. The appearance of the threat of death, even, but when you're telling a story about a person, you don't expect that person to die before the story is done.

We all know it's a trick, but we also love watching a trick well-performed.

@Jeshin said:

perma-death is a fairly crucial feature (in my opinion) of storytelling

Said no one ever. Imagine if Frodo was killed at the Prancing Pony.

Stories must have ends, but ends do not always complete a story.

@Jeshin said:

Would you agree MUSH challenges, puzzles, random scenes rely on at least one person in the room being a competent storyteller?

I would not. I would say that Mush challenges, puzzles, and random scenes rely on two people who want to see what happens next.

As @Chime and now @Three-Eyed-Crow points out, Mushing is collaborative at its core. This is why we gravitate towards RPG systems as ways to abstract the challenges into manageable bits. When everything is abstracted, there is less need to repeating the same scene over and over.

In one month on a Mush, my character went from losing an archery contest (except acing it with a gun with a trick shot over my left shoulder) to shooting a cyclops in the eye while someone else tackled it off the bridge to making out with a woman who would end up a mortal enemy later on, with some random politics in between. None of these situations were coded, but they could be resolved with coded systems that managed the basics.

I loved URU. URU, for those who don't know, was an MMO by Ubisoft and Cyan. The idea was that everyone would play an explorer in the abandoned D'ni ruins and solve puzzles. But here's the problem I had with that: Once the puzzle was solved, you're just following in someone else's footprints. Why, I wondered, did someone not put a rope ladder in this key spot so I could reach this keystone? One a conflict is resolved, it's resolved. It's done, over with, and if you want to engage it again that's cool and all but it's not the kind of game that RPGs (traditionally story-based) are meant to be about.

I don't know if this is why URU failed, but fail it did. It tried to be about a story, using tools that were about playing games.

I'm sure I had a more concrete point here, but I can't remember what it is anymore.

@Chime said:

Sometimes, well implemented NPC combat/puzzle things might be of interest.

I used to write puzzles in TinyTIM, back when dinosaurs roamed Usenet and we had to use complex dark exit's @afail as fake commands. I helped put together their Hitchhiker's Guide, which communicated by @teleporting objects back and forth to the main Sub-Etha object in order to submit their changes. I coded a while-loop using @trigger and @if statements back on NorCon Pern, a TinyMUSH 2 game and probably the final split of Mush and Mud.

And you know what? Coding puzzles is dumb. Fun, educational, entertaining, but ultimately something that you must grow past if you want to advance the game.

Some time ago, I checked out a Mud I was interested in playing and there was this big announcement how a new area was almost done being coded with new puzzles. And I thought, "Why? If someone wants to challenge me, they describe it and I get to do the same thing." Sharks in the Rhine? Done. Highwaymen goblins? Done. Risking a fall from a cliff's edge? roll dexterity - 3 is all I need. It's very meta, but whether this is good or bad is up to you.

@Jeshin said:

RPXP which is gained during scenes and by emote/pose

Musher: Really? Goodies per pose? Enact Gaming The System #32.
Mudder: Are you done writing your 'spend/regain' system yet, Theno?
Musher: Shut up. Also, shut up.
Mudder: Are you crying?
Musher: Shut up!

@Jeshin said:

I would say that a quality RPI would take an adjustment for a MUSH player but that the quality of roleplay would probably surprise them.

Consider your average Musher thinks of Muds as MMOs. I have seen quality RP on an MMO, but it was still vastly limited by the medium and was not what could be done in a pure-text medium. This is fine. MMO is MMO.

What you're describing in your example are no different than on a Mush. Combat is often coded and can be coded blind. Speed-walking becomes the same stat system that handles combat (athletics/dodge). Putting your hands up is role-play and can be weighed equally to the stat system, or even be engaged as a part of the stat system (fast-talk).

Mush can be used to create much that Mud has, so it's not the limitations of the code. (Mind you, Mush's various code systems are limited and horrible, but can still be coerced to do things.) Conversely, Mud can be used to create everything that Mush has.

What I find of people who favor Muds is the reliance on automated systems. The speed-walk systems evolved from a need where the speed of ones network connection and the capabilities of the client program. A Musher would see someone appear suddenly in combat and say, "You were just in the next town. There's no way you could be here. Go away." The reliance on automated code can be good, or it can be bad.

We've been discussing a similar argument on the reliance on player consent for a very, very long time, but it's probably the culture of code reliance vs. consent reliance that marks one of the largest differences between a Mud and a Mush.

#3 is probably key. It now sounds like:

Musher: Um ... yes? You can do something else. Go you.
Mudder: So when are you getting a real coding language?
Musher: I'm too busy freely posing with your mom.

We have tried economies and guilds and automated mobs and so forth (nnngh, coded language systems) and we've eventually rejected them for bringing nothing substantial to the table, or requiring a far higher investment than coding a counter and doing these things manually. On the flip side, we have been re-coding and re-re-re-coding combat systems since forever and that gets old.

To be fair, I would try a Mud if someone played there with me, not as a role-playing experience but as an MMO one. People here have praised RPI Muds, and even World of Warcraft sounds interesting except for the MMO part.

EDIT - Clarification. I believe the majority of MUD economies are objectively bad. Not the automated systems as a whole.

I think all fan-created economies are objectively bad. One of the best automated economies I've ever seen is in the board game Power Grid.

@Jeshin said:

1. When you state that you are used to the game being more or less complete. Can you give me an example of what you mean? Do you mean most MUSH use RPG systems as their game systems and thus all the rules are quantified and known to everyone after they login to the game?

Yes. Even hand-crafted RPGs are generally considered complete enough to do conflict resolution, with enough guidance in the writing so that players can agree upon what this means.

2. The favor generation wouldn't actually be "changed" per se. It would be designed on a matrix to shift. These shifts would be a game feature and an intended function so players would be aware of that when they started playing. So would that still cause players to become upset as per your example?

Possibly. It has that going for it, so perhaps it was a bad example. Let's say that you change how the Crafting System works, and suddenly the 95% of Commoners who are Tailors are suddenly much less effective, people may call "nerfing"

3. Can you elaborate on your "stuff happens" comment so I can better understand it? Do you mean that the game features are not properly quantified and just generally say this is how it will work with no system explaining why? Do you mean it in the sense that we brainstorm and implement features without a source material to guide us and "that stuff happens" kind of way?

It's a reiteration of two of my statements. 1) What is the game about? It seems to be about Nobles and if you want to be a Commoner then okay that's up to you, but Nobles play the real game. 2) From a Musher's perspective, Muds are encoded system of coded codeliness, and this is from a Mux coder. In putting in just enough code/RPG system to the entry, without knowing anything more about the Mudder culture I don't know what to write between the lines.

I imagine it'd be the same if someone told you that EldritchMux was "not a typical WoD Mux" and that we were focusing on "events mixing all spheres". Not knowing what a "Typical WoD Mux" was, you wouldn't know what I meant, or what to expect, nor why I was jumping up and down like a schoolgirl who's heard her favorite boy band has come to town. If you said, "That's nice, dear. I'm glad you're excited," then went on with your life, I wouldn't blame you one bit.

That's how I feel about Usurper. It looks like a Middling Politics game focusing on a coded Politics system with possible future branching out. Very Castle d'Image. I would play it if someone asked me to, which is downright praise from me, but it doesn't hit my buttons the way that, say, "The House" from Ted William's Otherworld would.

I guess I'm saying that the write-up may have too much Mud in it for me to "get it".

I should dig up my "Mars!" write-up sometime, tho it is absolutely a love-letter to Space: 1889, but the initial game world scenario was mostly going to be focused around solving a political situation. Now that 1889 is back out, it doesn't quite serve the same purpose anymore.

One of the things I noted from the example winner is that a lot of it read like "stuff happens". I don't mind "stuff happens", but it must be a Mud thing that this is the design work methodology. Perhaps it's the mentality that "let's do this and see if it works, and if it doesn't then oh well". We Mushers could have more of that, but we seem to be more used to the RPG aspect of things, where the game is more or less complete before we log in, and that we understand that changes will be made with some commentary from the consensus.

Mind you, I would like to live in a world where if I change how, e.g., Favor is generated I won't get an angry mob of players with pitchforks and torches trying to beat down my door. Engagement will inform changes in procedure and therefore code. So will unexpected system loopholes.

Understanding is key to bridging groups, so here I am, trying to understand.

I think it's even especially awesome because they're implementing this right before the Steam Summer Sale. This, people. This is how you do loyalty to your customers.

Steam has always been a decent attempt of "by fans, for fans". I think the EU has been pushing for this, so why not give it to everyone? It's a direction we needed to be going for five years now, and major kudos to Steam for raising the bar. It's things like this that make me think it's okay that there is no Half-Life 3.

Besides, Steam is not going to be out-done by flippin' EA and the mandatory self-flaggelation service known as Origin.

Goddammit face, now is not the time to decide to extract my sinuses through my cheekbones.

Goddammit, Mux. I want to know if the list '1.3' (%qm) is entirely in the list '1.2.3.4.5' (%qv).

The best I have so far:
eq( words( setinter( %qv, %qm, . ), . ), words( %qm, . )

There has to be a better way.

@Jeshin said:

It's just that I see so many interesting stuff from the other MU* worlds when talking to Evennia developers (which are really from all over) that I often try to bridge the gap.

What gap is it that you're trying to bridge? I've become lost between your talking about MUSH and a system I have, myself, absolutely zero experience with or knowledge of.

@Jeshin said:

The fashion thing is as much to give people something to do as to incentivize the appropriate attention to fashion that is a staple of high society.

This exemplifies my biggest gripe of "what would the characters do?" So far, only tailors are the only Commoners important to the game mechanics. I imagine that guards and others close to the Noble characters will also provide important roles, but to be taken on the whims of the players and not encouraged by the system.

My feedback isn't meant to challenge anyone's notions or attack the concept, but @Ide enjoys watching differing paradigms interacting, and why not. From this new ideas might be born.

@Ide said:

I'm interested in hearing the reaction to Usurper from people here.

Okay.

I'm not sure what one is meant to do on this game. I have a sense of "things will be coded that will do all this stuff", but not what those systems are expected to look like. I can see that there is some plan to link the island to the science-fiction aspect of "The Light" and that's kind of neat, especially as the population of the world are apparently misunderstanding it. It also ties in how Favor can be gained or lost without witnesses, so bonus points for making the game mechanic thematic.

The mechanic of changing fashions is being described as "give Commoner characters something to do" which I'd be afraid would undermine the diversity of the support network that Commoners do. Akin to the first sentence, why would someone play a Commoner?

It's an interesting proposal, and I'd be interested to see how it develops. I am not excited by High Nobility, so I can't see if it's a gripping theme or not.

I liked the presentation.

Hey, I was getting my ass kicked at Ora et Labora. Priorities.

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