@wizz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
Arx aside, we've had some great discussions here......... ere these many years gone
Discussion here would be great if it weren't for everyone involved.
@wizz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
Arx aside, we've had some great discussions here......... ere these many years gone
Discussion here would be great if it weren't for everyone involved.
Beg someone for shell access somewhere.
SSH in and use TF.
Bonus points if you learn how to use ‘screen’.
@wizz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
I'm not, for sure. My critique of the forum is more in line with @Roz's, I just honestly don't think we're the place for big, constructive, positive discussion anymore.
“Anymore”?
I will frankly derail this conversation right off the bridge and into the ravine:
I don’t think ANY discussion about Arx on this board has ever been that constructive, and certainly not focused long enough for someone to decide it’s not a discussion to have. This is the closest I’ve ever seen, and I will outright blame high emotions and high egos from making it so.
Sure this board isn’t good for conversations for any considerable length or depth, but there is something hot button about saying the word “Arx” that makes it more likely to fail than almost any other topic, sure as hell more than any game.
Except that once where @faraday asked for system input and even after repeating twenty times the kind of input she wasn’t asking for someone kept wringing her over the coals about it.
That was fun.
I think we’re kind of on the same page for the most part, but now this thread is about whether or not we’re talking about things.
That’s fun.
Updated SQL section quite a lot.
*** UPDATE ***
If you used the previous method, please @shutdown, run the extended sudo apt-get
, then follow the ChimeMUX installation instructions again.
The SQL dev binaries weren't installed.
@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
I think you are just playing a different game than this one in your head
There's this phrase I heard, once, I can almost remember where, which would be an almost-perfect Staff response to that:
"We don't do that here."
Maybe phrased to be less antagonistic toward the suggestion.
"Our goal is for something more <fill in blank>."
It shows that the idea was considered and rejected for a design reason, not just out of hand. Who wants to make a suggestion with a flat-out "no"? Nobody, that's who.
(It's also why I took out '+job/deny' out of the aJobs system. It's '+job/complete' or nothing.)
@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
It's hard to get good feedback though, most players never want to give any opinions at all while others just want to rant and rave about what they want while the designer usually just wants to know if things feel like they're intended to feel.
There are a lot of documents out there aimed toward board game designers on how to get feedback. This is a well-trodden path. It starts with wanting to be open to feedback.
If people on Arx don't feel comfortable giving feedback or having a discussion, then that's an internal issue that should be addressed, starting with the important one: Sometimes the feedback you get won't be pretty.
"Kill your darlings."
More specific questions would be a good start, too. Explaining the scope of the feedback being requested. Taking even the Firehose style responses to better get the feedback intended. Communication as a cycle is a craft.
That's my "I agree", but hopefully adding to it.
And @sparks is what "elegant" looks like.
Staffers and wannabe-staffers, take notes.
@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
@thenomain said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
Agreed, but here's what's going against the Echo Chamber theory:
- 100+ Players
- Feedback from people who are engaging the system
Unless there is a secret channel I don't know about, there's very little talk about Arx on Arx outside of the odd panic on the info channel whenever a major change is made.
Asked and answered:
@thenomain said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
Here's what's going for it:
- Once the feedback is given, there's no discourse
You throw feedback at the "proper channels", which is often code by bad staff for saying "throw it in this pit and we may look at it".
Arx is proud of its "our way or the highway" methodology and fortunately that works for a lot of people. I think the only truly successful games would have a Benevolent Dictator approach. The question that you and Tempest raise is: Are the dictators benevolent?
Or at least are they benevolent enough?
If not, then I agree with Tempest's echo-chamber concern. If they are, then there's not much to worry about.
@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
Creating an echo chamber seems like a bad idea.
That's constructive criticism.
Agreed, but here's what's going against the Echo Chamber theory:
Here's what's going for it:
I have my own reasons to not trust Arx staff; they are varied and well-documented and I won't repeat them here.
That Arx staff believed that this thread was for them was their first mistake; the person starting this thread is not an Arx staffer, and so their farewell from this thread was entirely for themselves. Nothing wrong with this, though it was a bit of a polite middle-finger to the existence of this thread.
I'm honestly not surprised nor phased by it.
This thread is for us, Soapbox posters, to play around with the ideas of systems of a game. That's it. As I said before, anyone who thinks anything more or less of this thread is probably fooling themselves.
We're all fools from time to time.
If any one person takes this conversation and makes a system with this as feedback, then this thread is a win. Arx doesn't do things perfectly. Nobody does. But we can take what Group A does and apply them to Group B. We can talk and discuss and invent and that's pretty goddamn amazing.
If Arx staff was getting too emotional about it, then it's for the best for everyone that they've taken their ball and gone home.
So...how about that prestige, eh?
@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
That's assuming all voices are equal, or that half are even heard.
I'm sure the people who talk to Apos/KQ/etc daily via pages or on discord, or what have you, have way more input than the average player.
This is true of every game ever made and is not unique to Arx. People with the ear of staff, "staff-friends", tend to have a higher priority than others.
All you can do is either trust staff to be fair enough to try, or out their nepotism or hypocrisy on some kind of web site set up for it.
Maybe one that you're posting to right now.
(edit: but not this thread, which is about constructive criticism on Arx's systems.)
@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
And then you only get feedback from the players you like and actually talk to, and they're generally not going to be honest about things
If they're bad players, you have a pretty valid point, but considering that Arx has about 100 players on at any given time, I doubt they're that worried about the echo chamber.
Unless they criticize and ban players with negative feedback.
Depending on how they present it, sure, sometimes people deserve to get banned or sneered at online and publicly, but if everyone trusts staff to behave civil as their first interaction with everyone, then they won't have a problem.
Mind you, I was recently told the KQ was not officially staff anymore, but I'm sure I'm getting outdated information.
@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
I don't think Arx needs to be defended.
Nor do I. I even said as much.
I've seen a few posts indicating that it does, or that the feedback is unwelcome.
To those people taking it there, getting up in arms on either side, I say: It's all good.
(Mostly because it looked like @Sparks was maybe getting a bit agitated, and that bugs me because she's good people. Don't nobody hurt Sparks, dammit.)
That's fair. I think searching for homogeneity is a mug's game; it's traditionally been the GM's job to make things interesting for the players, or as @Sparks says, the systems are there to facilitate RP, not replace it.
However, I have upped my concern to: It looks like the players are playing an incomplete game. I have no problem with this. But as a defense, it makes this entire thread moot, academic for the sake of academics.
I also have no problem with this, but if true it does mean that Arx staff should probably stick to this as their one and only defense of Arx, if they feel that Arx needs defended at all.
Explained, sure. Defended? Not at all. We are, after all, blowing in the wind, and anyone who doesn't realize that now is probably just fooling themselves.
System design is fun, even when futile. So onward, to system design theory!
--
edit: Er, that said, it's still staff's job to try and make all sheet designs as fun as reasonable.
edit 2: By "explained", I mean if you lot want to explain the theory behind a certain system design, cool. I'm interested in design theory, and tend to prod at its weaknesses in the White...ish Hat Pentest manner. If you want input, you're already getting flooded with it. If not? Yeah, not bringing it up might be best.
I ask this with kindness and understanding:
What do you mean "until everything is done"? Is there a timetable? Is it transparent?
(edit: quote was not direct; fixed)
@thatonedude said in Setup ChimeMUX + MediaWiki on Digital Ocean:
What about using the mocker/docker solution like this guy/gal brought up in the past?
I don't know. The post links to a .tgz file and while I would like to think there's instructions in there, I'm posting my existing experience to help others.
I don't think your question relates to what Groth said.
What I heard, at least, is related to my #1 complaint of Mutants & Masterminds 3e: There is a specific way to best make the characters but the game book does not have you do this.
This criticism of M&M doesn't have anything to do whether or not social stats are useless (as in WoD/CoD), or a treatise in dump stats (D&D), but that if a game system says "here's a bunch of numbers; go nuts", then there should not be an asterisk at the end of that statement.
--
This is no criticism of Arx, but how I read Groth's statement. The only thing I don't like about the systems of Arx is that I could make a character, play it, retire, and then find someone else is playing it in a way that it wasn't designed.
That is, I sincerely dislike roster systems. I don't hate them, they are just something I don't enjoy engaging with.
Oh, and the arbitrariness of making scouting (stealth? one of those) a 'combat' stat and therefore chew up all of my chargen points making a character I thought was going to be more or less off-screen funtimes.
Follow-Up from my much earlier turnaround: D’Arcy Carden is an amazing actress.
If you are not watching The Good Place, then what are you doing with your life?
LAMP should have MySQL installed and ready to go already. I will put a placeholder in the guide to remember to check it out.
So things have changed. Things have changed a lot. The "Zero to Mush (with wiki)" is still good, but it's changed and gotten messy with exceptions.
So here's my instructions, partially for myself, on how to set up ChimeMUX (what I call the experimental Chime fork of TinyMUX) on Digital Ocean.
This is not a static post, but I will try to update the thread with what changes have been made.
For this tutorial, it's going to be the LAMP account.
https://www.digitalocean.com/products/one-click-apps/lamp/
Start with the $5/mo account.
In my extremely strong opinion, you should not use 'root' for the game. There are a few reasons for this, but the main is that: It's root.
(The secondary is that an account for the game makes it easier to manage.)
Log in to your account as root then do this thing:
sudo adduser <username>
sudo adduser <username> sudo
Then log out of root and log into your user. Do as much as you can from the user.
I'm aware that creating an account with super-user abilities is not a whole lot better than using root, but it's cleaner and easier to see what's going on. The rest of this tutorial is going to assume you've done this.
There's a few steps here because while LAMP has almost everything you need, there are a few packages that won't be there.
sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc make bison libpcre3-dev libmysqlclient-dev
(bison
is for Omega, which while isn't compiled by default, it can be an important tool for doing some deeper Mux things.)
I believe the game should have its own account. For this type sudo adduser <username> sudo
and then re-log in with that account.
Either way, at this point you just need to follow the directions from Chime's GitHub and you'll be fine: https://github.com/lashtear/tinymux
Mostly fine. You need to open the port in the firewall:
sudo ufw allow <game port>
If the game hasn't been started yet, do so now. Log in. You're done.
Important Tidbit: The initial login for #1 is:
connect wizard potrzebie
You're going to have to engage MySQL without a password. As Surreality says below, the default install has no password for root. That's fine, because you can do this:
sudo mysql
Now you'll need to make a database for the game, and an account for the Mux to log into that database. From within MySQL:
CREATE DATABASE <gamename>_db;
CREATE USER '<acct_name>'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';
GRANT INDEX, CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, ALTER, TRIGGER, LOCK TABLES
ON <gamename>_db.*
TO '<acct_name>'@'localhost';
You can, of course, change this however you want.
Check that you did well:
SHOW GRANTS FOR '<acct_name>'@'localhost';
Type exit
to get out of MySQL.
cd ~/game
pico etc/netmux.conf
Somewhere near the bottom, or even at the bottom:
## database ##############################
sql_server localhost
sql_database <gamename>_db
sql_user <acct_name>
sql_password <password>
If your game is running, @restart
it if not, bin/mux-start
it.
Log into the game.
Type the following:
think sql( select 1 )
If everything went well, you'll get a response of '1'. Congrats! You have SQL!
A lot of the system is already set up. Digital Ocean does have a "how to set up MediaWiki" page but it's out of date. Right now, here's what you need to do to seal the deal:
sudo apt-get install php-intl
sudo apt-get install php-gd
sudo apt-get install php-xml
sudo apt-get install php-mbstring
sudo service apache2 restart
curl -O http://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.31/mediawiki-1.31.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf mediawiki-1.31.1.tar.gz
sudo mv mediawiki-1.31.1/* /var/www/html
It's really too bad that there's no easy link to 'most recent stable', but hey. By the time you read this, there will probably be a newer version.
Now check your web site for the "LocalSettings.php not found." message and click on that link below it: "Set up your wiki."
Here are the things to change from default:
Database name: <gamename>_db
Database table prefix: wiki_
Database username: <acct_name>
Database password: <password>
The "name of the wiki" and "administrator account" is up to you.
I also suggest turning on "Account Authentication" & "File Uploads". I forgot to record what other good ideas are in there. (Such as 'Cite' and 'Poem'.)
Now the hard part: The wiki setup will give you the LocalSettings.php file. Upload that to /var/www/html/ and, once it's in there, the following critical steps:
cd /var/www/html/
sudo chmod o-r LocalSettings.php
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data .
Your Wiki is now set.
<I hope. Further instructions to follow.>