I refer to these as nerd honey traps. It's not as sweet, but it's sure to catch someone.
(edit: specifically "nerd honey traps", because as nerds we are super cereal in our desire to make sure the world is correct. Actually this reminds me of Um Actually: The game show where nerds correct nerds. It's formatted as a game show and it's actually pretty good. Good times.)
So this thread has turned into a "when I met a fascist/socialist" thread.
Um...what?
(I am kidding; this is a fantastic series of um-whats.)
To @Sparks and @Ashen-Shugar ::
I still think that formatting for a web interface is harder than programming for a terminal interface, and not because I've been doing the latter far longer than the former.
Moreover, it's easier to make the terminal interface to look clean and useful than the web interface.
So I disagree on coding for web only vs. web plus terminal cutting the work in half. Removing a fourth or a third of the work, maybe.
This post brought to you by the continued attempt to explain what I meant to Sparks, since I don't think I'd been doing a good job at it.
@ashen-shugar said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
So, I have this new feature that changes WOOF WOOF BOW WOW MOO MOO OINK OINK OINK WOOF WOOF WOOF. So what do you all think?
Anything after the word 'changes' they tend to tune out.
Because people tend not to understand our crazy coding moon-language.
I think it's worse when you say "I have this new feature that changes," and people think that's an invitation to be part of the change team.
I've done this too; I'm not innocent.
Then again, name more than two people in this thread who haven't and I'll call you a liar.
If you name the OP as one of them, I'll know that you're trolling. 
@lithium said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
@thenomain Sometimes 'Play the Game' means Bad Shit(tm) is going to happen to your character.
As long as it's done with everyone on the same page.
A lot of games...
...No, strike that, almost every staffer and player are understandably shitty about this. They're shitty about accepting this, yes, but they're also shitty about thinking about preparing people for this.
This is why it's so important that staff be capable of explaining to people what they expect for the game. This has never not been true, but a lot of people use your exact language to tell people that they're wrong to be upset at something that happens.
While staff isn't wrong about what the game is about, it is their game to decide this after all, they can be ham-fisted anti-fun monsters when enforcing it.
Play the Game and expect only good shit to happen to you is when you get people playing fanged and furry super heroes on a WoD/CoD game.
The /game/ is dark, the /setting/ is dark, the whole /world/ is dark.
If enforced, sure. If not enforced, WoD is the superhero game many people play, and when someone comes along and demands that everyone play it dark and gritty then they're the one who's wrong. And by everyone, I mean everyone up to staff whose responsibility it is to enforce theme.
And people in charge of factions have a responsibility to enforce the theme of that faction.
A game is what people agree to play, regardless what's written.
On some games 'Play the Game' means 'Understand that bad shit can and will happen to your character.'
As long as this is what they've said it is, which is what I've been saying for years.
@ashen-shugar said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
This all does go to what I've said a few times. Empower the user to use what tools they find easiest, and you'll find a greater amount of adaptation.
Which is why I added you to my list of current projects as open to change as Evennia and Ares, which are taking variations of the ground-up approach. Because choice is good. Good choice is better.
@darinelle said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
I'm not opposed to a civil war.
If I played there I would be. War plots usually get the kind of acceptance as weather plots do. It changes the game I logged in expecting to play, and I'm in no small way forced to accept it regardless of my desires as a player.
Even the one war plot I participated in that had a good 90% player support killed the game (and I quite enjoyed it myself). We lost good players who didn't want to be involved, too. War plots really accentuate that ICA=OOCC.
I mean that someone needs to code that wiki, that coding a character stat system and coding a wiki are very different skillsets.
We very clearly want and I strongly believe that we need a change to the way we code our games, but I don't think simply changing input methods is going to be enough. We need support, probably more support, which makes the OP's goal of having a new game crop up because he wants more options harder to accomplish.
This may not be true, but we'd also have to change what we expect in a game.
Something that just came to mind: I've never played a game with an IC war that didn't suffer emotional exhaustion on the part of the players, often killing or starting to kill a game. Firan may be the exception, but given enough time I may be able to pull enough evidence to show that it's the exception that proves the rule.
If the players don't want to play out a civil war, I wouldn't discount that they are wise beyond their apparent years.
@magee101 said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
@thenomain But you also have the other side of things where a player does not follow the theme of the game in their IC actions and then whine and complain and bitch when something bad does happen because they broke the theme or at least was not smart enough to get away with it and thus you have to assert ICA=ICC
No, you don't. You have to assert Play The Game. That isn't ICA=ICC. That is the agreement that everyone makes when they log into the game: That they will try their best to honor the theme and setting of the game.
When someone is creating a vulcan for an Elf-Only Inn, then the staff is well within their rights to tell them to leave.
When someone wants to invent steampunk technology and the staff does not want that to be part of the setting, they are well within their rights to politely tell that player that this is not something they want on their game.
These are OOC decisions made by a player, enacted via their character. You cannot remove the player from the character. There is no character without the player, no NPC without the staff.
As someone wisely said recently, "is this fun for the player"? Sometimes the answer has to be "no", but that answer is never about doing what's IC. Sometimes it's about maintaining the game. Sometimes it's about shitty things happening to characters because that's what the game demands. But it's always a conscious decision to enact it.
Sometimes that decision is agreeing to play the game, but it's always enacted OOC.
@sparks said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
Everyone's already used to using the web browser for wiki
For using, yes. For coding, no. And this is something that we're slowly going toward. Evennia and Ares require a shift in how we code. The heavy use of MediaWiki that some games are getting into require a new kind of support staffer.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I am half saying that change is more than just going to a browser, and that change is already happening as we want more out of our experience.
I have re-compiled Mux twice in the last two games I've coded on because they didn't include SQL. Why? It's not because they don't want change, but because they don't know what change means what, nor the technical skills required for it.
I sincerely think that @surreality could make extra cash doing all the insanely code-specific MediaWiki things for all these games.
I think we are changing. I just don't think we're changing overnight.
@darinelle said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
EVEN THOUGH THESE WERE ALL IC REASONS, it was oocly fucking miserable.
To derail: This is why I loathe the statement "ICA=ICC". While we should all agree on the game we're playing, its theme and its mood and to uphold its setting, we are all players sitting behind a screen.
People have used ICA=ICC as an excuse to do horrible things to characters (and in some instances make them unplayable) for as long as we've been doing this.
Sorry about the tangent, but this is one of the hills I'm willing to die on. All decisions you make for the character and on behalf of what happens to other characters are OOC, and if you're good then they're informed by IC. All of them.
@moonman said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
@thenomain said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
So make another game. "It's too hard." Then start a 4-chan RP play by post. "I don't want to." Nnnnnghhhhh....
Who says I haven't?
Who says you have?
(See, anyone can play.)
@moonman said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
@apos said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
On the other hand, how many players do you want?
Infinite, ideally.
This is the scale for operating systems, or transportation, or video games as an entire industry. This is the kind of thing I would want out of a project trying to replace telnet, but few people in this thread see that as a goal. This kind of goal means that you want to see a change in how online text-based role-play is accomplished.
Hold on, I have something about this in my files...
Honestly, the only people who are doing what you're saying are @faraday, @Griatch, and @Ashen-Shugar. The rest of us are along for the ride.
It's better than the alternative of the hobby being "niche,"
Niche is something that happens. Muds and Mushes have the potential of having "infinite" hobbyists opening new games, dorking around, and so forth. A better question would be: Why is it niche? c.f. the above three names for some of the more informed answers, but I don't believe that "The Death Of Telnet" is why.
I mean, for instance, you are on a forum formed by and for people who play Muds and Mushes. You may expect a little bit of confusion and squinting and challenging of your thesis.
Almost all active MU*'s today are either World of Darkness or some kind of capeshit, and I'm interested in neither lately.
So make another game. "It's too hard." Then start a 4-chan RP play by post. "I don't want to." Nnnnnghhhhh....
There's a lot in RP to do that hasn't been hashed out yet, and that's in no small part because of how "niche" the hobby is.
I think it's already been fairly well established that:
a) There are options to Muds/Mushes.
b) There are people working on your complaints, and you should absolutely help them out by supporting them with your time, effort, and/or enthusiasm.
More the second than the first.
By a factor of a thousand.
My advice? Do that.
@melpomene said in TinyMUX: Info Storage:
Meeeeeh, C-style comments... but I changed it, just for you. XD
It saves everyone time. Instead of anyone having to ask you for the compressed code, they go there, select all, copy, go to Muxify, paste, done.
If you don't like it, don't use it. It's your github. You can structure the code in iambic pentameter for all I care.
Actually, I'd like to see that.
@ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:
I mean, fuck midichlorians, right?
I have never heard this term in my life, and I will Force Choke anyone who says otherwise.
@lithium said in Random links:
@thenomain You would consider the partridge family rock?
What I consider doesn't matter; during that era, The Partridge Family was considered rock.
@admiral said in Random links:
@auspice ...wasn't U2 one of the first rock bands to lack any masculinity whatsoever?
So we should ignore The Partridge Family, then?
If you make all the comments C-Type comments, then the whole text can be thrown at Muxify.
Kind of.
I liked how Haunted Memories in the Changeling sphere was set up. It was wildly sycophantic, but with few exceptions we had only moderately okay leaders.
But hereās the thing: This was expected. Our leaders didnāt have to do much, and we were set up more like a democracy, the sort where the majority served the whole. A new leader every 3 months meant that we could exist with the typical Mush character turnover, and that we could see who the new Staff Friend was more often.