I think you could impose relatively high risk on a game like this (just say if you get KO'd and are out of Luck points, you're 4realz dead). To me, it's more a matter of staff deciding whether or not they want that kind of environment (I'd play it! But I liked the atmosphere on TGG).
@bored said in Looking for potential staff for a Colonial Marines (Aliens) game:
So you're right, it might not promote a huge game. But we talk a lot about quality vs. quantity here, so that's not necessarily what should be the only goal. There are also probably ways to tune the lethality a bit so that people can volunteer for it or avoid it. IE, flag specially dangerous missions for being so, and let the high risk folks throw themselves at those if they want.
Oh, yeah, I'm not bringing it up as a negative. I just think TGG has kind of a reputation, whenever it comes up, as more popular than it was at the time. There was more dedicated core than mass appeal. I think players tend to assume/talk like they're more gung-ho about character death than they actually are when it's them dying, and any game-runner is going to have to be prepared for that. But I agree there's an audience for it that's not necessarily served right now (I'm probably part of it, which is in part why this idea interests me).
@auspice said in Make MSB great again!:
I think two threads for games (ad / discussion) could be good. Maybe not in the Hog Pit tho. Mildly Constructive, but with a potential to move to the Pit if it gets too bad?
This would be my ideal, since I think there's real value in lurkers or randos who just follow a link to the forum reading the commentary sometimes. People who might not want to opt in can still find out what's going on to some degree.
@faraday said in Make MSB great again!:
ETA: I'd be fine with what @Three-Eyed-Crow said about the ad thread just being for an ad, but I didn't think this forum s/w could do that easily.
Oh, I'm not at all sure the thing that exists in my fantasy world would actually work on this forum as it exists in reality (and it does create the issue of funneling all questions into the general 'commentary' about the game, but I guess I'd personally prefer that). I get that it's kind of out of keeping with the spirit of the board in a lot of ways. But this is a rare opportunity to give feedback about the more logistical/organizational board stuff, and that's my big idea/hobby horse issue about the ad section.
I'm just happy there are clearly-posted guidelines at all now, tbh.
@DariRyu
I started on consent-based games. Some were good! Some were terrible! It is a mixed bag, as with all things in life. I'll still play them if I find one that appeals to me, though I prefer games with some sort of conflict resolution system even if it's minimal and loosely used.
It's also about players...actually doing it. Some people just will without much prompting. Some just won't, no matter what you do. You can try to create an environment/culture that encourages it, and to create things to react to, but this is one of those things that depends on people taking ownership of their own fun. Which a staffer's control of is limited.
A poll might be useful for this if you can add them to threads retroactively.
@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:
@three-eyed-crow said in Regarding administration on MSB:
And making it a separate thing from the Hog Pit would make staffers less able to obfuscate criticism from the masses, which I do think happens as things stand now.
I'm not sure if Yelp! allows owners to respond to reviews or not, but would it be reasonable to keep staff responses to reviews on the Advertisement thread?
I'm the wrong person to ask, since my original pitch in that other thread was an Ad section that ONLY allowed posts by the OP and mods and all commentary and questions somewhere else. And I do think questions need to be answered somewhere/don't think all criticism is valid and dumb shit should have push-buck.
@ixokai
I volunteer IRL, too (and I've done organizational stuff for book clubs/poker games/etc), and I have wildly different feelings/expectations/personal fulfillment about that experience and the people I do it with than I do about my IRL job and co-workers. I am one of those people who it grates whenever the term 'professional' is equated with hobby work. I get that it's inferring certain types of behavior (responsibility, commitment, etc) that I do think MU staff should have, but I get the knee-jerk reaction because I also have it.
This has been a tangent. Back to your regularly scheduled thread, and such.
I had a lot of characters I really enjoyed on TGG, though a lot of them had their lives cut short (which was part of the fun!). My favorite was probably my Sikh combat engineer, Singh, who I only played for like 3 months and who died a bloody, meaningless death in the trenches of WW1. As you do.
@sockmonkey said in PBs You Haven't Had a Chance to Use:
@Arkandel No one would ever get mad about that! We're all mature adults here. Right?
Lololololololol.
@seraphim73
For me it's not even so much the window thing. I DO absolutely prefer doing actual reading and actual referencing of help files on the wiki or website. If I know I need something, that's where I've got it up. But sometimes, I can't remember the exact command syntax or in some thematic cases the exact spelling, and I want a quick hit (in many cases to copy-paste) that takes 10 seconds and I can insert before a pose.
@Sunny said:
In nearly every single pose that I make with people who don't know me, and my PC is being an asshole, I include at least one meta sentence acknowledging he's a jerk, usually mocking him for it.
Even with characters who aren't assholes, displaying anything resembling a sense of humor about your character, or acknowledging when the ridic things they do are ridic, goes a looooooong way.
@ashen-shugar said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:
Got a ton of green coffee beans for Christmas.
Oh man, I want to do this one of these days. Maybe in 2019, when the disposable income is higher. Roasting my own coffee is part of The Dream.
@tanyuu said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
I honestly think that MU* s could offer something new to RPers who are looking for something lightweight, especially on tablets and phones. It doesn't need constant attention, it doesn't need a specific console or computer, and/or your internet access is limited or spotty, MU* s are great. Telnet seems to connect okay, but I've never tried to stretch it beyond 'connecting in to chat while cooking'.
I've always wondered how you'd go about making phone RP better, and I'm not sure I have an answer for it. I always find it torturous when I have to interact with a MU that way, and I never feel like it's the fault of the client (there are some perfectly fine ones out there). I just don't enjoy playing without a full keyboard. Maybe people who text more than I do have a different take on the experience, though.
I've been reading this thread and sort of batting a lot of thoughts around about it without fully being able to pull them together. Because I think MUers can be incredibly cruel to eachother and we all have tales of really shitty things we've either seen or experienced first-hand (I can, off the top of my head, remember two cases of players faking their deaths for no better purpose than ginning up sympathy to escape IC consequences/fucking with people. Humans be messed up). But I also think this is a pool of gaming that is less cruel than the worst of what you see in other quasi-anonymous online gaming venues. I think the relatively small size of the player pool helps. You can't burn your bridges TOO much, or else you'll have nowhere to play very quickly. I also think there's a separation in text and the slower pace where you can keep things from becoming as intense as you might get in a medium where voice interaction and interaction through graphical platforms is more normal.
But I was listening to this podcast on (among other things) the promise of virtual reality today, and it pulled together some things that kind of connected with me on this.
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-interview
This guy had a lot of what I found to be really interesting thoughts on the toxicity of some online platforms, and he talked about VR as - at the moment - a place where there was promise for a better kind of interaction. And a large part of that promise was how personally-driven (rather than pack-mentality driven) the experience was when you assume an avatar that you've created and invested in. And you're interacting with the other avatars that other users have created and invested in, in that same singular way. The lack of monetization/advertising as a driving behavioral force was also put forward as something that sort of leveled out the way players relate to each other. It keeps the experience personal, even in a very unreal way, and doesn't allow you to as easily dehumanize the other players.
This might be too starry-eyed a view of VR (it's not a platform I have a ton of familiarity with) but I found it a really intriguing conversation and it pulled at some threads that I think are applicable to MUing as well at its best (and its worst people are still sometimes terrible, but that's the nature of people).
@rnmissionrun said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:
I have to say, not once in more than 20 years of playing on Star Trek MU*s have I ever had to explain to a player how a 'transporter' works, not even to players that have never actually watched Star Trek.
Same. I feel like there's a lot of over-complication going on in this thread. Maybe that's what players actually do on MU*s and should be accounted for by game-runners, but it's a still over-complication.
Also, I feel like there are a LOT of specifics in fantasy in terms of weapons, armor, economics, and social mores that are far more alien than what you normally encounter on a sci-fi game. Like, a phaser is a gun with a stun setting. That's, imo, all you need to say, go about your business. It's a matter of how much you're willing to hand-wave them and tolerate minor missteps, and I'm skeptical that fantasy players are more hand-wavey than sci-fi ones.
"Twink" is one of those words that's gotten down to having no real definition other than "Guy who does stuff I don't like." I hate these words, and I've gotten away from using the term except in tongue-and-cheek ways because of it. So I guess I don't care about 'twinking' in RP MU*.
The term I prefer, that an RP buddy of mine applied to another player awhile ago, is "stat bully." It was specific to this player, but I realized it's what I think of when I want to default to calling someone a "twink." The character was in a role that didn't generally hone a person into having sky-high combat stats, but had them anyway, to the point where they were more skilled than experienced PCs who in theory spent all their on- and off-screen time doing soldier-y things. This by itself is, whatever. People buy combat dots for no reason because these are RPGs and that's what you do. But this character also spent all their time getting into situations where they could throw their bloated dice around and "win" minor contests against other characters. Not even life-or-death stuff, because that wasn't the nature of the game. Just dick-measuring.
This isn't a twink, but it's the thing that aggravates me, and I feel like it's more often than not what's actually be criticized when the term is used.
@scissors said in Encouraging Proactive Players:
Granted, using +event for scheduling purposes makes things easier. +Events are well-suited to certain types of scenes, such as one-off "Monster-of-the-Week" scenes, or game-wide major plot scenes. For ongoing mini-plots and story lines, I think using +Events will only end up with frustrations for the ST.
You've just 'granted,' as if it were a side note, the main utility of +events.
I use them as a calendar. I assure you, it's a hell of a lot better than wading through +mails and hoping everyone has their WhenIsGood set to the right timezone or trying to set something in a Google calendar that nobody checks or or or or or...
I mean what's your alternative for this? I feel like this is blaming a tool when the actual problem is player behavior that stems from a lot of things, lemminging to +events being only a rather small part of it.
I do wish every game allowed private as well as public +events. This feature is pretty sweet! As are notifications an hour or a half hour before something you're supposed to be at is going to start.
@aria
The WORLD needs a Mia. 