Best posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@apos said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Yeah, I don't mean this as a slam on WoD at all, but it seems to me that a core reason for its popularity is the already existing softcode that can be plugged into it. It's significantly easier to set up a sandbox and get going there than anywhere else, along with a great many people familiar with it that are willing to pitch in.

Yeah, I'm reading this 'good games differ' line and am just baffled, given the world we all exist in. We've been getting by on plug-and-play code in large part for decades. I cannot fathom how better plug-and-play systems will be anything but a positive and open up the market for people who wouldn't have otherwise to run a good game.

@saosmash said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I'm really genuinely confused about what this argument even is anymore.

There seems to have been some goal-post moving away from whether or not players should be able to opt-out of RP that includes racist/sexist/homophobic slurs or storylines, to whether it's OK for those storylines to exist at all, to whether fictional discrimination is functionally the same as RL discrimination (damn the Man for keeping those Bajorans down), to whether any kind of fictional or non-fictional discrimination should exist at all on MUs or has ever made for good stories in the history of fiction across the world.

Some of these arguments are dumber than others, imo.

@shaggy said in Games:

All the new games are Ares.
Am I the only one who just doesn't really care for Ares?

It's the easiest way to set up a game without a ton of coding ability. It's the same reason most Ares games default to FS3, because it's so well-supported and integrated with the portal compared to even the other plugins.

I'd love to see more variety but people have to make it, so!

ETA: Ares is very well-suited to me as a player in most ways and I like it/admire it a lot, but the reason you see so many new games using it in similar ways at the moment isn't some kind of mystery.

I consider myself pretty mini-game agnostic. I'm not a person who gets much out of MMOs, and I feel like my ambivalence for MU mini-games comes from the same place. I tend to go to single-player games to enjoy grind (Stardew Valley 4 life) but on games where there's a need to be social it feels focus-splitting in a way that ends up kind of stressing me out. I'm not the type of player who will ever be drawn to an RP game because of its equipment system or its crafting system, and they're things I begin to resent if they're necessary to push through to actually go out and RP (my hate-on for stuff like eating/drinking code lives here). This is a personality thing, though. The players who love this stuff LOVE it and it doesn't seem to make them less engaged in actual RP. Different strokes (seriously, though, don't try to make me love crafting).

That said, if they're truly optional and just side pieces, I have no hate and will play with them and enjoy them sometimes. I think coded poker/pool/darts actually can spur RP in fun little ways, even if they are just toys, the same way having a dice system where players can dick around with random rolls among themselves can lead to fun and unexpected RP. I also think grid exploration games (where you can discover secret rooms or world lore by reading descs carefully) can be very immersive, though you have to be careful that they don't take away from the grid being easy to navigate and functional.

I don't really view combat as a 'mini-game' in the way I think @Apostate is talking about. On The Greatest Generation, for example, it required a GM to run and was very much central to the major-game. It can be turned into a mini-game: the sparring on Arx that players can run amongst themselves is a mini-game I end up playing quite a bit and has led to some cool scenes/meetings with new PCs.

ETA: I'd actually be curious what people think constitutes a mini-game. Like, the @clue system on Arx I consider a vital part of the game in terms of interaction with the metaplot and story. Same with h-space on the games that use it for travel (and the combat on something like TGG). These were things that, if you aren't into them, they aren't something you can really avoid. Whereas, not being into crafting has usually been pretty shrughands for me.

It's also a lot about presentation. I was pretty skeptical that a web portal could replace a game wiki, based on my experience on Arx (I get that this just isn't the focus of developers at the moment, so it's less a complaint than...wiki's currently have features it lacks). What @faraday did with the web portal at Ares largely turned me around on that, though. The reason MUs have sustained is because a lot of the "replacement" platforms like Storium just plain haven't been very good or haven't offered the ability for persistent world RP that was as deep. I can envision a web interface that is an actual, viable alternative, though.

@sg said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

I too hate staring at a timer when I'm in hyperspace, it sucks, but I think the fault is with staff for making the setting for RP galaxy wide instead of an area of space where this wouldn't be an problem. I'm in the camp that a star wars mush should take place in a single sector at maximum to get rid of this issue.

I'd love to play a Star Wars MU or Firefly MU that was centralized around a single world, with adventures happening more episodically outside it and revolving around it as the main setting (again, this is a game the people interested in sim space travel probably wouldn't love, but, different audiences). I do think it'd make a game in terms of RP/story, though, and I'm kind of surprised it's not tried more often.

@deadculture
I mean nobody's government is going to come to MSB and say we can't call each other nasty names (or, if they do, that'd be pretty amazing). I always cringe at the conflation of laws curtailing freedom of speech and the moderation private companies and groups like a bunch of fucks on a message board should or shouldn't engage in.

@apos
Whenever I've seen staff talk about their intentions behind a system, you guys do seem to be putting these things out with the hope they'll foster rp/story rather than ooc casino grinding. I appreciate that and it's what makes me continue to engage with the game, even though I'm a player who prefers more lightly-coded environments. I am super curious how domain is going to be balanced/what steps you guys have in mind to keep it from being a deep dive into accounting for any minister position, but it shall be what it shall be.

@faraday said in The Balance:

It was my hope that the Ares scene system would enable more organic "slow RP" as @Seraphim73 describes. Not because I want to supplant the "live" MUSH scenes we're all used to, but as an alternative for folks like us who don't want to leave MUSHing but just need a little more flexibility in our RP.

FWIW, the early response to this on Spirit Lake seems pretty positive. People seem to be taking advantage of the webportal to do slower-paced scenes that accommodate the US work-day more, and it feels like it's easier for people in off timezones to connect (with some planning). I'm excited about the possibilities since, even though I still MUSH pretty actively, my availability is pretty confined to certain hours. Feels like this opens it up a bit.

@surreality
Yeah, when I think about the stuff I regret not reporting it was...That Guy being fucking creepy on Pub chan, or That Guy being creepy ICly in scenes in ways other players 'handled' but oh gosh it was a sign of behavior that wasn't cool. Things that were public and involved multiple other people, just not staff at that exact moment. That Guy spun that stuff into 'oh I was just having fun and also I apologized and also what was the harm?' when it got to staff via other reports but the logs and my particular 'this fucker is a fucker' interpretation of the situation would've been a hell of a lot different. Shit like this is extremely verifiable but staff often won't act on it unless it's clear it bothers people.

@bear_necessities said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Three-Eyed-Crow we are definitely not banning trans people or anything like that.

I didn't seriously think so and was mostly being tongue and cheek and also wanted to say WE ALL KNOW THIS GAME THIS THREAD IS ABOUT ISN'T BANNING TRANS PEOPLE, RIGHT?

@faraday
I only semi-jokingly bemoaned with a MUing friend of mine not long ago that I'd lost my ability to complain about the WoD stuff on MSB because it was now just as much Arx and Ares games. Time moves us all, etc.

@cyberdemon said in Euphoria - Feedback:

I would think that such a thing would increase online activity of this sort, not decrease it, since people are no longer permitted to have normal social lives in many jurisdictions.

It did for a while, at least in terms of character creation/apps, at the beginning of the pandemic in March through...I'd say about May or June? But that's tapered off into exhaustion mode for a lot of people in more recent months. That was my experience on a couple games (not Euphoria because...oh gosh, I am part of this pattern and new things are hard), at least, but it feels pretty typical as far as a pattern.

RP that is just JOY and RP comedy that is actually funny.

@pyrephox said in GMs and Players:

Like it or not, there's a power differential there within the context of the setting, and I think it needs to be kept in mind. With NPCs, really just...fade to black would be my preference. Do what you want on your PCs, although be aware that if people know you're staff, some of them will try to get into your pants for the perceived extra bennies of being involved with you, and other players may end up feeling that they can't be honest about their desire (or not) to engage in a romantic relationship IC because they're worried about retaliation, whether that is warranted by your behavior or not.

This is my feeling and my general preference, though I tend to think if it's causing problems it's a symptom of a larger one rather than the problem in and of itself.

A lot of the examples of MU* campaigns mentioned here touch on something I think is important. I think it's a LOT easier to do a satisfying, game-wide story on a game that's focused on PvE, rather than PvP. This is one of the reasons I prefer those types of games, though far from the only reason.

The first game I ever had a character die on was The Greatest Generation (it was the first non-consent game I ever really got into). I had lots of characters die there, just because of the nature of how the combat code worked, and after awhile I kind of got a kick out of it, in a macabre way. My poor bastard soldiers got a reputation for turn-over after awhile, both because I was very active at times (and able to make lots of battle scenes) and because I actually did shit in scenes (and 'doing shit' is either glorious or ruinous in some high-risk situations). I also did a lot of soft RP, so my characters were pretty well-developed by the time they died, and a few deaths seemed to actually impact other PCs and created a lot of ripple RP I loved to read (reading about your dead characters is the best kind of mention porn).

I was cool with losing my characters on TGG (and most of the players who stuck around for any length of time were), I think, because the headwiz was very, very upfront about the level of risk in combat scenes, and I always felt like things were fair. This is all I ask out of a GM. Be clear about the chance of a character dying, even if it's remote, and I'll happily roll with it. This is one of those things that requires a high level of trust, though, or else it's not fun, and trust is a frustratingly tricky commodity between players and GMs on MU* settings.

I don't think characters need to die for RP to be worthwhile, or to feel like there's a certain amount of risk in a scene (though I do, always, want stupid, stupid IC actions to have consequences somehow, even if it's just be a mission failing or an injury that the PC has to deal with). And I'm fine with players don't want to go there, as long as what they actually want isn't "I always want to win because winning is the only fun thing." But I do think it can make RP and stories more worthwhile, in the right situations.

@thebird said:

I really think that a lot of drama and "feelings of not being wanted" on MU*s can be mitigated simply by not assuming things, and adulting enough to speak to each other. Instead of sitting around and taking gossip at face value, or assuming something typed was meant offensively, someone is ignoring you for some epic reason when really they were just afk, etc.

Most people don't think about you nearly as much as you think they do.

This was probably my biggest revelation when I hit my thirties and it's so incredibly freeing.

Definitely agree they shouldn't be treated as alts. It isn't really that different than apping into a game with a bunch of friends, which is pretty common and not something I think anyone would consider policing. I've known some couples who MU* together and are fine, others who are weird and annoying, but that's also just down to people being people.

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I also think it's polite to try to work people in when they ask, as per the second bullet. But there are legitimate situations where that's hard/awkward/impossible.

These also usually aren't scenes I want to join. If two people are having a intensely personal conversation in a public space, sure I could RP with them. But my experience with those scenes is they tend to become really banal and not about anything, and I usually feel I'd have been better off just starting my own thing. I would always be better off starting my own thing than trying to parse a scene that 8 people have piled on.