Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@Gingerlily said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@Arkandel

So this thread inspires a question for you.

MSB a net positive for the hobby, or nah?

I'm gonna answer seriously anyway.

I think there was constructive discussion in this thread before it got bogged down in a fight between @bored and @surreality

His fault mainly, though there's a point long long ago where I would've just stop responding to shit like this (I'm pretty quick to disengage and do not go back) so, like the drug trade, nobody gets away clean.

I think I also said previously I wouldn't have brought an idea at this stage to the general populace because I don't think general input is helpful except in either very late (when it's almost an ad thread but you're bug and interest-checking) or very early (actual brainstorming in which no firm ideas are present) stages of development.

Whether this thread should've been split when it became a dumb fight is a thing I have opinions on, but they're bullshit opinions. I'm neither mod nor person who started this thing.

@Arkandel said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@surreality Well, it's not porn, but for most of us it's not safe for work either. But that's my point - very little is safe for work.

Safe for work is a concern for me, too.

It would also, as a newb, make me wonder what the purpose of the game was (like, am I playing a sex game?), if it was on the front page. Maybe that's not fair, but it's a first impression. Art deeper in the wiki or on char pages I wouldn't care aobut.

I'm very glad I looked that thing up online before buying, because I would have been Displeased if I hadn't known beforehand that the unicorn was caffeine-free.

Still totally trying it, of course.

I don't actually think forums like this are particularly good places to get general feedback on broad theme-building concepts. I find the write-up pretty interesting, but that's just due to my tastes (and my want for off-brand fantasy, not just another L&L game). Ideally, you do theme-building brain-storming with a few close friends/possible potential staffers or potential alpha players, then bring stuff to a larger group once you've got some concrete ideas you're committed to.

ETA: Although, for serious, don't split up a playerbase on your new game.

Yep.

Not that I'm hating on the statue and I like the discussion it's provoked, but I wish it was more apparent it was there due to a finance company/index. I'm deeply creeped out by how much advertising we absorb without full consciousness we're absorbing it, and this is A Thing Like That.

It does but it's terrible when it comes to updating for new games. You can submit something, and it'll be months and nothing but crickets before it pops up (if it pops up).

@Auspice said in RL things I love:

9 times out of 10, I get my hair cut just for the wash / head massage-y.

I went to a random cosmetology school to get my hair cut a couple weeks ago. They had massage chairs I could lounge in while I got my hair shampooed. It was a revelation. I will be doing this again.

@Scissors said in Why do you play? (Or not.):

And honestly, even in my college days I never understood the appeal of getting uproariously drunk together as a social event, which seems to be the most common party option available. I just feel it's better to do something creative with people with similar interests.

Same, honestly. I come from a family with looooooooooooooooooots of alcoholism going on, so binge drinking culture grossed me out. This is probably why I got more into MU*ing while in college, along with the other obvious gateways like a more active campus nerd culture than my high school had, and part-time computer lab job.

There are a handful of semi-active Star Wars games right now...I think? Fires of Hope and Dawn of Defiance are the names that come most readily to mind. I keep meaning to check them out but...motivation, you are a fickle fiend.

@WTFE said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@surreality Yeah, I saw that afterward. I took a look. It's going to go the way of the other board, I suspect. (I wish I could remember the name of it. Spin-off of OGR before it died.)

Electric Soup? It's the main one I remember. What it suffered from is what I'm afraid MSB would suffer from with stricter moderation on...how mean people can be, I guess. The gloves were on all the time, and so some VERY bad ideas and dumb statements (women sometimes play male PCs? MY WORD HOW STRANGE AND SHOCKING) got by with basically no critique whatsoever. Some people will interpret any criticism, no matter how constructive, as an evil, and then discussion just dies. Also, yeah, the people flagged on WORA as abusive staffers posted a lot, which was a bit lulz.

@surreality said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Apparently there is one. Someone passed along the advertisement for it the other day. It's new, so I didn't see any posts there when I signed up.

http://www.mushology.com is it.

I tried reading this site and quickly became annoyed. The content is lacking and scattershot (there are sci-fi and fantasy games existing that are not on here). But whatever. Such is websites updated by humans. What really annoyed me was this:

"Unfortunately over time the online community of text based RPG is at an all-time low and resting on the edge of extinction. It’s a sad time for those of us that remain dedicated to our writing muses."

There's a lot of RP on Tumblr and dreamwidth and in content spaces the average MUer doesn't interact with. Hell, I'd say there are more MUs I'm interested in playing than there were 5 years ago, though that's extremely hit and miss (I don't think things have gotten worse in the last 5 years, at least). It's myopic and, most of all, it's whiny and martyr-y in a way I find to be a huge turn-off.

My take on the hobby has been that it's not so much dying as evolving in ways that aren't necessarily desirable for us oldbies, and becoming more and more fragmented. Which might not be great in many ways, but it makes me kind of 'Eh' when people talk about being in an 'RP desert.' That attitude is part of the problem.

ETA: What I'd like to see is someone maintaining sites that I do think are useful, like http://mudstats.com/

Updated. I am trying the Arx thing/trying to get back into the BSG swing of thing at Fara's BSU. Games!

MU*s are writing games, and I've yet to find a better form to do it in. I like collaborative writing. It's the kind of game I want to play. The pace of journal RP never really pulls me in, and I've yet to find a platform that does text-based, real-time RP better than these dumb games. It has an improv feel that's fun as hell when it's firing on all cylinders, and I enjoy as much of the social element of it as I hate. When I write there's usually an escapist element to it, so I guess it's that as well. Less about escaping into a perfect world than getting outside my own brain and into a story.

I do it because I enjoy it. Same reason I go hiking or take part in book clubs off and on, and it exercises different parts of my brain than those do. It's a dumb hobby, but most hobbies are dumb, and this one's free!

@Ghost
I'm not even bringing it up to bitch at you, really. Those posts annoyed me because they were off-topic and I felt like they were derailing a formerly useful thread into nonsensicalness, not because I thought you were too mean. It's far from the only time that's happened and lots of us are guilty of it. I even kinda agreed with some of your criticisms to those staffers, even while I found the way you phrased them hyperbolic.

I bring it up because it's a really good example of a reason to change how ad threads are treated, even while the commentary in them would still be legit enough in the Hog Pit or elsewhere.

I think perception here does often get skewed. There are players/staffers I like whose persona here irritates me. And people I think come off far better (or at least pithier) here than they do on-game. If you don't actually know another player/staffer on-game (and I'd say I don't know very many of the other posters here, despite the incestuous nature of the MU community), all you have to go on is whatever they put forward in their board persona. And if they pop off like an asshat, welp, that's all I have to go on. I also think certain posters get far more latitude than others, but that's message board culture and it's certainly not unique to MSB.

@Ghost
Oh, yes, bonfires over petty shit are common and usually silly.

I think you were often guilty of this in The 100 thread, actually, seemingly over stuff that happened on another game entirely...I think Fifth World? It's one of my text book - Why Bitching Threads Should Be Separate from Ad Threads examples. But, again, that's kind of the nature of message board culture. I read those posts, found them dumb, and judged the game on its merits (it wasn't for me and I didn't stick, but I'm not a hater. I think some of the complaints about it were overblown while others were entirely legit.

For the petty shit, I trust other readers to do that, too. I'm often wrong about this. I think most people are overly incredulous about things they shouldn't be, and not nearly cynical enough about stuff they should. But, again, that's people, and you get that wherever people outside a friend circle interact.

@Ganymede said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

You sure about that?

From what I'm hearing, the hate mobs are being encouraged to go to some other server or program or something.

Yeah, that's the thing. If anything, it's far easier to create 'hate mobs' on specific games than it ever was before, in private chats/skype sessions/whatever. At least MSB is a court of public opinion to some degree (if not a fair or fully-informed one, but that's just life). Shit-talking goes on everywhere and it's most insidious when it happens where no one can see until it blows up or people are frozen out with no explanation.

Also, you know what? I think games like Firan, and Serenity, and Game of Kings and the like deserved to have what was deeply, grossly wrong with those games brought into the public square. Even if people want to continue to play there, forewarned is forearmed. I think I'm a pretty cynical reader of every horror story I skim here, as everyone should be. There are plenty of idiots who pop off over nothing or over pretty grudges from three games ago in which they were actually the asshole. But, I think I've said before, I appreciate the muckraking side of what these boards provide.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

Though I also like the ability to register mild agreement or mild disagreement without posting anything. So idk.

I keep vaguely wanting to run a small group online TT with the "Leverage" RPG system (really, it's a thing): http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/85727/Leverage-Roleplaying-Game

Dunno if it'd work for bigger groups, but a buddy of mine ran it for a few of us and (before that game dispersed, as games do) it was a lot of fun.

@Thenomain
I'm not really disagreeing with you. I said up-top that this stuff is very well likely in keeping with MSB. I'm just stating that it bugs me when it happens, and it happens frequently, and it is a carry-over from WORA culture, good/bad/indifferent (I had thousands of WORA posts, I am no saint).

I think @surreality had an idea that's my ideal world. There's an ad thread that does just exist for advertising (maybe locked to the originator, though I do think questions that are actual questions are useful) and a more general thread where comments/criticisms get dumped (honestly the random OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER is just as if not more irritating to me, it just leads to total derails less frequently). I honestly don't know if this even bothers anyone else, but this is the meta thread and this is my big meta complaint with the board. I take/leave/am cool or indifferent to the rest of how it's run.

ETA: Also, I'll admit, the 4chan wanktards spamming ad threads with bizarre and trolling questions has set me off about this. But it's a long-standing issue with me.

@Pandora
Maybe. I totally own that any argument made about the silent majority is kind of talking out of one's ass. Most boards are primarily lurkers/low-level posters, but who knows how much those people are actually paying attention/actively lurking. And there will always be those VERY vocal people who treat the board like a Yelp! review of new games, which I do always side-eye. I hope most people are cynical enough readers to tell the difference between good, critical points and just blowing up over one minor thing that wasn't exactly to your liking, but people are very reactive, so idk.