Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@BetterJudgment said:

Even though The Greatest Generation is also gone, I bet at least some people here could talk about that game, which I bet would be right up your alley.

Oh, TGG. The wiki's still up. Many fond memories (I was Strife there, along with several character bits).

http://warisunlimited.wikidot.com/

And it might indeed be interesting for you, since the combat was intentionally a MUSH/MUD hybrid (real-time, but the 'mooks' were run by a GM and if you didn't kind of try to pose Death would yell at you). Outside combat, RP was free-form. One of my favorite online RP experiences, though probably not one that could be replicated. There's been a diversity of things done with the MUSH format, even if individual players themselves might have only played WoD or whatever (I've never played a WoD game in my 15 years playing these dumb games).

"Metaplot" feels like one of those words that's been abused into meaning whatever its user wants it to mean. Like any plot, they can be good or bad. It's all in execution. I think a game should have a clear take on its theme and occasionally tell large, game-wide stories, and I'm not terribly interested in games that are pure sandboxes without regular STs beyond PrP runners. There are lots of people who like the latter just fine, though. Like consent/non-consent, it's so variable it's not useful to talk about what the MUSH community thinks. All I want as a player is that a game be upfront about what it's trying to be, and I can decide for myself if I want to invest in it.

ETA: This thread gets into the weeds of this more http://musoapbox.net/topic/123/prp-or-srp/2 I don't know that there's any consensus except, "Some people like this, other people like that, a larger combination of those people would prefer both be available." To me it's all about the larger question of how to get and keep active STs of any stripe, which is the at times very difficult goal, whatever they're doing.

@Jeshin said:

In text-based games and their storytelling I believe that death & loss are even more crucial. Unless you take the tact that all PCs are main characters and thus should be exempt from that and if you do then that is your decision (or that of the game runner). I certainly won't say you shouldn't do it only that I believe there would be more value in having the threat. I'll use two games as examples.

There are plenty of threads that debate this topic in one way or another and plenty of MUSH players who agree with this. I haven't played a game that didn't have at least death as an ICA=ICC outcome for years. There's a lot of variation on this within non-consent and consent games (and variation within those terms). I'd say possible but not probable under ordinary circumstances isn't hard to find and my preference, depending on how you define "possible."

I think I mentioned No Return awhile back in a thread looking for examples of post-apoc systems, and it might be of interest to you. It's a zombie MUSH. Decent group of players, from what I briefly encountered. Has some fun toys that aren't common elsewhere (I was surprised by how much I enjoyed playing with +scavenge, when I had time to play).

http://www.zombiemush.com/

One reason I mentioned the FS3 games is that I consider them quite a bit less code-intensive for players than other places I've played that probably wouldn't qualify just because the systems they used weren't "automated" to some degree. So I suspect this, as a proviso for these sorts of games, is going to get really arbitrary, as I don't think it's something game designers of this sort put much thought into. As @Rook said, a lot of games will fit your definition, but which ones do and don't is going to be, I suspect, rather random, and probably not indicative of how someone with a MUD background might enjoy them. Something like Firan was an obvious MUX/MUD hybrid (Otherspace is probably one as well), but those games are rarities.

@Jeshin said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow

Based on this webpage and assuming I am reading it correctly. This game would qualify as having "coded support & automated systems" and thus would only need to be roleplay focused and support perma-death to be listed on Optional Realities.

Yeah, I was curious about how something like that would be quantified for your purposes (the qualitative aspects of the system itself notwithstanding, it's just a MUSH system I'm familiar with that's automated). I suspect there are MU*s with more complex coded systems that might not, just depending on how they're applied and how much the coder bothers to automate them (and games with automated systems installed may almost never use them), so I wonder if it differentiates types of MUSH/MUXes as well as it might other sorts of games. It's as interesting a way of looking at games as anything, though.

I'm curious how you feel about something like Faraday's FS3.

http://lynnfaraday.github.io/MUSH/fs3/mechanics.html

We used it on ye old Battlestar Cerberus (and it's been used in many a BSG game and lots of fantasy games, including Game of Bones which is running now) and it automates a lot of functions, like combat damage and healing. It's designed with MUSHes in mind, though (it's turn-based rather than operating in real time, a GM still runs and narrates the scene but just doesn't have to do fifty million rolls by hand), and you just +roll outside combat.

There are other games with combat systems that do things like auto-apply and track damage, that's just the one I'm most familiar with.

@Jeshin said:

If yes than would it not stand to reason that the experience might be more rewarding if a talented storyteller crafted it and it was executed as part of the world which could be enjoyed by anyone at any time?

Yes and no, which is ultimately why I both enjoy MUSHes (MUXes/MOOs/whatever RP intensive code-base you prefer) more than any other online time-waster and find them frustrating.

I play for the collaborative writing experience. You can't really code that. There's also nothing to replace it with when it's absent. It's not like MUSHes with mini-games haven't existed (Firan had tons of them) and they definitely gave players stuff to do when nobody was around to play with, but it's always 'other stuff to do' that's not really RP as I want to RP. The creative spontaneity is The Thing Itself at its best, even if it's rarely at its best.

I have no doubt auto-generated stories/pre-built campaigns you can interact with are possible, they just aren't why I keep doing this (MMOs, incidentally, have never held my attention for precisely the thinness of story reason).

I adore FTL. One of my go-to time-wasters. So many ways to murder sprites in the cold vacuum of space...

The only time I hate them is when I want to buy booze, which defeats the 'self' part of a self checkout.

@SG said:

Man, their stat system was awful. I've played some obscure games with strange things going on and have been able to understand most, but Dahan's system is just a mess.

If they're working with penn, they'd be much better off adapting FS3 or something.

Any reason they aren't just using d20 Star Wars (of which I am a fan)?

@Jeshin said:

EDIT - It is worth noting I actually like this forum a lot. Slick look, active community, and even though it's more MUSH centric you guys haven't shunned this advertisement or my opinions elsewhere. I think it's just as good as OR at being a place for text-based game lovers to come together and share ideas and games.

More communication between different kinds of text-based RP games is all for the good, and I was glad to see your site pop up even though my interest in MUDs is low (I don't dislike them, I started out on them, they just generally cater to a playerbase with different goals for fun than the goals I have for my pretendy funtime). I'd be similarly interested in what's going on in forum/journal RP, even though it's not something I do much anymore. I've always held that text-based RP as a thing, divorced from any code base or platform, is a good deal more popular than the narrow niches of it assume. I swear there are kids RPing on Tumblr who have no idea anyone was RPing on the Internet before they were born, and so just invented their own (kind of broken and not literate-friendly) way of doing it.

@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.

@Arkandel said:

Loner-slash-misanthropes don't work on MU*. They can work, I suppose, if you're OOC well connected and set them up in just the right way, but why burden yourself like that?

PC connections help a lot, though I've noticed that players can be bizarrely stubborn about making them.

Ages ago, I played a PC who was a part of a fairly large, established family on the game. This gave players insta-connections as people apped in , for better or worse. A newb apped my sibling. A sibling who'd been off-camera and not really fleshed out, but who was only a couple years younger than my PC. Who my PC would've grown up with for quite a long time, until their early teens. I page this person to work out some basic relationship stuff (how did our personalities bounce off each other, how did we get along as kids, have we kept in touch over the years, etc.). It took me like a solid 15 minutes to convince this guy we would've known each other at all and spent time together on occasion during our childhood. Like, it would have been unavoidable. When he finally had to admit it was unavoidable, he said he didn't really want to establish any sort of dynamic because he'd "been gone for a a few years and hadn't stayed in touch with the family for no particular other than not wanting to make stuff up." So I gave up and just decided my relationship with my sibling was really bland and uneventful, and that's what this person was looking for, apparently.

I had a point, but I've kind of forgotten it. We are sometimes weirdly resistant to making social connections on a game that's all about social connections, I guess, and I don't understand why.

Introvert doesn't automatically equate to subdued or shy or retiring, either (just like extrovert doesn't actually mean sunny or outgoing). It can, but all it really means is someone processes their feelings more internally than externally. I've had a lot of fun playing a handful of introverted characters, because I got to play that extra layer of them processing their own feelings and then expressing them in a way that was somewhat edited for public consumption. They were very different people with the one or two PCs they actually considered friends than they were with their co-workers/acquaintances, which to me at least was interesting.

The staff and players were decent during my (short) time there. Life and its demands, alas. I have no horror stories, which is as good a recommendation as any. Germane to this thread, they had a unique but not over-powering code setup that I felt worked to enhance RP rather than just be a bunch of overhead that got in the way of it.

You might want to talk to the staffer at No Return, which has a very fun 'item scavenging' system: http://www.zombiemush.com/ I was surprised by how fun it was, back when I had the time and energy to play there, and they seemed to strike a good balance to keep things from devolving into MUD-style object silliness.

I've lately come to the (obvious, non-revelatory) conclusion that this hobby is much more about engagement than anything else (free time, RP 'quality', etc., though obviously those things help one engage). And you have to actively engage with something as much or more than you have to be engage by it. When I can't get into a game or character, 90% or the time the reasons are mostly Me rather than It (even if the Me issue is 'This particular story-telling style is not my thing and never a thing I'm going to fully enjoy.') The other 10%, the game is Serenity-level terrible and should die in a game fire, but those actually are outliers. In general, if I'm not having fun, I'm not working very hard to make my own fun.

I have way more ideas than I have time and inclination to play them.

I've come to terms with the fact that, for me at least, what makes a character really work and what doesn't is more alchemical than I'd like to admit. I have to make a few PC connections that bounce off their personality well. I also have to find little tics that are fun for me to play. I once couldn't get into a character until I decided he was basically incompetent at certain aspects of his job, at which point he became entirely amusing to me. I've also taken to trying to establish a major NPC in their background that I can build the PC against. I can't map out every relationship, but I can decide how they get along with their step-father/boyfriend/roommate off-camera, and figuring out that dimension of their life that's never really RP'd helps me in how they relate to other PCs.

The game is certainly not beholden to or responsible for the latest atrocities on the show, in any case.