@ganymede said in Who are you?:
@tinuviel said in Who are you?:
Well. We have kids. What's the goal there?
Suicide.
I'll drink to that.
On the topic of the legal discipline, how many different specialties are there? At least ones common enough that you can go to a typical law school and find a course in it.
@ganymede said in Who are you?:
You don't engage in an endeavor that is going to cost you around $75,000 without some goal in mind.
Well. We have kids. What's the goal there?
I mean. I guess my main query about all this would be: Does it matter? It's a thing. Nobody's going to agree due to the vagaries of application of the MU framework, the differences in ideas on definitions on 'video' and 'game' and 'MU*'.
If we mean MU*, we say MU*. If we mean more mainstream, video-based, electronic, interactive, rules-driven, entertainments that are traditionally called video games, then we say video games.
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
Do they weaponize it? Is it shot like projectiles up across the room? Do they do this on purpose?
Yes to all three. Also laundry baskets are apparently the perfect place to exist for anything with fur that is smaller than I am.
@faraday I didn't actually offer an objection? I was asking a question.
@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:
If a significant percentage of people are interested in X, staff is probably going to do more X.
That bit, yes. I'm talking more about the actual telemetry, rather than relying on more traditional feedback that we usually do.
@misadventure said in What drew you to MU*?:
Likewise, they have telemetry that tells them what percentage of the players ever do various things, and they use that to design play.
I don't want to sound snippy, at all, but this line here reminded me of Arx actually. Specifically when @Kanye-Qwest is slapping down @Tempest, but the Arx folks certainly seem to use a similarish methodology. Is that something MU*dom is going to start doing more and more, given that it clearly works in Arx's case?
@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:
I'm not sure that I would want to encourage mu players to treat of the staff of the games they run with the same entitlement that some people have towards the big gaming corporations about games they bought.
True. Though I feel the idea was less about the company itself and more about the evolution of the game that company made. In essence, the MU* community would be the "company" and the complaints would be aimed at the changes we have made to the environment and the games that we create and participate in now.
I think. It's five am, I haven't had my coffee yet.
@arkandel said in What drew you to MU*?:
easier to find sane game-runners through word of mouth
Well. It's easier to find decent game-runners. Nobody that thinks "Yeah, I'm going to invite dozens of people into my living room to shit all over my furnishings. That's a grand idea." Is 100% sane.
@paris And this little corner of a tiny corner most certainly isn't the MU* Community. We will laugh at you.
@arkandel said in What drew you to MU*?:
And MU* are different, too, although for obvious reasons those changes are a bit less visible at a glance.
I think a big part of MU*dom being different is that we're all, most of us anyway, old now. We've been doing this for around or over a decade (in many cases much more than that). When you do the same sort of thing for that length of time, it can easily grow stale no matter how much Special Sauce you put into it to make it better. Especially when it's similar, not the same obviously, but similar groups doing the same basic stuff over and over.
@pandora said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:
Is a monitor required to play a MUSH? Yes.
Is a monitor required, though? Blind people play them using screenreader software of some nature. So I would argue that a monitor isn't required.
@pandora said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:
Is a MUSH a game? Yes.
Again, are all MU* games? Would you go to MUS*H and call it a game? I wouldn't.
Most are games, sure. Even using @Misadventure's definition of game vs play. They have rules, and restrictions - be they self-imposed or handed down from on high, and restrictions, and a competitive nature to them (Be it character-versus-character, character-versus-world, or whatever).
Alright, I'll do this summer camp 'getting to know you' game.
I am an anthropologist by training, a teacher of necessity. At least out in the wilderness of Australia teachers are either English teachers or Math teachers at their core, branching off to the humanities or sciences respectively.
I speak with an Englishish accent, due to my native one being a source of ridicule during the 90s in the norf of England. So I sound smarter and more confident than I actually am.
I have serious, and occasionally cripplingly so, mental illness. Specifically bipolar disorder (type 1) and various other little maladies that all coalesce to give me mental health issues instead of a personality.
I have children,with the eldest being fifteen. Long story short: Mother is also gay, old friend of mine, turkey basters may have been involved, and now there are children.
@nessa said in Shadowrun 5e - Logger for karma - post to web functionality?:
When I click on AresMUSH it seems to be situated as though it's a link but the link doesn't bring me anywhere?
For future readers, the link in @faraday's post has been corrected so that it works now.
@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:
I hold out no hope for the average MU runner to plan for a limited series run.
Oh, naturally. It's a pipedream nestled in a fantasy snugly wrapped up in a cocoon of nevergonnahappen. But it's still pretty.
Without even looking at the rights of external entities, I'd side-eye any game that wanted to make a profit off of my work. And yes, I'd consider any input I have into the game's canon to be my intellectual property, at least to some extent.
As for logs that I've personally put on a game's wiki or whathaveyou, or if the game itself does when I've knowingly consented to it (ie Ares' scene system): pretty them up and share them around as advertising if you want, I've given those to the game. That's another point. I've given them to the game, not to any individual staff members or the headstaff or the host or anyone else.
Now, as for formatting for the purposes of reading later - regardless of audience - I think most ereaders and all browsers can use some nature of CSS for the formatting of their books.
If you want this to appeal to a wider, specifically non-MU*er audience, then you need to take a look at film novelisations. They take the script, in this case the scene log, and embellish and expand upon things and make slight alterations to the scripted 'reality' to fit the flow of a novel better.
As far as I can see it's a minefield of copyright and IP problems, mixed with a whole bunchload of effort, for no real payoff that I can see.
@three-eyed-crow said in What drew you to MU*?:
so it has its pros and cons.
Truth, as everything does. But you're right, this is probably better served in another thread that I cbf making.
@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:
So the fact that game-runners don't plan for an ending and people invested in characters don't want them to leave the "show" seems perfectly understandable and natural to me.
It might be perfectly understandable and natural, but that doesn't make it sensible. If people are seriously invested in something it makes more sense, at least to me, for that investment to come with a payoff at the end. A finale rather than a cancellation, if you will.
@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:
I think folks expecting their game to go on forever and ever aren't being very realistic.
When it comes to the staff/authors of the game it's less about expecting the game to last forever, but more about not planning for an ending. Players, definitely, seem to be edging more and more towards the 'my character needs to be here forever so this game needs to be here forever' camp. Not all of them, obviously, but a number notable enough that I've seen it. And usually I don't give a damn about other people unless they're paying me money.
I know what you meant about on-demand, I was mostly using it as a jumping-off point. I think the fact that nearly every other source of entertainment is equally as capable of instant gratification, and the barrier to entry for things is so much lower with many being ostensibly free (specifically MMOs and their ilk) or capable of delivering many various genres of entertainment (like your Netflixes and such) that when people feel the desire to invest deeply in something, such as a character, they demand that they be allowed to do so for as long as they want.
Every other entertainment source has an end. A film ends, a book ends. The only thing I can really relate it to is perhaps a long-running television show that refuses to end in spite of all evidence that it should. Stories end, and so should games. And that's something players should have on their list of things to expect right out of the gate.
