Best posts made by Tributary

On Arx, I spent 5 months OOCly doing research and writing songs, involving people in the investigations, RPing with them about what they already knew, and practicing my lyrics on willing victims. I talked with people about what I was doing, got them excited about things, made social connections between other characters, and even got a little NPC action in. I made a lot of friends ICly and introduced them to other friends. Much RP was had.

Then, in November and December, I spent six weeks doing 5 concerts, one a week with a break for Thanksgiving, to present my songs and to answer the general public's questions about them. I highlighted people in my Q/A sessions who might have a better perspective than me, and in general, I spread a lot of "secret" knowledge out into the playerbase. This led to people approaching me afterwards to ask questions about what I'd said so that they could gain "evidence" in the form of @clues. Everyone who attended got a copy of the song for reference, and most of the songs were chock full of useful information. I made a lot of connections and gave people a lot of fodder for subsequent RP scenes.

I recommended people get in touch with the Bards and the Scholars, and I included both the Bards and the Scholars in my formal @action to staff to essentially sum up what I'd done to get the songs out into the world. For some people, this was their first @action, and they were giddy about helping, and I got to walk them through how to do an @action assist. Socialites jumped on it as a way to use their social clout for Team Good. It was a purely social @action, and I had four pages of helpers because people loved the idea so much.

Turns out, staff loved the idea, too. They gave me a new title, and there were some interesting effects of the @action, including the refurbishment of the Hall of Heroes, a new statue for Sorrel's hero Copper (who died between her concert and the final concert), and the fact that the songs actually are spreading across Arvum. Staff was thrilled that a social-only action touched so many people and garnered so much RP and was an entirely player generated piece of work.

It feels good to be appreciated!

@auspice said in A Regency MU (Conceptual):

Personally I prefer when there's just one PC allowed. But my experience has been that people get very antsy and such when they can't have multiple characters. So my thinking is: 1 PC for society stuff (allowing staff to not be overwhelmed with handling stuff for tons of alts there) and commoner alts for people who have a need for alts or just want to mess around with other ideas.

Honestly? Just limit people to 1 PC. Allow them a time period to tweak it (some concepts work out better than others) and then ask them to stick to that single PC.

If people do want to mess around with other ideas, permit a certain amount of emitting of NPCs: no one important. No one who can seriously influence anything or needs stats to do things. But perhaps someone who can sort of interact in ways their PC cannot; i.e., a nobody sailor interacting with naval officers for the player of a female peer. Essentially, backdrop NPCs. If their NPC ends up being more appealing than their PC, let them drop the current PC and make the NPC as a PC.

Sometimes it's okay to just say, "No." Especially for your own sanity.

This is Osmium, a snaggle-toothed ewok. Shih-tzu, I mean. Osmium is a blackish metal, so Ozzy is the most metal of shih-tzu. Also, Osmium has an odor to it and the root word means "smells", and the dog likes smells. It's the densest of metals and the dog is a little dense. (Yes, his name is a chemistry joke.)

He's terrified of @Cobaltasaurus's cats. He understands that they are sharp and not to be trusted.

Okay, so it's not technically art, but I crafted it with math and logic, and it might help other people make art:
https://github.com/OddishDoggish/asciiArt/releases/tag/v0.1.5

This software is still in testing. It will take an image and convert it to text to be inserted into an Evennia game. No image is required, however: one can simply type and color in the upper window and click "encode" to have it converted to marked-up text. There is a button to copy directly into the clipboard. Highlighting a colored character will allow you to check its color. You can change the color of highlighted characters by clicking the color you desire. For accessibility, you may toggle tags on and off: highlight the area that should be contained in the tags and click the button. Highlighting areas that shouldn't be contained in the tags but have been marked ascii can be removed from the selection by just toggling the button.

If you have any questions or find any bugs, please let me (Sorrel@Arx) know.

Splash art is Ida Cat by Crawfish@Arx.

I got frames!

@faraday The Hero and the Crown was the one I ended up reading first, and I loved it madly, and it's probably my favorite book. My mother was an English teacher then, and she ended up teaching that book to her middle schoolers, and I was a snot that she'd ruined my copy. When my ex dumped me right before our wedding, I made an interstate move listening to that book on tape.

I have read a lot of other McKinley books, but that one may forever be my favorite.

I have the Chronicles of Prydain on my Kindle, and when I am bored or maybe sad, I go read those. They never get old.

I've read the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper) so many times that I have the poems memorized. You know, just in case.

The Ordinary Princess (M.M. Kaye) was another one of my beloveds, as was Cricket and the Emperor's Son (Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth). My copy of The Owlstone Crown (X. J. Kennedy) is in the hands of some friends' children.

Ooh, and Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series has largely held up. As has L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But man, those are so much weirder than I recalled as a child.

@crawfish I love Sorrel so so much!

https://i.etsystatic.com/icm/9ebfcd/330906947/icm_fullxfull.330906947_scneugzz5dwk0s88o0cg.jpg?version=0

I need to go through the thread and pull down kitties to alter and upload!

The ewok is having a crisis because there's thunder and he's not supposed to be in the bedroom.

(I love his snaggletoof.)

Current:
Dawn, Spirit Lake
Luna, Chontio
Sorrel, Arx
...
It seemed like a personal challenge to list as many of my characters as possible here. I have log files that date back to 1996, and my memory is hazy. Some things are best left forgotten. I have tried to be as compete as possible, nonetheless, although I didn't always log and some of these logs are from the days when you could only name files with 8 characters.

List is alphabetical by character name and incomplete:

Amadea, Valorous Domain
Analee, Cuendillar
Annabelle, Dark Wine and Roses
Baedi, Star Wars: A New Threat
Beaid, Star Wars: Brak Sector
Bianca, Emerald Dreams
Cassandra, LA MUSH
Cate, Dark Destiny: Denver by Night
Melpomene, Dark Metal: New Core City
Eiriel, Akarian Dawn: Shadows of an Empire
Eva, A Memoir of Betrayal
Eviene, Windy City
Fuchsia, Due Rewards
Gwyn, Star Trek: Gamma One
Ilsa, Haunted Memories
Jenni, Masquerade
Judy, San Diego
Kalori, Firan
Keritbes, Tales of Tavaren
Ketria, Firan
Luna, Due Rewards
M42, San Francisco
Maria, Threads of Time
Meg, Memoir of Betrayal
Meg, Exodus
Meneliel, Elendor
Miko, Darkness Falling
Min, Star Wars: Galaxy
Minerva, Out of the Darkness
Miranda, Fallen Leaves
Mirella, Firan
Mirielle, Due Rewards
Mirelle, Time of Shadows
Sparky, Haunted Memories
Sweet, Star Trek: Anomaly
Sydnia, Cuendillar
Tallulah, Metro
Tallulah, The Reach
Teonia, Firan
Zinnia, Gathering Storm
Zita, Ashes to Ashes

I also staffed on Darkwater, Due Rewards, Firan, and Star Wars: Brak Sector with some regularity, but people often gave me a wizbit because... I dunno. I'm likable and trustworthy or something.

From Bennet, the developer, on BeipMU's discord:

Why is the store app stuck on build 312? Well here's why and how to fix it:
https://github.com/BeipDev/BeipMU/blob/master/Documentation/store_update.md
(This link is also on the main web page so more people can find it, spread the word!)

I'm not coping at all. Everything is awful.

@Thenomain said:

My name is SPARKY and I take the aspect Artistic Firebug. I get to re-roll failed attempts that have to do with fire! I get bonus points when I succumb to my love of fire!

Fixed.

(This is non-stop awesome.)

@arkandel My vet allowed me to schedule something for my little old man dog who had cancer. The vet prescribed him pain meds for palliative care. And it was super hard, but knowing that Saturday was coming for him gave me about a week to process that I was losing him. And I cried a lot, and my boss let me smuggle him into work, and my spouse had time to prepare to deal with what an emotional wreck I was.

And he ate basically nothing but donuts for a week, and he got time to visit with all of the veterinary nurses and techs he'd flirted with over the years. He went out happy and sugared up and cradled in my arms, after my very sweet vet offered a prayer before the injections. (I am not religious, but having someone offer to pray for me in a heartfelt manner is an emotional balm.) And I had time to save fluffs of his fur, arrange for a memorial pawprint, and decide on a pet cremation package.

It is much easier, I think, to deal with the emotional weight of that decision over several days -- knowing that you could say, "No, no, I cannot just yet," but that you won't. Because while your grief will linger, her pain will not.

I am so sorry that you're going through this and that you have to make this decision.

Something I've noticed playing Arx, in particular because there is a +firstimpression command, is that a lot of people don't actually pose enough personality in a scene for me to be able to say the first thing about their character. "Drinks and talks" is boring. It's hard to be engaged with someone who just exists in the room with you.

This has happened to me in other games, too, where I'm like, "OMG, I have no idea of what this person is like at all because they have only drunk things and talked at me. I'm just going to mark them down as boring."

So please, when you pose, write in something approximating readable English, don't take half an hour to do it, and please, please, pose some personality to your character, which is supposed to have character.

@ganymede said in Crafting Thread Part ?:

@tori said in Crafting Thread Part ?:

Ahaha! Also? This totally reminded me to add my Ida-cat to the character gallery

"Ida-cat" sounds like something a lawyer pretending to be a cat would say.

Ida-cat has a forge hammer!

And we took the image, edited out the background, converted it to Evennia's mark-up, and made it as a tchotchke, which we left in Ida's shop.

Because we are highly amused imps.

@Coin said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

@Waller said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

@HelloProject said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

Like damn, let me be a wizard who does sexy wizard things, but also I can do other wizard things, and Doom Guy won't suddenly walk in like "I'M GONNA FUCK YOUR SEXY WIZARD THINGS!!!"

This sounds like if someone made an Oglaf MUSH.

An Oglaf MUSH would be ridic and fun, ngl.

I would totally play an Oglaf MUSH. Totally.

Please enjoy Ozzy, my trash goblin, and his boxes.

(I cannot figure out why only the one gif seems to work. It's making me a smidge crazy. The links are https://imgur.com/n6eLaQN and https://imgur.com/f9BuYa1 for your viewing pleasure.)

@ganymede said in Online friends:

@wizz said in Online friends:

What factors make y'all decide to move further? Is it solely just time and trust?

I have never met anyone I MUSHed with in person for over twenty years.

I, on the other hand, recently asked someone if they were the person I'd met up with 20 years prior.

Turns out, yes. @Sunny and I had indeed met for drinks 20 years ago when she was on vacation in New Orleans, which is where I lived at the time. Her then toddler had tried to lick the French Quarter in many ways. It was delightful catching up with her.

Y'all, we old now.

@Cobalt and I met on a MU more than a decade ago, and somehow, I ended up taking her under my wing. She's an extra little sister for me; I'm an extra older sister for her. She's slept in my guest room when times were rough, and we've been through good times and bad together, sometimes from across the US.

Anyway, I'll do what I can to keep an eye on her for you guys, even as she fades from here and applies energy to other things.

And even if I haven't approved of every stupid thing she's done, I still love her for who she is. I'm very glad so many of you remember her so fondly. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only one who considers her a friend.