@bored Well, I don't have an issue with someone telling people not to fuck with a game. Whether that comes from someone speaking as a regular poster or as a mod, it doesn't matter to me.

I maintain that there are more important things to get one's panties in a bunch over.

Seems we all guest wrong about the reason behind this one.

What I'm getting out of some of this is that moderation is fine as long as it's done the way a particular person wants it to be done. Otherwise, moderation is not fine.

Personally, if I was a moderator I'd crack down on blatant trolling, but that's one of my hot button things. If someone is only out for a reaction by being a jerk toward others, I don't have a lot of patience for that.

And yet, while I know the Hog Pit is more of a free-for-all part of the site where insults, sharp criticism, and pretty much anything else goes, that area has value when it comes to trying to address misbehavior by players/admin/staff/whoever. These are the kinds of things that, especially using an Elsa game or UH as examples, can't be discussed in-game without people being punished for it when people in power abuse that power. The Hog Pit is one of the few places things like that can be brought out into the open and, depending on what evidence is out there or what people believe, general conclusions can be reached about what seems to be going on.

I don't know most posters here well enough to have too strong an opinion of who they are as people, what their morals and ethics are, or any of that, but I will say it's a mistake to assume people in general will understand what you mean when you say something and do it in a vague way. You may think what you're saying is clear - God knows I've been there more than once - and someone is stupid for not getting it, but the only one who can make sure what you say is understood is you. Don't make things worse by acting like everyone else just doesn't get it when you say something that gets misinterpreted, and don't give a half-assed apology when you're called on it.

As far as posters having separate moderator accounts or not, I don't think it matters as much as how it's handled. If @Arkandel creates a second account only to use when MOD VOICE is needed, people should know that's his account from the start. It won't fully eliminate the possibility of MOD VOICE being misused in some way, but it's one more step of separation from asking him to pick and choose when he uses MOD VOICE on his personal account. Either way, I could see the potential for suspicion based on when and how MOD VOICE is used, no matter the setup for it.

What's important to remember is we're all MU*ers as well. We're not above conflict, controversy, arguments, in-fighting, and so on just because we have a place here to call it out when we see others do it. An outsider could look at the debate going on here and say "See? These holier-than-thou fucks are no better than the ones they're whining about over and over!" At times, that would be accurate to say. That's not automatically bad, either. It just proves that nobody is perfect, nobody is going to agree about everything, and we all have different personalities and beliefs that sometimes clash.

If we can be better about staying civil and sensible about it, that's the most important thing to me.

I'm just here for the popcorn.

What I'm getting out of this latest blow-up is Auspice used MOD VOICE to tell people not to go troll a place, Tempest pitched a fit about it, and now here we are with another back-and-forth.

Is that about the long and short of it?

@bored Except this isn't really even an offense at all. She did nothing objectionable. She said "Don't harass games." She didn't say "Don't harass games or else." If you think that's what she said, that's what you're reading into it.

If you seriously consider this some sort of moderator offense, you need to re-evaluate a few things.

@mietze Yes, but the message a couple people are trying to send here is that Auspice fucked up and got another strike because someone simply dislikes moderation of any form beyond moving a few posts around to another sub-board in the background as needed.

People are used to zero moderation whatsoever and there's a bit of a push against it now that things are changing a little bit, perhaps as if they fear it's going to lead to further moderation and tighter rules when Arkandel himself has already made it pretty clear that's of no interest to him here. This sort of nitpicking over what Auspice did also shows little faith in Arkandel's ability to handle things himself, whether the people pointing the finger of blame here realize that or not.

I get that people want the freedom to say and do just about whatever they want here. The thing is, I don't see that suddenly being denied them. There are still some general standards of decency we should agree to in or out of the Hog Pit itself. "Don't go fuck with a game because you have a problem with someone, and don't use this place to try to set it up if you're not going to be deterred" is one most, if not all of us, seem to be in agreement on.

So why is reminding people of that such a problem, even if it's pro-active and based on something apparently said in private as a heads-up? It's like it's less about the reminder itself and more about the voice Auspice used to deliver it. Are we going to be THAT sensitive about it any time "MOD VOICE" comes up? Really?

The story would be completely different if Auspice went off on her own and openly threatened people with this or that if they didn't do as she demanded. That...did not happen. It didn't even come close to happening.

@enoch I think if you, as a game, wish to have prior RP matter, it's a slippery slope in the context of IC relationships. We all know a draw for a lot of people in these things is playing out various relationships.

Scott/Jean, Logan/Jean, Rogue/Gambit, Emma/Scott, Shatterstar/Rictor, Kitty/Piotr, Kitty/Pete Wisdom, Logan/Scott/Jean/Emma (okay, maybe that last one's going a bit off the rails) - these are all canonical, expected and accepted character relationships depending on the cutoff. But yes, if Scott and Jean are playing one in-game, one of them drops, and a new player comes along and doesn't want to continue it, that's one thing. The new player has every right to go in another direction.

However, I don't think it's fair to the other player to just say "Well, none of that stuff happened now." It essentially invalidates and throws out things that did happen in-game, and it can be a big problem.

If something is logged and posted, it typically counts. If you have a tool in-game (+canon, was it?) that establishes something in a simple one-line explanation, it sounds like it counts as well. If people are doing this and that "off-screen" that becomes more difficult to enforce without proof of it, and we know that happens. In addition, some people don't want to share the mushy stuff with everyone even when it's purely vanilla. I understand if someone wants to keep it private. Using +canon could be a great alternative to posting a log.

But, if it's established and is part of the continuity in any way, my suggestion would be that at least in the general sense, it sticks. If a new player wants to go in a different direction, fine. If the new player and the old player agree to just say "They saw each other for a while and now they aren't" without focusing on any more than that, fair enough.

When someone comes in to play a character that's already been played before, there should come with it an expectation that the former player(s) may have done some things the new one wouldn't have, but it's not an automatic reason to retcon a bunch of stuff immediately. If there are a lot of logs, it's tough to expect someone to account for every little detail so some summarizing may be needed, some info from other players of characters that did things with someone, whether it's a relationship or not. It can make taking on a played character more daunting, but in general it's good for the game if "What Has Gone Before" is maintained as still there somehow.

Most things can be worked around, acknowledged, etc. If there IS a good reason to retcon, figure out a sensible justification and excuse with staff. It's a comic book genre. Strange shit happens. New writers put different spins on characters and change things we've seen in the past. "I was mind-controlled by blah," "Sinister cloned me," "I was stuck in an alternate reality and replaced by a different version of me," "It was a Skrull," or "It was just a phase I was exploring" may be cheesy, but it's not necessarily wrong to go with any of those. Create an RP hook out of it that an existing, affected player can at least do something with, even if it's not perfect. Don't simply toss out the time and effort they put in. Honor it.

Just take it on a case-by-case basis as needed. Be prepared to spend a little time helping hash something out and hope both sides can come away satisfied with the result. Also make sure players who take on a new character that hasn't been played before understand that anything they do that's available for all to see can normally be expected to stand.

I wouldn't have a problem with a no-alt policy for the first month or two of the game. That's more than enough time for interested people to app who they want as a primary character, then if they really want a second one they can see who's left. It should be open season by then.

As for activity, don't do some thing where you need to have a logged scene or whatever once every so many weeks. Figure out tiers, come up with reasonable activity levels for each, and have it go by the calendar month.

When it comes to proof of activity, leave out player voting. If someone's in a log beyond just a cameo (this might have to be checked, though), it counts.

Also, on a personal note I'd love an in-game logging system that automatically goes into a real-time log somewhere online, and I'd love some sort of pose code that separates each player's pose with something. These two things did make UH very convenient, and having a separator of some kind (along with, even, an identifier for whose pose it was) felt so much easier to follow a scene as it was going on.

@thatguythere This place is certainly not the equivalent of newspaper classifieds.

@Derp said in General Video Game Thread:

Oh god. It's so good so far. They just kick you right in the feels from the beginning.

@Ninjakitten said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Wolfs If you leave the image window open, it will stay where you leave it. If you close it, it reopens in the default spot at the top because it no longer has a position when it stops existing.

For an input window, just pop up to File > New Input Window or use /newinput, and then place it where you like!

Got it, thanks.

@Ninjakitten said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Wolfs said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Alamias said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Wolfs Remap it to ctl+P, that is what I did for the same reason...muscle memory from Simplemu.

I know I could, but I'm trying to get used to the arrows if I want to cycle up and down through commands. Doing Ctrl+P to go back a ways, then using the down arrow to cycle closer if I go too far feels counter-intuitive.

I am liking the option to automatically copy whatever I highlight on the screen, though. Same with being able to use Ctrl+Dn to automatically copy what I'm in the middle of typing, just so I lessen the chance of accidentally losing a longer pose.

Like @Alamias, I remapped Ctrl-Up to Ctrl-P and Ctrl-Down to Ctrl-N to match what SimpleMU had, and talked the dev into adding input window - push to history which I have mapped to Esc so it all matches SimpleMU and I get to keep my muscle memory.

Also, you might consider adding another input window! Then you don't even have to toss things into the input history to write something else in between, etc.

I...never even noticed Ctrl+N did that in SimpleMU. Never looked that deeply.

What I'd like to do is figure out how to get the image viewer to stay on the right side of the screen in the empty space, but so far it's just popping up at the top. I'm sure there's documentation on that somewhere. Just trying to drag it didn't do anything.

Scratch that - I saw the tip to hold down Ctrl to prevent docking. Then again, now I don't know. It doesn't seem to keep that intact as a preference every time an image would be set to load.

Another input window might be worth looking into, as well.

@Alamias said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Wolfs Remap it to ctl+P, that is what I did for the same reason...muscle memory from Simplemu.

I know I could, but I'm trying to get used to the arrows if I want to cycle up and down through commands. Doing Ctrl+P to go back a ways, then using the down arrow to cycle closer if I go too far feels counter-intuitive.

I am liking the option to automatically copy whatever I highlight on the screen, though. Same with being able to use Ctrl+Dn to automatically copy what I'm in the middle of typing, just so I lessen the chance of accidentally losing a longer pose.

@Coin said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

@Atomic said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

All I want is the ability to repeat entered text by keying in the up arrow.

You can do that with CTRL+UP in the default setting (just in case you didn´t know!).

This is one change I'm getting a little used to, because it was Ctrl+P in SimpleMU.

Now, I like the history window as an option in Beip (and liked it in Potato), but I'm going without it for now as I get more used to Ctrl with the up and down arrows to cycle through commands. That part alone is not bad, at least. Just a muscle memory thing to get down as a minor change.

I waited way too long to try this out because I procrastinate far too much. I gave up fast on trying to dig into Potato and MUSHClient, not because they're bad or anything, but because I just wasn't getting things intuitively when it came to certain triggers and trying to set stuff up the way I was familiar with.

Aside from a couple minor differences (like how to set an idle timer, which I saw someone mention previously here), BeipMU feels so much like a successor to SimpleMU that it was a much easier transition. In fact, it's made some of the things I liked setting up for display purposes even simpler and I know I'm barely scratching the surface of its functionality.

Having the expanded color palette that's become more commonplace today is nice to finally get to fully experience, the ease of how the links work is convenient, and overall it just looks and runs more smoothly. Wish I hadn't waited so long to finally give it a try, but someone else was discussing it on a game recently and I figured I'd ask a couple questions then finally jump in. After a little trial and error and some digging deeper into helpfiles for one or two things, it's already sent SimpleMU into retirement.

Nice program!

@TNP said in ISO: a comics/superheroes MU* (give me your recs):

@Wolfs said in ISO: a comics/superheroes MU* (give me your recs):

@TNP Well, I would say a "hot, young Aunt May" wouldn't really mesh with what people normally expect to see when they think of Peter's aunt, but that's something your app staff would have to make a call on if and when it came up.

Did you not see Captain America: Civil War? There are people who only know that Aunt May. There are also different versions of Alfred.

Haven't seen it.

@TNP Well, I would say a "hot, young Aunt May" wouldn't really mesh with what people normally expect to see when they think of Peter's aunt, but that's something your app staff would have to make a call on if and when it came up.

You can say "the butler" or "my aunt" but people are going to know who you really mean if we're talking Bruce or Peter. It'd be like the TMNT not having Splinter cast, but everyone knows "our sensei" is the rat dude.

I think the difference here is people using someone like that as background flavor doing something they'd be expected to do ("butler stuff" or maybe baking a pie, overseeing training in the TMNT example) vs. having them do anything beyond that but as you said, it's your place and your rules, and it's up to others to determine if that's something they can accept or not.

Thank you, at least, for your explanation and reasoning behind it.

I would like the ESH folks to chime in and clarify their policy on emitting people close to a character, as I have heard direct mention of two situations that concern me - Peter Parker not being allowed to emit or reference Aunt May, someone who is unlikely to even be played, or Bruce Wayne not being allowed to refer to Alfred as anything other than 'The Butler.'

For many characters, minor supporting characters that are important to their stories are normally just fine to use for flavor here and there, within reason. Is it true that this is different on ESH? If so, why? If not, why were there apparently issues in the past with this?

If this sort of thing is heavily restricted, that is important to know.

I may have to look into ESH further sometime. The pattern these days seems to be more "multiverse and whatever else we can fit in if it makes a sliver of sense," but it's the style that leaves the most room for variety.