I wrote over a hundred descs of characters on Arx and some of the ones I liked best when I wrote them have been changed now because players like to customize – but I still love Eiran’s maybe the best:

Here is a portrait of Eiran Laurent: sprawled long-limbed and flung out in an attitude of perfect despair, dark hair unkempt and limpid eyes full of deepest wist. No; here he is, lean and strong in a forward charge, a shield on one muscular arm and a mace swung up in the other, his even features written with battle-mad delight. Try again; swaying forward on his toes, mesmerized by an enchanting beauty in one face or another, his lush lips pouty with earnest need. All of these are Eiran. His dynamism is what makes him striking, rather than any perfection of his looks, which are pleasant but unremarkable – except for the languid depths of those clear and velvet eyes.

What? You mean this wasn’t a place to blow my own horn? Sorry, I’m a Leo, everywhere is a place to do that. Don’t blame me, blame the stars.

@Griatch said in Yay AresMUSH 1.0.0:

What are your plans for Ares post-1.0?

For now just continuing the incremental improvements based on player and game-runner requests. A dedicated mobile app would be nice someday. Beyond that, it’s just vague pipe dreams.

@Arkandel

I know of an instance of that that’s in development right now (outside of muds, where that’s included out of the box).

@Twinkle Ahh, gotcha.

Thanks. A shame, but it’s nice to know the place went down gracefully rather than crashing and burning.

@Jennkryst

Answers to your thoughts:

You will have to hand write your own custom rules for PVP situations, as PVP actually flies in the face of the game design. One of the core conceits of the game is that only one person should roll in any given action, and that it should almost always be the player.

I don’t feel that would be a good idea, since almost all of the cyphers have a level that is variable. Two cyphers of similar level have a similar effect, but one takes up more space in your “cypher slots” sounds like something potential players would complain about in the long run. If the staff is doing their diligence to create situations where cypher turnover is happening regularly, there’s no need to put further constraints on number of cyphers owned / used.

Nope. Artifacts are not cyphers, so they should factor into that. That said, Artifacts are meant to be rare, so again, if staff is doing their diligence on that, you don’t have to worry about a lot of them existing, especially if you use plot to write them out of the story. (That big laser gun artifact you found is actually the power supply for this one thing over here, and when you install it, you can’t get it back. Sorry.)

Also nope. See staff doing a responsible job of controlling the flow of these things into the game. (Also if it’s basically the Numenera equivalent of a Ford Focus, do we really care if there are bunch of them?)

Love love love love love this game. Highly recommend.

Very async-friendly for those of us who are being bamshangalanged six ways til’ Sunday by a hectic RL.

@shit-piss-love said in How long should characters last?:

I love this topic so much, because I have learned over the years that I seem to be on one extreme of the spectrum for how one enjoys PC play.

…

I strongly suspect that I love this pattern because I’ve been the Forever GM since the 90s. Playing a character, for me, is less about the story I am experiencing and more about being the hand behind experiences that others enjoy. I also really like being a Conflict-driver because there is truly no one a character is closer to than the people they are at odds with. It’s a kind of intimacy that, done in a positive and collaborative fashion, is unique to the medium.

Forgive the follow-on to thread necromancy, but I love this response. I’m at least a decade removed from a MU* career, but share similar instincts and hadn’t fully internalized the “Forever-GM” aspect as a possible root cause.

This is one of the reasons I prefer games that have generous character roll-over policies that are tied to players vs. characters.

-r

@IoleRae said in MUSH List?:

@Reason

There’s a little scroll paper thing link at the top of the bar, to the right of the little symbol that looks like 3 people.

Holy shit, I never knew about this. I should add my game to this. Thanks for pointing this out.

@Tez

https://priceonomics.com/how-maritime-insurance-built-ancient-rome/#:~:text=Maritime insurance was crucial in,a population of around 300%2C000.

I can’t vouch for this site in general but the facts here are basically lined up with other trustworthy sources and condensed.

This just goes back for ages.

Totalled up the number of rosters I’ve applied for – well, not pertinent to the current conversation. Answer is a lot. But. Have experienced all hues of the how to greet a roster rainbow. Not sure what the happy middle is between extreme enthusiasm and isolation.

@Jumpscare Yes please! I’m really interested in what you’ve been doing.

@Aria Lame as fuuuuuuck.

Moved some more posts over to the forked thread.

Continue rougher more argumentative stuff over there, not here.

I read somewhere that you multiply the peak connections by 2.5 to get a good estimate of the total playerbase, but I have no idea where I read that, and it doesn’t apply to places that allow multiple alts, so take this info with a grain of salt.

But in the bigger picture, there’s so much roleplaying going on in the world that there’s no way it’s going away anytime soon. Even after the world collapses, you can guarantee there’ll be players in a cave rolling dice and telling stories in between their battles with radioactive spiderlocusts.

@KarmaBum is letting me play Janitor: The MUSH on Glitch so 15/10 rating for me.

I’ve been on games that had some kind of quiz as part of charges. I get where they’re coming from, but it was a real turn-off.

I would feel the same way about an automated tutorial quest type thing. I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t MUSH for quests and NPC bots. That would almost certainly have me saying “this is clearly not the right game for me”.

What I try to do is have easy access for new players to get involved. Whether that’s a personal pointer in their approval: “Hey I notice you’ve got the BG skill of surfing, John does a lot of surfing RP…” or a general “how to find RP” guide, or frequent open plots where they can dive in.

@Tat said in Session Zero & M*s:

The tension with how much there is to read, to catch up on, to get into the game, is real.
How to effectively communicate this stuff is a puzzle I have not yet solved.

It’s definitely hard. In my last few games I tried experimenting with a layered approach to the stuff folks have to read. Keep the basics short and sweet, and then have links to expanded articles if they want/need more detail.

@Tat said in What stops you from running a game?:

I see lots of people with cool ideas or themes they’d love to play in.

What are the things that keep you from actually running a game? What are the barriers?

Code and time.

People want a certain amount of stuff coded to play on a game. Coding that stuff takes time. I don’t have it.

I was coding my own engine to be able to launch a game, but I ran out of time when I inherited Liberation Mage. 🙂

I agree with @Mourne that at its most basic, a successful game is an enjoyable one.

Getting into more detail, I like a lot of what @Tat and @Pyrephox and @L-B-Heuschkel said. To me, a successful game is one with a cohesive theme and setting, where I can get enjoyable RP 1-3 times per week and can have an impact on the setting (even if it’s tiny).

I want the enjoyable RP because, well, that’s why we do this, right? I want to be able to have an impact on the setting because that’s what I find most enjoyable. I want a cohesive theme and setting because I like a game that makes sense, and without that cohesion, I get stuck putting in inputs and getting outputs that don’t make sense to me.