@Gashlycrumb said in “All the World’s a MUSH”: Genre as Destiny in Collaborative Roleplay Behaviour:

I think it has a lot to do with creating the vibe that we’re all sitting at the same table.

Right, I’m not saying it can never work, just that if done poorly it can contribute to some of the negative behaviors that Pavel’s asking about in the survey. I’m asserting that those behaviors are tied to the game design and personnel, not intrinsic to the genre.

So even IF the survey shows that, say, Sci-Fi games have more of (some bad behavior), that doesn’t really tell you anything at all. It could be that those games just share a particular design element (rosters, PVP, you name it). Heck, for all we know, all the respondents played on the same one bad Sci-Fi game back in 2001. That’s the problem with drawing conclusions from terribly small sample sizes.

@Pavel said in “All the World’s a MUSH”: Genre as Destiny in Collaborative Roleplay Behaviour:

Anyone seeking deep scientific meaning from a google form survey based on a throw away joke on a niche forum is missing the point.

I mean, you had an ethics statement and everything in the intro. It seemed that you were taking it pretty seriously, so I didn’t get “funsy joke opinion poll” vibes from the whole thing. If that’s all you want from it, then by all means, have fun.

People (broadly) just tend to be very bad about attributing deep scientific meaning to statistically insignificant studies though, so that was my concern.

@Pavel

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@Ominous Be careful about crowdsourcing too much - people have a way of killing enthusiasm for new games and new ideas because they tend to focus on all the ways it WON’T work. It can be hugely discouraging, but it’s just the nature of the kind of critique you’re going to get in this format.

Solicit ideas by all means, but one of the strongest markers of a successful game, I’ve found, is the passion of the creator and their willingness to put in the work to build enthusiasm of actual players. Decide the game YOU want to run, the game that’s worth it to you to do the work on, bring on a small group of people whose vision strongly aligns with yours, and go for it.

@Pavel
This is exactly what I needed! Thanks!!!

Sad to hear Glitch had to leave the hobby but this is some really slick work!

@Faraday Oh that’s not too bad, and I think I’ve still got some of the stuff around from last time I did an Ares game, might be worth a shot then. Thanks Faraday, very glad you’re still about the community.

Random observation: The telnet access is what makes Ares accessible to visually impaired players. Which of course doesn’t rule out having the coolest web portal ever.

@Tez said in [BeipMU] Removing pose order spam from Ares games.:

less consistency about putting \ before my < and >

I only do it so I can look at it and know, “Right, it is checking for the actual < not some weird control character I’ve forgotten and need to look up.” 😛

@Jennkryst I’ll DM you, feel free to also page me on dsmush.com/webclient.

The reason I don’t do both full roster and my roster system…simply is time. I have enough time and patients to pick one priority at a time and that right now is to get the character creation done.

@Cobalt said in Work with me on a project?:

I know Faraday disapproves, but it’s easy

I don’t disapprove. There have been several WoD/CoFD/etc. games made on Ares using the generic RPG plugin. It’s only an issue if you’re looking for a Masq or reality levels or those other sorts of immersive code thingies that often crop up on WoD style games.

Not that you need my approval or anything, but just for the record 🙂 Good luck!

@somasatori I know Lost and Dreaming are totes different, BUT if you adopt the resurrecting faerie soul from Dreaming, then they can have flashback adventures.

Saw the post on r/MUD about 2.0 releasing – congrats!

My biggest issue with character progression is that the only way most characters progress on a game is through xp and stats.

XP and stats should not be the only way a character progresses. There should be other achievables like rank or resources or territory or a combination of all of them that allows a character to progress without simply racking up xp and spending it.

If people had more objectives to achieve besides MOAR XP, then a game wouldn’t need to give out so much xp per week to keep people interested and uber stats become much less of a problem.

But handing out scads of xp is the easy, traditional solution. It takes very little monitoring and is often completely automated. So that’s what most games do.

Not saying that is bad or wrong, just that it really puts the burden of character progression on xp if that’s all the game has.

@Faraday I’m not a kimono expert or even novice but I can tell at a moderate glance that’s AI, too. The sleeves, and the way the folds don’t match above and below the belt. That’s the first thing I look at, making sure the borders of things make sense/line up. AI is not good at it.

@Faraday said in What Is Alpha Anyway?:

Alpha and beta are really meant for players to provide feedback and help test things out before it’s ready. That’s why so many video games offer free alpha/beta test versions. You’re doing them a favor by trying out their half-baked game/app.

I think that this is really where I’m at:

If the main purpose of having players on the game is to test systems/theme/etc and the features are not complete, I think it’s Alpha. If the main purpose of having players on the game is to test systems/theme/etc and the features are (nearly) complete, I think it’s Beta. If the main purpose of having players on the game is to tell stories and play the game and the features are complete, I think it’s Gold/Release – even if there are still going to be additions made to the game later.

Those are just my definitions, of course, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else would stick to them (although it would be nice for me if they did).

Jumping in to add a vote for BeipMU onto the pile.

I used to use SimpleMU, then Mushclient, then Mudlet, then Potato, and now BeipMU.

BeipMU (not counting being currently supported) outclasses all of the other clients I have used.