Minigames in MUSHes
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I suddenly now want a programmed cat cafe where the cats are interactive and their affection levels for PCs increase with affection/treats. Man I really appreciate you guys sharing, there’s a lot of inspiration in these.
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@Muse KITTY
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I really liked a few of the things @Jumpscare had done in Silent Heaven, even though I didn’t get to play with many of them while I was there. But you had forensic kits you could carry around and read fingerprints, or other forensic evidence from people who had been in rooms previously.
Something like that tied into a robust investigation setting would be super cool for a mystery/crime focused game.
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@Muse said in Minigames in MUSHes:
examples of minigames
So this isnt a minigame because it was the entire point of BTMux, but you basically piloted Battlemechs in real time, your range based on distance between your X,Y,Z coords, tracked in… a way. Basically think a top down version of Mechwarrior Online.
I tried for a couple years to convince them to add RPG +sheets, but never got it off the ground.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst said in Minigames in MUSHes:
I tried for a couple years to convince them to add RPG +sheets, but never got it off the ground.
I’m guessing this was prior to the creation of Mechwarrior: Destiny?
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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Ye gods, DiscworldMUD. So many coded minigames, from crafting to shop running, to actual, literal games – poker? Board games? It was all there.
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@MisterBoring said in Minigames in MUSHes:
I’m guessing this was prior to the creation of Mechwarrior: Destiny?
Yes, but long after the creation of the original Mechwarrior RPG (1986). They just wanted a text-based battle sim, not a RP MU.
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There was a zombie themed game years back (not KB’s) that had a minigame for scavenging. You could roll for it in certain rooms, and probability of quality/amount/what was based on a random value of your scavange skill, how often/recently someone else searched, and type of room.
Most of what was found converted into resource, either medical, food, or supplies that could be ‘donated’ at the appropriate IC spots for each. Or the trading post for barter credit.
But, you also could submit specialty stuff your character was looking for that would be threaded in at an appropriate found difficulty, and if others found it, have scenes for trading directly, too.
So it gave you reasons to RP with the cooks, or medics, or other scavengers, because you got a better value for that trade if a different PC ran it than if you just clicked the buttons alone.
Kind of like Jump’s investigations, and the extra benefit of sharing your findings IC’ly. I like minigames that are story-connected like that rather than just the button clicking of flights/buying/selling that don’t involve others at all.
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@Faraday said in Minigames in MUSHes:
Once the initial novelty wore off, I never liked these kinds of systems much. They either got in the way of creativity, or were annoyingly tedious, or both.
I never found the pool tables and stuff tedious. Some spewed more text than one would want, though, and I can see preferring to use fewer, simpler rolls. The decks of cards seem dated, since you can now use a web-based virtual deck of cards simultaneously with RPing.
My god those space navigation ones were tedious.
The vampire +hunt code that worked like a little choose-your-own-adventure game was less time-consuming than I imagined it would be, but not the ease of the usual convenient two-command hunt. The creativity-crush effect was legit. Dice is dice is dice and I love them, but I prefer to declare my PC’s actions, not pick them off a list, and I don’t want intense character-altering events in my PC’s life to be the result of picking the option nearest to what my PC would do and getting a machine-generated result. Foraging code that rolls for you and tells you how many mushrooms you found, okay, but not necessary. Foraging code that rolls for you and tells you that you tripped over a bear while foraging for mushrooms and it tore your left arm off? No.
MUDs were pretty much invented to be multi-user versions of Dungeon! and Zork, but I thought that MUSHes had largely eliminated those things because their players didn’t want that kind of game.
It occurs to me now that I made a couple of OOC-room games. They involved kicking a skull and it screaming something from a random list, hitting a random player in the OOC room, breaking, and renaming and redescing itself into a pile of bone bits which you could then glue back into a skull and kick again. Or figuring out which key-words would make the raven answer and trying to get it to say “George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.”
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@Gashlycrumb said in Minigames in MUSHes:
I never found the pool tables and stuff tedious. Some spewed more text than one would want, though, and I can see preferring to use fewer, simpler rolls. The decks of cards seem dated, since you can now use a web-based virtual deck of cards simultaneously with RPing.
Yeah, I mean, I’m not wrongfunning anybody who enjoyed them. More power to you.
For me, it was just a matter of goals. When I MU, I’m there to tell stories. If my char is playing poker with their bestie, I don’t actually care how the poker game went. I don’t personally enjoy poker. The poker game / basketball game / whatever is just a background thing for the actual connections between the characters. The code just got in the way. Similarly, if I’m in the zombie game @Jenn described, I’d like to be able to just RP getting some supplies—or NOT getting them, if that befits the story. I don’t want to be constrained in my storytelling by what the code says. (There are situations where constraints are necessary to prevent powerplaying, resolve disputes, etc. but I prefer those guardrails to be minimal.) But then I don’t mind minigames in a MMO, because I’m there more for achievement/progression/questing stuff, and it feels less invasive. It’s just a matter of preference.
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Lately I’ve been enjoying the element of chance when it comes to the narrative. Sure, narrative above all else. That’s given. But sometimes, sometimes, it’s nice to be a bit surprised by the system that was originally built with the fiddly bits in mind. And I think, judging by the responses, other folks have had decent experiences. Ideally they’re tools to kind of pad things out between RP. Hanging out in your room, everyone’s gone to bed, now I can work on descing my glorious wardrobe.
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@Yam said in Minigames in MUSHes:
Ideally they’re tools to kind of pad things out between RP.
I tend to pad things out between RP by watching Korean horror movies. (No, I don’t understand Korean, that’s part of the fun.)
I don’t want to need to play a mini-game for my PC to function on the MU, 'cause I’d probably rather not play a mini-game.
@Faraday said in Minigames in MUSHes:
I don’t actually care how the poker game went. I don’t personally enjoy poker. The poker game / basketball game / whatever is just a background thing for the actual connections between the characters. The code just got in the way.
Yeah, this. I liked the pool tables etc because they introduced a little random detail, and spare you from having to negotiate with another player about how the game might turn out. Waaaaay back when, on the original PernMUSH I used to show people how to insert the MUSH dice fuction into poses to roll a couple of d6 so we could play craps, and this is still a favourite for me, meshed right into the poses.
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@Tez said in Minigames in MUSHes:
@dvoraen said in Minigames in MUSHes:
@Tez So what I am hearing is I should make puppy-eyes at Tehom to do this for Arx II. Over Aion knows how many months.
cries in database schema
No one should ever make puppy-eyes at any coder for anything. If I want these things, I* will make them myself.
*claude
looks at spoiler block
mmhmmAnyway, you misunderstand. I’d be the implementer, seeking permission to put it in.
The argument: “Jayus would want us to BUILD THESE MINIGAMES.”
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It’s been interesting to read all the different takes on minigames, it’s made me think about what I actually like in minigames, and what I don’t.
When I think about minigames that I’ve genuinely enjoyed, I like something where I get to use my character’s skills and abilities (especially ones that maybe don’t get used a lot in scenes, like research, finance, social, etc.) to create something (including just an experience) that enhances my enjoyment of the game.
I don’t like grind, or minigames I must engage with on a regular basis or face negative consequences. I don’t like minigames that replace a fun scene or that become a bottleneck to being able to do the things I’m there to do.
So something like a poker game that takes into account character stats (luck, for example) or skills (gaming/gambling/bluff/sleight of hand)? That’s pretty cool. +hunt code that I must remember to use every couple of days or else Bad Things Happen? Not so much. A crafting minigame would be fun (as long as I don’t have to do ASCII), or an investigation or research minigame.
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I’m not a mini-game person so I’ve kinda stayed out of this thread. This kind of thing will never attract me to a game, it’ll either me an ‘oh that’s nice’ thing I engage with sometimes but appreciate being able to avoid, or a I think that just makes me nope the fuck out because, Not For Me! That’s OK.
So, grain of salt.
For me, the big question with all this stuff is, why aren’t you just playing a single-player video game or MMO to get your engagement fix? They do a lot of ‘mini-game’ things better. So, what’s the appeal, for a person into this sort of thing, of not just having that open on your secondary monitor? What does it add to an experience that’s unique to a MUSH?
ANSI art and object descing absolutely do this. While I didn’t do much with them personally, I always enjoyed seeing what people created, and it’s a unique form of creativity you can do on a telnet-based client you can’t do anywhere else.
