@helvetica said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

@Serafine Logs are publicly available, their placement on the site just isn’t in a very obvious location.

I think their custom portal has a bug actually, because the “Recent” view on scene logs was initially blank for me. Once I switched it to “all” and back to “recent” it behaved itself. That might lead one to honestly believe there were no public logs.

But it’s oh-so-pretty. Seriously. Kudos for the aesthetics.

@Roz said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

@Serafine said in Wyrdhold Discusion:

True to its name, I’ve seen nothing but war and strife from ARES.

I mean, Ares is just a codebase, it doesn’t really have any influence on whether or not there’s drama on a MU*.

Whatever do you mean? I’m quite certain it’s the first and only MU codebase to ever see drama. I designed it special that way.

@tsar said in Los Angeles 2043: A Blade Runner MUSH - Discussion:

Man, thank you. Because this vague insinuation that Director bailed and crushed all these people’s hopes and dreams of stories really started to get my blood pressure up. He’s a really cool dude, who is engaging, funny, and a great time.

I don’t know Director from Adam, but even if they did completely bail, so what?

Staff are volunteers, and players are not entitled to anything from them that they are unwilling to give.

If they open a game and close it the very next day because some horrible experience caused them to reconsider the whole thing? That’s their prerogative. If they open a game and close it the very next week because RL got too hard? That’s their business.

Yes, it’s disappointing when games close. But guess what - even running YOUR OWN GAME doesn’t mean you’ll get a chance to finish the stories you imagined telling. Enjoy it while it lasts.

@GF said in New Concept:

if you can’t suspend your disbelief for less prejudice but can for God being a space squid who hates you, then maybe sit with that and really think about it.

If it’s a fictional setting? I absolutely can suspend my disbelief for that. But history is established. Someone (sorry can’t find the quote) mentioned “it’s just the 1920s but without discrimination.”

I don’t know what that means.

I’m not being snarky. I hate discrimination with a burning passion in RL, and I fully respect someone not wanting to deal with that in their pretendy funtimes.

The problem is that discrimination is so deeply baked into societal systems that it’s just not as simple to me as snapping your fingers and saying it doesn’t exist.

Everyone always points to Wild West settings and says: “If you can imagine a world where the PCs don’t die of dysentery, why can’t you imagine a world without discrimination?”

Easy. You’re not pretending dysentery doesn’t exist, you’re just saying the PCs are lucky enough to not contract it, or to contract it and survive – both of which actually happened.

“A world without discrimination” is just not the same thing. How did it get that way? Let’s start from that Wild West setting…if racism isn’t a thing, then logically slavery wouldn’t have been. There wouldn’t have been a Civil War (or it would have gone very differently). Heck, the entire economic basis of the south would probably be dramatically different. Oh and would America even exist at all if not for the genocide against the native peoples? How far back do we go with this?

If you want to do alt-history, that’s cool. That’s what Savage Skies did. They picked a divergence point (something about “when dragons appeared” IIRC) and then wrote the history from that point forward to explain why their imaginary world is different from our real world. It’s a bunch more work, but it addresses the issue cleanly.

Less clean is “racism exists but we don’t want stories about it here” because of systemic discrimination. What about the laws of the land? What about PCs who have discrimination in their backstories? It gets thorny.

I’m not telling people how they should RP. I just wish people would stop ascribing evil motivations to those of us who just have a hard time imagining a historical setting as an egalitarian utopia.

@De-Villefort said in But Why:

I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.

There have been Star Wars MUs where people play members/supporters of the literal fascist Empire; Wild West games where people play racists, outlaws, and robber barons; supernatural games where people play vampires and werewolves; and modern-day games where, indeed, people play super-rich elites.

This fixation that fantasy settings are bad and other genres are good seems weirdly out of step with what people actually do in those other settings.

People point to the staff tools and FS3 design in Ares as like: “This enables folks to run games with fewer staff,” and while that’s true, it’s backwards. Ares and FS3 were designed the way they are because games, including my own, were having trouble finding and keeping staff.

I personally experienced too many cases of staff blowups or abandonment through the years, some of which harmed relationships with friends. So for the last decade or so, I run games myself. That means not only do I need tools to support that (see: Ares and FS3), I need game design to support that. So generally I stick to single-sphere, PVE, narrowly-focused games. ETA: Also with de-centralized storytelling like @L-B-Heuschkel described.

@doodletilidie Be aware that if you allow players under 18 you’re subjecting yourself to the COPAA laws. Additionally, you may be opening yourself up to liability if you allow R-rated content on a wiki that is geared towards 13-year-olds (per your NSFW policy) or by allowing mature RP at all without the players involved having any means to verify the age of the people they’re playing with. Big can of worms. Don’t recommend.

ETA: COPAA is specifically for under-13 but other regional laws may still apply for under-18s, especially European players. Still don’t recommend.

@Kestrel That’s very interesting. I only skimmed the thread, so maybe I missed something, but I wouldn’t consider their attitude “disdain” so much as a different emphasis.

We want people to be able to emote with each other while focusing on one thing at a time, not doing that awkward thing that plagues MUSHes where you end up addressing five people in a single emote and having five conversations at the same time.
…
What we’re trying to do here is provide an immersive atmosphere for a playstyle that resembles improv acting more than collaborative writing. It’s difficult and jarring to immersion when these two styles clash.

Much as I enjoy MU RP, they’ve got a valid point, don’t they? I’ve literally had 1-on-1 MU scenes where there are three different conversation threads going simultaneously between the same two characters. Traditional MU paragraph style resembles neither organic character interaction nor normal creative writing.

TGG, for instance, had shorter poses during action scenes by the necessity of the code. Storytelling still occurred within those constraints.

Like they said, these are styles. Neither intrinsically better or worse than the other, but each having pros and cons. At least they’re up front about it and setting expectations about what they’re going for.

@Pyrephox said in D&D Licensing Agreement:

I don’t begrudge Hasbro making money off of D&D. There’s a lot of the merchandising and expansion of the IP that I love. I know it’s only there because it’s profitable, but as long as it’s fun, it’s good. However, I don’t like the way this thing has been played…

That’s where I land. D&D is their product and they’re entitled to stop letting other people make money off it without getting a cut. But their terms are utterly ridiculous.

It would be like me saying that not only was AresMUSH no longer free, but if you use it you have to send me all your game’s wiki/css/etc. that I can use for whatever I want without paying you a cent. That’s just absurd.

Some players will roll with things - I love that. But I’ve had some players quit over what I considered natural (non character-ending) consequences of their PCs’ actions, and others throw gigantic fits over the smallest of setbacks.

PC death is my personal hot-button because it ends the story and makes you start over from scratch. That’s not fun for me, so I don’t play (or run) games like that.

@SpaceKhomeini said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

I usually operate under the assumption that the character I’m helming is largely an idiot and does idiot things that will result in idiotic self-owns.

Sometimes I forget that I haven’t communicated this loudly enough with everyone around me and they get kind of cagey when I do stupid shit IC.

The fact that this needs to be communicated at all is kind of emblematic of the core issue. Most players in my experience don’t want their character to come off looking bad (in their opinion) because they think it makes them look bad. There’s such an over-investment in IC success, glory, and coolness that if someone is actively trying to embrace natural consequences or have their character do something stupid, it’s looked upon with suspicion or disdain.

@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:

You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.

Many players enjoyed DarkMetal.

Many other players wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole because that style of gameplay holds no appeal to them.

TGG was a game with permadeath, trivially easy chargen, XP-based progression, stakes, drama, rotating “seasons” to keep things fresh, and the some of the most impressive immersive code systems I’ve ever seen. It still had a lot of player turnover. (and about 10 very passionate core players)

People want their actions and choices to matter. … It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.

This I agree with, but routinely killing your PCs off is not the only way to accomplish this. There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.

There is no one-size-fits-all game.

@Pavel said in pvp vs pvp:

It definitely feels like Faraday’s the actual MU historian and my brain is wandering through ruins of memories like Philomena Cunk.

Lol, I think we just played on a different cross-section of games. My early experiences were at both extremes, between SW games (better have your +blaster +equipped in case you get ambushed in the town square) and historical ones like Maddock (barely an admin or GM in sight). I didn’t start out anti-PVP, I became so through experience.

A few decades ago, we had more of a bell curve of gameplay styles among MUSH/MUX games.

TTRPG/often-PVP games on one end, full-consent on the other. One highly authoritative (through GMs or code), the other highly collaborative (at least until you hit a wall and someone picked up their toys and went home.)

Both extremes were (and probably still are) super popular among a subset of players, but had dramatic issues. TTRPG/PVP games became known for capricious behavior. Full-consent games often devolved like schoolkids playing cops and robbers. “I got you!” “Did not!” “Did so!”

So over time, we saw a shift toward the middle. Fewer headaches for staff, more agency for players to run their own plots (since GM staff became harder to come by), and a wider appeal to potential players (which became even more important as MU populations dwindled.)

That’s not to say you can’t make a successful game in the margins these days. I just don’t think the shift to the middle was random, or the result of PVP players going to video games or whatever. I think it was just collective experience into what kinds of games appealed broadly and weren’t nightmares to run.

@Jenn said in pvp vs pvp:

Could you expain how it’s possible to MUSH without collaborative storytelling because I’m super confused and not understanding what you mean.

There is no one true universal definition for what a MUSH is. For some it’s more TTRPG+some writing. For others it’s more storytelling with (maybe) some dice or cards or something. Different players and games fall at different points along that scale.

But even if we accept the supposition that collaborative writing is the core, how you collaborate is open for debate.

Think of an improv troupe. It’s more about going with the flow on the fly, not knowing detailed backstories and collaborating OOC about the details and stuff. I think that’s akin to an OOC Masq.

@Cygnus said in pvp vs pvp:

People tend to blow these things out of proportion – if there’s any PVP at all, diehard PVE players have a tendency to distort things and overstate how bad they really are. This happens in all games.

This has literally happened to many of us. Repeatedly. Please stop telling us that describing our actual lived experiences is “blowing things out of proportion”.

It’s like your argument about PVP video games. I’m glad that you’ve found at least one game or one guild with a non-toxic PVP community, but there is a very real and serious problem with toxic behavior in online multiplayer games, and it’s worse in competitive ones. Especially if you can be identified as a woman or other minority group. This problem is rampant, and many of us believe (backed by some research, though admittedly not enough, and basic human psychology) that it is a direct result of the core game design combined with inadequate moderation.

I’m not saying that all PVP games are doomed or that nobody should run one. I’m just saying that the “golden days” you’re yearning to go back to were literally miserable for many of us, and the drift away from them wasn’t a bug for us, but a feature.

@Cygnus said in pvp vs pvp:

It’s not that they don’t exist, but older gamers have PVP communities as well.

There are toxic older people too. My main point was not about age (my teen and their friends are quite decent little humans who are fun to play with) but just that going into an open lobby in many (most?) mainstream PVP games is opening yourself up to abuse. It’s pretty well-established that there’s a lot of toxicity in online multiplayer games, and it’s worse in some genres and settings.

@Cygnus said in pvp vs pvp:

PVP games are not filled with teenagers throwing slurs. That’s nonsense. There’s huge communities of PVP gamers that aren’t like this.

I have played several online PVP games with my teen. I can assure you that many of them, in fact, are like this. Obviously I cannot speak to every single one so YMMV.

@Cygnus said in pvp vs pvp:

PVP players went on to play PVP video games mostly because video games became a thing in the first place. I

And at the same time, PVE-inclined players went off to play solo or co-op video games. This is a red herring.

Literally nothing is stopping PVP-inclined individuals from running a PVP game. Seriously, you could make one tomorrow.

If your argument is that there’s some huge untapped mass of PVPers just waiting for a game, then it’ll be wildly successful. Maybe so successful that it spawns more.

I think it more likely that, at best, it’ll be a small niche game for a minority of players. But that’s still okay.

The only thing I take issue with is the argument that being anti-PVP is just some kind of unfounded bias. I have had nothing but negative experiences on PVP-MUs, going all the way back to my very first Star Wars game where some random guy shot my PC in the town square for no dang reason. I won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but that doesn’t mean nobody else should run one.

@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:

There’s so many benefits to PVP in a game that have been outlined which are generally ignored by game-runners based on personal preference – the reason they’re the only people making text-based MU*s is because the PVPers have been driven away from the hobby due to a rather vocal minority and lack of gameplay which they find engaging.

You talk about game-runners making games based on their personal preferences like it’s a bad thing. But people have always run games that they’re going to enjoy playing on.

I remember a time in MUSHing where there were a lot more PVP games. There became fewer and fewer not because of some arbitrary exodus, but because the people willing to run games became less willing to play on PVP games.

Why is that? You blame a vocal minority, I blame the extra toxicity and headaches involved in running a PVP game amongst internet strangers.

How much of that is accomplishable in Ares, I don’t know.

I mean, anything’s possible. But Evennia gives you a pile of LEGO bricks and says “build what you want and have fun”. Ares gives you a LEGO castle and says “here’s a castle already built for you, have fun.” If you want a spaceship, it’s far more sensible IMHO to take Evennia and build a spaceship than it is to try to turn Ares’ castle into a spaceship.

@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:

but Ares sadly does not offer the OOC masquerade that is necessary in PVP-type games

I disagree with your assertion that OOC masq is necessary for PVP games. (The TTRPG PVP games I’ve been in certainly did not require any such thing, and if we imagine the hypothetical mature playerbase you described, they wouldn’t need it either). Nevertheless, you are correct that Ares has OOC transparency baked in and it would take a lot of custom code to undo that. Rhost and Evennia would probably be a better bet.

@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:

There should be a place for mature players to throw dice at each other and still be friends afterwards.

One of the most fun TTRPG campaigns I was in involved a bunch of backstabbing (figurative and literal) amongst PCs. My reporter PC stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong, and ended up getting killed by my BFF’s PC. Good times!

The difference between that and MUSHing is that we were all friends.

You say there “should” be a place for mature players to throw dice and still be friends, but that presumes:

• You’ll be able to create a game with only mature players.
• They were even friendly in the first place.

Ample experience with MUSHes over several decades shows that getting either of these things (let alone both) on an open game is nigh-impossible. PVP games have all the same inter-personal drama as PVE games plus the drama inherent in players working against each other. That’s just objectively more drama, and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to deal with it.

The good news is, that with the cheapening of cloud computing and the advent of newer platforms like Evennia and Ares, it’s easier than ever to spin up your own game where you can PVP to your heart’s content.