@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 AI Megathread:

@Third-Eye Agreed. I recall reading somewhere that an AI program could detect the very, very, very early stages of some kinds of cancers far more quickly and consistently than a human. That’s the sort of thing AI should be used for, not art.

There is research like that in the medical spaces, but that’s not the GenAI that this thread is complaining about. Those are specialized machine learning algorithms. “AI” is such an overbroad term, it’s like saying “the internet” and encompassing everything from 4chan to AP News.

@Third-Eye said in AI Megathread:

That’s not driving advertising dollars and making anyone’s money. ChatGPT does…somehow…

Actually, ChatGPT and most of the other GenAI platforms are a huge money pit. Ed Zitron writes about this a lot (example). The investors keep buying the hype that it’ll do a vague something revolutionary someday.

@Raistlin said in AI Megathread:

There’s a world of difference between “I prefer not to RP with people who use AI tools” and attacking others as “disrespectful” or their writing as “bullshit.”

I don’t personally feel that calling a behavior “disrespectful” is a personal attack. I feel that online piracy is disrespectful to creators. I push back against those who feel that it’s a “victimless crime”. That doesn’t mean I think everyone who pirated GoT rather than pay for HBO is evil incarnate.

In other news, ChatGPT fails hilariously at MapMaking 101.

@Jennkryst said in Best Games with Roster Characters?:

How well, if at all, does this handle the fancy dice?

The RPG plugin only handles numerical dice using a syntax of “5d6” or “3d4” or whatnot. You have to manually figure out what to do with the numbers - add them, count successes, figure out the difficulty, etc.

As Raistlin said, you could use custom code to make it roll whatever you wanted, you’d just have to figure out the syntax.

Ares also has a partial FFG Plugin based around the Genesys system. I don’t know how well it would adapt to L5R but you could probably at least steal some of the dice code.

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

But a LLM itself is still ill-suited for such a task. And when we understand why, we can start to understand why it’s also ill-suited for giving other accurate information.

Sorry for double post, but wanted to add:

When we understand why it’s bad at giving accurate information, then we have to ask: So what IS it good for? And apart from a few niche word-parsing and pattern-matching tasks, the only answer I’ve seen is: replace the humans who generate content (artists, authors, customer support agents, narrators, etc.) with a machine that generates worse content. And that core idea is fundamentally the problem I have with GenAI.

@Roz said in AI Megathread:

If you program a calculator, you instruct it on immutable facts of how numbers work.

I mean… kinda? A calculator app doesn’t really know math facts the way a third grader does. It doesn’t intuitively know that 1x1=2. It just responds to keypresses, turns them into bits, and shuffles the bits around in a prescribed manner to get an answer.

I don’t point that out to be pedantic, but just to further contrast it with the way a LLM handles “what is 1+1”. Like you said, it’s based on statistical associations. It may conclude that 1+1=2 because that’s most common, but it could just as easily land on 1+1=3 because that’s a common joke on the internet. LLMs contain deliberate randomization to keep the outputs from being too repetitive. This is the exact opposite of the behavior you want in a calculator or fact-finder. And if you ask it some uncommon question, like 62.7x52.841, you’ll just get nonsense.

Now sure, some GenAI apps have put some scaffolding around their LLMs to specifically handle math problems. But a LLM itself is still ill-suited for such a task. And when we understand why, we can start to understand why it’s also ill-suited for giving other accurate information.

@Jynxbox said in AI Megathread:

But okay. Rant done. Get on your computer and tell me on the internet how AI is so problematic you won’t use it.

I can. I did in previous posts, but I’ll recap briefly: There is a benefit/harm ratio to every invention mankind has ever made.
Harnessing fire can bring warmth, but it can also destroy. Splitting the atom can power a nuclear power plant or wreck untold destruction. The internet contains filth, but it also powers information, education, and human connections.

We have to gauge tools based on how they are used. GenAI, by my estimation, brings tremendous harm and next to zero actual good. Every use case I’ve seen - from customer service chatbots to research - is terrible compared to the human counterparts it’s driving out of business.

We also, traditionally, have gauged tools based on their legality. Napster brought free music to millions. Some saw that as a good thing, but it was illegal, and it was stopped. The GenAI industry is committing copyright infringement on a scale that would make Napster blush.

There are many people who boycott Amazon, social media, or whatever based on the harms they perceive. There are environmentalists who would scold me for the plastic soda bottles I use. We’re all allowed to pick our battles. Fighting GenAI is one of mine.

@Roz

“They’re designed to produce statistically probable sentences.”

Exactly. Sometimes what is statistically probable is also correct: “What is the capital of France?” will most likely correctly tell you “Paris” because Paris has a high statistical association with “capital of France”.

But this methodology is inherently unreliable for giving facts. A LLM might confidently assert that George Washington cut down a cherry tree, just because there’s a common association between Washington and that story, even though historians largely believe it’s a myth. Elon Musk associated with Teslas + Teslas associated with car crashes + Elon Musk associated with a car crash leads to a LLM erroneously asserting that Elon Musk died in a fatal Tesla crash. Sure, it’s a statistically probable sentence, but it’s just not true. The LLM doesn’t know whether something is true, and it doesn’t care.

@Warma-Sheen said in The 3-Month Players:

If the RP means something to one of the characters or the plot, then it is Social RP rather than just BarRP. And what is BarRP to you might be Social RP for another player, or even Plot RP and you might not even know it.

This exactly. Through the years, I can’t count how many of my RP connections started with BarRP. These people went on to be the besties, significant others, rivals, and in one case adopted child of my various PCs. Those connections wouldn’t have happened without BarRP, and led to a lot of great Social RP and even Plots. Personally if ALL I had to do was BarRP I’d quit, but it still serves a useful purpose.

@Hobbie I love that one.

Friend quoted me this recently:

"It’s like ChatGPT has read everything on the internet, and kind of vaguely remembers some of it and is willing to make up the rest.”

There are so many documented instances of LLMs making up nonsense. Citing books that don’t exist. Making up fake lawsuit citations. Misrepresenting articles written by journalists. Making up fake biographical details. The code it spits out is often garbage (or, worse, wrong in subtle ways). And that’s not even touching on all the random stupidity where it tells people to use glue in their pizza or incorporate poison into their recipes.

The whole GenAI industry is most likely just a big bubble built on a con.

@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:

WWIII with Aliens and Zombies is plot, sure, but so is Gilmore Girls, and the latter would generally be considered social RP.

There are gray areas, sure, but in most dramas (like GG) some storylines are given more prominence and feel more like Plot than others. It doesn’t have to be action-packed, just impactful.

As an example - in the pilot episode from ER, some of the major plotlines are a building collapse, a new medical student’s first day, and a doctor deciding whether to leave the ER for a quieter specialty. Those I would call Plot. In-between are various scenes that don’t affect the overall story but promote character development, like one doctor turning up drunk and sleeping it off in an exam room. Those feel more like Social RP.

TV shows and novels don’t tend to have much (if any) BarRP, because they don’t have time to waste on random meetings between strangers or small talk that serves no other narrative purpose. But MUs generally aren’t as heavily plotted as those other mediums. People don’t meet because the plot demands it, they meet because they happen to be on at the same time and decide to have a scene.

ETA: I’m not claiming that these definitions are an infallible or universal classification scheme or anything. They’re just useful for me in terms of evaluating what kinds of RP I enjoy, and what’s going on in a game.

@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:

The question I would have is: why are you turning the lights out?

Games end for all kinds of reason. Burnout, goals being met, RL disruptions, running out of story ideas, and yes - to your point - losing enough critical mass of RP to the point where people stop showing up.