The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.

EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.

@Pacha said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.

The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.

That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.

I have two problems with that. The first is that it doesn’t allow for relationships and situations to develop organically. Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.” They always seem to start in media res. And when they do start as “our characters come across each other,” things feel stilted. You’re in a scene with this other person and you have a very specific direction this scene is supposed to go in, “developing some sort of relationship so future scenes can be had with them.” There is no chance that if things seem to be going sideways in the characters’ interactions that you can pose out or ideally shift more of the interactions to other person’s present.

The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance. You’re not going to have the scene interrupted by someone barging in unannounced and taking the scene into an unexpected direction. This can be a good thing as maybe those already in the scene aren’t up for a detour and shenanigans, but some of my favorite scenes came about because of such incursions.

Also, I am a weirdo who likes BarP.

This may have already been brought up, but I’m too lazy to scroll up and see.

A setting in the X-Files, Delta Green, SCP, Control, Triangle Agency, etc. vein. You could even include World of Darkness stuff, but the setting would mostly from the viewpoints of a government agency of “Hunters” and the occasional Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, whatever that decided to work with the agency. The server is mostly PVE as PCs work together on missions they take, but the server could also can go the Paranoia TTRPG route by having some NPCs and PCs belong to secret societies, have ulterior motives, be given contrary secret missions from the Directorate, etc. to keep people a little uneasy and wary. Operations could be investigations into weird shit, neutralization of weird shit (more tactics and combat oriented), covert ops (cause weird shit to happen so we get a funding increase), etc.

@KarmaBum Eh. I know how it is. You can run an event every hour, 24 hours a day, and some people will still only do BarP for all their interactions while complaining that there is nothing to do.

I demand to be allowed to write in Ralph Nader as my vote.

@catzilla That’s clever and a good use of AI for MU* purposes.

Honestly, I am coming more and more around to the idea that all PBs should be custom created art and/or AI generated images. The use of images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes has been making me more and more uncomfortable over the years.

@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

At that point it’s not harassment, it’s just the other person being annoying by not taking the hint. And my dudes, dropping a hint is not clear communication. It’s deliberately vague communication, which is hard enough in person when there’s also body language and facial expressions and tone to pick up on. Text has none of those things. Don’t drop hints, cross your fingers, touch your toes, and hope the other person clues in to what you’re (not) saying. Say what you mean. You can be nice about it! But say what you mean. The internet is not going to burn to the ground if you tell someone “Oh! Thanks for the offer, but I’m not really up for that.” or even just “No, thank you.” the way we were all taught when we were, like, five.

Yes! Exactly!

You dropping what would be a very clear hint to anyone else that you aren’t enjoying our interactions:

Me who is terrible at social interactions:

I have hesitated to post anything in this thread, because I very much do not appreciate being drafted into the role of OP for this particular topic. Anyways…

@ProperPenguin said in AI PBs:

Hi, tech writer here.

I am job hunting (as I left a toxic work environment right before the AI obsession began in corporations). I have been job hunting.

The work disappeared for a good while. And reports from people who weren’t laid off basically came down to them being piled on so high with work they couldn’t manage. One person even reported that her coworkers had nicknamed her AI. ‘Send it to AI.’
Which was hugely demoralizing (understandably) to her.

I know a developer who runs a team: he was made to lay off his tech writer and told ‘just use AI.’ Except he’s in the financial sector. They cannot use it (for security, accuracy, etc.) and when he pointed it out, was told ‘it’s just writing, do it yourself.’

And this is the core issue, the lack of appreciation and respect to a profession from other professionals and industries. “Anyone can write. Anyone can draw. Anyone can take a photograph. Anyone can shoot film. Anyone can work an assembly line.” No, anyone can’t, and no a robot cannot give you as good a quality, yet. If you need specialized, expert, professional work done, you need to pay for a specialist, expert, and professional.

I like AI for hobbyists, people who don’t have the cash or the level of personal investment into whatever hobby it is to pay for a professional. “I want a PB that isn’t a photograph of a real person, I don’t have any artistic talent at all, and I don’t want to pay $150 for an image I am going to slap on a wiki and never really think about again.” “I need a desc, but I hate writing them. I’ll just have an AI write one over and over until I get one I like.”

And I am now going to exit the thread again. Have fun, y’all.

The snack of all gaming champions, both tabletop and video: Cheetos. With a Mountain Dew to drink, because it compliments my X-TREME hobby that involves sitting at a table and/or computer for hours at a time.

@Jenn said in Empire Discussion Thread:

No, you’re not supposed to SEND logs, because the mechanic is there that will track them. Since I don’t see them tracked, can you tell me more about why this NPC should give you their ENTIRE pile of resources, and what RP has supported such a major ask being made, much less granted.

To me, if I have to proactively document something to get staff to act, that is me sending something to staff. Whether that’s emailing a copy of a log, asking staff to be present in the scene to witness it, having other PCs in the scene reach out to staff to confirm that X, Y, and Z happened in the scene, mailing it priority next day certified mail to staff, paying a pilot to skywrite it over staff’s house, hiring a process server to have it served as a summons for court, or typing +logthisscene at the start of a scene, I have had to provide staff something as part of my request. So, if I, a dumb player who doesn’t know the ins and outs of the server or even that a +logthisscene command exists, ask staff if I need to provide/send/submit/present/proffer/tender/offer/point to/any other synonym an item and that staff must review said item before they will do the thing I have requested they do, the answer to my question is always emphatically “yes.”

What Ada should have written in response to the question was some variation of “We require evidence of roleplay that makes progress towards accomplishing the thing that has been requested. We do not require that logs be sent to us, as we have the +logthisscene command that will log the scene and we will be able to refer to it. However, if you did not use the command, we will need logs or some other means of proving that roleplay has occurred moving this item forward.” Because their response is unclear and confusing to me and apparently a few other people in this thread. I went down the same path as Warma Sheen and also would have been incredibly pissed at this reaction from staff, because they couldn’t be clear in their communications.

@Pacha said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.

The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.

That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.

I have two problems with that. The first is that it doesn’t allow for relationships and situations to develop organically. Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.” They always seem to start in media res. And when they do start as “our characters come across each other,” things feel stilted. You’re in a scene with this other person and you have a very specific direction this scene is supposed to go in, “developing some sort of relationship so future scenes can be had with them.” There is no chance that if things seem to be going sideways in the characters’ interactions that you can pose out or ideally shift more of the interactions to other person’s present.

The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance. You’re not going to have the scene interrupted by someone barging in unannounced and taking the scene into an unexpected direction. This can be a good thing as maybe those already in the scene aren’t up for a detour and shenanigans, but some of my favorite scenes came about because of such incursions.

Also, I am a weirdo who likes BarP.

If I am MUing, as in everyone is controlling one character in a scene, it needs to be live. I cannot do async in such a framework. I lose emotional connection to the scene and interest. After the second day, I lose complete interest and have already moved on.

If I am doing novella stuff, which I call collaborative writing and I haven’t done in decades because I’m picky and it has an even smaller population than MUs do, it HAS to be async. Someone (I’m not scrolling up to see who) was poo-poo-ing on this style, suggesting that such a framework focuses on the writing aspect at the expense of collaboration. That is incorrect. I would actually argue that MU*ing is much less collaborative as everyone in a scene tends to be looking out for number one with number one being their character. It’s a different mindset.

You don’t consider one character in the scene just yours. All of the characters are yours and all the other participants’ to work with to craft a good story. What you control is a portion of the scene not a character. It’s like improv with a lot of “Yes, and…” The other writers become partners and you have to work with what they give you and they in turn have to work with what you give them to craft an interesting fiction.

The focus is on having a good scene that, if an uninvolved person read, they would go “Damn, that’s a good bit of writing and a good story.” If this were in person, it would be less D&D and more story-game, like Microscope, City of Winter, and Fall of Magic, with something like a talking stick that gets passed around the table with the person having the stick getting to come with whatever they want but the other players have some form of veto power. Also there tends to be way more OOC discussion, figuring out where everyone wants the scene to go, what they want accomplished with which characters etc. Also also, it leads to people being more willing to have bad things happen to the characters, since there is less personal investment in a particular character. A character is just one of many that you use to write a story. I have argued that MU*s should adopt this style more but everyone tends to react to it like I’m suggesting we sacrifice infants to the Elder Gods, so whatever.

I have closed down four games and dwindled but never left until it closed on one game. Either I stick it out, even if just occasionally popping on until the end, or I leave within 3 months of joining.

I am still of the opinion that players identify too closely with their characters in MU*s for most people to be divorced from feeling bad when bad things happen to them. I think exploring other story game designs, such as Everyone is John Dread, Microscope, Band of Blades, The Quiet Year, The Fall of Magic, Swords Without Master etc.

@Clarion said in AI In Poses:

They just absolutely are not trustable, and I think human intuition of “wait, this writing feels wordy and bland and disconnected from what’s actually happening in the scene” is both more accurate and more useful right now, because if a person isn’t using AI but does sound wordy and bland and disconnected from the scene, that’s still worth checking in about.

Wordy, bland, and disconnected? Shit. Now I’m starting to think that they trained the AI on my poses.

@MisterBoring said in Prove Tez Wrong:

Tangentially, it strikes me that Blood on the Clocktower could easily be hosted using a MU codebase.

Before BotC was a thing, I thought about running a short-run server about a town fending off secret baddies, such as werewolves, witches, a cult, etc. However, the RPI server, the Inquisition, was a thing and I figured that niche was likely well covered

I also think murder mystery/whodunit would work as a short-run server too.

It’s also good advice for Blood on the Clocktower.

@Pavel

Touché

@Pavel said in Prove Tez Wrong:

@Ominous Of course not, she never uses three words when a grunt and a withering look would do instead.

@Yam said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

Do we ever learn anything? Ever?

Yes. I learned that a few people are actually interested in a ridiculous 3-month server surrounding the antics nobles trying to get chosen as a spouse to a head of state to be.

@Pavel said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

@Ominous I think there was a guy who was quite successfully roleplaying as a… I wanna say washing machine? Something like that.

I will say this of Shang. It may be the Mos Eisley of the MU* world, but I have encountered and heard of some the most creative RP there.

I’ve also encountered some of the worst. The place tends to house the extremes.