@Raeras said in The Lost Realms Discussion:

@tighearna
Genuinely curious question. I’m not extremely familiar with Hobbit/LotR lore and I know it’s not D&D so

I can understand on some level why your policies say to keep romantic rp between the same species but is this primarily aimed at the physical aspect?

Or is this just across the board because it’s not thing at all in the lore? (Again, I can see other reasoning for wanting to keep things separated on the physical aspect)

This is the one at least a few people are going to deliberately flaunt in private scenes, guaranteed, lol.

It’s a problem created by the nature of a MU.

In a work of fiction, the protagonists, deuteragonists, and antagonists are, a lot of the time, people whose circumstances are somehow special. In settings in which things like cross-species reproduction is rare but possible, that’s an easy way of making a “special person”.

In a tabletop game or a small group, your characters are the protagonists of the story, so them being special is not a big deal; you can play a half-elf because, despite being vanishingly rare (which automatically makes you special) there’s a lot more control over who can and can’t be that specific version of special, as there are only about 3-6 protagonists.

MUs, unfortunately, break this by catering to a much, much larger playerbase. Suddenly, if one out of every five characters is a half-elf, then being a half-elf isn’t special because it ceases to be vanishingly rare.

Do I agree with this policy? Ehn, not really. I think once the characters hit the grid they should be able to fall in love and have the lives they choose (if they are rosters, they should probably be played by the same person for a long-enough period of time before they can do things like get pregnant or married or whatever, just to avoid people doing that and then bailing on the character).

This is especially true given that the game has a policy of one character per player, which means the pool wherein you can find someone to play a romantic storyline with is extremely limited. Even aiming high and saying that you’ve got 50 players, lets say you’re playing a Hobbit… but most people are playing Humans or Elves, there’s maybe at BEST another 9 Hobbits on the game. Let’s say your character is bisexual/biromantic, that’s 9 people – once you start eliminating through schedule, chemistry, RP preferences… yeah.

I personally would bend a little and let interspecies relationships just be more common, but that’s just my take. Clearly @tighearna has their own vision for their game, which is how it should be.

Wait, you all read the books?

@Artemis There’s a group of us that’s adapting DnD rules into a post Second Reckoning campaign. One friend is doing a small module to apply to Arx and I’m creating a longer campiagn that’ll probably take place five years after putting Azazel back into his box.

Will it be the same? Nah.

Will it be fun? Probably.

I have transferred the grid and theme stuff to Atharia on Ares and fiddled code (mostly my awesome coder did the fiddling when she had time).

CG has been tested and people can now make characters. How I am currently handling character stuff:

While I am in the middle of transferring characters from PennMUSH Atharia to Ares Atharia players who wish to transfer their character (even returning people), or new characters, can go beyond the limitations in CG. I am not restricting how much beyond the CG points limits people can go as long as they are being reasonable about it. Once people stop being reasonable, I will start restricting.

The character transfer process will be:

Roster characters Retired characters Active Characters who are not being done by a player.

Basically, if you want to reach for the stars in your CG stuff, as a returning, new, or current player, now is a good time. I am not concerned about people being overpowered as long as they make sure to let others shine.

The website: https://atharia.net

@Warma-Sheen said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

The problem is people.

It’s true. My code always works until people start touching it.

cheese log

Not quite the cheese log I was looking for, but eh, close enough.

@BeetPoet Stressful. Glad you were able to clear things up! I’d rather have a staff that bans than doesn’t.

@watno said in Pose Sizes:

@Rinel You didn’t thwack him with a cane or threaten to, so…not normal for you.

She had just talked to Orazio and was extremely tired, and it was a very rare thing for her to threaten violence in a temple. Even Tehom’s. I think she only did it once, and it was over an exceptionally big deal.

@Kestrel Yeah, I dunno. I get putting things out there right away, but I guess I can’t really wrap my head around the idea that an emphasis on writing detracts from the immediacy of the acting. If this was just a MUD, I likely wouldn’t blink, but the game doesn’t wholly feel like a MUD at glance. I just suppose that in a medium where everything is based upon text, the writing involved is what delivers a sense of immersion and delivers that emotional impact.

While yes, I’m not saying that the same can’t be done with a shorter form of writing, but I guess, something feels lost by what feels(to me, in my opinion)when that kind of rule or restriction is put into place. Maybe the word restriction is too harsh of a descriptor. Limiting, I guess.

And if were to really think about it, I think what bothers more is that there feels like there’s a press on having a quick turnaround in poses. I feel something like that would be more anxiety-inducing than whether or not your pose was too wordy

@Apos said in Arx Stats for Nerds:

1083 were hairpins

😄

I have one folder with all the notepad files of crafts I did, starting with the great weapons in late May 2016 and ending with a sword for Jasper three days before the game ended:

files

(Edited because Jasper not Jasher, though there was an axe for the latter in 2019 apparently)

@Third-Eye ![

Did the empire win?

stormtro

@Pavel Arx has gotten like 4 or 5 apps from chinese players that definitely did not speak english over the years, and I vaguely recall hearing of some large chinese language games using evennia.

A small earth grid has been added to the game and is accepting characters for those that want to play in a “modern” theme. Information on the Earth setting and theme can be found here: https://ascensionsojourns.com/wiki/index.php/Setting_-_Freistatt,_Minnesota

The Unity grid still available for play for those that want a more challenging rp experience.

Hey all. we appreciate all the feedback we got on this thread and the interest expressed by folks. We’ve been refining the game and building our initial content, and while we are anticipating announcing a soft open within the week on the Advertising thread, we are looking to get a few people who would be interested in coming in before then to look over and offer some feedback.

If you’d be interested, shoot me a PM and I’ll give you the address. We’re looking to get some thoughts on specific mechanics and systems, as well as overall feedback on the game itself.

As a thank you for early interest and offer feedback, you’d get a bit of an earlier crack at a character. We’ll be adding roster of characters shortly, but for now you could choose to create one of the soon-to-be rosters or create your own concept. We also support OCs, if that is more of your interest.

PM me if interested.

Otherwise, look for our real ad to come out probably Thursday or Friday (unless the feedback is all catastrophic, haha!)

Thanks!

@Testament said in Plagiarism:

@Rathenhope

431129ad-d5fa-42c9-8598-5dd2111d1d73-image.png

Clearly you haven’t seen my Grindr matches.

@mietze said in Investing Yourself into your MU* Chars:

I don’t care how well you write. If you harm people or treat them like shit, I have no interest.

Abusive behavior should never be tolerated.

That said, I’ve met plenty of RPers through the years who were perfectly nice people, but their RP was just boring because they didn’t know how to write. I’m not talking about spelling and punctuation; I’m talking about the art of making a compelling character and writing an interesting story.

MU RP exists at a crossroads between writing, improv, and gaming. Different games and/or players may value these things to different degrees, but they’re all essential IMHO. (and as with any activity involving other humans, basic social skills matter too)

Two things I want to comment on - players making the ‘wrong’ choice ICly (when they know what the right choice should be OOCly) and incorporating player choices into the story.

There’s a LARP principle that we talk about at the start of every game during our opening workshops that I see a lot of MUSH players take to heart, which is don’t be afraid to make good mistakes - if you are faced with a choice, sometimes making the choice you know is the wrong choice OOCly leads to more fun RP than if you were to make the right choice ICly.

I think if you come from a perspective where winning = the thing, then yes, not being able to do what you want when you want it can be frustrating. If you come from a perspective where the journey = the thing, then sometimes it doesn’t matter.

I have a very firm storytelling principle when I run a scene or a plot which is that if a player comes up with a clever move that I didn’t anticipate, I don’t no sell it. Even if it undoes the entire plot, and shifts to an entirely different resolution. Because ultimately, the players are not the NPCs in a story that I am writing, they are the PLAYERS and I am putting up a scenario for them. Even if it means that somehow the really cool dragon I was looking forward to them fighting never shows its face because they find a way to defeat the big bad WITHOUT having to get the MacGuffin hiding in the dragon’s hoard, well, good on them.

I can always find a way to use that dragon later, right?

I was holiday-ing, but it looks like the wonderful Terminus has replaced the stolen writing with a placeholder in my absence.

To confirm, this is an OC, and the character has yet to be submitted for approval or anything, but if this desc makes its way back, even with tweaks, the app will be declined with explanation.

If you’d like, @Roz, I can forward this player your rates for autographs 🙂

I was thinking about this earlier today (literal shower thoughts), or a little bit in parallel. About what characterized the games I’ve felt the most success on. Disregarding basic things like “I need there to be people around to RP with whose RP styles and schedules generally mesh with mine” and “I need staff to not be creepers and not allow creepers” – those will go without saying. But I realized that one of the biggest things for me in the DNA of a game is:

A sense of discovery.

This is achieved on a small scale with just characters getting to know each other, because that’s two people on a lifelong discovery of new details about each other. But what really thrills my brain is when there are mysteries and unknowns to the world on some level, and part of playing on that particular game is figuring out more about those.