Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG

[Third Eye]

@Jumpscare
How simple is it OOCly to get back to your character’s safe place (their home, whatever) if you need to log off (it’s late, RL demands mean lack of ability for immediate screen attention, whatever)? I understand there’s not really fast-travel commands but this is a somewhat uninformed piece of information (like, can you ‘home’ or the equivalent)?

[Coin]

@Jumpscare said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

Also, I could find no reference to an OOC command in the files. Did I miss it?

Yes, sorry, it’s PAUSE. You can pause your game at any time and your character gets put into a metaphorical bubble so you can go do RL stuff as desired.

If there is a PAUSE command, could it not automatically get set if you disconnect? I’m just thinking about using an existing system to solve one of the other concerns.

[Pyrephox]

@Third-Eye said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Jumpscare
How simple is it OOCly to get back to your character’s safe place (their home, whatever) if you need to log off (it’s late, RL demands mean lack of ability for immediate screen attention, whatever)? I understand there’s not really fast-travel commands but this is a somewhat uninformed piece of information (like, can you ‘home’ or the equivalent)?

Everyone gets issued a free room at an IC hotel once they get out of chargen. It’s an entirely safe place, and getting back to it hasn’t been difficult thus far. I gather that once you start doing something to earn money, there are other places around town you can rent. Those may be more difficult to remember/return to.

I do really wish for OOC chatter channels, and ways to page/find people that are OOC, like +where and the like. The wind thing is cool as flavor, but not really intuitive as to finding a specific scene, and also it just feels a little…isolated and lonely. I like the atmosphere of the town, and poking around exploring things. The code is really interesting, and I love the way each step takes you to a separate screen so you’re not doing the +thing/switch/switch/short text=long text process all the time. This is MUCH more intuitive, and it’d be great if it caught on elsewhere. Kudos for the coding.

As far as an immersive horror game, there have definitely been some creepy moments, but I’ve only played briefly so can’t say much. I miss the OOC tools that I’m accustomed to, but I’m willing to give it some time to see how I adapt.

[Jumpscare]

@Third-Eye said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

How simple is it OOCly to get back to your character’s safe place (their home, whatever) if you need to log off (it’s late, RL demands mean lack of ability for immediate screen attention, whatever)? I understand there’s not really fast-travel commands but this is a somewhat uninformed piece of information (like, can you ‘home’ or the equivalent)?

The town is small. I think the absolute farthest place on the grid from your character’s hotel room is about 11 rooms away.

If you don’t know how to get back there, asking almost any NPC “Where’s the hotel?” will prompt them to tell you how to get there from your current room.

@Coin said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

If there is a PAUSE command, could it not automatically get set if you disconnect? I’m just thinking about using an existing system to solve one of the other concerns.

That’s a great idea! I’ll make sure to add it soon. Thanks!

[STD]

@Jumpscare said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

Hi there! Thanks for your questions.

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

I want players to RP with others for a while before introducing potentially sensitive moments into their RP. In other words, if you really want to do more than one kind of possibly triggering activity with someone (or the same activity with multiple people), I only ask that you’ve RP’d with them for more than one day.

This seems more like something that should be solved with just a policy rather than code. That’s why this is so confusing to me. The whole point for the consent system is to provide information on what others are comfortable with. Limiting its use is counterproductive to that and MAY result in exactly the problem you’re trying to prevent happening accidentally (since people can only check ONE thing per day).

It’d be better, I think, to just have a player’s consent rules easily accessible all the time and just have a policy in place that says, ‘Please don’t do anything squicky with someone unless you’ve already RPed with them for over a day.’

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

So the concept of Abstraction Land exists anyway.

I’m not sure what you mean by Abstraction Land, but here are a few example.

It’s called different things. Offstage, In Pocket, Abstraction Land, Backgrounded. Basically, when a character isn’t available, they are considered just ‘around’ in some nebulous, non interactable way.

Suppose your character falls unconscious due to jumping off of an unsafe height. Someone else can grab your character and bring them to a doctor character to be treated.

But someone unconscious would still be online, correct? You’re not forcibly kicked off the MU* if the character becomes unconscious, I’d assume?

Or, suppose your character decides to fall asleep out on the streets. Another character can grab your character and take them to safety. Very, very little can actually happen to your character while asleep, but the theme is a dangerous town, so getting someplace safe before going to sleep is in-theme. It’s not something commonplace in other games.

I suppose what I don’t get is why the character’s state is linked to whether the player is online? A player might not be around a while, but the character can be assumed to be doing stuff in the background. I don’t see why there’s this hard link between connection and character state.

It is very different from other games, so it might just be that I don’t and will never get it. I’m old.

If you have to go and can’t move to a safe room, send a message using the GM command and I’ll be able to move your character for you.

So there isn’t an equivalent of a HOME command, either? Or an easy means to teleporting to scenes?

Yes, sorry, it’s PAUSE. You can pause your game at any time and your character gets put into a metaphorical bubble so you can go do RL stuff as desired.

Okay, that’s good. What about OOC communication? Someone else mentioned there’s a channel that is accessible on the game.

[Faraday]

@Jumpscare said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

If you have to go and can’t move to a safe room, send a message using the GM command and I’ll be able to move your character for you.

Sometimes people have to log off suddenly and don’t necessarily have time to type a command first. Or they just lose connection. Power goes out, cat turns off the computer, who even knows. Kinda sucks if you get disconnected and log back in all messed up.

[Pavel]

I think we’re all coming at this with a more ‘traditional’ MUSH mindset, when this seems (at least to me) more of a role-play-intensive MUD kind of environ, at least as it’s presented. So our cultural mores and expectations might be off.

[Jumpscare]

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:
It’d be better, I think, to just have a player’s consent rules easily accessible all the time and just have a policy in place that says, ‘Please don’t do anything squicky with someone unless you’ve already RPed with them for over a day.’

I’d like to give this a week or so. If the core playerbase would prefer it be open and accessible in the manner you describe, I’ll be happy to open it up further.

There’s actually a metric in the backend that counts how much you’ve RP’d with each other character, so I might even be able to set it to a certain limit of interaction.

Thanks for the feedback on this one!

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:
I suppose what I don’t get is why the character’s state is linked to whether the player is online? A player might not be around a while, but the character can be assumed to be doing stuff in the background. I don’t see why there’s this hard link between connection and character state.

Ah, I understand now! Yes, when someone logs off, their character object remains on the grid as a sleeping object. This was an intentional divergence on my part from how other games handle things. I could have made character objects disappear from the grid when they log off, but in support of the horror aesthetic, I made the choice that getting back to a safe spot is a part of core gameplay.

If you need to go immediately, that’s fine, just PAUSE.

If you get disconnected, that’s fine too. I’ll add it so that you get auto-paused during disconnection.

If you want to intentionally have your character sleep out on the streets, you can do that and see where your character wakes up.

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:
So there isn’t an equivalent of a HOME command, either? Or an easy means to teleporting to scenes?

That’s correct, there isn’t. I’m sure this will turn some people off, but I hope it helps convey the horror aesthetic of being in a spooky small town.

@STD said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:
Okay, that’s good. What about OOC communication? Someone else mentioned there’s a channel that is accessible on the game.

Yes, the GAME command lets you chat on the game help channel to ask and answer questions. You can also use the OOC command to chat locally, and you can type GM to communicate privately with staff (which is just me right now). I encourage use of these!

I chose to move the general OOC chatter to Discord to make a clear delineation between IC and OOC. I’ve seen games that blur the lines with this. So considering the theme of the game, I felt it was a good idea.

Thanks again! I’m always open to considering changes.

I think the best way to get an idea for whether or not the game is a good fit is to play through the chargen experience. If you get to your hotel room and you’re craving more, then you’ll probably enjoy it in Silent Heaven.

Otherwise, thanks for giving it a try!

[Jumpscare]

@Faraday said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Jumpscare said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

If you have to go and can’t move to a safe room, send a message using the GM command and I’ll be able to move your character for you.

Sometimes people have to log off suddenly and don’t necessarily have time to type a command first. Or they just lose connection. Power goes out, cat turns off the computer, who even knows. Kinda sucks if you get disconnected and log back in all messed up.

That can’t happen. I’m sorry if I misspoke and it came off that way, but your character can’t suffer any harm when disconnected.

@Pavel said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

I think we’re all coming at this with a more ‘traditional’ MUSH mindset, when this seems (at least to me) more of a role-play-intensive MUD kind of environ, at least as it’s presented. So our cultural mores and expectations might be off.

There’s inspiration from both worlds, and I would call it a hybrid of the two.

As the front page says:

RPI-lite: MUSH-style RP + coded support for supplementary skills.

[NotSanni]

@Pavel said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

I think we’re all coming at this with a more ‘traditional’ MUSH mindset, when this seems (at least to me) more of a role-play-intensive MUD kind of environ, at least as it’s presented. So our cultural mores and expectations might be off.

My first impressions (having gone through Char-Gen/Tutorial, both of which are very good and like Jumpscare said probably very good indicators as to whether or not Silent Heaven will be a good fit for someone) is that it sits somewhere between RPI and MUSH (maybe more of a MOO, idk, all of the labels get a bit weird and sometimes I think the MU community relies on them too heavily).

It’s live, real time RP, with some crunch, but progression isn’t gated behind repetitive skill-based activities the way it generally would be in the RPIs and RP-enforced MUDs I’ve played in the past. I think the front page of the website says “RPI-Lite” and I think that’s a good way to put it.

My gut feel from wandering the grid a bit and reading helpfiles/interacting with the code a bit is that the systems Jumpscare has in place do a great job of telegraphing the theme and setting of the game.

[STD]

@Jumpscare

Thanks again for your responses! I really do appreciate it.

Sadly, after much hemming and hawing, I don’t think the place is for me. The lack of OOC tools to facilitate RP just is too big a hurdle for me to surmount. I don’t have much time these days, so wandering around a grid in desperate search for RP is just not something I have the patience for any more. I’ve really been spoiled by Ares.

Which really sucks, because I LOVE Silent Hill and the theme and setting of Silent Heaven sounds great!

Regardless, I wish you luck in your endeavor! Have fun!

[Jumpscare]

@STD
While I will say that I made a suite of IC tools to assist in finding RP, I completely understand that that’s a dealbreaker for you.

Thank you too! You helped give me some excellent blueprints for improvements.

[somasatori]

@NotSanni said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

It’s live, real time RP, with some crunch, but progression isn’t gated behind repetitive skill-based activities the way it generally would be in the RPIs and RP-enforced MUDs I’ve played in the past. I think the front page of the website says “RPI-Lite” and I think that’s a good way to put it.

It reminds me a lot of the RPI MUDs I played before I was introduced to MUX/MUSH. Towers of Jadri springs to mind, as there’s a big plot, strong theme, and crunchy commands. I like it a lot so far. I will say that I’m very unused to RPI MUD culture these days so I feel like my long MU* poses are a bit out of place (probably just me), but I’m getting used to it. So far it’s been a nice way to ease back into the hobby.

[Testament]

While I will say that I do wish there was more OOC tools to facilitate communication, it’s not what I could call a dealbreaker for me, however in my mind, I think it creates more of a hinderance. That said, I do I understand that this is a me issue. I like having readily accessible WHO and WHERE lists. I like having traditional page system. Call it old comfort or simply something that I’m used to. I don’t deny that this might just be a situation where it’s something drastically new and I’m not used to it, IC justifications and reasons aside.

If I have any real gripe, it’s the lag between moving through rooms. I understand that raising certain skills mitigate that, but man, I’ll admit that it’s the one thing that just annoys me.

Reminds me that I haven’t seen lag times between moving room to room in over a decade. I think the last time I remember talking about it is when I had friend who played on this fantasy mush(cira 2007 or so? Called Chia-something. It was a fantasy game)that had like ten minute ‘travel’ times between rooms or something crazy like that. Never played the game, but I can recall that being a huge reason why I never stepped foot on it when I asked my friend about it.

[ten]

take my two bits with margarita salt, as the only other MU* I’ve ever played was Evennia-based.

it gives me text-based 1980’s video game vibes so far –

no complaints, still stumble-fumbling through and enjoying it.

[mietze]

@moth right there with ya. it’s been interesting brain exercise to turn off my mushing instincts/expectations. I’ve never tried RPIs or muds at all, though when I was a kid I did try to play ZORK a few times on the C64. This is a lot more involved than that. I’m not sure if I will stick with it long term (and I get confused/turned around easily) but it’s been fun to play around with.

[mietze]

updated: unfortunately I’m also kinda not smart about these things and now i realize I should have done a few different things (not icly but oocly). To the point that maybe I think I should start over, but it also seems kind of silly to do it so early. It really is a way different brainspace, but I think my brain is starting to understand more.

[Jumpscare]

@mietze
If you’d like me to make any changes for you, such as change your character’s name, or resetting your XP so you can reroll, I’m happy to do so!

I’m DM friendly, so if you have any questions, requests, or concerns you’re not comfortable with sharing publicly, please feel free to reach out.

[DrQuinn]

The sudden disconnection thing making it so people can harvest your organs and have a scene around your PC that you don’t know about is going to be a dealbreaker for me. Last night I was trying out some commands in the hotel room when I suddenly got disconnected (my network dropped due to a storm). I didn’t think anything of it since I’d been in the hotel room so was “safe” and didn’t connect again until hours later.

Where I found myself in a dump site. I contacted staff, who were very helpful and positive, and looked at logs to see what happened and assured me not to worry because there’s very few bad things that can happen and they’re rare.

Turns out that one of the commands I was playing with before I was disconnected started with a ‘d’ and since it wasn’t a real command (it was a skill name) the game interpreted it as separate letters, one of which was “down” and it dropped me in the hotel lobby. But because of the delay in movement, I had disconnected before I had seen that I’d moved and mistakenly assumed I was still in the hotel room.

I asked if waking up in the dump site was why I had a dark aura and staff said oh, no, that means the bad thing happened. Someone had harvested an organ and now had a trophy of me somewhere. The upside being that I now had a RP hook to find who did it. This made me uncomfortable and I said as much and they offered to retcon it since not being in the hotel room had clearly been a mistake. At the time I said no, I’d roll with it, then this morning I was given more information from another PC.

Apparently other PCs witnessed my body being brought in and dumped, then someone started to go through the pockets of all the sleeping PCs there and a couple PCs tried to stop them, but due to the lack of commands to actually do that to other people, let them get away.

It makes me even more uncomfortable to know that while I am disconnected and cannot consent to things people can pose doing basically whatever they want to my PC and honestly I’d never know unless a friend also happened to be in the room. Especially since I had taken care (or so I thought) to try to disconnect in a safe space.

It really seems like an odd choice that disconnecting or idling out doesn’t automatically transport you to a safe room. Maybe there could be an opt-in or opt-out to set something where you’re okay with your PC idling out and being “unsafe”, but as this was my first time on the game…I just don’t feel like ever logging in again. I want to be a part of the stories my PC tells, not have people tell me things happened to me when I wasn’t even around and had no say in it.

[Pyrephox]

As one of the PCs in that scene:

There is actually code to ICly stop someone from leaving and escalate to physical conflict - only thing is that it appears to be blocked for the first seven days of logging in. To “protect new players from physical conflicts”. That block can be overridden, but I, at least, wasn’t quite sure what the ramifications of that were and so opted not to do it, which mean that yeah, the thief could slip past.

There is a weird disconnect between the urge to protect the players and to have a horror game in a town where Very Bad Things Happen, and it’s sending out some weird mixed signals for me that makes it hard to figure out appropriate responses and I think that’s going to be an ongoing problem moving forward. You can, explicitly, beat someone into unconsciousness and harvest their organs, or poison them, or eavesdrop on their TS without their knowledge or consent, but you can’t initiate any sort of romantic play for two weeks after meeting someone, or check what sort of things they’re comfortable with playing more than once a day. It’s pretty muddled at the moment.

I am enjoying the game and the play I’ve found so far, but yeah, the messages are deeply mixed about what/how we’re supposed to be playing the actual horror parts.