MU Peeves Thread
-
@Narrator this has nothing to do with this thread, please shut up
-
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Narrator this has nothing to do with this thread, please shut up
This is the MU Peeves thread. âYou replaced smart people with purple prose and pronounsâ is a pretty scathing peeve. But no wonder you want me to shut up. That peeve applies to you, personally.
-
Yeah I have no desire to engage with people using AI to write their poses. Thatâs not regressive, it is people wanting to play a different game than me. The game about teaching AI to play letâs pretend may be fun but it is not this game. It is not what I signed up for and it is not what the staffers who built the games I am on designed or choose to maintain. If a game encouraged people to use AI, or used AI to run npcs, and was open about it, it would probably not be the game for me, but it could probably be fun for others and this would trouble me not. Because we are literally talking about pretendy funtime games here and I thought it was cute when someone taught AI to play d&d but that didnât mean I wanted to invite it into my longstanding weekend group.
This is value neutral, despite your condescending attitude. I also donât think it is either conservative or progressive; I do not wish to play any game where I am not aware of what we are playing and other players get to change the rules without my knowledge because that is not how gaming works.
-
What in the world.
@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
Yeah, and I think the point of this specific conversation is that a lot of people want it to be culturally inappropriate in this hobby. There are already games that make it explicitly not allowed to use generative AI in writing, and so sometimes they have to use tools to help confirm suspicions.
Those tools are basically useless. They have a success rate of about 60%, which is to say 40% of the time they give either a false positive or a false negative. Theyâre only marginally better than using a magic 8-ball. Youâre wasting GPU cycles by relying on them.
Lol nobodyâs pulling these out for every piece of text that comes in. Theyâre pulling them out when something is already obvious enough that it twigs peopleâs senses of âthis feels off.â And then the results are inevitably like 99% because if it pings someoneâs gut, itâs because itâs a pretty terrible example.
Theyâre not wasting nearly as many resources as the generative AI itself.
Also, the âMU*â segment of RPG players, whatâs left of it, is notoriously backward in culture. Your culture needs fixing. I watched MUDs, which had legitimately sophisticated game design, get gradually replaced by MUSHes, which are basically just glorified Telnet chat rooms. It was done because they wanted to get rid of the Game part of Roleplaying Game, especially when it came to the Game part of Game Design. Through the 1990s, the conceit was that there was an automated GM that managed the world and did all the rules accounting involved in that. You could treat the rules almost like a strategy game, especially when it came to combat. More advanced MUDs had committees designed to better balance this element of the game and to add new features, to make the game richer. There was a potential to gradually build up a system so sophisticated that it basically was an automated GM, in all respects. But that was discarded in favor of World of Darkness MUSHes where most of the game is in the character application process and in making sure you never offend the right clique in the OOC foyer, and not in the scenes your character is in.
What in the world are you talking about? The MUSH style of game has never replaced MUDs, and theyâve basically coexisted alongside each other for decades. MUDs are still plentiful now, probably moreso than MUSH style games. They serve different audiences and fulfill different niches. This is not a matter of âone is right and one is wrong.â
(And the idea that MUDs never have weird OOC issues with cliques isâŚa strange take.)
LLMs have a similar potential to function as an automated GM, although there are some issues with the prose they generate, most notably a lack of something called âperplexity.â The current thinking is that the programmer feeds it all of the facts of the gamestate, all of the game rules, and what the players intend to attempt to do in that scenario, and the LLM uses its advanced reading comprehension to determine which rules to invoke, which gets returned to the programmer. They then evaluate the outcome of those invoked rules and feed the outcome tot he LLM, asking it to write some prose to describe what happens. That workflow has already been implemented in some limited contexts, it just needs work and refinement.
And youâre doing what people did with MUDs again, here. Instead of seeing something with all of this potential and going, âHow could we improve this? How could we identify its flaws and mitigate or remove them?â you think, âHow can we make sure this never gets utilized at all?â Itâs not conservative thought, itâs literally regressive thought.
??? I literally donât care if some code-heavy MUDs want to make use of LLMs to generate automated responses in their code. I donât want generative AI writing on the games that are specifically focused on collaborative writing.
Is âthe drugery of productionâ hereâŚwriting? Writing words in our writing hobby?
RPGs entail a lot more than just âwriting.â Remember the âgameâ part of âroleplaying gameâ? That thing MUSHers gradually excised from MUDs because it might entail a little bit of logic, a little bit of math? Thatâs pretty key here. âWritingâ is one aspect of many in RPGs. Thereâs also game balance, mechanical flavor, simulation accuracy, ensuring choices players make are consequential, game depth (players have more than one avenue that could lean to a âwinâ) over game complexity (having a bunch of rules to memorize), and the list goes on and on. Calling RPGs a âwriting hobbyâ really tells me quite a bit about what you think the whole point of this is.
Yeah, could it possibly mean that different parts of the MU* hobby spheres have different focuses? That different types of players have different interests?
I wasnât saying anything about RPGs in general. Iâm sorry if I didnât specify that I was talking about a subset of games within the MU* sphere that this board tends to discuss most often.
It also probably explains the contempt I recall for a certain class of players I met in the 1990s and 2000s, who didnât have the best English skills, but boy oh boy, did they display a lot of creativity and cunning in the warfare/combat modes of MUDs back then, and why they were gradually pushed out in the 2000s and were basically gone by 2010. It also explains why whatâs left of the MU* sphere has a dearth of good programmers. As I demonstrated above, this isnât just a âwriting hobbby.â Itâs also a design hobby and an engineering hobby. Itâs a hobby for people who know how things work, and want to make things.
Iâm pretty sure people are still making things!
You got rid of the grognards and the math geeks and now all you have are people who think RPGs are about purple prose and pronouns.
Oh Jesus Christ.
ChatGPT doesnât need you veering off in a conversation just to shill for it.
By âChatGPTâ do you mean âLLMsâ? They arenât all interchangeable. But like I said. Itâs not going away no matter how mad you get about it.
Buddy, it was just one person making a joke, it doesnât need paragraphs of explanation.
My guy, to the crowd who thinks that itâs actually a better use of time and resources trying to detect LLMs so you can squelch them than it is to fiddle with them and make them serve your purposes better, it absolutely does need paragraphs of explanation.
Itâs literally been like 0.5% of the time spent on the game I help staff on. This is not actually a big investment.
-
@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Narrator this has nothing to do with this thread, please shut up
This is the MU Peeves thread. âYou replaced smart people with purple prose and pronounsâ is a pretty scathing peeve. But no wonder you want me to shut up. That peeve applies to you, personally.
lmao i canât imagine why someone wouldnât want you listen to you.
-
Right now the biggest benefit of LLMs I see for this community would be in editing arguments made for their inclusion less wordy, more concise and compendious.
-
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
Lol nobodyâs pulling these out for every piece of text that comes in. Theyâre pulling them out when something is already obvious enough that it twigs peopleâs senses of âthis feels off.â And then the results are inevitably like 99% because if it pings someoneâs gut, itâs because itâs a pretty terrible example.
Theyâre not wasting nearly as many resources as the generative AI itself.
Cope.
What in the world are you talking about? The MUSH style of game has never replaced MUDs, and theyâve basically coexisted alongside each other for decades. MUDs are still plentiful now, probably moreso than MUSH style games. They serve different audiences and fulfill different niches. This is not a matter of âone is right and one is wrong.â
(And the idea that MUDs never have weird OOC issues with cliques isâŚa strange take.)
The kind of people into the sort of thing Iâm talking about by and large graduated from MUDs into things like EVE Online, which often donât rely on roleplaying at all.
??? I literally donât care if some code-heavy MUDs want to make use of LLMs to generate automated responses in their code. I donât want generative AI writing on the games that are specifically focused on collaborative writing.
You could also use them as automated builders in the MUSH sense. You could have a blank room thatâs earmarked for generation, and then when a player first enters it, the room, and all of the adjacent rooms, and all of the mobs and items and so on in those rooms, get fed into an LLM, and it generates a new room for you, with new mobs and new items and exits, and between 0 and 10 new rooms that are also earmarked for generation, iteratively.
That would be really cool. It could be done with API use of an LLM, but Iâd prefer a locally-run one fine-tuned on the right materials than a commercial one like Claude2 or GPT-4.
You got rid of the grognards and the math geeks and now all you have are people who think RPGs are about purple prose and pronouns.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Not an argument.
ChatGPT doesnât need you veering off in a conversation just to shill for it.
By âChatGPTâ do you mean âLLMsâ? They arenât all interchangeable. But like I said. Itâs not going away no matter how mad you get about it.
Not an argument.
My guy, to the crowd who thinks that itâs actually a better use of time and resources trying to detect LLMs so you can squelch them than it is to fiddle with them and make them serve your purposes better, it absolutely does need paragraphs of explanation.
Itâs literally been like 0.5% of the time spent on the game I help staff on. This is not actually a big investment.
Please post the games you staff on so I can avoid them at all costs.
-
@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
What in the world are you talking about? The MUSH style of game has never replaced MUDs, and theyâve basically coexisted alongside each other for decades. MUDs are still plentiful now, probably moreso than MUSH style games. They serve different audiences and fulfill different niches. This is not a matter of âone is right and one is wrong.â
(And the idea that MUDs never have weird OOC issues with cliques isâŚa strange take.)
The kind of people into the sort of thing Iâm talking about graduated from MUDs into things like EVE Online, which often donât rely on roleplaying at all.
Wow sounds like they had some different interests in their hobby life! Wild that different people are interested in different things.
??? I literally donât care if some code-heavy MUDs want to make use of LLMs to generate automated responses in their code. I donât want generative AI writing on the games that are specifically focused on collaborative writing.
You could also use them as automated builders in the MUSH sense. You could have a blank room thatâs earmarked for generation, and then when a player first enters it, the room, and all of the adjacent rooms, and all of the mobs and items and so on in those rooms, get fed into an LLM, and it generates a new room for you, with new mobs and new items and exits, and between 0 and 10 new rooms that are also earmarked for generation, iteratively.
Yeah, having mobs and items and generated rooms are â not actually the point of some games. Because, again, different games have different focuses and audiences.
My guy, to the crowd who thinks that itâs actually a better use of time and resources trying to detect LLMs so you can squelch them than it is to fiddle with them and make them serve your purposes better, it absolutely does need paragraphs of explanation.
Itâs literally been like 0.5% of the time spent on the game I help staff on. This is not actually a big investment.
Please post the games you staff on so I can avoid them at all costs.
Has your deep technical expertise left you overlooking the publicly-posted playlist linked in the signature of literally all my forum posts?
Or were you too scared to look in the face of terrifying pronouns preceding it? I know, I know â basic parts of speech are pretty scary to think about.
-
@Narrator Dismissing the âMU*â segment of RPG players as backward overlooks their preference for narrative-driven experiences. The shift from MUDs to MUSHes reflects a desire for deeper storytelling and social interaction, not a regression. While AI like LLMs may offer potential as automated GMs, they lack the nuanced understanding and emotional depth of human game masters, risking a loss of the human touch essential to RPGs.
Introducing AI into RPGs could alienate players who value traditional, hands-on approaches. RPGs are social experiences that thrive on human creativity and spontaneity, which AI cannot replicate. Instead of relying on AI, the community should focus on nurturing talent, encouraging creativity, and embracing diverse play styles. Preserving the core values of collaboration and personal engagement is crucial to maintaining what makes RPGs special.
-
@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Narrator this has nothing to do with this thread, please shut up
This is the MU Peeves thread. âYou replaced smart people with purple prose and pronounsâ is a pretty scathing peeve. But no wonder you want me to shut up. That peeve applies to you, personally.
lmao i canât imagine why someone wouldnât want you listen to you.
-
@Narrator
lol my dude did you just compare yourself to Jesus on a message board? Is that where we are now? -
@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Narrator
lol my dude did you just compare yourself to Jesus on a message board? Is that where we are now?dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there
-
@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:
dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there
I have seriously been wondering if this was a 4chan guy but he seemed different than the standard 4chan guy? IDK, maybe they contain multitudes.
-
@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:
@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:
dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there
I have seriously been wondering if this was a 4chan guy but he seemed different than the standard 4chan guy? IDK, maybe they contain multitudes.
nah i found the âzineâ theyâre publishing, including the zineâs social media presence on the fediverse (and one of the two main contributors to the zineâs accounts/handles).
thereâs a reason they werenât loud and proud with the fact that they publish IDDQD Magazine and instead did a soft sell (probably trying to find likeminded people here to DM them to grift for money).
-
@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:
@NotSanni said in MU Peeves Thread:
dude is producing internet content for incels on 4chan, so, not a big surprise there
I have seriously been wondering if this was a 4chan guy but he seemed different than the standard 4chan guy? IDK, maybe they contain multitudes.
nah i found the âzineâ theyâre publishing, including the zineâs social media presence on the fediverse (and one of the two main contributors to the zineâs accounts/handles).
thereâs a reason they werenât loud and proud with the fact that they publish IDDQD Magazine and instead did a soft sell (probably trying to find likeminded people here to DM them to grift for money).
ah yes, our old friend NEETzsche, we meet again
-
I know I did this to myself and really itâs a board peeve and not a MU* peeve. But damn. I want my last X amount of minutes back in my life from reading all that.
carry on.
I did this to myself. Self board peeve.
-
all Iâm writing now is purple prose.
and oh my â itâs florid.
-
@Testament said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.
I AM BEGGING PLAYERS TO STOP USING CHATGPT.
IâLL STOP USING IT WHEN GAMES STOP ASKING FOR DESCS
Disclaimer: If it wasnât obvious; this is a joke, I use it to get ideas for a desc and then actually write one. As much as I absolutely loath to write it.
Although this is a joke: I do think that the advent of AI has done one small favour to the MU* genre, which is expose a lot of the drudgery that people donât want to do. If people are so unmotivated to write or read prosaic descs that one could literally replace them with AI-generated slop, and in the minds of some people that would be better, then those are aspects of the game that might be superfluous.
I think this is a bigger problem on MUDs than MUSHes, but there are games where instead of walking in and posing, "Kestrel arrives on the scene, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. She looks around curiously and then waves to Testament", I would have a white T-shirt and jeans as codified objects on my person, that can be examined. And because some people think more prose is always better, there can be a cultural expectation that your character isnât properly presentable unless each of those objects has a paragraph describing them. Even though no one cares, and no one is going to read a paragraph describing a white T-shirt. Itâs a white fkn T-shirt, what more is there to say?
Thatâs the stuff I see people delegating to AI a lot now, and thatâs my peeve. We should just rethink outdated cultural norms, instead.
-
Did that guy really turn up to a MU* board to tell us all that MU* games are dumb and weâre dumb for playing them?
Lol. Lmao. Donât come back.
-
I will never understand people acting like descs donât matter, or that no one reads them. If you donât read the desc of your scene partner, that is fkin rude. Itâs a verbal medium. If you donât want to read a paragraph to get your mental image right, that is a you issue. Not a game design issue.
Are they difficult to write sometimes? Sure. Drudgery?? What?? You absolutely cannot replace them with LLM slop without it being painfully, repulsively obvious, and I have literally never in all my years in this hobby seen someone disparaging a desc for not having a paragraph to describe clothes. That doesnât mean it doesnât ever happen, but itâs not some widespread standard.
fr fr
(she/her)
