Grid vs Web Scenes

Pavel

@Third-Eye I sometimes peek at https://www.mushcode.com/mushlist. YMMV as to its usefulness.

hellfrog

Are we getting more players from other mediums though?

yes. we were always surprised on arx just how many people kept coming in that had no MU* experience at all.

tsar

@KarmaBum said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.

I thought this for a long time before discovering that instead of going to ‘Edit Scene’ and changing the value for Location, there is an honest-to-god ‘Change Location’ BUTTON under the ‘Play’ menu.

EXCUSE ME WHAT

Ominous

@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.

Clarion

@Ominous said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

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.”

Those are almost all of my first scenes with people, no matter if the scene itself was pre-arranged. If the characters don’t like each other, that’s potentially fun. If I realize I don’t like playing with the other player, my character can always just leave and we can wrap the scene.

It’s fine if people don’t like these arranged 1:1 scenes, but I’m puzzled at the idea that they don’t allow IC spontaneity or bailing out if something isn’t working.

Faraday

@Ominous said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

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

I’m not disputing your personal experience, but it’s been very different than mine. You don’t have to randomly encounter someone on the grid to have an impromptu scene with them. I can’t count the number of times I’ve set up a 1-on-1 scene with somebody my character didn’t already know and then just had them randomly meeting for the first time ICly. The only difference is the amount of OOC coordination involved.

@Ominous said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance.

Again, Ares’ scene system just gives you the choice. If you want happenstance, you leave the scene open. Others are free to join. If you don’t, you make the scene private.

Here are just a few of the many different ways you can RP in Ares:

Grid RP: Faraday hangs out in the Gym hoping for someone to come by. When Ominous enters the grid room, Faraday poses doing something. Ominous responds. Yam joins from the web portal. Roadspike wanders into the grid room and joins too.
Off-Grid Client Open RP: Faraday PMs Ominous: “Hey, want to do a scene? Our characters seem to both like basketball, maybe they could meet in the Gym?” We use scene/start to start an off-grid client RP set in the Gym and our characters meet for the first time. Since we left the scene open, Yam can use scene/join to join it. Roadspike can also join from the web portal.
Pickup Web RP: Faraday creates a web scene set in the Gym, leaving it open. Ominous, Roadspike, and Yam all join from either web or client.
Private RP: Faraday and Ominous have a basketball showdown off-grid, set in the Gym, and since it’s private, nobody else can join.

You can still do pickup RP. You can still do random grid RP. You can just ALSO do private RP more easily. Philosophically I just don’t think it’s good to force people to play in ways that they don’t want to for some imagined “good of the game”.

Pavel

@Faraday said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

Philosophically I just don’t think it’s good to force people to play in ways that they don’t want to for some imagined “good of the game”.

One day I am going to make my ShakespeareMU where every pose has to be written in iambic pentameter. Then you’ll see!

RightMeow

While I will always be a grid girl. I’m old. I like my back in my day sort of MU*. I do understand the benefits of web planned scenes too. Especially as we are busy people. We don’t have to type:

ooc - RightMeow stepped away, but they will be back

or hide in private rooms and hear:

OMG RightMeow is always in a TS scene (not that it matters if I want to be as a grown adult). Or RightMeow is not very inclusive.

When I’m really not RPing. I’m idling with random OOC chatter or we are both waiting on a pose 1 an hour or something until we tie up dinner, etc.

Also in web scenes people cannot run away from my massively long and chaos filled scene sets where I will purple prose you to death, I may fall, I may set the place on fire on accident, I might faint across someone’s lap on a dare… you know… normal things. Normal… right?

But I also like just wandering the grid to open places and discovering people and places and things. So… I guess don’t yuck a yum and time is short, enjoy your hobbies how you want?

MisterBoring

I need the grid for my RP to give me something to use to RP off of.

My character is in a world, they are not the world.

Clarion

@MisterBoring said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

I need the grid for my RP to give me something to use to RP off of.

I don’t really understand, can you expand on this? With a web-based game you aren’t roleplaying in a blank white void, you can have rich room descriptions that give you something to RP off of.

Faraday

@Clarion said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

you can have rich room descriptions that give you something to RP off of.

Yeah for example see the locations directory on Keys. Each of those locations, like Abandoned Animatronic Pizza Place, is equivalent to a grid room. Many games also provide either ASCII or graphical maps like Keys’ here to show how the locations relate to each other.

Now if you desire the “immersive feel” of literally typing N/E/N/In or whatever to reach the pizza place, then sure - that’s personal preference and off-grid/web RP is not going to be your thing. No shade.

But the arguments that you’re RPing in some void where you have nothing to go on and nobody can ever run into you are simply not how this works.