Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[Pax]

not to shitpost but can we get that talking fedora back in here, I want to hear the latest hot take on how this is reasonable.

[shit-piss-love]

@Wizz Whoever was looking to build their own Star Wars game may want to get in touch with Zephyr and the other booted admins. Sounds like Cujo just vetted some potential staff for you.

[IoleRae]

@shit-piss-love said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Wizz Whoever was looking to build their own Star Wars game may want to get in touch with Zephyr and the other booted admins. Sounds like Cujo just vetted some potential staff for you.

This is a great idea. @Jennkryst, you should consider reaching out. If nothing else, they have experience admining in the genre, and could provide valuable input for setting things up.

[BloodAngel]

I can’t wait to see what comes next, this is one hell of a ride!

[Jennkryst]

@IoleRae said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@shit-piss-love said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Wizz Whoever was looking to build their own Star Wars game may want to get in touch with Zephyr and the other booted admins. Sounds like Cujo just vetted some potential staff for you.

This is a great idea. @Jennkryst, you should consider reaching out. If nothing else, they have experience admining in the genre, and could provide valuable input for setting things up.

sets up the Staff-summoning signal

Please feed me all your coding knowledge. Or just write the code for me. OR BOTH!

(Everyone is going ‘read this and that, and they will tell you what these different strings of code mean’ while I am way earlier in the process than everyone assumes. Just ‘wait… Linux? I haven’t tried to figure out linux since (in the biggest twist of irony) AoA died the first time, over a decade ago’.)

[CuriousGamer]

Well - I suppose if people keep buying (as in logging on there) they will keep selling (as in, all the things they do)

[crawfish]

@Pax said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

not to shitpost but can we get that talking fedora back in here, I want to hear the latest hot take on how this is reasonable.

Diet Sprite right out my nose reading this jfc wow ‘talking fedora’ I don’t remember their handle but I know exactly who you meant

wheeze

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@IoleRae said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@shit-piss-love said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Wizz Whoever was looking to build their own Star Wars game may want to get in touch with Zephyr and the other booted admins. Sounds like Cujo just vetted some potential staff for you.

This is a great idea. @Jennkryst, you should consider reaching out. If nothing else, they have experience admining in the genre, and could provide valuable input for setting things up.

sets up the Staff-summoning signal

Please feed me all your coding knowledge. Or just write the code for me. OR BOTH!

(Everyone is going ‘read this and that, and they will tell you what these different strings of code mean’ while I am way earlier in the process than everyone assumes. Just ‘wait… Linux? I haven’t tried to figure out linux since (in the biggest twist of irony) AoA died the first time, over a decade ago’.)

I have a generic database with a D20 Saga system for RhostMUSH I can pass to you. Not sure what codebase you’d want, but it’s available.

[Jennkryst]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

D20 Saga system

Too crunchy, TOO CRUNCHY.

But also, thanks for the offer. I may still take you up on it, even if not using it, to try and rip apart bits to cobble back together into something else. I am hyper-focused on figuring out who to annoy to program FFG with some kind of Ares-like async web portal but also like… items.

UNRELATED TO ALL THIS, but related to THAT OVER THERE:

@Sammich said in Prospective Star Wars:

I am the worst kind of Star Wars fan in that I am not actually a Star Wars fan and instead I just really want to be a badass bitch with a laser sword.

This reminded me about…actually that’s a lie, I remembered a while ago, but was looking for a convenient excuse to bring up.
And lewd gif is that excuse! AoA used to have +kinks code implemented. Incidentally, it included Lightsabers as one of the +kinks.

[Sammich]

@Jennkryst I now regret everything :C

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

D20 Saga system

Too crunchy, TOO CRUNCHY.

I fully agree. I loathe the code. The feature set and end-user stuff is fun. But the code… the code…

Trying to modfy that code is like forcefully removing your eyeballs, surgically replacing your sexual organs with them, then willfully having sex with a rabid honey badger…
…
…
…
in slow motion…

[Jennkryst]

@Sammich Just gotta remember to include a ‘I am cool with you paging me out of the blue with lewd ideas’ choice, that only people who are actually cool with it will be listed.

[Pavel]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

D20 Saga system

Too crunchy, TOO CRUNCHY.

I fully agree. I loathe the code. The feature set and end-user stuff is fun. But the code… the code…

Trying to modfy that code is like forcefully removing your eyeballs, surgically replacing your sexual organs with them, then willfully having sex with a rabid honey badger…
…
…
…
in slow motion…

Going to file this under metaphors to use in therapy. As the patient, not the therapist.

[Warlander]

@Pavel I’ve heard that about the code, and it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve played on several SAGA games, and that was the number one complaint among staffers; tweaking the code.

But even without that, d20 Star Wars, SAGA or otherwise, is a giant, steaming mess. The system is governed too heavily by numbers, classes, and builds. Even if it’s heavily house-ruled to make chargen and advancement more flexible, characters still tend to have a cookie-cutter feel to them, and the play-a-card system for both The Force and starship maneuvers provides endless frustration. You’ll never get to play the character you actually wanted to play, just whatever you can kludge together with what the classes, races, feats, talents, and attribute points allow.

And when the dice enter play, everything slows to a crawl! What fun I had on those games was usually in spite of the system, not because of it. Good players tend to be the only thing that keeps these games open.

[Warlander]

@Jennkryst Why does it not surprise me that AoA would waste time and effort on a kinks code system?

They wasted plenty of time on working elevators and trams, some of which eat coded money, in some locales, to say nothing of ‘balancing’ the coded weapons and ammo, most of which doesn’t begin to match old or new canon… and adding modifications that tend to be very rare (except for the garbage-grade versions that clog up the vendors everywhere) and cost many, many times more than the weapons themselves, just to turn those weapons back into something besides useless junk. Mostly what they managed to do is turn the gap between newbies and dinosaurs into a huge gulf, which I doubt was accidental.

Starship mods are treated much the same way, though the stock ships aren’t nearly as junked-up as the weapons (even if they are far more rare, since only a small number of each ship model exists on the game at any time).

And if you want anything modded, you have to find someone with the skills and coded equipment to do it. While this makes some sense, a staff member has to be available to adjudicate the actual modifications, just in case the tech succeeds wildly or fails; in the latter case, the mod is lost and the item being modded can be permanently damaged, reducing one or more of its base statistics. Needless to say, it takes very high skill levels in the necessary skills to generate consistent results. Like automated cargo running code, this is supposed to ‘encourage RP’. I don’t know about RP, but it certainly encourages frustration, as scheduling is the worst enemy of using coded mod systems.

There’s also pricey color codes for armor, weapons, etc., and something called ‘screambucks’, relatively recently added, that are supposed to be gained through RP, and can be used to purchase other coded rarities, like beskar metal for making Mandalorian armor. This is great for large groups and orgs, who have a habit of nomming one another heavily, but not nearly so useful for less active and/or ‘well-connected’ players, which are usually newbies; usually by the time the dinosaur groups finish nomming one another, they’ve run out of noms.

All of this code and coded objects may explain why the game suffers from persistent and often severe lag. Just typing +paycheck or +bbnew guarantees a wait of several seconds, minimum.

[Anony Mouse]

Someone pointed this thread out to me a couple days ago. At the time, I was sympathetic to the OP and their friends (no condolences can ever be enough), but was busy with work. Also, thinking about this place brings up bad memories. But I can offer a little insight from my own dealings with Cujo and AoA in general. Sorry if this is rambling: I just got home from work and I’m beat.

@Polk said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I know it’s not gonna be popular, but Cujo sounds to me like your classic Geek Social Fallacy carrier. GSF #1 in particular, but with a side of #4.
https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
They just want everyone to get along, so the game can thrive. They hate it when something happens that would force them to make choices, because they think having to make choices like that is wrong.
So they try to hedge, and hem, and haw, and just wish everyone would ‘get over it’ and play.
Not defending it. But possibly explaining it.

It’s a kind thought, but definitely not the case. More below.

@Narson said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

As I’ve said, it is about 20 years out of date, and everyone is 20 years older, but back then certainly Cujo gave the vibe that he was about Cujo. The game was a means to an end of making Cujo cool/important/the man, rather than everything being in service of the smooth running of the game.

This is entirely correct. Cujo does not care about RP or activity, other than their role in keeping the WHO list full. Cujo does not care about players, seeing them as a source of endless work that he doesn’t want to do, but without players you don’t have a big WHO list. Cujo wants to be important and cool, but he’s too self-absorbed and lazy to ever be either of those things (outside of being the owner of a crappy MUSH, where he is all-powerful). So he ties himself to people he thinks are cool, hoping some of that coolness will rub off on him. Trouble is, most of those people aren’t cool, either: He admires strength, intelligence, and knowledge, and they’re know-it-alls and cheap bullies. I’m speaking of longtime staff, and of the cliquish players who really run the game at this point (two of whom are staff).

@IoleRae said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

So Cujo fires a bunch of staff for what I assume is pushing him to do something about Hadrix and/or the crime of saying “hey you know those posters have a point”, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the original post was accurate.
This is a great object lesson for those who are always demanding logs/proof. The truth will come out without them.

Sometimes. This doesn’t prove it so much as hang a neon sign over the fact that something is going on there, and there’s likely sexual harassment involved. I hope some of Zephyr’s comments were public. It’ll get other players thinking.

Another point: Cujo can’t get rid of staff, because they do the work he doesn’t want to do (code, processing +noms, running events, etc.). So he’ll put up with anything they do, up to a point. Zephyr just discovered that point. It’s likely he’d have had to get rid of more staff (and possibly some players as well) if he’d gone after the problem staffers, meaning more work left over, so he got rid of the one who thought their behavior was a problem instead. He also puts up with all the immature, toxic crap on Pub, when he’s not actively contributing to it (which he often is). On more reasonable games, some of that stuff would result in jail time or bans. He has also instituted bans on criticizing his favorite people on group channels, with jail for those who ignore the bans. Pub’s not the only channel with a climate of fear.

For these and other reasons, there are a lot of players on the game who’ve made a habit of avoiding dealing with staff unless it’s absolutely necessary, and just have fun with their friends. That list has been slowly shrinking for some time now, but there aren’t a lot of alternatives for roleplaying Star Wars unless you want to join a guild on the SWTOR MMORPG.

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

But also, thanks for the offer. I may still take you up on it, even if not using it, to try and rip apart bits to cobble back together into something else. I am hyper-focused on figuring out who to annoy to program FFG with some kind of Ares-like async web portal but also like… items.

If it’s any help, WEG’s SWRPG is still an option. Plenty of books and conversions are available on D6 Holocron. There’s also a PbtA game that is decently workable, though it does have the drawbacks of a PbtA game.

[Narson]

@crawfish said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pax said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

not to shitpost but can we get that talking fedora back in here, I want to hear the latest hot take on how this is reasonable.

Diet Sprite right out my nose reading this jfc wow ‘talking fedora’ I don’t remember their handle but I know exactly who you meant

wheeze

Very much aside, but wait. Does this imply you have non-diet sprite available in the US? Like, actual honest-to-God sugar bearing Sprite?

[Testament]

@Narson Sierra Mist is being done away with. Not sure that counts.

It’s replaced with a different lime/lime soda.

[hellfrog]

@Narson said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@crawfish said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pax said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

not to shitpost but can we get that talking fedora back in here, I want to hear the latest hot take on how this is reasonable.

Diet Sprite right out my nose reading this jfc wow ‘talking fedora’ I don’t remember their handle but I know exactly who you meant

wheeze

Very much aside, but wait. Does this imply you have non-diet sprite available in the US? Like, actual honest-to-God sugar bearing Sprite?

well, high fructose corn syrup bearing sprite, yes! You can probably get real sugar sprite, too, imported from Mexico.

[GF]

@Narson America’s not a world leader in diabetes for nothing.