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MU Peeves Thread
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@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
What in the world are you talking about? The MUSH style of game has never replaced MUDs, and they’ve 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 “one is right and one is wrong.”
(And the idea that MUDs never have weird OOC issues with cliques is…a strange take.)
The kind of people into the sort of thing I’m talking about graduated from MUDs into things like EVE Online, which often don’t 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 don’t care if some code-heavy MUDs want to make use of LLMs to generate automated responses in their code. I don’t 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 that’s 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 – not actually the point of some games. Because, again, different games have different focuses and audiences.
My guy, to the crowd who thinks that it’s 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.
It’s 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 – basic parts of speech are pretty scary to think about.
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@Narrator Dismissing the “MU*” 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.
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@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. “You replaced smart people with purple prose and pronouns” is a pretty scathing peeve. But no wonder you want me to shut up. That peeve applies to you, personally.
lmao i can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want you listen to you.
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@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
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@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.
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@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 “zine” they’re publishing, including the zine’s social media presence on the fediverse (and one of the two main contributors to the zine’s accounts/handles).
there’s a reason they weren’t 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).
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@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 “zine” they’re publishing, including the zine’s social media presence on the fediverse (and one of the two main contributors to the zine’s accounts/handles).
there’s a reason they weren’t 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
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I know I did this to myself and really it’s 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.
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all I’m writing now is purple prose.
and oh my – it’s florid.
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@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.
I’LL STOP USING IT WHEN GAMES STOP ASKING FOR DESCS
Disclaimer: If it wasn’t 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 don’t 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 isn’t 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. It’s a white fkn T-shirt, what more is there to say?
That’s the stuff I see people delegating to AI a lot now, and that’s my peeve. We should just rethink outdated cultural norms, instead.
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Did that guy really turn up to a MU* board to tell us all that MU* games are dumb and we’re dumb for playing them?
Lol. Lmao. Don’t come back.
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I will never understand people acting like descs don’t matter, or that no one reads them. If you don’t read the desc of your scene partner, that is fkin rude. It’s a verbal medium. If you don’t 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 doesn’t mean it doesn’t ever happen, but it’s not some widespread standard.
fr fr
(she/her) -
@hellfrog I think to me, the best amount of description/background/whatever is however much it takes to get the point across and not a word more. Sometimes you have people writing to a minimum word count because that’s the culture or they’re self-conscious and that’s when it can become a slog to read. All this could be avoided if they’d written “it’s a white t-shirt” instead of turning to chatgpt to fluff it up.
I play games where the RP is time sensitive. If someone flounces up to me with a description taller than my vertical monitor full of chatgpt-isms, I ain’t reading that shit. Got halfway through the scene once before we both realised she was buck naked.
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@Juniper That’s fair, I also roll my eyes and backflip out of characters when I see the chatGPT signifiers in the desc. Any time a physical quality “embodies the nature of” or “speaks to” a vague and unrelated personality trait? Bam.
I like a little fluff in descs. I like it in poses, too, even though I know it isn’t good writing, strictly speaking. I also prefer not to have clothes in a desc and just pose them where appropriate in scenes. To me, these are preferences. Something doesn’t have to be for me, but that doesn’t mean I think it should be designed out of the hobby. Except the LLM stuff. That should be.
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@hellfrog I actually don’t read character descriptions. Not to be insulting but more that it doesn’t actually do anything to help me when I try to get a mental image of someone, I need an actual image. And for whatever reason, it only seems to apply to people’s faces. It might be some kind of internal blindness on my part, I know @imstillhere and I have spoken about this that has an actual word associated with it.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament Prosopagnosia! I have it as well and it can definitely be an embarrassing factor in my real life. It’s also one reason I hate AI portraits, as I find them extremely hard to distinguish.
In terms of descs though (and I know, we’ve talked about this) I don’t think you need to know exactly what their face looks like. It doesn’t matter. You need a vibe, some physical basics, and anything major unusual, and that’s it, that will inform the impression of the character in the written form.
Tastes vary, but for me, I never need to know details like a roman nose or cupid’s bow lips.
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@hellfrog Generally, my first pose into a scene is what my character is wearing, because I am not going to update the @desc every time they change clothes.
Hyperbolic counter example is hyperbolic for comedy: if someone in the scene mention that its raining outside, do I need to update the @desc to reflect that the clothes are wet before I even pose in?
Edit for more comedy: if a @desc does not include clothes, can we assume they are running around naked? Can we return to the cursed era where you have to +wear clothes ro cover up specific body parts and it all jumped into a big weird nightmare of layered clothes concealing other clothes concealing your naked desc?
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I am with Hellfrog on this one that I enjoy descriptions and even fluffy ones! I’ve also made my opinion on this known before, lol. It’s kind of crazy to me to hear someone suggest nixing descs as a whole. To put it plainly, I love writing descriptions, I love writing them in detail, and I love describing clothes because it makes me feel like I am playing with Barbie dolls. If you don’t want to read that, then don’t. I often include enough detail about my character’s physical traits and attire when I pose/emote anyway.
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@Testament You do you, but I for one have, on numerous occasions, been rping with someone who clearly has no concept of my character and poses them as though they are entirely different? Short instead of tall, old instead of young, bald instead of brunette, etc.
That’s inconsiderate and disrespectful, and at that point why am I even there? Clearly what I bring to the scene does not matter.
