RP Safari - Pacing Styles

[MisterBoring]

@Third-Eye

[Prototart]

I’ve never been able to get into Async because I’m super flighty and unreliable. A friend of mine who lives in Australia absolutely loves it tho, it lets her do stuff with the 90% of people who aren’t in the Pacific Theater

[Faraday]

I think folks are dramatically underestimating just how much mathematical averages can be skewed by outliers when there are sample sizes as small as most MU scenes have.

This really doesn’t have to be this hard. We’ve been having scenes with different pacing since I started playing in 19-fricking-95. All Ares does is provide more tools so that adults can communicate and collaborate with each other in the hopes of finding people who like to play in the same way. And it even includes a handy guide to explain said tools:

MUSHes have traditionally been focused around live, synchronous RP, with players all being online together. With the web portal, Ares supports more varied playstyles. You can specify a Pacing for your scene to let other players know what to expect before they join.

• Traditional: Live, synchronous RP with poses coming minutes apart. (Default Setting)
• Distracted: RP that is still synchronous, but with longer time between poses due to work or other distractions.
• Asynchronous: RP with poses coming in at various times, possibly in different timezones or schedules, or even over multiple days.

If you wish to add extra detail about your scene’s pacing, use the scene notes field.

If you can’t find people willing to RP in a way compatible with you, that’s not a tools problem, that’s a people - I hate to call it problem, because it’s not really a problem, it’s just you being at the wrong party.

[Prototart]

@Faraday

I got it and I’m not even that smart.

Traditional: Normal MU shit, you and your friend or whatever just posing back and forth.

Distracted: You and your friend fucking around bc you’re both kind of busy but want to do something so you swap a pose an hour or whenever you see the activity light and have a couple of minutes to write something.

Asynch: It’s like you and a friend swapping poses over @mail because their dick game is completely and totally insane there’s a very important scene that has to happen but timelines just can’t link up right.

(you can quote this in material it’s super helpful)

[MisterBoring]

@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I think folks are dramatically underestimating just how much mathematical averages can be skewed by outliers when there are sample sizes as small as most MU scenes have.

This really doesn’t have to be this hard. We’ve been having scenes with different pacing since I started playing in 19-fricking-95. All Ares does is provide more tools so that adults can communicate and collaborate with each other in the hopes of finding people who like to play in the same way. And it even includes a handy guide to explain said tools:

While I do think that having pacing information might be helpful to some people in finding RP, after thinking about it more, my interest in tracking it is purely curiosity. I just want to see the data.

[Pavel]

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I got it and I’m not even that smart.

[somasatori]

@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

This really doesn’t have to be this hard.

As MUSHers, it is our job to make everything as difficult as possible, Faraday

[howyadoin]

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Asynch: It’s like you and a friend swapping poses over @mail because their dick game is completely and totally insane

No one - and I mean no one’s - dick game is good enough to suffer through async.

[Wuff]

@howyadoin said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Asynch: It’s like you and a friend swapping poses over @mail because their dick game is completely and totally insane

No one - and I mean no one’s - dick game is good enough to suffer through async.

Async is better than no sync sometimes. Some people are worth the effort and the patience.

[Prototart]

@Pavel said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I got it and I’m not even that smart.

I spent yesterday genuinely upset because of something someone on a sex game said about me, it is what it is.

@howyadoin said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

No one - and I mean no one’s - dick game is good enough to suffer through async.

You gotta find better dick, there was this guy who played Nightwing who We simply have different lived experiences.

[Pavel]

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@Pavel said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I got it and I’m not even that smart.

I spent yesterday genuinely upset because of something someone on a sex game said about me, it is what it is.

If you wouldn’t go to them for advice, you needn’t accept their criticism.

[Faraday]

FWIW Ares 2.11 comes with a new scene/stats command.

+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~~==+
Total Scenes: 13

Scene Pacing
Traditional.........12....(92.3%)
Asynchronous........1.....(7.7%)
+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~~==+

The stats should be taken with a grain of salt since many people don’t bother changing the pacing from the default (Trad), but I don’t really see a good way around that.

Minutes between poses is too easily skewed by outliers (one slow guy tanks the whole scene even though everyone’s mostly posing around him).

Making the default “Unknown” will give better fidelity when it IS set, but then most scenes will just be Unknown. So that’s not super helpful either.

I dunno. Just something to play around with.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Making the default “Unknown” will give better fidelity when it IS set, but then most scenes will just be Unknown. So that’s not super helpful either.

Could you make it blank or unknown, if you will, and require the field to be set before it can proceed? I don’t know if that’s implementable, nor how easy it would be, nor whether it would be worthwhile.

[KarmaBum]

@Faraday Thank you for taking the time to add this. Genuinely appreciated.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Could you make it blank or unknown, if you will, and require the field to be set before it can proceed? I don’t know if that’s implementable, nor how easy it would be, nor whether it would be worthwhile.

On web you could, but I think it would annoy people. And so many scenes are started from the client just by doing scene/start; it would definitely be annoying to try to require a pacing parameter there.

[MisterBoring]

I’d want to see something like this as a staff accessible report:

+Scene Pacing Stats+

Current Average Pacing: 13 min / pose. 
Slowest Current Scene: 22 hrs 11 min / pose
Fastest Current Scene: 6 min / pose

[Roz]

@Wuff said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@howyadoin said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Asynch: It’s like you and a friend swapping poses over @mail because their dick game is completely and totally insane

No one - and I mean no one’s - dick game is good enough to suffer through async.

Async is better than no sync sometimes. Some people are worth the effort and the patience.

fwiw, i really don’t want to frame this whole thing as a matter of just having patience, or some people “not being good enough” to async with.

oftentimes it really just literally is “my brain cannot keep engaged in this format.”

[Faraday]

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

oftentimes it really just literally is “my brain cannot keep engaged in this format.”

Yeah that’s me. I’m not judgmental about async. I just don’t enjoy it as much. It’s just hard for me to stay engaged and keep track of things.

[MisterBoring]

@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I just don’t enjoy it as much. It’s just hard for me to stay engaged and keep track of things.

Me too. I have too much going on in my life (family, work, gaming, etc) to be able to pay enough attention for async. I honestly believe that the only way I could enjoy it would be if I stopped doing lots of other things that heavily ate my focus, but then if I’m just dedicated to playing one game and focusing on one async scene to the detriment of everything else, why am I playing async to begin with?

[Third Eye]

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

oftentimes it really just literally is “my brain cannot keep engaged in this format.”

You also totally lose the improv element which is part of what a lot of us like about this.

I’ll admit, my dislike of async has been aggravated by people who I fundamentally do not think have had any respect for my time or any interest/engagement in what we were playing. I’m perfectly willing to do time-shifted scenes due to timezone or availability conflicts and always have been. That isn’t usually what this is about anymore.