I like systems, to the extent that they support the story and the players and encourage RP. I like the element of random chance that dice bring, I like that +sheets force people to pick what their character is good at and what they’re not good at. To me RP is improv and the system/dice is one of several things giving you new prompts to improv with. I like that.

My forays into MUCK RP and Discord RP where there were no systems were not satisfying to me. A little bit of “you can’t fight this character because it is IC for me that I never lose so you will die,” lots of “I got you” “nuh uh, no you didn’t” like kids playing, and lots and lots of characters who are the best psycho killer in the entire universe at every single weapon that there is AND the best at persuasion and social skills AND the best pilot AND the best mechanic AND the best doctor, etc. I think that stays on the rails a little more with a +sheet/dice.

Many of my friends have long experience with freeform games wherein the players all seem to have been pretty mature and did accept losses/failures, did pick a lane for their skills, etc. I just personally don’t have that experience, so “at least some mechanical systems” is my personal preference.

@catzilla This is the one that I referenced in my post above.

Honestly if they had just asked “hey can we use this is that cool” at the start, or said at any point “my bad, I think the AI scooped it and I didn’t know,” there wouldn’t be an issue. It’s the obfuscation and weird refusal to credit a coder with his code beyond the “idea” that frustrates me.

There is some shady stuff going on with this Age of Heroes game.

The ‘very strange coincidence of taking someone else’s name’ is part of it. Last night we also discovered that Age of Heroes is using “Look for RP” code developed by @Trashcan, without credit or attribution. A representative of Age of Heroes in the Ares discord became defensive and buckled down on ownership, saying that this LFRP code is their coder’s and was entirely coded by her, despite several obvious and distinct indicators within the code that this isn’t true.

When we pointed this out and requested to be credited with having written the original code, Trashcan also said he’d make a plugin for this code. Within a few hours, the AOH “coder” produced an AI-coded plugin. Faraday, aware that there was some controversy over authorship of the LFRP code, notified Trashcan so we could compare the code to ours. The AOH “coder” is claiming again that it is her code and she made it from scratch, crediting him only with the “idea” for it.

Our best guess with this situation is that the AOH “coder” used AI to request a similar feature to the one Trashcan wrote, and the AI scraped his code. Then as soon as he said he’d make a plugin, this person used AI again to try to get ahead of him and quickly produce a plugin first. The plugin itself bears the hallmarks of AI coding, which Trashcan can elaborate on if anyone’s wondering why we’re certain the plugin is AI.

These Age of Heroes people are never going to own up to lying, failing to credit where credit is due, or using AI to steal other people’s work. However it’s pretty uncool behavior in this small community, it is obvious behavior in this small community, it is rude, and it is shady.

So at 93 responses so far, looks like:

• 45% of forum users actively RPing (in the last month)
• 55% of forum users not actively RPing (in the last month)

If you sign up for something

Go to it

Or tell someone you aren’t going to it

Fucks sake

@howyadoin I don’t think this works for the context @Yam mentioned, though, which is why I wanted to have the discussion in a purely MUSH context.

I think in MUSH we see a lot of things like:

• I’m not leaving the spaceship to go walk on the planet we’re visiting, my guy wouldn’t think it’s safe.
• Sorry for making this social scene awkward with both of us here, but my guy wouldn’t forgive their grudge against your guy.
• I won’t RP where you suggested. My guy wouldn’t go to that side of town.
• Sorry for disrupting this town meeting, but it’s what my guy would do.
• My guy already knows that information so I’m not interested in RPing passing it on to others.
• I wish I could RP but my guy wouldn’t go out in this weather.
• I can’t help you. My guy wouldn’t find that interesting.
• Sorry I hurt your feelings with the way I acted IC. It’s what my guy would do.

etc etc etc

Many of the times we run into this, there might not even be a GM involved to say “are you sure” and the actions they’re doing aren’t inherently absurd. The My-Guyer’s actions might even be sensible. Sure, that planet we’re visiting does look dangerous.

As a GM you can definitely say “fine, stay with the ship then, guess you aren’t playing in this event” and as a player you can say things like “well you pick somewhere to RP then,” but the bad vibes are already there at that point. Other people are uncomfortable. Most players don’t want to leave the My-Guy person out. Most My-Guy’ers know that.

My-Guy people disrupt a feeling of collaboration and buy-in that is pretty fundamental to the improv we depend on in this medium. That’s what the top guy in the link is talking about: he got his way, the other players agreed, it was all very “in-character,” and it still felt bad.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37103/what-is-my-guy-syndrome-and-how-do-i-handle-it

Interesting Q&A from 12 years ago that still seems to apply. What do you think about “my guy syndrome” and handling it, in a MUSH and not LARP or Tabletop context?

@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:

It’s really no better nor worse than any other genre, there’s shitfuckery everywhere.

I don’t know that I agree with this.

I’ve played plenty of oWOD, many many years of it, though never nWOD or the other newer iterations, so, speaking from that perspective. This system was never meant to be in a MUSH format. What was supposed to be “a cadre of me and my buddies fighting overwhelming forces of corruption and monstrosity working against us” at a table becomes, on a MUSH, other groups of buddies in the role of the forces working against you. WOD was never designed for vampire and werewolf at the same table, much less Mage and everything else.

It’s not balanced for it. So what you’ve ended up with is this really problematic soup of theme that hasn’t aged well, players in thematic opposition to each other, and rules/structures that aren’t balanced between spheres and require interpretation, and a ton of spheres that have to be supported, all against a backdrop in which “the world is gritty and dark” is used by some players as an excuse for very toxic behavior.

I still like oWOD. Love to play an Ananasi someday, somewhere. I’m not saying WOD games can’t be good or fun, but I do think it takes an extremely firm hand and clear head at the wheel to make them so. While there is shitfuckery everywhere, unfucking the shit is a more uphill battle in WOD than elsewhere.

In my opinion, anyway.

@Ominous What keeps you around on the forum in the sections about RP habits and practices?

WOD players are you guys okay??

@Faraday said in When is the last time you played?:

The possibly vain hope that someday life will settle down enough that I actually have the time and spoons to play again.

What would you want to play, if those conditions were achieved?

@Roz You aren’t even in the several years category GET OUT OF HERE lolol

For those who haven’t RP’d in several years, what keeps you checking in/weighing in on the forum? I’m referring here to the forum parts specifically about MUSHing and RP, not the social/ooc parts like RL support, pets, books, dead people, etc.

Back on FORT BLOODSHED (of ‘staff sent wild animals to ruin my canoodling’ fame) table talk was routed to a channel staff could see, and the staff characters would show up and accost you if you were saying something they didn’t like. That was about 10,000 years ago and I’m still wary of table talk.

But more genuinely, I think there’s pros and cons. It allows a smaller conversation during a giant scene, but rare are the games these days in which such giant scenes still occur. It can create some drama when you get left out of a tabletalk or someone poses to the room “Wow look at Ashkuri he is such an expired salami lol lmao” and then goes “oh sorry that was meant for my table!”

I think for Ares games, whose logging features do not mesh well with tabletalk as it was known in other formats, the “side scene” is better: spinning up another scene where you and your friend(s) have that small conversation from the party in the smaller group.

I’m glad to see Cujo took some action here. Those people cannot be allowed in any communities. They needed to be banned, they should be banned, they were banned.

However

I feel like it’s worth noting here that during my time on AOA Cujo did approve things like barely-legal characters with sex-slave backgrounds, as well as underage characters around 14/15 years old. @Zephyr pointed these things out to him and he didn’t really care (justification being that Jedi/Naboo queens/whatever “start young”) until she pressed him to speak to the players and make them age their characters up. As a player running into it on the grid you feel like “that can’t be right?? this person must have lied to staff. I will report it.” No, Cujo knew.

We greatly appreciate all evidence of bad behavior turned in to staff, and encourage the community helping to police the actions happening around the game. Please never fear submitting +rquests for help, or to provide the administration with helpful information on such matters

This is just idk. An insane thing for AOA to post, and there’s like 1300 posts expounding on that. Shit’s ridiculous.

The most difficult lesson I learned (hopefully learned lol) on my last staffing venture was what I said earlier and what everyone in the thread is saying: people just leave. You won’t always know why. They don’t even always know why. As hard as it is to swallow it, you can’t make a game so good and effort so perfect and a story so great that they stay. There is no amount of correct staff behavior that makes people stay, though there’s quite a lot of incorrect staff behavior that can make them leave.

At this point I just plan that the ending of the next game will be me and like 7 people and that’s alright.

People like what is new and struggle to keep fresh what has become familiar. There’s always a new game to check out. People’s rp partners/ships leave and make them less invested on their own, RL happens and then people struggle to re-engage, there’s all sorts of reasons. Also some games don’t have an end to stay to, they just wither out.

As both staff and player I am a Stay-er but I’ve come to understand it’s an aberration, lol. MUSH is a transient medium.

@xCroaker said in MU Peeves Thread:

Real question: What is staff overworked with in most games?

For me, it’s the labor of making sure plot/story is happening fast enough, that it’s happening often enough, that it’s accessible to everyone, that it’s still interesting and fun to people, that all the dots are being connected in an at least sort of sensible way, that it’s not too opaque and confusing and not too simple and boring, that it’s kept summarized and with reminders so people stay apprised of what’s happening…

Even with all that effort, people naturally lose interest in the game/story over time. Very few people are stay to the end people, which is the nature of the medium. I think persevering through the fatigue of “does anyone even care?” is another kind of staff work, perhaps one that doesn’t get talked about a lot.

IMO:

Async rp is not my first choice

Players doing async rp, reading real-time logs, and then incorporating that log knowledge into their “past” async scene as apparently prescient knowledge is unacceptable

Async events are hell. Everyone needs to take a turn before the action can resume and waiting 3 days for someone to say “I pursue the pickpocket” is awful

Speedy rp is kind of slept on as a fun option. Not every pose needs to be a Pulitzer Prize winner or to be 4 hours of real-time writing long. “Text” scenes, for themes that support them, can be a fun way to get rp done in a short amount of time.