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.
I would not pay and I would not accept pay. I’m an unpaid martyr okay I’ve spent 28 years making this a core part of my personality
More seriously, I am just tired of paying for things. 
One of the more key things for me (and mentioned by BN up there too) is
p a c i n g
And in particular, understanding that certain things take more time than other things. Asking PCs to brainstorm their own solutions, asking PCs to choose between a variety of options that may have good or poor outcomes, puzzle solving, talking to NPCs, resolving in-group disagreements as to approach, these all take way more RL time to accomplish than you’d sometimes think.
It’s important to keep it moving, it’s important not to get the players stuck on decision points or hurdles that won’t ultimately matter. Understanding for yourself how much time combat in your system generally takes (and how to keep it flowing relatively quickly) is important. And knowing which things are slow is important. It doesn’t mean you can’t do them, but if the PCs need to talk extensively with multiple NPCs and then have a fight, those may need to be separate sessions.
Back in the day I think events could be very long chunks of time and now you’re probably lucky to get 2-3 hours, because everyone including the GM is busy and has kids and has work in the morning. Pacing is key to get the most out of limited time chunks available.
@Jupiter said in Brainstorming Game Ideas:
I would like to make a game, but, I don’t want to put in hundreds of hours in development hell just to have it stall on release or have a player base of 3.
I don’t think there’s any way around this. There is no guarantee for what will be popular. Sometimes games with a dumb premise do really well for a long time, and sometimes games with a great, extremely popular premise go from boom to bust in 6 weeks.
IMO you can’t build for “what people want.” You can’t even build for what your friends might like, because even the closest of us don’t always like the same things. You can only build what you personally love, and that personal enthusiasm makes the work less “hell.”
If you like original setting vampires, do original setting vampires. People will come or they won’t, but if you’re excited about it and you/your team put genuine care and effort into it, I do think that players notice and appreciate.
What tips would you give a new (or even established) GM/ST to make MUSH events/scenes enjoyable? Perhaps from your perspective as a player, perhaps from your perspective as a GM, perhaps both.
There are some lengthy guides out there already, but let’s keep responses shorter form as posts here, rather than links.
@Yam I like anything that doesn’t make me do too much math
@bear_necessities said in Other People:
I think there is something to be said about having your own fun in order to make fun for other people.
There is, but for the purposes of this thread, we’re assuming you already checked that first box, “I am having fun to begin with.” Then the fun for other people can come in, which is the discussion I’m most interested here.
@bear_necessities said in Other People:
I’m a yes-and person. I do my best to be engaging …
Like so!
For the purposes of discussion in this specific thread I’m taking it as a given that the player is having fun, and I am interested in investigating how that player then makes sure others are also having fun as well, and shows interest in their experience.
“The player is not having fun to begin with” is kind of a different barrel of fish to shoot.
Gently steering this back on track
What do you do in your MU RP to make it fun for other people?
@Roo said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
even got to play with Hex and company, and it was great.
Aw, haha. I was a casualty of Cujo’s spree when all this went down (whole crew got banned), but if you had good experiences with us I’m very glad for that. The game is unfortunately not a good place to be, though.
@Lemon-Fox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
I let Cujo talk me out of my convictions
@Lemon-Fox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
not once but twice
@Lemon-Fox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
That’s very unlike me
@Lemon-Fox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
I can’t promise I’ll walk away yet
More subjects I’m curious about in the MU RP community at large:
What do you do in your MU RP to make it fun for other people?
ETA “MU” rp specifically, as tabletop etc is another sort of craft I think
@Testament lol just ask me next time, I would help you!
Interesting to me that no one (yet) voted for “Yes but only physical peril, not social.” Social to me covers the like
@Yam said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:
someone’s gonna’ post a proclamation the next morning LORD EIRAN, LAYABOUT OF THE LAURENTS, SEEN BEING AN UNMARRIAGEABLE IDIOT
that kind of thing. I would consider that a Social Bad Thing for a person to encounter.
But I think it’s pretty clear across the board that bad-things-likers enjoy them from a trusted source and people who decide to humiliate your character socially are maybe not a trusted source.
@Hobbie I dunno about this. For RP it doesn’t need to make functional code, and most scenes don’t even involve enough heavy theme specifics for the AI to fail them. AI is okay at, and fast at, writing RP.
Is it great? No. Is it interesting? Not really. But it’s inoffensive for sure and it’s “good enough” for a lot of people. That’s why so many people are adamant on points like “It’s fine as long as it’s readable” and “I only used it to make my pose BETTER” and “AI is so good and so slick that if you’re such a super mega good writer you’ll get called AI by accident” and “It’s better than bar RP”
Code, it’s failing for sure. But for quick fictional scenario writing, it does get better every day, even though it’s still never going to be better than average. The issue with AI isn’t so much “it sucks major ass to read this, this is unintelligible” as it is “you’ve lied to me and cheated me out of the human connection/experience we were both supposed to opt into.”
That last part is the kicker to me, and I am comfortable banning players who are okay with that kind of cheating. I can’t thrive in the same game ecosystem as them, no matter how “good” the AI gets.
@Raistlin said in AI In Poses:
I’ve helped other people use it for characters and what not as well.
What does this mean?
