@Pavel said in Star Trek Games:

So please don’t “gentle reminder” your way through ignoring my experience.

100%. I’ve played on (and run) tons of military games, and the rank divide has always caused issues. There are ways around it, but it needs to be acknowledged and planned for.

@Pavel said in Star Trek Games:

Gentle reminder that I’m talking about the enlisted crew, who constituted the vast majority of the ship’s complement and generally didn’t get to go on wacky adventures.

Yeah, one of the things that always bugged me about Trek is that more of the wacky adventures rationally should have involved the enlisted crew. It’s a Hollywood-ism to always have the heads of departments doing everything, but that mentality also pervaded the Trek games I tried through the years.

Then again, Trek has always been weird about its handling of officers/enlisted. At one point in the 60’s, Roddenberry even insisted that Starfleet had no enlisted ranks at all. (This is seemingly contradicted not only by simple logic but also by various characters throughout Trek canon.)

I know Star Trek isn’t RL, but just for reference/scope, a US aircraft carrier would have ~3000 enlisted crew and ~200 officers. So even the most junior Ensign is still in the top 6% of personnel, rank-wise. Lower Decks seems to contradict that conclusion, so who even knows.

@MisterBoring “The crew” in that example could just be the crew of the shuttle, not necessarily the entire crew. But yes, you’re right about the general problem. My point is just that there needs to be something more going on besides just “Ensign Bob technobabbles the broken thing”, and players on the whole are not great at driving stuff like that (in my experience).

@Jennkryst said in Star Trek Games:

There is a whole chart, for roll d20 to [science] the [device] for [techbobabble].

@Raistlin said in Star Trek Games:

Find some available people and do “Star Trek-y” things; take a shuttle out to explore an anomaly, run some training scenarios, tackle an engineering problem that’s cropped up

Those aren’t the kinds of things that make Trek interesting, though. A team can’t just take a shuttle out, get some readings, and then go home. An engineer can’t just throw technobabble at a broken drive. That would be really boring to RP.

Stuff has to happen. There have to be stakes. The drive needs to be fixed in time to get the ship away from some threat. The anomaly has to put the crew in peril somehow.

Some players can generate those stories for themselves, sure, but many (most?) are going to need it handed to them. It’s much harder to craft engaging stories like that for a random assortment of characters from disparate departments than it is for a fixed group of series regulars + the occasional guest star/redshirt.

@Jennkryst said in Star Trek Games:

Tangentially important to point out the entire point of Lower Decks is that we don’t focus on the primary crew, and it has given us some of the finest Trek in decades.

True, but that’s - what, one show out of a dozen that went that route? The default Trek would play like a FC-driven game, with the department heads as coveted positions and everyone else feeling like second fiddle. That was also how the old-school Trek games I tried felt, and why I believe they were never as popular as some of the other genres.

I certainly think it’s possible to make a game that worked differently, but you’d have to deliberately make game design choices to break that mold.

The other challenge is figuring out what people actually do. Like, say I’m a junior Engineering crewman. What is my RP about?

@Superbia Just be aware that FS3 is not very “crunchy” and so does not have a lot of the kinds of systems you’d typically find in a TTRPG. Like for Mechs in Battletech - there’s no concept of heat, ammo, range, critical hits, etc.

For a light-touch story driven thing, FS3 vehicles would surely do fine. It’s just not going to resemble any of the “mech wargame” systems.

@Pavel said in AI PBs:

The use of AI feels worse for a lot of us because we’re creatives, or move in creative circles, and that’s what generative AI is directly impacting right now.

That is true, but also not the whole story. GenAI is causing widespread disruption in everything from the fundamental business model of the internet to critical thinking skills. It may be impacting entry-level jobs, hurting an entire generation because companies are too short-sighted to realize that today’s entry-level people are tomorrow’s senior people. It has profound implications for propaganda, which is increasingly dangerous considering the threat of authoritarianism. These impacts are not limited to the creative fields.

And that’s not even touching on the alignment issues that make generalized intelligence (which we do not yet have but these grifter companies are trying desperately to build) so dangerous. My favorite thought experiment is the rogue stamp collector AI because it’s pretty hilarious yet illustrates the problem very well.

I am not saying that all machine learning is bad, but I personally see GenAI specifically as a threat on par with climate change in its ability to really screw up society. Amazon is bad, but GenAI is way worse IMHO.

@bear_necessities said in AI PBs:

when the exact same argument could be made for Amazon and I would argue those very real people being exploited are being hurt a bit worse here.

The relative evils of Amazon vs. GenAI is a valid debate but pretty off-topic. Unless your argument is that exploiting artists is OK because Amazon also exploits workers, it feels ultimately irrelevant.

Also did you miss the part where I admitted my reasons were kinda selfish? If someone wants to rail at me for being an imperfect human with inconsistent priorities, that’s valid. But at least I’m not going to try to argue with them that buying from Amazon is completely innocent.

@Third-Eye said in AI PBs:

I also don’t care if people like playing with it as a toy, even if the company sucks and the whole industry needs to pay the contributors it sucks inspo from and also be regulated.

Yeah I mean… in the grand scheme of the AI industry, is MUSHing going to be the make-or-break thing? Obviously not.

It just bothers me. These tools are literally destroying the livelihoods of people I care about right now and threatening to do the same to more people in the future. So it just really hurts to see people shrug and be like: “Eh, whatever, I’m gonna still play with it because it’s a fun toy.” I wish more people would take a principled stand against it, because that can actually make a difference to their bottom lines.

Most of us are old enough to remember Napster. Imagine what would have happened to the music industry if that had been Apple’s model instead of some little indie that could get crushed by the big corps. If they had just said: “Yeah we know it’s illegal, but we don’t care. Come sue us. By the time it gets through the courts, we’ll have a monopoly and nobody will be able to stop us.” I don’t really like that image. Yeah, I know the current streaming services aren’t great to musicians either, but it could have been a lot worse.

@KarmaBum said in AI PBs:

There’s also a big difference between “I don’t purchase things from Amazon” and “I feel that people who purchase things from Amazon are enabling corruption and exploitation.”

I purchase from Amazon and thereby enable corruption and exploitation. I have reasons, but they’re kinda selfish. I can at least admit it.

Someone using GenAI tools is supporting a tool that steals from artists. Full stop. You can argue that your support is a drop in the bucket (as someone can for Amazon), but it is undeniably contributing to that bucket. Every GenAI query harms the environment more than its alternatives. Every GenAI query is a number reported on a spreadsheet of “look how many users we have!” that is used to justify more corporate investment in tools that harm artists.

Where I draw the line is “people who ((do thing I disapprove of))” are evil/bad/scum of the earth/deserve harm/etc. That’s going too far, and I feel it can be avoided with a tiny bit of empathy.

@KarmaBum said in AI PBs:

And how we engage with people who align differently.

Sure. But there’s a big difference between “I understand the harm that Amazon does but I still choose to use it because (reasons, which may even be wholly justified given your personal situation)” and “I don’t get why everyone keeps saying Amazon is a big deal; it really does no harm when I order from them; people are just overreacting.” I see a LOT of the latter when it comes to GenAI, and that is what I push back on. (not from you specifically, just in general)

Like, piracy sites actively harm authors on a large scale. You can argue “I wouldn’t have bought the book anyway so I didn’t personally do any harm”, but that’s discounting the real harm caused by the very existence of those sites. (including that the pirated material was then used to train GenAI, bringing us full circle…)

@KarmaBum said in AI PBs:

I dunno. It feels like a weird hill for MUSHers to want to die on. It’s a writing hobby.

Fanfic (which is what most MU writing feels like to me) and handfuls of people using movie screencaps to support their imaginations have existed as long as the internet has, and haven’t really done any tangible harm that I can tell.

GenAI is doing TONS of real-world harm every day. Creative professions, journalism, critical thinking, toxic deepfakes, the environment… it’s literally staggering to me. The more we normalize it as being OK, the more we’re supporting that harm.

And sure, there is other harm in the world. If you want to boycott Amazon or gas-powered vehicles, or whatever, more power to you. We can each choose what causes are important to us. Opposing GenAI is one of mine.

@Pavel said in AI PBs:

I think that it is theoretically possible for it not to be. If I trained my own model on photos I took, or art I did, then that could probably be reasonable (from an art use standpoint, at least). Whereas all commercial generative models, at least so far as I am aware, are prolific in their art theft.

The problem with that theory is that most of the current generation of LLMs only work at scale. Unless you had a gazillion of your own photos, or had written an entire series of novels, it’s unlikely that you could train an AI model just on your own work and have it work effectively.

But hypothetically – if you did, and then only used it for your own personal use, then it would be completely ethical from a copyright standpoint.

There was an article recently about how some research group made a LLM out of solely public domain works, which was interesting. I don’t know how well it stacked up against other models, and I still think there are ethical concerns around the harm caused by such a tool, but at least it would be legal.

@Roz said in PBs:

@STD said in PBs:

Secondly, if the model is made for a for-profit system like Midjourney, then they already have the requisite rights and permissions. That’s part of what you’re paying for when you buy a license for Midjourney.

You cannot be serious.

Come on.

@Roz I completely missed that in the first post. Yeah that’s an absurd statement, as the twenty bajillion copyright lawsuits – everyone from Stephen King to the New York Times to Disney and Getty Images – will attest.

@STD said in PBs:

. It’s mostly Python anyway.

It’s not the source code that’s the problem, it’s the data that you’re training it on.

Nobody’s ever going to universally agree on ethics and morality; they’re always in the eye of the beholder. Personally I feel a lot less bad about using a screencap of an actor from a Hollywood movie (where both the film and the celebrity have put themselves “out there” into the public eye) than I do about generating some fake person from the work of unwilling artists and/or real everyday people whose face was scraped off the internet somewhere.

Let’s not pretend that fan-casting is a thing unique to MUSHes.

@Pavel said in World Tone / Feeling:

To be honest, most of the consequences I’ve experienced in games haven’t involved dice rolls at all. They’ve been the result of stupid decision making, some of which was because of stupid players trying to win stupid prizes, but plenty of others could be chalked up to a misunderstanding between players, or player and storyteller. So there’s often no ‘I am going to attack him with my longsword’ pre-action discussion time. Someone calls the Prince of Vancouver an American and suddenly there’s a blood hunt, all because of a lack of communication or clarity.

Same. Most of the serious drama I’ve seen has resulted from “I didn’t expect your character to react that way”, not “I didn’t expect that falling into a deep chasm might result in a broken leg.”

But this is all getting down to the age-old story vs. game continuum. It’s not one or the other, but every game and every player falls somewhere along the scale, sometimes variably.

On the more “story” end of the scale - I don’t care how much you as GM warn me about the chasm. A story that has a main character die because they slipped and fell into a chasm is dumb IMHO. It’s just ridiculous. (unless it’s a comedy then maybe being ridiculous is the point) Story absolutely can have setbacks, even deaths, but those setbacks should fit organically into the story and do something to propel either the plot or characters forward.

On the more “game” end of the scale - the unpredictability is a feature, not a bug. Not knowing if any die roll can result in tragedy can be exciting. That time when your PC failed his athletics check and flew his jetpack straight into a wall? Telling that story never gets old.

Neither is superior or inferior, they’re just different. I favor story when I MUSH and game when I play tabletop, but YMMV. The important thing is to set expectations.

@Juniper said in World Tone / Feeling:

Breaking your ankle though, let’s do that more.

Here’s the thing though - the game doesn’t stop while your PC’s ankle is broken. So a lot of the time, your character taking a serious injury means you can’t participate in the adventures for two months! (longer if we imagine realistic physical therapy / recovery periods! my friend dislocated a finger and was out of roller hockey and in physical therapy for ages).

I am the weird person who actually has put a character in a cast for six RL weeks. I also sent a PC off-grid for IC medical training for something like three? four? months RL months because it made sense for the character. But it sucked, and I don’t really fault anyone else for not wanting to deal with that.

There’s a reason TTRPGs mostly gloss over injuries and most MUs just use Hollywood wound physics.

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

Wait six weeks and never get your scene, yeah, so what. Honestly, if it’s not a pattern, and if in this instance you get skipped, well, so what, there’s more game coming. If is a pattern and it seems it is just your place to be ignored on that game? Well, yes, you need to find another game. And you are justified in being irritated that you wasted time and effort on a game that offered you a PC but made you audience.

You’re assuming that scenes-with-NPC is part of some intrinsic promise staff makes in for playing on the game. Unless it’s spelled out in policy, I disagree. This is why it’s important to spell out expectations, so everyone is on the same page.

ETA: Also, “not getting scene” is not equivalent to “being ignored by staff”. Good staff will communicate, provide updates, perhaps offer alternatives (like resolving the scene off-camera), etc. My point was simply that not all jobs are created equal, and there’s nothing wrong with staff prioritizing ones they’re able to get done over “first come first served”.

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

If it’s just ‘whatever I have the energy for’ with no queue at all, then it’s "whatever sounds the most fun for me’.

Those two things are not equivalent though?

Not all jobs are created equal in terms of workload. Sometimes somebody has a question that takes ten seconds to answer. Other times somebody requires a 2-hour scene with a NPC or has a really thorny theme question that’s going to require serious brainpower and/or consultation with other people.

Prioritizing based on your available energy vs. the jobs at hand is prioritizing.

Now if someone’s waiting 6 weeks and never gets their scene with the NPC, that might be excessive. But so what? Staffers are human, they’re volunteers, and they’re entitled to have fun too. If they’re not doing a satisfactory job by your estimation, that’s a good reason to find another game. But if all the staff burn themselves out because the demand exceeds their spoons? Then nobody’s jobs get done because there isn’t a game.

@STD said in World Tone / Feeling:

In my experience, most people don’t mind losing big – even going as far as character death – as long as it’s cool.

YMMV. Over the span of about 2 decades, I ran many different games with opt-in character death. You PC could be incapacitated, but would never(*) die without your consent. In that time, I can think of maybe two? three? players who chose to kill off their PCs voluntarily. These were high-stakes settings. Loads of gunfights, plenty of opportunities to write yourself out as a Big Darn Hero. The overwhelming majority of players I’ve encountered (both online and in offline TTRPGs) don’t want to lose their characters. Even if you ignore the XP loss, there’s an investment in relationships, story, development there that you can’t quantify.

(*) Barring extreme “you’ve painted us into a corner with your monumentally boneheaded actions” situations.

@Pavel said in World Tone / Feeling:

If there’s danger around every corner that’ll get you if you slip up for even a moment, your CG needs to take ten minutes and approval even less.

It’s certainly possible to do so. TGG had a high PC fatality rate and zippy fast chargen (I don’t think there was even an approval step).

@Warma-Sheen said in World Tone / Feeling:

a game where there’s danger around every corner that’ll get you if you slip up for a moment SHOULD make characters risk avoidant. The problem is that most games don’t provide a reward that is worth characters overcoming that risk avoidance.

There are certainly players who enjoy a high-risk environment, though my experience is they’re a small minority. For the rest, I’m skeptical that there’s any manner of reward that would get players to risk their characters to death at the drop of a hat. Most MU players don’t want to play the “you have died of dysentery” version of a Wild West game—they want outlaws, gamblers, and high adventure on the frontier. A real post-apocalyptic world would involve a lot of people making gardens, filtering water, and dying from small cuts and poor sanitation. Sane people in such an environment take risks to survive, but how do you model that in a game environment without forcing a MUD-like level of survival mechanics?