@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:

You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.

Many players enjoyed DarkMetal.

Many other players wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole because that style of gameplay holds no appeal to them.

TGG was a game with permadeath, trivially easy chargen, XP-based progression, stakes, drama, rotating “seasons” to keep things fresh, and the some of the most impressive immersive code systems I’ve ever seen. It still had a lot of player turnover. (and about 10 very passionate core players)

People want their actions and choices to matter. … It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.

This I agree with, but routinely killing your PCs off is not the only way to accomplish this. There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.

There is no one-size-fits-all game.

@RedRocket said in AI Megathread:

You might find something interesting.

And if you’re lucky, it might even be true! That’s the problem with LLMs, though - you’ll never really know for sure.

@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:

While that’s how you and I might mean it, I have quite legitimately seen the term used in discussion to tar all social “non plot moving” RP with the negative brush. As if the best bits of DS9 were the explosions and not the conversations between Garak and Bashir.

Sure, no definition is ever going to be universal. Also I’m certainly not going to WrongFun anyone who doesn’t like social RP. I just think it’s useful to highlight that distinction. Social scenes can absolutely move a plot forward if that plot is “will the Duke of Nowhere undermine his rivals” or “will Mary reconcile with her estranged brother”. If all you want to do is RP flying a fighter jet and shooting Cylons (no shade, btw) then anything in-between can feel like fluff.

@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:

@MisterBoring I have no idea. I don’t consider duels to be BarP.

I don’t think anyone does? Folks are reacting to @KarmaBum who literally said: “Just that 4/5 of these sound like the L&L equivalent of Bar RP”. The 1/5 that didn’t was the duels.

That aside, I think it’s important to consider a distinction between social RP, RP that happens to take place in a bar, and BarRP. They are not really the same.

Social RP can include deep, meaningful relationships (not just romantic) between characters; backstabbing plots; high drama; fallout from other plot/action scenes, etc.

RP in bars can be exciting. A bar fight, confrontation, breakup, backstabbing plots, etc.

“BarRP” is usually used for time-filling “fluff” RP that’s just filling space because the players have nothing better to do. It’s the MU equivalent of small-talk. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if that’s all you ever do it can feel unfulfilling.

L&L games aren’t really my thing, but on the surface it seems like most of the balls/plots/drama would fall more on the social end than the BarRP end. YMMV of course.

@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:

You’re not going to appeal to 100% of people, but 95% of people will want to try the new hotness. After a bit, the ones who don’t like it will leave. It’s not really a mystery.

Yeah this. I don’t think it’s a magical 3-month window so much as bunch of people saying: “Oh hey maybe this will be fun!” Then after anywhere from 1 to 12 weeks being all: “Eh, not so much.”

Like you said, it’s the same with TV. A hot new show will get a bunch of viewers for its premiere, but then they’ll start trailing off. Depending on how good the show is, or how niche its appeal is (even if it’s objectively good), you might see that tapering off be more or less dramatic, but you’re never going to get rid of it entirely.

@Third-Eye said in The 3-Month Players:

But the Bubble is its own thing and it’s exhausting and it keeps happening and I want it not to happen again on the next project I undertake.

What’s the alternative though? Let’s postulate that a game is likely only a good fit for 30% of the people who check it out. If 60 people check it out in the first month, you’re left with 20 players who will hopefully stick around. You can build a game around that. If only 20 people check it out and you’re left with 7 players? That’s a tougher proposition. Sure it can work (see: TGG and other smaller niche games) but I think it’s an uphill battle.

@Trashcan said in The 3-Month Players:

I also don’t agree that all players want to stick on a game but the game fails them, and I don’t agree that you can make the game so shiny that these people will stick when they would have otherwise gone off to the new shiny thing. Some people are 3Ms and that’s just the way they are. You can make the greatest, most inclusive, most content-having, most relationship-building game anyone has ever seen, and they will still wander off to check the next up and coming game.

Just because the game isn’t meeting their needs, that doesn’t mean that the game failed them. There’s no conceivable way that a game can appeal to every single MUSHer out there, because many of us want different things out of a game.

There are many reasons folks move on from a game. I’ve just seen zero evidence that there’s some kind of ticking 3-month clock (where they’ll move on just because of “novelty” if the game is otherwise a good fit for them) built into the majority of MUSHers. YMMV.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in The 3-Month Players:

Smaller but invested. It sounds harsh, but it’s not those March violets you need to invest in as a game runner. They come with great enthusiasm – and they bail with just as much enthusiasm when the next game opens. It’s the other players you need to invest in – the ones who will stick around for a longer time. Those who came looking for a community to move into and stay in.

I think this is where we see things differently. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but in my experience–the majority of players want to stick around. MUSHers come to tell stories and build IC relationships. That’s the long game. It’s not like a MMO or single-player game where everyone’s always drawn to “the new shiny”. The biggest reason they move on to a new game is that the one they’re on isn’t meeting that need.

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:

Has The Bubble always been there, but games came out more slowly back in the day so we didn’t notice it as much?

I’ve seen this phenomenon since I started MUSHing in the 90s.

The main issue IMHO is that many (most?) games open without a clear plan of what players are going to do. You can get people in the door with any interesting concept, but what’s actually going to happen in the game to keep players there?

So players hop on, hoping that something’s going to catch their interest. When you don’t hook them, they’re gone. If this happens with a lot of players at once, the initial turnover is extremely disruptive.

@Third-Eye said in The 3-Month Players:

One thing I’ve thought a lot about this year, and do not have an answer to, is if there’s something unique to Ares that drives this phenomena more than other MUSH-like formats, or if the transparency just makes this all more visible.

The phenomenon has always existed, but I think you can reasonably argue that Ares magnifies it.

Ares lowers the bar to opening a game. If we postulate that 50% of games will fail after 3 months, then more games that open = more games that fail (numerically speaking).

Ares also makes it easier to discover games. This arguably could lead to bigger initial bubbles, magnifying the effects of the collapse.

Making it easier to open a game also potentially reduces staff investment in the game’s success. “Try it and see if it sticks” is a more workable mentality when you haven’t invested a mammoth about of blood, sweat, and tears just getting the game to opening day.

Lastly (and I don’t think this is Ares-specific), it feels like a lot more games are opening now in limited alpha/beta status than there once were. I think it’s harder to build critical mass for a game when you’re starting on a shaky foundation.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Why MUSH?:

@Faraday The way I interpret it is, the better your thing is, the more players will end up in cathegory three.

Sure, but the question was “is three months the sweet spot for a MU”. If you operate under that belief, you would gear your game toward category one and then nobody would end up in category three

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Why MUSH?:

Three months: The average time a player will spend on a game, any game. Once the new shine and sparkle has worn off, many move on to the next new thing.

With the utmost respect to the legendary Koster, I disagree with this assertion. MUSHes lend themselves to long-form storytelling. Their closest parallel IMHO is a TV series with multiple seasons. The idea that TV shows should aim to only be 1-season long just because statistically most TV shows don’t live past the first season is a faulty premise. If you make a good TV show, viewers will stick around for ages. Same for a MUSH.

On the flip side though, it’s still good practice to focus on making the most kick-ass 1st season you can, both to hook new viewers, and in case that’s all you get

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

Is three months the sweet spot for a MU?

IMHO 2-3 months is just the time you have to “hook” your playerbase. There’s a honeymoon period when a game first opens. If you don’t build critical mass during that period, the game will fail. So rather than plan for a game that only lasts 3 months, I would plan things that will build momentum during those first months.

@Jumpscare said in Why MUSH?:

Yeah, at least with Ares games, it takes 3 months for the story to be abandoned.

I kid, but I really have played so many Ares games that fizzle our within 3 months.

Sure, but I’ve played on so many PennMUSH games, TinyMUX games, etc. that fizzle out within 3 months too. For as long as the hobby has existed, the vast majority of MUs have never really taken flight. Ares just helps more at least get to the “open” phase.

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

@Faraday Did Storium happen to inspire Ares at all?

Ares had been underway for a long time (since 2007) before Storium existed (2014). The first Ares alpha game had already opened before I even learned about Storium. But as I was designing the web portal, I did look at a lot of different online RP styles - some of the big forum/PBP sites, commercial MUD websites, Storium, Roll20, and more. One concrete thing I adapted from Storium was showing the character icons next to the poses in the web scenes. The earlier versions looked more like wikidot logs - just all text. You can read a bit about the early web prototyping on the Ares Developer Blog.

@MisterBoring I’ve played a few games there. It’s sometimes fun, but it’s just not the same.

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

The odd part about this is that I cannot do asynchronous RP at all. As much as asynch is definitely for people who don’t have a stable schedule, it causes me anxiety that I still don’t really understand.

I don’t think that’s so strange. Despite all the effort I put into letting Ares support async RP for those who need it, I don’t like to RP asynchronously. The constant context switching, the long delays between poses (which also tends to lead to longer poses that are harder to react to), and the fact that many of them just trail off without resolution… not my jam. That’s also what’s kept me from getting into PBP and Storium RP.

There are plenty of styles of online RP, from forum PBP to freeform discords to hybrids like Storium. What do you like about MUSHing specifically?

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

Sometimes I’ve found even the “your social conflict dice work on NPCs, PCs react to your RP” jarring. If Abelard has enormous influence in ‘society’ and everybody loves him based on his dice, but every single PC thinks he’s an insufferable prick and an idiot, it’s rough. Though really, this sort of thing may have less to do with social-stats and their use and more to do with players who want to play total assholes but not the consequences of assholery.

It’s fair to find that jarring, but there are a number of ways to deal with it.

You could try to figure out where the disconnect is. Is Abel just doing a spectacularly bad job of playing in line with his dice? Maybe he needs some help. Maybe there’s some kind of miscommunication. Who knows.

Or it could just be that the other PCs are reacting entirely appropriately from their character’s POV and what you have is just that the PCs are the outliers in society. You can then make clear through NPCs, plots, +rumours/IC news/whatever that Abel is in fact loved by the populace and the PCs are out of step with society at large. This could potentially lead them to some interesting RP and/or conflicts.

Regardless, I see no justification for forcing another PC to love Abel just because he’s got good dice.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

In tabletop it’s pretty ordinary for a GM to say, “Woah, hold on, roll intelligence,” and then inform the player (on success) that their scheme is flawed and why, and help them come up with a good one. It’s harder to do that on a MU, where play continues without the GM watching.

Yeah totally. And also that sort of thing is less jarring in tabletop because it’s far more common to just give the broad outlines of a plan, like “I try to convince the guard that I’m part of the cleaning crew ((rolls dice for bluff))”. That just doesn’t work as well on a MU where the RP is typically more down in the weeds.

Of course you have to handwave sometimes, but my issue with social conflict (back to the topic at hand) is that you tend to be handwaving, like, the core of the RP.

Something like @Roadspike suggested could be a decent compromise though. Being able to influence NPCs, gossip, etc. without having to make PCs behave in a certain way. It’s one thing to inflict something upon a character (“you’ve been hit in the head” or “there’s a mean rumour swirling about you”), it’s another to control that character’s thoughts and actions.

@Raistlin said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I think it’s similar to saying, “You want to play a strong character? Show proof you’re that strong in real life.”

Your own physical strength is not reflected in the words you write, though. Nor is your ability to throw a punch or fly a spaceship. I’m not saying you need to actually possess these skills, just be able to write it. Nor is there anything wrong with collaborative brainstorming.

I don’t think we’re that far off in practice, really, I’ve just literally seen too many cases through the years where people will do something like RP the worst line imaginable and think that a +roll Con or +roll Seduction should somehow make that work. For me, it doesn’t. If you can’t even get in the ballpark of portraying a convincing con artist, maybe that’s just not the right role for you.

@Raistlin said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

Without them, you risk telling players “Sorry, you can’t play a charismatic character because you’re not charismatic in real life” or “Your character can’t pull off that brilliant scheme because you’re not smart enough to devise it.”

Unpopular take maybe, but personally? I don’t have a problem with that, to a point. Yes, we’re all playing characters that are not ourselves, but MU*s to me are more of a writing game than a puzzle-solving game. Writers have to do at least some modest amount of research into the characters/settings/themes they’re writing. You don’t need to be an expert, of course, but you at least need to be able to fake it to a level that isn’t jarring.

So if you can’t come up with a scheme for your character to break into the vault to steal the MacGuffin, or a way to convince the King to give you troops, it’s not my job to come up with one for you just because you made a few good rolls. I don’t want a game where the poses are like: “Faraday gives a rousing speech.”

Dice can be used as an adjunct to the story, but they should never BE the story.