@Yam I’ll own that it was a snide comment.
But I don’t feel it’s on the level of implying that kids who choose not to MUSH were raised wrong.
Anyway. Carry on. 
It’s clearly a “me thing.”
Ed to note in case people are only seeing the quoted section: The complete quote is: “Even those of us in the hobby lament that there’s shit-all for fun new games right now.”
@Ashkuri My point is just… it’s not “the modern generation being raised wrong!!!” that’s lead to the majority of this hobby being middle-aged folks.
We all found our way into this at some point, so either our parents were also iPad dads, or that’s not why kids aren’t joining M*s in droves.
(The “iPad dad” comment is really stuck in my craw. Just seems like a shitty thing to say to us parents who are, like, doing our best out here.)
@Juniper said in Age Verification & Games:
TBH I’m not worried about minors infesting my spaces because they’re not interested in the level of effort that is required to get invested in this stuff (anymore. Thanks iPad dads).
My teenage son roleplays online several nights a week. His stories are full of lasers, demons chasing people through time and space, and lots of stupid teenage arguments. I’ve never once heard him say, “I sip my drink and look cool.”
He’s aware of MUSHing, has seen me do it, has even chatted with me and brainstormed a few times, but he’s not going to join a hobby full of middle-aged women pretending to be sexy vampires.
While I think our janky reliance on telnet is definitely a barrier to entry, my take is just that young people aren’t joining 'cause this just isn’t fun. If you were a young person, would YOU find any of this interesting or fun? Even those of us in the hobby lament that there’s shit-all for fun new games right now. 
@catzilla said in Neon Protocol:
I didn’t see this before posting. Now I’m 99% sure it’s her.
I’m almost positive it’s not the same person.
This Star Wars game is also run by the person that runs the current game called Age of Heroes - the one that jacked all that code.
https://ageofheroesmush.com/char/Persephone
https://swdarktimes.com/char/Persephone
I put 7-12 months.
I’m technically running a private story right now, but I wouldn’t really count it as “RPing on a Mush” in the common parlance.
@Pyrephox flippant example, as that’s usually all I have, but I see your point. Replace “throw tomato” with “smuggle in a weapon, ask a salient question, etc.”
The idea that the whole scene is impervious to characters feels like lazy storytelling.
Which I’ve totally been a lazy storyteller and just put a scene on rails or slapped a post up because I didn’t want to deal with curve balls. It happens, but if it happens often, I should probably tell a more interactive story.
@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.
Shouldn’t the solution be to find a way to make it more interactive? Like, if the King is making a proclamation that affects all the PCs, wouldn’t you want that scene to be something people show up to?
Even if they know they can’t stop the speech, can’t they RP trying? Throw the ST a curveball and bring a rotten tomato and wind up getting arrested?
It seems like the assumption of “all the PCs show and watch like good boys & girls” may make it easier for the ST, but it’s not giving characters much room to maneuver.
Through the early 2000s, the big Pern games had strict building quotas, so areas couldn’t actually build rooms for everything. Your builder might get a 20-room quota, so admin had to prioritize. It wasn’t uncommon to have 30+ people in the Galleries room, all watching and reacting to the same Hatching room scene, which also has 10+ people posing in it, so having places helped minimize the spam. The galleries might have four sections in it, so you’d be seeing the big event spam and then mostly just the 5-10 people your PC was actually close enough to talk to.
And all the people apologizing for forgetting to use the places code. 
I remember on at least one WoD game, the code interacted with code for things like heightened senses and obfuscation. People could drop into table-talk to avoid having an invisible character eavesdrop, and/or certain characters could eavesdrop if they had the right stats.
It was a nice bauble - not unlike mutter code that would replace random bits of dialogue with ellipses, or language code that only translated things if you had the right stats.
@Faraday Thank you for taking the time to add this. Genuinely appreciated. 
@Faraday I’d rather see it as a page on the individual game than on Ares Central. My thoughts went to a /scene-stats/ route that just populated a quick dashboard of metrics (avg scenes shared per day, avg characters per scene, avg words per scene, breakout of scene types, etc).
While I like the activity log on AresCentral, I am wary of standing up fuzzy data in what winds up looking like an official or comparative capacity. If there was just a /scene-stats/ route that could be turned on/off, that’d give game runners the chance to opt out.
$0.02
Edit to add - @Trashcan I just ran this for funsies on ODW. TY for sharing!
Currently, 5/36 scenes are tagged “Traditional” but have been ongoing for more than 1 day, so 14% are currently mis-tagged. I imagine that varies wildly, but 10-20% mis-tagged sounds fair.
@Faraday Oh, most definitely, but I’m also operating on the assumption that most scenes played are shared. I didn’t get to the level of seeing if there were any scene gaps or comparing scene # to scene share date…
…cuz that’s my actual job and what I’m supposed to be doing now instead of posting here. But!
Given a small sample of publicly posted and ongoing scenes, more scenes carry-over at least one day than are posted same-day.
@MisterBoring I’ve always been into tracking metrics on games. At one point on GH, I coded a virus that you could pass from person-to-person as part of a plot (pre-COVID <.<), and it had background tracking so I could watch its transmission, see who infected the most people, etc.
One time, I went through and compiled all the old data about every hatching on every active Pern game in the early '00s, just to validate that it was statistically easier to get a Gold Dragon on PernWorld than any other open game - and I still remember that PW had over 1/10 PC Impressions as Gold vs 1/15 for NC.
Pre-Ares, there were tons of log and activity trackers on Wikidot. You can still see some in action on Harper’s Tale - http://harpers-tale.wikidot.com/sw-staff:activity-tracker I think they’ve revamped the page since I played there, but I helped build/maintain the log tracker for a while there.
A “totally useless data about scenes” page would be awesome: Avg words per scene, avg characters per scene, % of scenes shared (vs total), avg time between open-and-share date, % of scene types (Social/Event/Vignette/etc)…
And by awesome I obviously mean super nerdy.
@Superbia said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Aegis Company runner here, just want to belatedly chime in to say our scenes, especially events, do skew live.
Please note that this isn’t a value judgment. I personally don’t care about the live/async split. But I’m a data analyst, and confirmation bias is one of my biggest peeves. So just to give you a very small sample set:
As of 3/18 -
Scenes already shared with the dates posted - 9 live
Scenes started yesterday+ with those dates - 12 async
Looking at those four days, 43%* of your scenes are live.
*Ares doesn’t have a publicly available ‘scene shared date’, so I’m assuming that scenes posted on those days were also played those days (credit for “live” scenes).
Just for the sake of conversation, the other two games mentioned as having a live component - Empty Night and Keys - have even less, with no scenes posted on 3/16 or 3/17 for either game. So your game’s still ahead of the curve.
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes
Thank you for clarifying, as I also read it that way, and was like… damn, I tried to explain that it just doesn’t hit me as fun, and people were like NO I BELIEVE YOU DO LIKE IT!!!
Alas, all the games where I used to play are no longer open to grab my default RP prefs, but they generally went something like:
Specific examples?
Hopefully, this helps.
p.s. r u fr rn?
p.p.s. Double-edit to add… as I’m rereading the past few go-rounds…
I am not trying to sell this to anyone as a better or even good way to be. I wish I could still enjoy playing pick-up scenes the way I used to. I’ve spent at least a year trying to find that old oomph, and it just is not there.
If anything, I do not wish for others to fall off the same way that I have. So take my story as a warning, for I do not play right now, and that is not what I would wish for the rest of y’all.
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???
Sorry, that’s more an issue of replying on my phone.
My entire point is just that I know what social RP is, I have enjoyed it in the past, I do not enjoy it anymore. I do enjoy many other types of RP.
Whether or not you believe that is irrelevant.
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i think that what people generally mean is that they don’t like RP that turns out to not be fun. which is universal.
I think that’s what people generally mean, yes.
I also agree that I do not like RP that turns out to be not fun.
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i don’t actually believe anyone would eschew a social scene with a new character that turned out to have great chemistry and was an awesome time.
I’m fine if people don’t actually believe this.
Edit to fix quote issue.
@Yam Interesting.
I guess it is just a matter of differing tastes. I used to enjoy random social interactions, but I do not anymore. They just do not entertain me, the same way that I am not entertained by Bridgerton or MMA.
@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I definitely agree with this, which is why I’m always baffled about why people declare no bar RP/no social fluff.
Hm. Are you equally baffled by people who declare no smut? Or no lords and ladies?
People like different things.
@sao I used to do this, too. If it helps you any…
You can also do this by going to the /locations directory on the game, finding the room, and clicking “Start Scene” from there.
It still marks them as Temp Rooms, but it imports location name and room description into the scene for you. Which I like.
The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.
