@MisterBoring said in System for Mech Game:

Not sure about the integrating with Ares part, as I’m a noob to Ares.

• Lancer + Lancer: Battlegroup - In my opinion, this is the new hot mech game. Where the tech in Battletech is a product of its time (the 1980s), Lancer updates that tech stuff to make more sense given current tech (Mechs are 3d printed, people can be backed up onto a hard drive type thing and restored to life if they die) along with a more anime art style.

Awesome game in an awesome setting (especially the Karrakin Trade Baronies) by an awesome creator. Unfortunately, it is probably compatible with FS3. FS3 is a rather unique skill/resolution system that I don’t think is really compatible with most TTRPGs without heavy modification to either the code or the overall TTRPG’s mechanics.

@catzilla That’s clever and a good use of AI for MU* purposes.

Honestly, I am coming more and more around to the idea that all PBs should be custom created art and/or AI generated images. The use of images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes has been making me more and more uncomfortable over the years.

So, as I was riding home from my Friday happy hour binge after a completely shit week, (God, I hate laypeople who think they can argue law. Which is hypocritical, because I am a layperson, a well trained layperson, but still a layperson who argues law) and I came up with a “rule.” It’s kind of like some states where you have to inform a home invader you’re about to blow their head off if they don’t leave, before you’re allowed to blow their head off. I drunkenly call it the Duty of Informed Consequences. If your character is going to take offense, hold enmity against, try to ruin, whatever another PC because of something they just did or posed, you MUST OOCly inform them that their character has “done fucked up” and give them the chance to retcon, repose, whatever. You do not have to specify what the exact problem is, but you have to go “Hey. You done fucked up. You get one re-do.” After that, if they go “Nah, I am good,” or the try to make a new pose but still do the fucked up thing again, you get to ICly hammer them or at least try to hammer them for their shit.

@Pavel said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:

if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear

I think this point here is often a point of contention. What’s obvious to the person running the story isn’t always obvious to those of us playing the story, especially if it hasn’t been communicated accurately. Sure, some of the responsibility is on the players to ask follow up questions, but I’d really advocate for those telling the story to go that extra half a mile in making hazards and risks more explicit.

Well, my example was from OSR D&D. What I was meaning was cases like “I attack the orc with my longsword.” In that scenario, the player, unless they’re new to D&D, should know the roll and what the consequences of failure are (not hitting said orc). Basically, anything that isn’t a standardized action in the rules should be clarified between the GM and the player. For MU*s, pretty much every action is not standardized, so the GM should always be informing the player what failure looks like. I will note, though, there are cases where there is no GM but failure is still possible. In a L&L game, a PC might make a speech or whatever and staff reviews it later, makes them roll, and decides because they did a terrible job a mob has formed, and this decision takes place obviously after the player has already taken their action. I’m not sure how to address that.

EDIT: Drunken spelling and grammar. Then again, this is a drunken edit, so maybe the spelling and grammar were right the first time.

@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:

I think the issue is so often when the consequences come around those consequences are out of the player’s control. Which can be completely reasonable/logical! But they feel helpless and more easily feel slighted/pissed/unaccepting of the outcome. Especially if there is a hand behind the outcome such as a GM/Staff telling them what happened.

When bad results happen, I think you have to push it back on the player and let them make a choice. I was recently watching Critical Role’s new campaign and their use of their new system Daggerheart and I thought it was perfect for handling the scenario of a bad outcome/consequences in a MU*.

As an OSR GM, when my players tell me what action they want to take, if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear, I try to make it clear and confirm that they still want to take the action.

"Player: My character is going to jump the chasm to get to the other side.

Me: That’s going to be a d20 roll under strength with a -2 for they length of the jump. If you succeed, your character will be on the other side of the chasm. If you fail, your character will fall into the chasm and, while your character can’t determine the exact depth, it’s enough that there is a strong potential for their death. Do you wish to continue?"

GMs should treat action declarations more like hovering over the options in a Paradox Interactive strategy game story event. Tell the player what the odds of success and failure or what die their going roll, the difficulty number or whatever, and whatever bonuses or penalties they have. Tell them what success looks like (because what they’re attempting may not get them what they’re actually after), and tell them what failure looks like.

@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:

Also I want a Grimbright/Nobledark sci-fi/fantasy with mechs and lords and ladies and dragons.

Allow me to introduce you to Lancer. You’ll want the Dune-esque Karrakin Trade Baronies setting. Though, it’s mostly a D&D 4e style game, e.g. a miniatures wargame focused on tactics with very few mechanics for out of combat stuff.

@dvoraen said in World Tone / Feeling:

I never thought I’d see “sex worker” meaning “tax collector” in even a fictional government, but here we are.

Do…do I even want to know what it is they’re collecting as “taxes?” I suspect I would want to refuse any tax refunds.

@Tez said in World Tone / Feeling:

• Everyone loves to see their actions reflected in game-wide updates and announcements. Firan and Arx both featured that to greater or lesser degrees. It’s cooler still in my opinion to see an actual shift of culture or laws. I’ve been working on my long-dreamed generational game where the ability to shift an in-game culture is a mechanic, somewhat modeled off Crusader Kings.

@Pyrephox and I are both hankering for a city-state setting centered around the politicking of the various guilds, noble families, what have you. This sounds like it would work well with those mechanics.

• I like temporary room descriptions that can be updated on public spaces to reflect events that have happened, but sometimes people forget and it loses its impact. Still, I like that as an idea: a grid that updates to reflect actions people have taken.

I have recently taken up looking into the FutureMUD Engine, because I have found that I am more of an RPI guy than a MUSH guy. Anyways, in the engine Creator’s YouTube Video on room building, he talks about how the engine has overlays for zones that are basically different instances of the same zone. While people are playing in one, you can building in the other. Then when you want to switch which one is publicly accessible, it’s just a toggle. In the example he gives, he talks about one zone having an after a disaster overlays that they switched on to replace the normal zone to represent all of the damage down to the area by the disaster. Such a system seems like a great way to manage updates over time that reflect the effects of the PCs actions

@bear_necessities I am surprised you hadn’t encountered it before. It’s been a bit of meme in tabletop gaming since Brighthammer and Midhammer

The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.

EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.

@Pavel Norm!

@dvoraen I find ear cleanings to be a rather pleasant experience

@Flitcraft What if their hands aren’t functional?

@Raistlin @Warma-Sheen
I also think it’s a trust issue, and a trust issue that is almost entirely in the “you just have to trust me” category. Just like trusting the person on the other side of the screen isn’t a stalker who keeps changing their identity so they can chargen a new character to interact with you or trusting that people you are having a private scene with or worse TSing aren’t sharing those logs with their friends to laugh at your writing, there isn’t a way to outright protect yourself and verify that it isn’t happening. It’s too easy for the other person to obfuscate. So instead of allowing for grey area, people have to make it a firm black or white issue, because if there is grey area, when you catch someone, it becomes a whole ordeal figuring out if what they did was wrong. When it’s black and white, there doesn’t have to be any time spent on nuance.

@Faraday Getting a computer as close to passing the Turing Test than any other computer has managed before. That’s about it.

@Juniper said in AI Megathread:

People call this “hallucination”. I think we should stop letting them assign a new name to an existing phenomenon. The LLM is malfunctioning.

No, it is not. What the AI spits out is meaningless to the AI. It just spits out what the most likely next set of words are based on the input it received and what it has already given. For it to malfunction, it needs to start writing sentences devoid of grammar. As long as what it writes is grammatically correct and a somewhat rational statement, it has succeeded

It is saying things that are wrong.

Yes, but factually accurate answers are not the purpose. Grammatically correct sentences are.

It is failing to do what it was designed to do.

No. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do. It’s failing at doing what entrepreneurs, marketers, and other PT Barnum snake oil salespeople want the public to think it can do.

EDIT: To actually contribute something to the thread, about the only thing I am willing to use AI on for MU purposes is played-bys and maybe creating images on the wiki for the various venues on the grid. I have grown tired of seeing Jason Momoa as the image for Seksylonewulf McRiptabs #247.

EDIT 2: Typoes.

@Pavel Soooo, I haven’t been on any MU*s for like half a decade. Are…are people doing that? That seems…pointless. “Hey, let’s play basketball. But instead of us, let’s have robots play against each other while we do something else.” Writing is the whole point

@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:

The same thing is true of people who hang out in bars just to hook up for TS. Why are you on a roleplay game with a complicated combat and stat system when you could just go to one of many games where you can literally be anything and bang anything you can imagine.

Some people like plot with their porn or porn with their plot. Romance novels sell better than Hustlers. DeepThroat, the highest grossing pornographic film, made $22.6 million inflation adjusted at the box office; Fifty Shades of Gray grossed $569 million. Sure, you could log onto Shang, find a willing partner, and hammer out your best IKEA instructions for Peg A going into Slot B with gusto, but where’s the flirting, the foreplay, the slow simmer, the romance?

For those of you that think the RH only route is a bad idea, which of the other options that I presented sounded better and why? Or if none of them sounded good, what is your proposal for the premise of the server?

@sao You’re a doctor! Not a MU* player.

@DrQuinn said in Pretty Princess Simulator:

@Ominous It still seems like you’re setting it up so that people are going to mob staff NPCs and that’s going to put what sounds like burnout pressure on them. And then there’s favoritism and times people can’t get on to meet up with a staff NPC and and and…

But as @KarmaBum always says: what are people going to RP? Because it sounds like everyone is just going to be fighting for I Talk To The NPC tonight. And that’s going to get really old really fast if you have more than like 5 people playing. Will there be bonuses for people who just chat/fight during the down times ala the Bachelor/ette? Or does this sort of thing favor the person who only logs on for events, gets the NPCs ear, then logs off so nothing can stick to them?

Like this seems great for a small group of friend running a sandbox, but looks like it will fall apart the minute you get more than 10 people.

Talking to the NPC isn’t going to get you much unless you have something notable to offer. It’s like Regular Joe knocking on the President’s door (somehow he keeps getting past the Secret Service) and asking him for help on a traffic ticket every day. The goal is to stand out and one-up the others in the day to day and at the events. Wear the best dress to the ball, challenge people to friendly duels and win, demonstrate largesse to the common folk by opening an orphanage, do something notable. Just chatting to the NPCs over and over again is just going to annoy them and get the character written off as…well…annoying.