Request: Scene Requests

Let me start off by making clear that this is a very small issue; it’s not a bug or a glitch, and we certainly can find ways around it. Just something that’d make our lives easier, a coding project for a rainy day if you will.

Ankh-Morpork MUSH is still a baby in terms of playerbase, and what we have is spread out across time zones. Coordinating between people is made a million times easier by the web portal, allowing scenes to happen (if at a slower pace) even if we can’t always get everyone on the grid at the same time. This is fantastic!

However, coordination can be tricky sometimes too. Let’s say Andrew and Avery have just had a conversation in which one dropped a bomb that the other new needs to go ask Rose about. Rose, unfortunately, is in another time zone or hasn’t been on the grid today. Rose isn’t on the Discord server, and players are certainly not expected to hand over their real life contact info. So how does Andrew tell Rose that he desperately needs her for a scene?

So here’s the idea: A plugin or page for the web portal upon which to register desired future scenes. Andrew would put in his request and next time Rose logs in she’ll see something along the lines of ‘Andrew is requesting a scene with you and Avery’ in her notifications.

It’s a small thing. But speaking as someone with social anxiety, it would be a big thing for me, and I suspect I’m not the only person either who’s prone to struggling with coordination. “I don’t feel anyone’s really interested in playing with -me-” is a complaint I’ve heard on every single game I’ve been staff on since 1995. It’s usually not true. It’s just that there is no easy way for others to notify that they do, if they don’t actually spot people on grid.

Anyways, rainy day. But very appreciated if somebody has nothing else to do. :wink:

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Thank you for the feedback. I think I may not quite be understanding what you’re looking for here.

Why not just send her a PM or a mail? Especially since Ares lets you send PMs to people who aren’t online, it seems pretty straightforward compared to creating a whole other system that has another page people have to check, more notifications, etc.

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I think that having the requests visible on the web interface was the main content of the request as I understand it; that it will be immediately visible upon turning your browser there. I think part of it is also establishing in a fashion visible to others that there is a demand, a reason to check back regularly – we seem to have drawn a number of players with social anxiety issues (myself among them, no secret there) and I suspect that a very large part of this is really about validication; that as a player you’re not intruding, that you are in fact very wanted.

In my experience, MU* games are magnets for people with social anxieties and communication disorders, in part because it is often very helpful to be able to read back on conversations and know exactly what social cues were offered. I am probably inclined, personally, to want to bend over backward to make things more accessible for everyone – this is why I’m not a game admin anymore, incidentally, I’m simply not good at putting my foot down and telling people enough.

That is why I stress the whole rainy day thing. There are other ways of communication, easy workarounds, and it is possible that the whole exercise is one of those things where the proper course of action is to tell people to use the services that exist. Tossing an idea to you – but also quite aware that sometimes, ideas aren’t good ideas, or they’re just irrelevant ideas.

I think, on some level, that the fact that Ares is so impressive to begin with, is a little too inspiring, crazy as it might sound. I know it makes me at least go squee, if it can do this, then and this and over here and that too! You’re very welcome to take that as a compliment because it’s certainly meant as one.

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A page/PM or mail message would do the same thing though, via the notification bell.

I’m glad you’re liking Ares so far and I welcome all feature requests. :slight_smile: Even if they don’t make it onto the core backlog, there’s always the chance that someone else might design an extra around it. A RP request/scheduling system would probably work pretty well as a stand-alone plugin.

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