Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?
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You can really avoid this sort of theme drift by creating a setting that you want and forbidding players from fucking with it.
It’s not too hard, but you have to be willing to say “no” and too few staff are willing to do this.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
You can really avoid this sort of theme drift by creating a setting that you want and forbidding players from fucking with it.
It’s not too hard, but you have to be willing to say “no” and too few staff are willing to do this.
^Bingo. Like I said else-else thread: 75% of the grid playing chess while the other 25% runs off to play Monopoly. It makes it super hard for staff to deal with unless space for both has been built in deliberately.
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That's 90% of the reason that I tell people 'no'. It doesn't prevent them from whining at me and calling me the worst most bastard-est staffer ever before going off to do their own thing anyway.
Not that I've ever cared that they think I'm a tyrant, mind. But being willing to say 'no' has never reduced the workload, especially on a game where they can run to other staffers and get whatever they want from them.
Just -- being willing to say 'no' doesn't necessarily fix the problem, it just gives you a whole new set of issues to deal with.
Setting expectations up front and early is important, though, I agree.
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@aria I didn't play The Reach, so the reference isn't landing.
If anyone honestly cares - which I doubt, because it's not even a remotely interesting story - we picked Maine because we were doing a small-town sandbox at one point, and I found a town named "Boothbay" and thought it was the coolest name for a town. While sandboxing, we played in Boothbay itself (which is a goddamn adorable town if you're bored and wanna drive around google maps).
When we started thinking about production, we wanted to support a wider variety of PCs than would realistically live in a small town in Maine, so we decided to turn tiny real Boothbay into giant fake New Coventry.
Could we have put it in New Hampshire or wherever else people are saying it should be? Sure. But read @Pyrephox's post for why many of us have hearts in our eyes for Maine.
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@krmbm Oh! Okay, so....
Basically the Reach was, from what I recall -- it's been, like, five years?? -- written to be set in Maine, in a fictional town called Dunlin's Reach. Not even as big as Portland, with it's ~60,000 or so people, and IIRC, had an apocalypse storyline connecting all of the WoD lines set on the game into what was supposed to be a single metaplot.
The thing is, it became huge, by far the biggest WoD MU* on the net at the time. All of those things I mentioned - a major television studio, a casino, masses of nightclubs, etc, - were all things players created. And set in what was supposed to be a very Lovecraftian small town. So as I said, it got super fucky and weird pretty quickly and that thematic drift got worse and worse the bigger the game got. I'm pretty sure the legacy of that game is why you see so many MUs set in the Northeast trying to anticipate the possibility of that by adding in "But there's also a big city!" and some do that a whole lot better than others.
So my bad on assuming you were in alpha and still working on things. I legit was asking that question - and making the suggestion of a big grid if you were trying to both run with that stereotypical Maine feel and accommodate players Doing Things (tm) - because I was on The Reach, wanted to understand what you were shooting for, and trying to help make sure you didn't have to deal with that level of hair-pulling theme drift.
Players will always surprise you! Sometimes it's super awesome and fun. Sometimes you hand them the magic sword to slay the dragon and then watch them stab themselves in the face with it. Either way staff ends up working with whatever players come up with and I figured "Here's a suggestion that will hopefully give you fewer nosebleeds when someone decides they want to set up a NASA launch station in their mansion's backyard." ¯\(ツ)/¯
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello -
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@ganymede said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
You can really avoid this sort of theme drift by creating a setting that you want and forbidding players from fucking with it.
It’s not too hard, but you have to be willing to say “no” and too few staff are willing to do this.
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@aria Ohhhhh. Yeah. I can see that.
Our last game was set in a small, economically depressed town in the Pacific Northwest (listen i like tropes don't judge me you don't know my life), and we definitely ran afoul of that: why would this town have a four-star Michelin restaurant in it? Oh right, it wouldn't.
That was part of the reason we wanted to do a fake CITY instead of a fake TOWN.
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@krmbm Okay but if this a city with a milllion freaking people why can't I be an assassin turned history professor???????????
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@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
@krmbm Okay but if this a city with a milllion freaking people why can't I be an assassin turned history professor???????????
well now we know what you'll be playing on simon: the mush, don't we
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@krmbm set on long island
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@krmbm said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
Our last game was set in a small, economically depressed town in the Pacific Northwest (listen i like tropes don't judge me you don't know my life), and we definitely ran afoul of that: why would this town have a four-star Michelin restaurant in it? Oh right, it wouldn't.
Yes! And these things drive me crazy!
I had two PCs on the Reach and I put some solid thought into "Why would these concepts I want to play live in this little town?" and would strip out or add things to their background as needed. Like, my Mage's cabal was there because they were a two-bit shitty punk band that was "on tour" (read: living out of their van as they drove from dive bar to dive bar in towns no one ever heard of) when it finally broke down and they had to get jobs so they could fix it. They ended up squatting in an old farmhouse on the end of town where a major icky rip in the spiritual fabric was because they figured the horrible atmosphere would keep pretty much everyone else away.
Bu then I would run into the max Resources and max Fame actual literal movie star and be like, "....This is hurting my heart whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy please stop. Stahhhhhp. No.
:("https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello -
@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
@krmbm Okay but if this a city with a milllion freaking people why can't I be an assassin turned history professor???????????
What happens in Colorado stays in Colorado.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@aria said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
Bu then I would run into the max Resources and max Fame actual literal movie star and be like, "....This is hurting my heart whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy please stop. Stahhhhhp. No.
:("But, but, I love having resources 5.
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I've never understood why people are willing to blindly accept all kinds of supernatural ridiculousity in a setting, but then something like its setting is just untenable. A million people? In one city in Maine!? That's ridiculous!!!
But... it makes sense that supernatural monsters/creatures have been around since forever and only a teeny tiny sub-percentage of the population has ever been aware of them because the one thing people do really well consistently throughout the history of human existence is keep secrets well.. That part makes sense. Why would anyone question that.
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@lotherio said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
@krmbm Okay but if this a city with a milllion freaking people why can't I be an assassin turned history professor???????????
What happens in Colorado stays in Colorado.
that game will live on in my heart
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@warma-sheen said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
I've never understood why people are willing to blindly accept all kinds of supernatural ridiculousity in a setting, but then something like its setting is just untenable. A million people? In one city in Maine!? That's ridiculous!!!
But... it makes sense that supernatural monsters/creatures have been around since forever and only a teeny tiny sub-percentage of the population has ever been aware of them because the one thing people do really well consistently throughout the history of human existence is keep secrets well.. That part makes sense. Why would anyone question that.
Because there's only one city in the entire northeast US with over 500,000 people and that's Boston, lol. If you want a big ass city with supernatural elements, there's lots of other states that work just as well. And hell, plenty of supernatural shit you can do in the American South.
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@rucket said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
Because there's only one city in the entire northeast US with over 500,000 people and that's Boston, lol. If you want a big ass city with supernatural elements, there's lots of other states that work just as well. And hell, plenty of supernatural shit you can do in the American South.
Does it have gremlins and pixies and unicorns?
If so, then I apologize for not setting my game there.
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@warma-sheen said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
I've never understood why people are willing to blindly accept all kinds of supernatural ridiculousity in a setting, but then something like its setting is just untenable. A million people? In one city in Maine!? That's ridiculous!!!
But... it makes sense that supernatural monsters/creatures have been around since forever and only a teeny tiny sub-percentage of the population has ever been aware of them because the one thing people do really well consistently throughout the history of human existence is keep secrets well.. That part makes sense. Why would anyone question that.
I honestly don't care. It's not a matter of "Wahhhh! This isn't believable." At least not for me. It's a matter of "What game am I supposed to be playing so I make sure my character fits?"
....Unless you're going to set a game in Philadelphia. Because then I expect you to do my city proud and set the Four Seasons next to a crematorium and a dildo store as Ben Franklin intended.
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello -
@aria said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:
....Unless you're going to set a game in Philadelphia. Because then I expect you to do my city proud and set the Four Seasons next to a crematorium and a dildo store as Ben Franklin intended.
Plus plenty of opportunities for interesting NPCs for Philly MUSH: https://nypost.com/2018/02/05/eagles-fan-thinks-eating-horse-poop-is-cool/
