Sin City Chronicles
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@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
@surreality When the people involved are going to put in 0 work beyond copy/pasting code from another game, why would they?
This is going to be Reno 5.0, but set in Vegas, you know, like Fear and Loathing.
The one thing TJ does great is rally the people required to get a "new game" out and rolling.
However, TJ, Coin, and the other "usual suspects" have proven completely incapable or unwilling to actually put any effort into these games beyond "hey, so this is a MU, I guess, and it's WoD-flavored. Go, like, do sandbox stuff, I guess. Okay it's been a month, half of us are quitting staff and/or shutting down the game."
Am I one of the usual suspects? Is @Thenomain? Is @surreality? I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be defending.
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@Ganymede I'm talking about suggestions and alternatives coming from her, not that they aren't out there or in the works.
Instead of making suggestions, or volunteering to contribute to the story she claims she wants, etc., she's just throwing shit at the walls at this point like a child throwing a tantrum.
She's one of the prime examples of 'it's really easy to criticize; it is not so easy to put in effort, ideas, or put yourself out there in even the slightest way'.
I've not seen her do and of the latter even once. This'd be the perfect opportunity to volunteer to make sure those things are in place, contribute something, etc. -- even something so simple as, "I would like to see X kinds of storylines/management/things to do/etc." -- but even that ain't happening.
Just piles of bitching and passive aggressive horsefuckery about how shit just isn't good enough for her. Frankly, if there's one thing we have an excess of... it's that.
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@skew said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
@surreality When the people involved are going to put in 0 work beyond copy/pasting code from another game, why would they?
This is going to be Reno 5.0, but set in Vegas, you know, like Fear and Loathing.
The one thing TJ does great is rally the people required to get a "new game" out and rolling.
However, TJ, Coin, and the other "usual suspects" have proven completely incapable or unwilling to actually put any effort into these games beyond "hey, so this is a MU, I guess, and it's WoD-flavored. Go, like, do sandbox stuff, I guess. Okay it's been a month, half of us are quitting staff and/or shutting down the game."
Am I one of the usual suspects? Is @Thenomain? Is @surreality? I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be defending.
[clears throat]
Your mom.
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@surreality Upvoted because horsefuckery.
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@Royal said in Sin City Chronicles:
@surreality Upvoted because horsefuckery.
You and your bestiality.
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@Coin Don't you judge me. You 're not my real dad!
By the way, horsefuckery aside, really looking forward to seeing this take off. I'd love a new crack at playing 2E Mage.
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@Royal said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Coin Don't you judge me. You 're not my real dad!
By the way, horsefuckery aside, really looking forward to seeing this take off. I'd love a new crack at playing 2E Mage.
You could always help.
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AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.
XD
<3ubro.
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@Coin Ha! Oh, you.
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@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
@surreality When the people involved are going to put in 0 work beyond copy/pasting code from another game, why would they?
Just so you know, I'm offended by this statement. It's not a spazz-worthy offense, but I feel that you're taking the code I've worked over five years building up and boiling it down to a "copy/paste" scenario.
(note: A lot of us wish my code was a copy/paste scenario!)
You could have said this constructively. You could have said, "Yeah, but after open, what do you have planned?" It's a challenge, sure, but it gets to the core of your issues more than unsubstantiated insults.
If you don't think I'm continuing to tweak and add to my code, to take requests and consider them, then maybe you need to take a step back and think about who you're summarizing. I'm already regretting some of the XP/Beat system code changes I'm going to have to do for this game, but I'm willing to because Reasons, mostly because I'm proud of my code. You don't have to be, that's fine, but it'd be more helpful to reel back the shotgun approach of complaining; you're less likely to hit a bystander.
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@Arkandel said in Sin City Chronicles:
So, aside from our customary back-and-forths, a couple of questions for @tragedyjones :
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What are you thinking to do different this time than your last project(s)? That is, what's cool about this project?
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Is this going to be a sandbox environment or are you thinking to focus on narrating a longer arc (or arcs) of metaplot?
Kinda just ignoring everything else in this thread for now, but:
For #1 - The obvious differences are the scope of the game, aiming to provide as many gamelines (not all, sadly) but to make it work together in a pie and not a bowl of ingredients.
For #2 - Yes, I am working on that as part of the main reason to even be doing this again.
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I'll play but only if I get this infamous @tragedyjones sexxorz.
So can I make a meat sheath?Other than that...
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@surreality
You are so whiny, jesus.@tragedyjones
Here's something constructive for you, to shut @Surreality up.It seems incredibly unlikely you're going to BE ABLE to put much effort into a metaplot, when your advertising post for the game is "We've got every splat you could ever want! And we're going to stay true to the theme of all of them!"
With 6 or 7 or more splats, there is no way this ends up being anything other than another sandbox.
It'd likely require at least two full-time staffers dedicated solely to vampire (while not playing it themselves) to run a Vampire sphere with "undiluted taste".
Werewolf as a splat flat out does not lend itself to story-telling games. Werewolf is the "join a pack, shack up with pack, do some 'me r alfa' sexxorz, occasionally do in-pack plot, and never be seen in public again" splat. This is actually one sphere that can be run fairly hands-off. Problem is this is also the quintessential sandbox sphere.
Mage, much like Vampire, would require multiple staffers solely dedicated to that sphere to provide a realistic Mage experience. They could potentially play in it though, since mage is usually a little less cutthroat.
Changeling is much the same, if you're going to provide an "undiluted taste", you'll need staff to run leadership NPCs at the start until they're phased out, and then staff to keep hands in the ongoings of the Courts after that.
So, just from those 4 splats, you're looking at needing 5-8 full time, 100% involved staff, some of them not playing in their own sphere. I only went over those 4 because I don't know Promethean/Beast/Geist (real talk though, Beast seems to be the most awkwardly Special Snowflake uninteresting splat ever, and really seems to water down everything around it since it's in theme for them to 'group up' with all the other splats, but that is just my personal impression after watching Beast on NOLA).
If you don't have that much staff, all of them willing to be that involved, this is just going to be a sandbox.
There's just no way around that.
If you do get the staff, odds are at least half of them will end up actually not doing their job very well or very actively and will basically lurk for the power of being 'staff' or they'll just quit within 2 months.
TL;DR cut down on spheres, or this will just be 2nd ed Fallcoast. (Disclaimer : I have not played Fallcoast, I just assume it is still the Discount Wal-Mart of nWoD with every splat and no story.) Yeah, you'll get your rocks off looking at a 60 person who list inflated by the fact that 8 people feel the need to make a character in every splat, but nothing much will actually be "happening" on the game.
Which works perfectly fine for a lot of people, admittedly. A lot of people don't want to be involved in shit, they want to sit in their corner and do their own shit. We just have a lot of games like that already.
@Thenomain I'm so sorry, please forgive me, senpai.
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Attack the idea, not the person.
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@tragedyjones said in Sin City Chronicles:
- Is this going to be a sandbox environment or are you thinking to focus on narrating a longer arc (or arcs) of metaplot?
For #2 - Yes, I am working on that as part of the main reason to even be doing this again.
Yes what?
@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
It seems incredibly unlikely you're going to BE ABLE to put much effort into a metaplot, when your advertising post for the game is "We've got every splat you could ever want! And we're going to stay true to the theme of all of them!"
Why not wait until something fails though? I don't mean to jump down your throat here but... well, we've already seen "this can't possible ever work"... work just fine once someone put it in play.
For example someone told those Fear and Loathing guys their idea to offer high-end PCs playable out of XPs would never work and would get abused after they had already done so and it wasn't getting abused.
We're all jaded around here, it comes with the territory, but let's give some consideration at least to the vague possibility something might not fail just because it's ambitious or new?
With 6 or 7 or more splats, there is no way this ends up being anything other than another sandbox.
I'm 90% certain (I've done the math) this would come down to the implementation, not the scope. If enough work and creativity is poured into it why would it fail? There's no reason actually for these separate moving pieces to be connected; TJ never claimed they would be linked.
In fact one of the big things I agree with @surreality about is that the big game-wide central metaplot idea is probably a bad one. Seasonal smaller arcs are far more manageable, modular, and have the fundamental advantage that if you don't like the current story then well... in a couple of months it'll run its course, then you can get onto something new.
Like they do on TV shows, you know? True Blood didn't have the same villain every year.
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@Arkandel derp, yes I am working on a metaplot. Seasonal arcs work, too.
Also, pretty sure Sookie is in every episode of True Blood.
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@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
To be honest, I feel like I have to equate this to some kind of addiction where you guys just want the "rush" of being the ones to make a "new" game, to be there lording it over the MUing peons "YES, I MADE THIS!", and then 2 months later, you hand it off to whoever is handy when the 'new car smell' and hawt sexxorz from the supermodels that come with it has worn off.
As one of the Soapbox's official Eternal Lurkers, and someone who (I am about 90% certain) has never really been involved with any of you shmucks beyond the forum and thus has no pony in this show, I'm going to have to butt in and say that I have never, ever felt like anyone here has "lorded" a new game over anyone. Content creation is inherently cool and it's easy to be swept up in the excitement of a new game, sure, so since they're repeat offenders the attention is just naturally going to be there. Kinda sounds like someone has a jelly belly to me.
I'm also going to have to echo the sentiment that responding to an open call for staff by shitting down everyone's necks and doomsaying a project that isn't even off the ground instead of throwing up a "Hey, can I help you in one area I've found lacking?" is pretty goddamn lame.
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@Wizz said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
To be honest, I feel like I have to equate this to some kind of addiction where you guys just want the "rush" of being the ones to make a "new" game, to be there lording it over the MUing peons "YES, I MADE THIS!", and then 2 months later, you hand it off to whoever is handy when the 'new car smell' and hawt sexxorz from the supermodels that come with it has worn off.
As one of the Soapbox's official Eternal Lurkers, and someone who (I am about 90% certain) has never really been involved with any of you shmucks beyond the forum and thus has no pony in this show, I'm going to have to butt in and say that I have never, ever felt like anyone here has "lorded" a new game over anyone. Content creation is inherently cool and it's easy to be swept up in the excitement of a new game, sure, so since they're repeat offenders the attention is just naturally going to be there. Kinda sounds like someone has a jelly belly to me.
I'm also going to have to echo the sentiment that responding to an open call for staff by shitting down everyone's necks and doomsaying a project that isn't even off the ground instead of throwing up a "Hey, can I help you in one area I've found lacking?" is pretty goddamn lame.
God, @Wizz, why are you licking our boots so much, you brownnoser? You clearly just want to be in the in-crowd, omg!
<.<
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@Arkandel said in Sin City Chronicles:
In fact one of the big things I agree with @surreality about is that the big game-wide central metaplot idea is probably a bad one. Seasonal smaller arcs are far more manageable, modular, and have the fundamental advantage that if you don't like the current story then well... in a couple of months it'll run its course, then you can get onto something new.
I got this idea from @tragedyjones on Reno1, fwiw. I have shamelessly stolen it because it is a good idea.
It also means that later plots and major changes to the game world can happen fairly readily from major plot arcs like this: the outcome of one will understandably have an impact on things later.
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@surreality said in Sin City Chronicles:
It also means that later plots and major changes to the game world can happen fairly readily from major plot arcs like this: the outcome of one will understandably have an impact on things later.
One of the things I disliked about Arx - and I'm not shitting on the game right now, it was ajust that I just didn't like how it affected players - is that everything was single-mindedly pointed at the direction of a specific war... for months. And months. I would run PrPs about other issues related but not exactly about it then got paged by people asking 'what this has to do with the war'. Someone else explicitly said on a channel that if a scene wasn't about it then it was a waste of time.
This has many drawbacks. For starters you either buy in all the way or you're out - all the way. And it's one of those things that's first-come first-served, since no newbie no matter how active can argue with someone who's been there for day 1 in terms of involvement or ties to The One Story. If you happen to not like it or your character isn't the type to become invested in whatever the arc's themes are you're also screwed.
The other big issue with it, as TR found out during the EotW story is that having so many moving parts makes it a bitch to coordinate every faction to contribute their part in it. Some bolster more active Storytellers/GMs, others have fewer active players in general - and of course some fit in more than one faction ("my girlfriend is a Werewolf who's invited me over") which can either be a very organic part of character development or a special snowflake thing where someone wants their finger in every pie.
And so on... I think breaking arcs down with just some kind of distant link to them is the best way to go.
Also! They don't need to fucking dominate everything. To get back to True Blood the Big Bad of each season didn't take over every damn scene; some were about interpersonal drama, romance, drug addictions, dysfunctional families, whatever... and the villain just sort of lurked in the background. Hell, season one's bad guy was a regular human with a fucking knife, it wasn't even about a huge fight or anything.
I think that works better, for sure.