Grid Construction and Planning

[Bobotron]

@Collective
I can use it fine on Windows 10. I didn't even have to run it in compatibility mode.

[Collective]

@Bobotron Interesting! Thanks. Looks like something to figure out!

[Bobotron]

@Collective
Try running it in a compatibility mode?

[skew]

@Collective - Windows 10. Right click, run as administrator. I had issues with it saving files, and telling me it was when it wasn't. Was just rights issues, and run as administrator fixed it.

[Cobalt]

@tragedyjones said in Grid Construction and Planning:

@Seamus said in Grid Construction and Planning:

My concern is that the original Twilight Moons' grid was HUGE. And I don't know if that's the way to go now-a-days.

It isn't.

Not necessarily so. You want a grid that fits your player base. HM's grid was "huge" as well, but for its time it fit its player base. Fallcoast's grid is relatively small and it does not fit its playerbase. There are rooms with so many builds attached to them its like: "wtf".

Are you building an all-spheres-included CoD game? If so got with a medium to large grid. Are you doing a single sphere game? Small grid. Some weird niche game (like mine), probably a smaller ish grid, but with the possibility of expansion if things get going.

[ZekeTheG33k]

@Cobaltasaurus It's not CoD, I'm actually doing a 20th Edition WoD game. I'm going back to old school. While not being popular, I have a bit nostalgia for it. So I'm going with it.

[Bobotron]

@Seamus
Good on you. Do what you want. Are you doing multi-venue or single-venue or what?

[Thenomain]

@Seamus said in Grid Construction and Planning:

Yeah, my Ex, Traveling Man ran Victorian Reverie.
I ran Twilight Moons, back in the day.

I still believe that the hub-based room system is not the way to go. Something of a hybrid, like what Eldritch and BitN have done, is a better idea, but I'll be honest: When it was built, Haunted Memories' grid was fantastic to me. It was huge, but it didn't feel huge. It felt like communities, and each community had a few rooms, and it absolutely was built very tightly from a map of Vienna (also huge).

It didn't feel huge because it felt spacious. It felt that I was being invited to use it. And because every grid space had a wiki page, with the meta information at a glance (neighborhood, population, security, key features), I knew where I was, and where that was had personality. I could easily imagine the kinds of stories that could be told there.

I don't get that feeling on a small grid. I can't get into it. I'm not "immersed". Even the moderately small grid from Dark Water felt too cramped to me. (Sorry, @Cobaltasaurus.) The Reach's grid was only a little larger and it felt very roomy.

VR's grid was about as bad as I imagine they could get, just shy of "here's a room, now just make whatever temproom you want from it, now stop bugging me".

[ZekeTheG33k]

@Bobotron Until more are released, Vampire, Mage, Shifter. As more 20th Eds, happen, so will they.

[Bobotron]

@Thenomain
I"ve wondered about doing a grid in the vein of say, the maps/layout of the VtM Bloodlines video game. Each area is its own mini grid that is restricted enough that you can't just casually move to the next one. But then I think 'well, there's no real REASON for that on a MUSH'.

@Seamus
Cool. Good luck!

[ZekeTheG33k]

Ah @Thenomain I am not doing a hub 'based' room grid in that vein. Rather I'm just putting a neighborhood room that signify that neighborhood to tie everything together. Temp rooms aren't on the game plan, beyond Temp RP rooms off an OOC Nexus for non-grid stuff.

[Thenomain]

@Seamus

I'm envisioning "You are in Arlington. Do you want to go to 5th Street or Farrinton Ave?"

Anyone thinking of doing this, don't.

[ZekeTheG33k]

Eh kind of sort of. I used the design on another game and it worked fairly well. Basically, you are in Arlington. And depending on how the players want to develop the neighborhood, you might just have the main hub room, and a few IC buildings off it to represent the whole of Arlington, or you might have exits which lead off to 5th or Farrinton. Each hub room has the potential to be a mini-grid within the over all San Fran Grid. And it gets developed based on what the game players desire, rather than pre-planning. IE: If Castro and Haight-Ashbury are the main RP neighborhoods, then they might be the more developed. It also makes a general "Territory" easier to define, the Beast Courts control all of Chinatown and Little Japan. So every room within those two neighborhoods are known to be the Courts territory to the Sept Shifters, etc

[Thenomain]

@Seamus

Let me clarify my position: Literal hubs bad. Trees pretty.

Hub-like systems can be fine, but the moment the game tells me "you are floating above this neighborhood ", I tune out. I find it to be antithetical to what an immersive game should have.

If you're not going for that, then fine. Else, hubs bad trees pretty.

[ZekeTheG33k]

So, @Thenomain, how would you lay out a grid for San Fran. I'm not trying to be snotty, but I'd really like as much input as possible before I make a choice. I know you say a 'tree' grid, but elaborate with the specific setting, at least in part, so I can get an idea of what you are saying and go from there.

[Thenomain]

@Seamus

Yeah, I feel a little bad because my responses were more clipped because it's hard to be thoughtful while taking a hot bath for relaxing muscles and therefore all on a tablet.

Firstly: Fire Bad, Tree Pretty. Here it means that I'm not thinking clearly, but I know what I like and what I don't like.

And so I want to be clear, first, that the kind of grid that kicks my immersion is the one that is hubs of hubs which is what I thought you were describing. If not, ignore my objections.

I tried to give examples of grids I liked. The Reach, Haunted Memories, all traditional grids that were spacious but not really huge. I agree with the idea that you should focus on areas with different feelings, but Haunted Memories' grid did that by degrees; each grid space had a feeling, each room practically a neighborhood, because that's pretty much how Europe rolls.

The Reach's grid was smaller, because it represented both city and countryside. And when things needed to split or hub from those locations, they would. It was more organic than a design.

On Darkmetal, we were trying to represent a Cyberpunk-style sprawl, so we invented a high-speed network to connect otherwise extremely different parts of the city together. This was back when code like +taxi was considered almost too immersion-breaking. Nowadays we have +travel, so I question to myself why it matters if a grid is big or not.

Then I think about games like Changeling: New York. (Pardon: I can't remember its original name.) That grid was far larger than it needed to be, and it represented really only Manhattan, with a very minor nod to the other boroughs. Every intersection had a grid room. Even with a map, it never caught on. Most of us played in the same ten rooms.

But even a smaller grid doesn't solve this. Again with apologies I note that I personally think that the Dark Water (Forks, Washington) grid wasn't right, even though it was fairly small (15 rooms? 10?) and each space was iconic. Maybe the players liked it, but from a staff view I saw more discomfort with it than not.

---

This absolutely doesn't answer your question, partially because I don't have an answer. This is my involved explanation that grids that are not small nor hubs are not by nature bad. There's something else going on there. I've liked the grids that seem hub-like because you typically enter the neighborhood from one or two angles.

North Beach seems like it'd have 2, maybe 3 entry points. If you need to later break up North Beach, then do so. That's my advice. Start with broad strokes but not too broad, like the kind of painting you get from a Space Opera sci-fi book cover. You know, it's good and evocative but it looks like a good speed-painter did it.

Like this one: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/83/86/13/838613e31c5591b63b1fdbde4e94516d.jpg

(I enjoy this kind of painting, by the way. No insults.)

[ZekeTheG33k]

@Thenomain That's fine. I understand, but I welcome the input. It's been a /VERY/ long time since I seriously worked on a game, and trends change. I want to make sure that I do something that is liked and appropriate.

What I'm looking at is like this:
Castro (Main Hub for Overview Map)
Inside Castro it might just be the main hub room or it may have streets of interest/desire by the players/staff. So it could be Castro > 33rd Ave > Timmy's Books, just as an example.

That way I can break each of the neighborhoods into hubs and build out the neighborhoods that are used more than those that aren't, but still having those there to represent the whole of the city, it will also give a much clearer idea of territories amongst the various factions as to who owns what.

Does that make sense? Cause fear and panic?

[Thenomain]

@Seamus

Cause for Thenomain to go 'meh', but he can only speak for Thenomain. Important note: Thenomain hasn't really played on a game for about four years. Dabbling, yes, but he has some pretty solid thoughts on the subjects of grids.

[Lithium]

@Seamus I can only say how I am doing San Francisco.

I am focusing on the important parts.

What important parts? You may ask...

The ones important to the theme and story of the game.

For me that's The Presidio, it's Golden Gate Park, it's Alcatraz, It's Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, it's also Chinatown, the Aquarium, and a tiny bit of downtown.

Trying to map out an entire city is just silly, it's never going to all be used, so make what you're going to use.