@Wizz - Well, I’m going to take off my staffy hat here and answer more personally... For one, while the individual themes and tone of a lot of WoD is dark, I think that it’s very hard to escape the aura of surreal ridiculousness that sometimes ensues when you have a hundred or whatever people playing supernatural creatures of all shapes and stripes and tell them to all go nuts with it in the same place at the same time. ‘Two demons, a vampire and a dog that’s really a werewolf walk into a bar’ is not the start of a joke on a WoD MU*, its Tuesday. I think it’s better to just embrace some of that.

Also I know us. There are many moments that I take a tongue in cheek attitude towards stuff, and I like humor... I think @Coin does too and I know he likes BIG things, broad strokes, and the “occasional” touch of irreverence*... And truthfully, I think that trying to impose a tone of unremitting and constant darkness would actually undermine the themes of these games. You can’t have just the one note all the time in a story if you actually want to feel that note. The moments of ridiculousness and hilarity make a wonderful contrast to the moments of sorrow and despair. When I think back to Buffy, that’s one of the things I loved about it. The silly bits didn’t make the characters one dimensional cartoons. They didn’t detract from the moments of real pathos, they enhanced them. So I think that’s what we’re shooting for here in tone, and hopefully there will be something in it to suit everyone.

Which is, of course, the other aspect of this. What @Coin and I want as STs here is one part of it, but, at best, it’s like a third of the overall formula. MU*s are truly collaborative experiences, and what Eldritch ultimately turns out to be is still going to largely depend on the players. First they have to show up, and next they’re going to create their PCs and those PCs are going to have their own interests and their own ways of doing things, their own hates and loves, and that is a huge and by far the biggest part of what the game will be. I hope stuff like the Territory system furthers that.

The first thing @Coin and I did was basically to sit around and make up something like 500 years of history populated with a number of NPCs that I have lost count of long ago. There is a lot of ‘stuff’ here to use in stories, but my expectation is that some of it, maybe even most of it, will never get played with. What ends up being important, at least in some degree, is going to depend on the PCs and what is important to THEM. And within that, individual people are going to choose the tone and character of their individual story...and that’s exactly how it should be. But we’re not afraid of stuff is what you should probably take away from this. This week could be a heartfelt tragedy and next week could be tentacle monsters assaulting the college synchronized swimming team.

Xbox is up this morning, followed by EA!

My husband already pre-ordered the Pip Boy thing and I quietly roll my eyes. It will still be better than the FPS game that came with creepy night vision goggles and led to him stalking me through the house in the dark. I was secretly glad when they were stolen off his desk at work.

With as long as the merits and drawbacks of various XP systems have been debated, I’m still kind of amazed that anyone believes that there is a ‘perfect’ system out there waiting to be discovered. There have been enough prevailing theories and enough iterations of different systems over time that, for me, I think it’s been fairly conclusively proven that in designing an XP system you’re really looking for a balance which, while not perfect, will not drastically impact any one particular group. HMs ‘play all the time and in giant groups if you want to get ahead’ time/+vote system really slighted people with RL commitments or, frankly, just a desire for less chaotic 2 and 3 person scenes. I’m pretty sure I recall @Ganymede, who has long advocated for games that consider the needs and inclusion of people who are only realistically going to have time to play a scene or two a week shoehorned in amongst many other RL commitments, saying as much though ultimately she both played and staffed there.

As someone with RL commitments herself and who likes not to have to start with a completely bumbling novice character, I loved The Reach’s XP system in theory, but by the same token I think the general consensus is that, several years on, it has its own flaws that make the game environment occasionally weird to navigate.

The XP system is mainly @Coin’s baby, as he’s both more interested in system design than I am and has had first-hand experience playing on Reno, a fully GMC MU*, where I haven’t. That being said, we all discussed extensively what we wanted it to be like and most of these points were considered extensively, including not wanting people to have to start off with the skillset of a high school freshman, wanting to allow for players that came along later to have a clear and non-demanding path to something roughly akin to parity with the ‘dinos’ and also not wanting to see things devolve into the realm of the utterly absurd if we got more than two years on with this. I think there’s a balance to be had there between not taking someone who can only play a little out at the knees while at the same time rewarding activity and contributions to the game since while, no, not all ‘activity’ is going to end up being a breathtaking work of well-plotted prose, at the same time, no matter how nuanced and original someone’s character is designed to be, nobody else is going to get the benefit of that until they actually go RP.

I think that, as this stands, you could make a character and not get around to playing more than two or three times a month and still do really, really well XP wise, especially at the outset. Nine months to a year on, yes, people who are very active will start to pull ahead of you, if you’re the type to view XP as an arms race, though it should still take a while before it starts to be a huge factor, and even then you’ll still be ‘ahead’ of everyone who comes after.

I think, at this juncture, I’m not that worried about it for a couple of reasons: First, if I have a concern about stats and XP at all, it’s mainly that it is really very easy to make something utterly terrifying straight out of chargen in GMC. The power levels are intrinsically high, and (just to pluck one example of many, as this is true across all the games) a straight-out-of-chargen flying Demon with murder hands and the ability to do 8-again agg damage with all firearms is potentially going to smoke anything if it wins init. And second, as I think has always been the case and always will be the case, raw statistical power on MU*s is always going to be secondary to social power. The character who is not around all that often but is thoughtfully imagined, delightful to interact with and beautifully played will be adored by many and eagerly anticipated when they do arrive, will get +recced for their efforts, will be kept in the loop on plots, will have friends and allies aplenty, and will ultimately fare far better than the comparative jerk who has a few higher stats. This, ultimately, gets complained about just as much as XP systems do, and while I think we’ve tried to mitigate both as much as possible and strike a balance, I don’t think I believe in the possibility of eliminating all these problems entirely for everyone for all time, though if anyone can prove me wrong I would be utterly delighted. I think I can speak for everyone involved when I say that we’re committed to collaboration and discussion, so bring on the constructive tweaks. This is part of the six-month thing that Theno mentioned, as the idea was we'd stop at various points and sort of query everyone involved with the project, players and staff, and say: Okay, what do we love about this and what's not working? What do we need more or less of? And while consensus is rare and this wouldn't be a straight-up majority opinion thing, I think regularly scheduled bouts of introspection would be helpful to keep things on track.

@Creepy said:

Based on the wiki data present, the city has a Total Metro Land Area of 73.5 sq. mi with a Metro Population of 732,521.

That's double the land area of Manhattan (33.77 sq miles, not counting the boroughs) with a little less than half its population (1.6 million)... BTW, the setting places Detroit's population into Savannah's footprint.

So, yes, the parallels you quoted are pretty accurate I think. For reference when creating a mental picture, Eldritch is sort of Seattle and San Francisco squished together and settled on the California coast an hour or two south of the Oregon border. I’m from Seattle and have family in the Bay Area, and @Coin lived in San Francisco. We borrowed features from both cities we thought would make for interesting settings and then mixed in other things purely from imagination.

Density-wise, it’s also worth noting that some bits of the grid are much denser and more urban than others. We have a downtown core of four main grid rooms which will be highly dense and very urban, with skyscrapers and high rise apartments. Places like Carson Hill will be moderately dense – lots of retail and apartments, but probably nothing over 5-6 stories. And then there are sections of the grid that, while within the city limits, are probably more akin to what people would consider ‘suburban’, with single family houses and low-rise apartments, which would include places like Ashtown, Breakwater, the area around the University. This will ultimately be reflected in the neighborhood numbers an area has to work with. So, on Carson Hill, there maybe 6 neighborhood points (but we haven’t set figures so don’t quote me on that) to go around in that area, while a very low-density neighborhood might have half that many. Some probably will not have any at all at the start at least. Likewise, as @Coin said, the numbers for the ‘city’ only include the city and not the outlying territory that is still part of our grid, but is run by the county – that would be the desert, the mountains, the national forest, etc.

@HelloRaptor said:

She seems dubious. Are you sure you vetted her properly? Look at all the words she uses in her posts. She's clearly hiding something.

And aww... ~@Raptor~, I bet your fretting about me ~blows~ over in short order. I know you just enjoy getting everyone’s ~goats~.

But come on, its not like I’m hiding coded messages in my wordy posts, right? That's just silly.

(Also hi, @Creepy! We know each other. I played Zephirine on HM back in the day and your fembot and my rosebush were in a motley together.)

I so completely relate to this.

I think a big part of why I have played so few characters and why I tend to stick with one for a good long while is that the first two weeks with a new character, learning/making up their ins and outs and finding their voice, are a bit of a struggle. I have to think about seemingly everything, even trivial things, because it seems to be part of the process for me. What would she want on her pizza? Who did she go to prom with? For me at least, these somewhat inane details actually make them feel real to me and with bizarre frequency actually reflect themes or more important stuff about the character. And then eventually they click and I no longer have to think so much about any of this.

Unsettlingly perhaps, my drunken, corrupt, maliciously bored sheriff's deputy clicked instantly for me. I'm not thinking about that too much.

Some of this is hard to answer in the abstract, like:

Will minor, arguably repetitious actions, that affect a minor number of people for 4 xp a week be allowed, or will they become about Staff hovering and having to resort to telling people no, repeatedly?

This could describe a lot of things. I think @Coin already intimated that, yes, staff would probably not approve the same things over and over again. If your aspiration was ‘brush my teeth’, despite you wanting to do that every day, it would not be a good fit for an aspiration, especially if you submitted it over and over. Aspirations should be a bit more significant than that, even if they don’t have to be OMG earth shattering in every case.

But I think that what you’re really asking is more along the lines of: If there’s a lot of confusion about what constitutes a good aspiration and people start getting mixed messages from different staffers, are we just going to let that go on till our six month review. Short answer: No. If it becomes a problem, we’ll address it! Either we’ll put together more specific guidelines for players and staffers to use or figure out something else that works. That help?

@Coin said:

I am, as far as I know, the only MUer in my country. Not my city, my country. So while I cherish the friendships and connections I make with people who RP online with me, I'll never really get to experience connecting with the people who share my hobby in a face-to-face way that's anything more than temporary and transitory.

It’s funny how I feel kind of just the opposite about MU* friendships. I think if anything this is a medium that can make for particularly meaningful interactions. Like others have said, it requires a lot of time, so you’re likely to spend a good chunk of it with the same people in your group. And beyond time, I think there’s something about the nature of the internet that tends to make people say things that they probably wouldn’t if they were in the same room with people, as anyone who has been in an OOC room anywhere ever and cringed going ‘how is this person saying all this to utter strangers’ can attest to. And beyond all that, I think working on something creative with other people breeds intimacy. This may not be high art, but it is highly creative and invariably you end up putting a lot of yourself into your characters and plots. So constant exposure + open communication + creative engagement I think can really make for some fairly significant friendships. I have lots of RL friends in my immediate area and I’m pretty social, but I see my online friends more and I would even wager that ‘deep and meaningful’ conversation is more common with my online friends than my RL friends. I dunno! I’ve known @Thenomain and @Wretched for years and years at this point and I love them dearly and that was true even for the big chunks of that I wasn’t MU*ing, even though we’ve never met in person.

@Arkandel said:

And with some effort you can create entire worlds, taking anything from the pages of a book, the small/big screen or just your imagination and giving it a chance to become an immersive interactive environment shared with other people. That's pretty special.

Yes this. I think MUing is unique in a lot of ways. I am surrounded IRL by people that work in video games and have pretty much unlimited access to whatever I would want in that arena and nothing else is at all like MUing. I can enjoy a video game sometimes, but its really not the least little bit comparable to MU*ing for me.

That being said, I don’t talk about MUing to my RL friends because it’s very hard to explain. Very very. I suspect it’s really not for everyone and that you have to do it to understand it.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Did you ever think of the implications of fucking with people's desires, sorrows, or anger? It's pretty barbaric. Put some Changeling sparkles on it, and that shit's A-OK, though?

Another part of what bugged me was how many people with emotional abuse issues completely missed the trick on this.

The Changeling seasonal courts are essentially four of the five stages of grief/loss. Spring is denial, Summer is anger, Autumn is bargaining (expressed through their focus on magic) and Winter is sorrow/depression. They just leave out acceptance from the seasonal cycle, but I have always figured that its actually equivalent to being courtless.

My first outing with changeling I really played through the whole idea that changelings were forged by this singular, horrible, transformative thing. It was interesting and made good RP, but I dunno... my second pass at it I went the other direction entirely and made a Dawn Courtier, who are pretty 'over it' by Changeling standards, and I loved the character. I don't feel like I missed anything from the lack of angst about what had happened to her. So I think you can go either way.

As to Eldritch and Changeling, first I wanna see what 2.0 looks like. But that being said, I think that a lot of the worst bits of any sphere tend to become noticeable and amplified when there's nothing to do except battle each other for crumbs. The most pitched of battles on MU*s tend to be fought over the pettiest shit. A setting and a theme and plot that people can interact with meaningfully, I hope, will solve a lot. That and the fact that we're focusing on integrated STing so its more likely that people will end up collaborating against external threats than hunting each other for sport.

I want to absorb the pros and cons of this substantive debate, but I was unable to get past this part:

@Derp said:

@Coin is often more patient with that crap than I am. >

.... Whaaaaaaaaaat? Are you made of... what, Rage, Hatred and Caffeine?

Okay, this is the promised head's up regarding the Demon slots I'll be reopening tomorrow!

At the moment, it seems like I will have seven demon slots to pass out. This could change depending on if people suddenly wake up today and complete their apps or drop out, but this is my count for the moment.

Tomorrow at roughly 11 AM PST/2 PM EST I will toss up a bbpost called 'Demon Open'. After that I will take the first seven +jobs submitted requesting a slot. This does not need to be a concept or anything other than a request for a slot. Concepts and chargen will come after. Submissions that come in before the post goes up will be closed and told to resubmit when the post goes up.

This is obviously not perfect but it's the best I got! Good luck!

I want to absorb the pros and cons of this substantive debate, but I was unable to get past this part:

@Derp said:

@Coin is often more patient with that crap than I am. >

.... Whaaaaaaaaaat? Are you made of... what, Rage, Hatred and Caffeine?

@Arkandel

Again, I'm not really a gamer, but I am surrounded by them and my personal experience combined with what I've absorbed from being around others very serious about this stuff is this:

Sony leans towards hardware. The PS4 has slightly better specs than the One, though I have also heard that at least for the moment, few games truly/fully exploit this benefit so... eh. Microsoft leans towards software, so the interface for the One is much nicer and it does more stuff. Also if you are at all interested in playing with your friends online, Xbox Live is just... a bazillion miles better than Sony's version. Also, colloquially, I cannot turn on the PS4 without it wanting to update some stuff, which is invariably a 40 minute process that makes whatever I wanted to do initially pointless, so I now have a reactionary loathing of it that means I use it less, which makes it more likely that its going to update when I turn it on, etc, etc.

I do love the Little Big Planet games though, which are PS4 exclusive. I am pretty sure that's like 80% of the reason we have a PS4.

@Arkandel said:

"secretly"
"stolen off"
"at work"

None of these words mean what @Eerie professes.

More relevant to this topic, I'm not even much of a gamer and I'm super excited about 360 games being backwards compatible for the One. Particularly if I can get the Nike game to work, since it was great but the old 360 Kinect could never see me that well in my living room. The One Kinect is much, much better.

@Sammi said:

@Eerie With this, you can keep track of him because he'll always have his cell phone attached to his wrist.

This would not actually be much different than now, it will just look a lot sillier for a bit and then become yet another piece of collectable gaming paraphernalia cluttering his office.

Xbox is up this morning, followed by EA!

My husband already pre-ordered the Pip Boy thing and I quietly roll my eyes. It will still be better than the FPS game that came with creepy night vision goggles and led to him stalking me through the house in the dark. I was secretly glad when they were stolen off his desk at work.

@Tennyson Still!? This is the strangest thing and I have no explanation for why its happening to you. Can anyone more skilled at the internets offer Tennyson some insight or, even better, a suggestion about what to do?

Edit to add: I have had no connection issues and nobody else has mentioned having any, so as far as I know this is only happening to Ten.

@EmmahSue said:

I have trouble finding RP. I ask on various channels and in the OOC Room and get silence more often than offer. I'm not sure if it's because I'm playing a Lance Vamp, so folks don't want to get all up ins? Or maybe I've just lost my touch.

ES, I suspect that you are so great at STing that everyone just assumes you're spoken for, honestly. But if you or @mietze or anyone else for that matter are ever looking for complications or some sort of a plot twist that is going to bring you into the action and into contact with other people, please do open a +job and let me know. Again, this is the reason we have sphere caps - So we can do this sort of ST work. And its fun for me too, even if I am still sort of light-duty for another few days!

@EmmahSue said:

I'll help get it started, but I have no interest in actively staffing on any game but my own, at this point. I'm an adhoc helper-outter and scene/NPC-runner in general for Reno when whatshisname asks, and same for Eldritch.

Hell, that offer is for any of you out there making games. I'm glad to help set-up in minor non-intensive ways as asked.

ES

I highly recommend pilfering @EmmahSue's ideas, she was tons and tons of help both in providing ideas of her own and helping to organize ours. Also if you give her a bit then later on she can potenitally indulge in hi-larious pranks, probably at @coin's and @silver's expense, which makes it a double win-win.

We're super busy with Eldritch but I'm sure @coin and I would offer moral support and our observations muddling through this so far and @thenomain and @chime generally are great about providing their code to the community. From what I have seen there's definitely a desire for this sort of thing.

@iceshinagami said:

do subtemplates (Stigmata/Wolfblood) count for the sphere cap? (I assume they do) Is there a waiting list for getting into a sphere?

Ghouls, stigmatics, wolfbloods and mortals/mortal + are all open and unrestricted for the time being, yup. I just answered a question about this a few days past in more detail.

Well before we ever opened @Coin and Theno and I picked the brains of everyone here about how to do sphere caps and if we should have a waiting list. The general consensus was that there was no great way to do a waiting list, so we just went with first-come-first-serve when we do open, though I think we're going to try to give a couple days heads up before we open a sphere, both here and on the game.

Anyway, stop by the game and we can talk if you have questions. I can only speak for me but I've been having a grand time so far.

@Bobotron said:

@Eerie
I love you Eerie and I can only hope that the next game I run turns out so awesome at the start of it.

I feel like I should just close now so I can go out on a high note. Goodnight Internet! Mic drop!

(<3)