@thenomain Very true; but that's actually something I liked about the nWoD theme in general - the 'enemies' were basically the same as the player characters; they just had a different world view/politics/religious stance. In oWoD, Nephandi or Marauders had tweaked - if not completely different - mechanics; while in nWoD even Scelesti or Banishers follow the same general rules set. The Pure have some slightly different rules based on their lack of the Oath, but otherwise are just werewolves with a different world view and alliances; etc. Bale Hounds are nuts, but they don't have entirely different and unique sets of powers and abilities like Black Spiral Dancers did. nWoD has it's faults in terms of theme, but they do make the baked in antagonists easy to understand and, in some cases, relate to.

@lotherio Also, to bring it back into the context of 'how long should scenes last for', violence is very time efficient. I can stab anyone in the face very believably within seconds no matter who they are, but it could look completely implausible to change the Duke's mind about something huge within the time it takes for a PrP to run.

Hell, introducing NPCs can take a long time. I can produce an Elder y'all can stab to death very easily when all you have to know about her is that she means to drink your blood otherwise, but it would take considerably more for a party to expose her weaknesses and fears then to figure out a way to exploit them in any way that doesn't seem completely unrealistic or over-simplified.

@SunnyJ
Bob Kane was the artist that developed the concept of Batman. That's our theme and plot wizard.

Bill Finger was the writer that organized the Batman mythos into a structure, early in the comic run. That's our code and game theory management, me.

Jerry Robinson was the writer that invented the Joker, as a villain to write when Batman writers couldn't come up with a plot under a deadline. He's the iconic character of the franchise, by virtue of being so perfectly matched for Batman in terms of the reference to comedy and Batman as a straight man in vaudeville.

We want someone to create antagonist plots, i.e. the campaigns that players will fight through. Sometimes players will be running their own NPCs via puppet spawn objects I'm presently designing, sometimes they will be doing this to achieve a preset objective that we set in the campaign, and sometimes staff will be running a story event with special NPCs. That's storyteller and grid admin, the campaign staffer.

Essentially, we're looking for someone to manage the scenarios that the Spartans will be fighting through, someone that can create a recognizable brand for the MUSH as the opposition to the playerbase, outside the canon Halo universe.

You'll have Mr.Johnson, theme staffer, and myself, code staffer, to help. We've already written up a basic system of theme and campaign.

The City's politics are sorta complicated. The most powerful faction, the High Court, solidly controls half the City and has fingers in others. They have a near-monopoly on alcohol, largely because they have the only large-scale starfruit garden outside of the Starfruit Gardens that feed most of the city. Almost no one else can compete at scale. Those that try, well. The High Guard enforce the canons, and the Veils of the High Court define the canons. The High Court is concerned with order.

Territoriality, the Dragon Cadre (they aren't dragons; just horse-size lizards that can be ridden) is the second most powerful. Divided into castes and bands, they follow the First who is selected from their number annually. The Dragon Bands hire themselves out as guards, warriors, hunters, and fulfill contracts faithfully. They are concerned with honor.

The last, the Taken King, is the head of a slave army and has one enclave of a quarter of the city headily fortified, the rest... its all a protection racket (not that any other quarter isn't slightly). He's all bout freedom/chaos/anarchy. He's also largely the personally richest person in the City, because hey, he's got a lot of slaves (the Taken Army). He also has the single largest source of meat imports in the City, since on his raids into the Stone Eater territory, he brings back many kinds of spoils. He's concerned entirely with power.

Those are the three big political organizations. There's more affiliations and not everyone (in fact, not most) would identify with any of the big three strongly.

The Guilds are a secondary path to power and justice...

Thread necro because I just discovered a game called Prowlers and Paragons. It's a pretty neat little system from what I've seen so far. Kind of a decent mix between narrative style and crunch. It's D6 driven but not necessarily in the way one might thing (everything is rated in D6s , you roll your rank, even numbers = a success, dice also "explode" on a roll of a 6). My wife and I whipped up some characters last night and had a decent time punching bad guys in the face.

I wa just wondering if anyone else has experience with this game? It's crazy cheap, $5 on drivethruRPG.

@jennkryst said in Respecs.:

Possibly others!

Just because a mechanical system has respecs built in doesn't mean that it makes sense/is good for a continuous, populous, online game as opposed to a tabletop setting of a handful of people. So it's still worth discussing, even for those systems.

I think the problem with M&M as a system for MU's is that the people who get it, get it. Those who don't? As stated, feel out of place. Which is too bad because it genuinely is a solid system.

@thenomain and @Darc

I believe the policy also says that nobody can start at Tier 4 at this time, so that closes the gap a bit too. You can spend boatloads of xp and still be relatively supernaturally inept. It depends more on focus than quantity of xp, IME.

@cobaltasaurus said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

If you're looking at a game with roster characters, and decide to go with a roster. Does their already having a PB chosen have a positive or negative impact on your choice? Does it matter if you know you can change the PB once you're approved if you don't like the one that's there already?

Positive: It would give me a far better idea what that character is supposed to be about.

Negative: Nnnngh not another russian model/'roided body builder telling me that the character is supposed to be 'swole/hot'.

Mostly the positive, though.

Depends on the game.

While WoD/CoD has settings like this, so do other systems. This is a stat, like any other stat. That makes it very hard to omit. Things like Nature|Demeanor/Virtue|Vice/etc. have concrete mechanical effects within the system. As a result, I don't see these being something that can be hand-waved off to be set up later. Changed later if something else is more appropriate? Sure, provided the changes are kept to a dull roar.(1) Anything that has a mechanical effect is hard for me to justify hand-waving entirely in chargen, particularly if it's something that can be changed with relative ease at a later time and evolve reasonably with the story.

Background isn't as important to me as concept as it is initially envisioned, some of their initial goals as a player, and explanation of anything unusual in the character's history or on their sheet. The last is fairly sweeping and covers a lot of ground; this could be a high stat atypical for the concept, a stat typically high for the concept that's low, or something very unusual for the character as described. For instance, I'd want to know why someone's 16th century English noblewoman knows the ins and outs of the magical practices of the Mayans or similar, because that's not exactly normal. (And while PCs are generally exceptional, that's not the usual way 16th century English noblewomen are exceptional.)

I don't like the 'any unspent XP/starting points are lost' approach. At all. Never have. It's too easy to overlook something, realize very early on in play that it's missing and would be something the character would have, or with that small tweak they could fit perfectly in a needed niche in the game with a minor tweak that benefits not just that player and character, but may be the glue that keeps a group cohesive when that character can be tweaked to suit the group, or become the missing piece that completes their collective puzzle.

(1) "Dull Roar": Whatever terms someone is comfortable with to avoid changing between every scene to and for whatever provides the maximum mechanical benefit, because we all know that guy is out there. Somebody may be happy with 'no more than once every three months', or might like 'change at will if you think appropriate when the character fails (or even faces) a breaking point', logs of justification -- whatever they think is suitable. Similarly, things like touchstones should be somewhat malleable; X may fade and Y becomes elevated in importance as the story unfolds, and this is reasonable. It becomes less reasonable when this becomes a case of 'oh, well, that wasn't a big deal any more, now this other thing is' when it's presented to staff after something has happened to the original thing.

@misadventure said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:

If someone wants the fun of growing from nothing, they can not spend their starting budget.

My concern with that is that there would be no 'competition' between those that choose to spend slowly and those that choose to min-max. Especially in nWoD, your stats and skills can (but don't always) directly impact your likelihood to hold certain jobs, and so forth.

@surreality said in Action Movie MUSH:

@coin Something Pacific Rim-like was what leapt to mind when I first saw the thread title. You have good options for various power levels and team sizes, a fair amount of campy fun, a dose of mad science, and plenty of opportunity for classic action and rescue heroics, and a variety of interesting roles available other than 'ace pilot' (and even then the focus on teamwork is a plus here).

It's sci-fi, but the world itself is not so far advanced (it is the true universe of handwavium, like whoa) as a part of average daily life that everyone needs a crash course in quantum physics just to make their morning coffee.

Yeah, but if you go the Colossal route you can be a big monster and a person. >.>

@Misadventure The economy is an integrated XP/Skill Roll/Powerup/IC landmark/TP power system, that is dependent on both player opinion of others' behavior in scenes, and also investment in the game per scene.

@Jennkryst My jet fighter system could be adapted for space ships, although it would take a bit of work getting capital ships into the system. I'd recommend using frigate and carrier level ships, beyond the individual fighter.

It's really not too hard to handle for some things; it can be mentioned in a setting file somewhere. 'We don't plan to have any major advances in technology occur within the game, and any major developments or changes requested will be denied.' (And so on.)

This is one you can even make and keep very vague: 'The game we wish to run has been designed as presented in the news/wiki/whatever, and any major developments or changes that would massively alter the world would change the essential nature of the game as intended, and that everyone on it came here to play. Requests that would fundamentally change the physical, social, or technological landscape and reality of the game will be denied.'

@faraday

Yeah, I can’t keep track of everyone’s personal definitions of specific phrases either. God knows I’ve clarified myself and had people not pick up on that.

Often.

In this thread.

By you.

People gonna be people. It’s important to work toward common ground whenever possible.

I like them. I love them. I love them like I love switches in descs for time of day and season and weather, even though nobody bothers reading room descs most of the time.

I am that old school asshole, still loving these things.

I also think an opt-out is just plain necessary, because for frequent players, it gets repetitive.

If there's some sweeping 'everyone in town right now would notice this', there's always @wall and similar commands or setups to make sure no one misses one time major emits like, 'oh, hey, a volcano suddenly erupted two blocks over!' just by turning off the ambience emitter.

@ominous said in What Do You Want In A New Game (3-options)?:

So we got:

Rifts Birthright meets Naruto/Magic the Gathering/Avatar: the Last Airbender by way of Exalted Battlestar Galactica/Voyager

All are interesting concepts. I kind of lean towards #2 because I want a good Birthright game and it sounds like your most fleshed out idea, so has the potential of actually seeing fruition.

What are the most productive and/or enjoyable group scenes related to plots?

Perhaps suggesting those would give staff an endpoint to get groups or singles and pairs to head towards.

As example, I do like plots where many skills can contribute, however, I have little use for a scene where everyone poses reading research results. It takes up time, and can be safely left to players who WANT to RP around that framework, without staff attention.

Staffs primary value (in this topic) is validating efforts (both reporting success, and making sure that successes are tracked as they affect stories) and adding in new information for players to mull over and make preparations based on etc, to link up unconnected PC efforts if they should, and whatever management risks and costs (from lost contacts, to combat) need.

@mr-johnson i am sure if you reached out to the coders here they could help you get a better grasp of what ever it is you are having prpblems with.

@arkandel said in 'Inspired by' rather 'This Work: The Mu':

For me the greatest issue with original settings is that player buy-in is hard.

My issue is similar to this though I am not sure if buy in is the right term for my issue, for me the hard part is not buying in, if I like the general premise i have no issues investing the time to make the character and run in plot things the issue comes in when it is time for social RP, not the big issues those usually gets covered in the wiki so I know how a settings government works but what do the people do for leisure time, is there theatre in the setting what is it like? What spectator activities are there? Heck even weather patterns all help me get into social RP (and in the case of weather is has been shown RL to have a dramatic effect on moods), in a real world or published setting a lot of this is out there. In most original settings it is not.
What i have found in original settings is that I will play the heck out of the plots but tend to drift away from social RP and since most scenes are social I end up pretty disconnected from the game.