My backgrounds on games tend to be roughly a page. Enough to give a base for the character to start from but avoiding unnecessary detail, that is what IC conversations are for.
And this pretty much equates to both what I have in mind when i talk with a table top GM about the char I am making and what I expect a player in a table top to be able to give me. Not written out of course but in conversation during that first c-gen session.

So I haven't read a lot of this thread, but I can talk about something we've discovered on Lost & Found that's been pretty successful for us: Tumblr. We're in a position where our game canon -- not just Transformers, but specifically the comic More Than Meets the Eye -- has a huge fanbase on Tumblr. We've had a game Tumblr since inception. At one point we got a player who was experienced with MU*s but also active on Tumblr and the TF fandom there, and they started poking around RPer accounts on there and inviting people who seemed promising. I mean, Tumblr already seems like an awful platform to RP on, because it kind of makes conversation really difficult, and I've always believed that these people would probably be open to other options if presented to them. So now we've had a whole bunch of players who came in from Tumblr and learned the mechanics of the game, and we suddenly started exploding in size.

Here's the catches:

You have to be exceptionally newbie-friendly. We've been rolling out super basic guides to a lot of stuff both on the wiki and on the game. A lot of these folks have never heard of MUs, but could become awesome MU players as long as you're open to hand-holding for a while. Honestly, we've gotten some players for Tumblr who have picked up things faster than veteran MU*ers who can't for the life of them remember certain commands they use regularly.

We had to bring on more staff, and if we didn't have players willing, we would be in a position where we couldn't handle things at all. We went from a three-person staff to something like eight (although those additional folks mostly in specialized positions). If we didn't have people who were willing and able to step up and run plot and process apps, it wouldn't have been successful.

So I guess the moral of the story is: recruit outside the usual places. Find your audience if you're not getting enough from the MU* population.

@Packrat said in Conflict mechanics:

That is what I am working on for the (eternally still in progress) Space Nobles game I am still plodding through planning out, FUDGE dice mechanics with a momentum/initiative system stolen or at least heavily influenced by Exalted 3e.

So you roll to attack, with modifiers to the roll for equipment/circumstances, net successes +1 is added to your Momentum for the fight. Narratively, you are shooting at somebody and forcing them to take cover, pressing them in a sword fight, etc. Minor injuries might take place but nothing significant.

You can instead on your turn choose to spend Momentum points to try a more decisive attack where, depending on how many points you spend, you can disarm them on a success, or wound them, grapple them, etc. If you succeed then the Momentum is all gone, if you fail then you lose a few points but could potentially try again. Wearing armour does not inherently defend against a Decisive attack, it defends against regular attacks as you are (potentially much) harder to disadvantage because you can take more risks and ignore more threats. But if somebody has you pinned and is sticking a knife into your eye or has lined up a shot on your head or whatever then it no longer matters.

Yeah, I love that. I also really like that it makes each Health Level matter. Because before, you took 1B or 1L and it was a glancing blow. Now, glancing blows don't really mean anything HL-wise; if you take even a single HL of damage, someone nailed you. Perhaps not badly, but it's still a solid blow that is impactful, narratively speaking.

@Sunny
Actually, I asked. At least on Penn you can set the @odrop NONAME and it won't prepend the name, so you can futz with the messages completely.

The Empire codebase is similar to what you're describing, and I think there's a current RP-focused Empire mud up called LorenMUD.

This reminds me of a story the developer of the Godwars code told. In his second or third game he created a dynamic wilderness where players could claim grid tiles, build roads, settlements, etc. The world was completely player created. The game wasn't open for more than a few days before the players had 'built' giant penises and written certain choice words across the world in giant grid tile letters.

Developers and players often have different ideas of what's fun.

@Whirlwind

#1) Hey, Whirlwind.

#2) If it's on the Directory, the location can be called? Eh, it seems like a cheap solution, but an easy one.

@Lithium Yeah, that's a matter of how an individual game is choosing to apply background skills, and I agree it's wacky.

Background skills arent meant to be specializations of action skills. FS3 has no concept of specialization. BG skills are designed to be other skills, not particularly important to gameplay, that round out your char.

I would never approve someone with a BG skill in Tridents because it's already covered by Melee.

So it sounds like some game really wanted to have specializations and tried to graft it onto the system in a way that's kind of weird.

Mummy or bust.

@Midgardener said in What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?:

Wild Talents would be a decent online system, without all the IP balderdash.

And teaching people the ORE system, which is difficult to learn with their twenty-eight types of die resolution setups. (Kind of kidding: Wild Talents, if memory serves, has three, tho it's the only system I know of that it's entirely possible to over-power your abilities and cause huge amounts of destruction. It's mostly by choice, tho, so it's not like The Tick.)

Just out of boredom and for slightly more definition .... http://mortalsouls.wikidot.com/

I may throw something in every now and again, but full development, I'd probably wear myself out. If anyone is interested in contributing their two cents ... I"d be willing to do it similar to the way we did old Redemption.

@Kestrel said in Tips on Güd TS:

I find it much, much worse if someone is trying to OOCly coerce a relationship or sex without roleplaying the approach IC first and do not deem the reverse coercion at all.

I think there's a line here -- and in one respect I think everyone is on the same page, and on the other, everyone's scattered all over the map.

Mainly, I think most folk are relatively chill about respectful, neutral inquiry, without the heavy breather factor attached (politely asking without awwwyiss bebe yur hawt overtones), but that's still going to vary widely.

I think we're universally all on the same page that someone wheedling, pushing, bullying, badgering, or hardcore skeeving toward that end OOC is profoundly uncool. Basically, an OOC 'not interested' shouldn't get pushed or wheedled at or bullied OOC, as that's serious creeper territory.

I think the main difference -- if I had to put a pin in it -- is that you're chill with people pressing for it anyway IC through IC means, while a fair number of the MUSH crowd would be less so, and would find that to be 'pushing for it IC after the OOC no thanks came down'.

This is sticky (pun not intended); I've seen this from both sides.

I've had RP with no initial conversation that went somewhere IC, and that's very neutral ground if it's pursued further IC. I've also had instances in which the initial OOC conversation has taken place, and guidelines have been laid down amongst those involved... and then people push for things vastly outside them, or utterly contrary to them, through IC means.

There is a world of difference here between the two scenarios.

In the first, if something happens that's unwanted or squicky, it's not like the other party could have intuited so by magic[1]. It's not intentional. You know someone is not knowingly disregarding or disrespecting you on the player level, because it's a case of 'shit happens'.

In the second? Not so innocent. Player to player, limits were agreed upon. 'Out of bounds' was likely decided. Knowingly disregarding these things is already not good. Forcing them to happen anyway through IC means is now much worse, because the other player? They know it's not kosher on the player level, or it would have been in the safe zone in the first place.

It basically doubles up the squick factor, because IC force is being employed to steamroll the other player, regardless of whatever agreement was made (which means untrustworthy right off the bat on the player level, at the very least).

[1] Major taboo territory -- incest, bestiality, snuff, and similar 'you can't even legally buy porn of it' subject matter -- is still something that people should probably be prepared to assume is not automatically fair game, to my reckoning.

I think the genre of the game applies, too. In Game of Thrones, being the victim of a villain or facing justice for being one, usually isn't a pretty sight. Whereas Darth Vader's TIE fighter can get beaned and float off into space "CURSE YOU, LUKE SKYWALKERRRRrrrr...."

How this could be implemented highly revolves around the IC stakes of the game. WoD, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc would require a lot more creativity to determine what kinds of defeat don't equate to death, but if you look closely these genres DO have villains that are defeated, evolve, return, etc.

@Haven
Well it's open now. We're just still putting in policies, so it's basically kind of in beta testing more than anything.

@DnvnQuinn
Prospect was the split that Sponge and Coyote created before pulling the plug on everything. We just carried over the files we still had in place (since most of us were helping to build the new places) to a new server and picked up where we left off.

I tend to just juggle multiple things at once when I ST.

Inits.
Player 1 declares and rolls.
Player 2 declares while 1 poses.
Player 2 rolls, 3 declares, by now Player 1 has posed.
Player 3 rolls, 2 poses, then 3 poses and I have time to work on my npc pose.
Top of the round starts it all over again.

I can usually bust out a 3-4 player scene, with set up, combat, and some clean up in about 2-2.5 hours.

The former. A character is a little bit of multiple personality disorder developing in my brain, to the point where I can almost imagine hearing my best characters talk and express what they'd do in any given situation.

The more I indulge that little bit of insanity, the more I get to know the character, and either I like it and let it keep growing, or I don't, and I do a mental flush and send it into oblivion.

@acceleration Many storytellers do handle failures and dramatic failures as story opportunities... but many players view them as dead ends and scene enders. Rather than making lemons out of lemonade they throw up their hands and cry about everything being sour. As an ST, I'm not going to give the players rainbows and butterflies when they dramatically fail. It is, by definition, a fail. And it is a dramatic fail. Is there a way out and to overcome? Yes. Is it easy to do? No. Is it going to come without some bumps and bruises? Probably not.

Dealing with dramatic failures sometimes require humbling ones character to the scene. And for some people, they just can't have fun unless they are the bestest ever alltimes. They view humbling one's character the same as humbling one's self and that isn't fun for them. As an ST you might hear something like, "you're just trying to humiliate me!" because the player's self image is attached so closely, if not entirely, to their character.

The problem becomes the uncertainty in how an ST is going to handle something. When you know and trust your ST you're much more likely to have fun. If you're playing in a scene with someone you don't know as an ST, sometimes people get this fear that their character is going to be killed - even on games where a PC has never been killed by an NPC. So people sometimes err on the side of pessimism and develop the viewpoint of 'this is a scene ender because chancing anything further could get me killed so I turn around and go home'.

The same can be said of players. If you join a +event, the 'fun' of what happens is sometimes tempered by the unfamiliarity of the other players involved. This is why storylines with friends are usually much more full and engaging, because things can go sideways without the apprehension that someone is gonna break the scene down the middle with some crazy character choices. If I choose to take a dramatic failure because it can create a fun opportunity, is the guy next to me gonna choose to frenzy and kill my character because he thinks that's a fun opportunity that was created? I was having great fun with a gaming group on one particular MU* and I made a character choice to go off on his own and handle an IC situation away from the rest of the group. Many others in the group took it as I, the player, didn't want to play with them anymore and they shut me out completely OOCly. They wanted to know OOCly what I was doing in order not to freak out. I wanted to keep things IC. It ended poorly.

The bottom line for me is that whenever I've had a bad experience in a scene it is usually because I'm not familiar with or used to the style of either the ST or the other players I'm with. Not everyone views the game (or gaming in general) the same way I do and that presents for very different outcomes in story and in satisfaction with a scene. I get the feeling it is like that a lot and many of the views and preferences we carry clash with others we encounter on games from both a player side and an ST side.

@Taika
It was really just the nature of the game, at least from my experience, back then and in that circuit (mind, this was 1999-2002ish, if not a little earlier). You played and sure, you'd have people who weren't really interested in building things OOC as well as IC, but the majority... well, OOC communication and OOC friendship was the norm. Even if you were characters who would tear each others heads off ICly.

It was also helpful that a lot of stuff was coded so things like combat were 'you use a command, the system calculates, and you pose accordingly in a fight' and that the game promoted OOC communication for stuff like that, even with the randomness. It was just 'how it was done' back then and in those circuits.

@Derp said in Grid building theory?:

WFRE Building <WFRE> CHIME Museum <MU>

I'm not quite that old yet.

@Admiral

We understand, it simply must be done.