@tat said in Meshing Groups:

Or just be okay with less interaction IN the scene, and build in time for those characters to connect around what happened later.

That's what I do. Like if the plot starts at 9 and I know that most players pumpkin by midnight, I'll make sure that the "meat" of the plot ends by 11 so there's still time for folks to do wrap-up and stuff afterward.

Personally I don't enjoy doing a lot of interaction in the midst of plot scenes (which tend to be action scenes on my games). It's hard enough to keep track of what everyone else is even doing without then also trying to respond to a bunch of different conversations. And it tends to bog things down.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

@ganymede said in GMs and Players:

If you are perceived as having bias then you should no longer staff.

So I'm going to disagree with that point, because I'm 110% positive that every staff on every game is at some point perceived as having a bias.

It's true. Run a MU long enough (and in this case, long enough is not long) and somebody will be bound to accuse you of bias.

But I figure Gany really meant 'if it's reasonable for reasonable people to perceive you as biased.' Somewhat like how cops can search your house if they perceive it as a likely crime scene, but said perception has to be something like a trail of blood leading to your door. The way your eyeliner gives Officer Fuckley the creeps won't cut it.

It's certainly a bad idea to dismiss any/all perception of bias. Fuckley being weird about eyeliner and a liar does not mean that Andy and Barney Fife don't really see blood.

Among my year's bumper crop of stupid shit said to me about MUs was that problems on MUs are "almost always just player perception." It wasn't a thanks captain obvious, yes, everything about games is pretty much about player perception, perceiving oneself to be having fun is the point kinda stupid, they meant that player perceptions are wrong and the problems not real.

@derp said in Decriminalise Pretty:

I need to finish Korra. Is it on Netflix?

Yes. So's Avatar and S:PoP.

I'm binging ATM on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on HBO Max too.

@seraphim73 said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:

There are a fair number of "modern MUers" who enjoy combat and risky actions, but who have no interest in PvP. It's perfectly possible to have a playerbase intensely interested in PvE combat, but not interested at all in PvP combat (beyond sparring).

See pretty much any of the BSG games, TGG, etc.

My experience with Battletech was effectively PVE. First there was us as tweens/teens playing against my dad (effectively acting as GM even though yes, technically, it was PVP). Then were the Crescent Hawk tactical RPG video games. Even in my foray into MWO, the other players may as well be AI bots for all I interact with them.

@seraphim73 said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:

I would include significant combat elements

I wasn't referring to the quantity of combat so much as the depth of it. I don't think it's worth trying to recreate TT style BTech rules in a MU setting.

Isn't a pizzadilla a calzone?

The only message board system I've actually managed in the past was Vanilla Forums. It's nice, but I discovered pretty quickly it's geared more towards corporate support forums rather than anything that might be useful to MSB.

@kestrel said in Paying for a MU*?:

At this point, I kind of feel like I should be paid to play someone else's MU*.

That's the spirit.

You know, given that most MUs rely on higher numbers of people/bits logged in to encourage people to try the game, at the very least even the most unwanted player on those games should have some sort of sign-spinner salary.

Starting to think about sheet design now. There was a lot of deliberation over what system use for this. Freeform Universal by Peril Planet /almost/ won. In the end though, we needed something with a little more crunch for settling disputes without too much need for staff interpretation. So! We went with Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system. One of my favorites for years. 🙂

sheet

No Rest for the Wicked!

@carma said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

Here's an idea for the Aes Sedai - make their magic work off intent. So if they're not doing something to directly harm someone, but in the mind of the caster, the intended outcome is to eventually cause harm to someone, it backfires and harms the caster instead.

Yeah, that's one I forgot.

Magic Has Standards of Conduct method - Magic is tied to the spiritual realm and using it requires you to abide by certain rules, beliefs, what have you. For example, using magic to kill is wrong, and, if you do it, you get to do it once, then you lose your magic. Or maybe now you can only use dark magic which can only do harmful destructive things. Even if you try to do good with dark magic, it warps and perverts your intention to still cause harm

@arkandel said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@derp said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@arkandel said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

I wish I had invisible voices double-checking my dumb decisions in real life. 🙂

...isn't that what we're here for?

Yes, when I want to figure out something important in my life I always ask myself "what would MSB do here?".

We are no more or less reliable than your random friend who's out of heals!

@ominous

True dat.

I was once part of a Fenrir pack as it’s Modi/Theurge. He had the Huge Size merit, Strength 5, and carried a war hammer.

And, yes, he was probably the least deadly. Negotiating with a death spirit was very cordial.

@songtress said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

it was more me pinning for the pretty colored clothing objects with their pretty ansi colors and descriptions. Vs. Say the actual how you get there.

Maybe I'm not following then. Without the "how you get there" - you just use the desc command and put in whatever ansi you want? If some other tailor char is providing the clothing, they can provide you the fancy desc of what it looks like.

If you just want an inventory tracking system to control who's got fancy hats and who doesn't, you don't need immersive code for that. You just need an OOC way to assign clothes to people.

I don't keep many friends. The ones I do have known me as the one that does "those writing games" and they don't care while they play mmorpgs or POGS or whatever. The dear friend who I've known the longest is someone online who I've never met in person - known since high school and college and unmoderated online World of Darkness games (somuchangst.) ICQ (I think) to Discord. Firnost to FF14 (maybe.) They know me well and I wouldn't trade that connection for anything.

@nessa Totally fair question. And I believe I left myself a mostly working CP:Red chargen system for Evennia (minus gear) back in the beginning of the year.

I think I was just hoping for that Black Chrome book to drop sometime between last Spring and now, and am questioning the long term viability of a game system that makes a major release less frequently than annually.

Maybe the right answer is to finish that first, before being distracted by the overwhelming cruft that is SR. 😉

EDIT: Going to spin down effort on CP:Red / Shadowrun for a bit and give CP Red an opportunity to release another source book before making a call on that. In the meantime, testing out some ideas for a way of approaching developing a game system that could just be dropped adjacently to a freshly installed copy of Evennia and could be wired up to turn it into a specific game -- tinkering around with this in the context of L5R (because it has somewhat simpler CG rules).

-r

@faraday It's all about game culture, not codebase, indeed. Ares makes it easy as pie to set scenes to private or open whether from the client or the portal. The decision to do either lies with the player.

@chibichibi Assuming WoD: enforce drawbacks. Paradox exists for a reason, afterall.

Assuming not-WoD... enforce drawbacks. Really, enforce drawbacks on everybody.

I think that we have a definitive majority answer here, lol.