WoD is like Cheerios.

You ate it for 20 years and then switched to something far more superior, like Honey Bunches of Oats.

After a few years of HBoO, you will see your ex-girlfriend cereal, Cheerios, on the rack at a store. HEY. 20 years of Cheerios, why not right.

You invite them Cheerios over. Pour milk onto them. Put them in your mouth..

...and then you realize, past the point of no return, that you're committed at least to that one tryst with Cheerios, and that you didn't really miss it that much.

WoD can totally be like regretful ex-sex.

@Seraphim73 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

Oh god yes. I agree 100%. I wish very much that more people would keep RPing after the "end" of a GM'd scene rather than just being like, "Welp, we killed the bad guy, and even though we're at the bottom of a collapsing mine, knee-deep in acid, with wounded to carry out and prisoners to rescue, we're gonna log out for the night and not worry about it."

If I run a scene which the PCs see no reason to play about after it's 'over' I consider it a failure.

@HelloProject said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

book

What book?

@EUBanana The insanity was why we loved it.

Though what I think TGG did best was concentrating its playerbase. It was always a small game, but the characters were mostly in the same concentrated area of whatever front they were on, and everyone had a reason to RP together (all the soldier PCs were mostly on the same 'level', which usually meant starting as privates). Every time I see a mid-sized game splintered into a dozen factions, it boggles my mind. You can get away with that if you're Arx or one of the giant WoD MUs, but most places are better-served by creating a sense of intimacy and character connectivity rather than trying to be everything.

@Faraday I love the sound of your thing (and I sort of enjoyed Storium for a bit, and can see some similarity)! I'd really love to be able to use visual aids, and just the portability of playing in a browser would be nice. I am also garbage about logging and hate having to fiddle with wiki code even though I like character pages, so that being automatic would be wonderful.

Well over a decade ago, at some supers MU* I can't recall specifically, there was a dude whose character was named MAC LAW, and he was a sentient truck. Not a transformer, just a sentient truck. He was hilarious and the concept worked fantastically with the crowd of people playing as Nextwave. I loved every second that guy was in a scene.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said in What's the new hotness?:

The thing that's out of balance about the game to me is the pledges. Being able to add stuff to people's sheets that don't cost XP for drawbacks that will almost certainly never come up unless an ST or player forces the issue was, to me, a terrible concept in game design. And then Demon turned around and did Pledges Part Deux.

Something, something, something... works great in tabletop with an ST that knows your characters and is running a game catered to them... something, something, something... not made for a MU*... something, something, something... all splats are not created equal.

I'll play. I play because of nostalgia, pretend, being creative. Those are all really good answers and they all fit.

I started Mu*ing back in 1994, on Gemstone while I was still in high school. I was into tabletop RP in college and Mushes were a natural extension of a "sometimes" thing I enjoyed. I never got into WoD because, my TT group was mainly a D&D Shadowrun group. College had to end eventually and real life(and a kid) set in. So I gradually stopped.

While in college, I minored in theater. So yeah, I've always kinda been an attention whore and had a weird enjoyment of being other people. Mu* always kinda scratches that itch. I can think up an entire character background and description in minutes. Yeah, I even have an alter ego like Beyoncé in real life (let's keep that between us).

I've always been kind of arty. I went to a technical high school and did graphic design. I was the girl in the back of the class drawing instead of daydreaming. While I don't write creatively, I do play around with it and I even have a dream book--that I actually use. This just seems like a hobby for someone like me. I'll probably be doing it off and on until I'm an old lady.

Why don't I play? The simple answer is real life. When I graduated, I became a teacher. Those first couple years as a new teacher are intense. I just didn't have time to do it. Then it turned into having a baby, which rapidly devolved into single motherhood. But now my son's a preteen and doesn't require(or want)as much of my time, but I got married and I have a new big baby to take up my time. Along with football practice and basketball practice, plus work....well, this hobby takes a backseat a lot.

So often I envy the people that have a lot of time to sink into Mu*ing. I only have a sliver of time to put into it and most of the time it's really late at night, so even when I get into it again, it doesn't feel like it's worth my time like it used to. That and I don't bounce back from staying up late like I used to. So I play for a little while, then I pull out because it kind of becomes a little much.

Maybe do a setup where there has to be no less than 8 and no more than 12 characters to drive a mini-faction (I dunno, are they the support for a Slayer, are they the officers of a brigade, are they the lackies of musketeers, the aids of politicians) where all the end result in in terms of the mini-faction scale, but each person has their mini-faction to RP with, and of course dealing with other mini-factions, and whatever story elements etc.

I will say, I prefer public grid to be open. If a scene needs to be private or limited, take it to TP or RP or private rooms. Sure, a flag on +who or whatever would be nice, indicating a hangout or location is 'closed' scene, but really there are places to take locked/closed/private RP.

I do like the idea, if you ask for RP (hey wanna rp, or on chan, or whatever), you set the scene. I'm just not so sure about asking if someone wants to RP, and following up with, 'what do you want to do?' If you initiate in any way, have some ideas at the ready. Wiki's are a good tool to get an idea of a character you're asking for RP. Or be forward ... I'm looking for RP, don't know what do to, and am open to suggestions. Just avoid the 'what do you want to do?' ... and you won't get the 'I don't know, what do you want to do?" reply.

Edit: I do miss those days, wandering a grid to find someone then posing whatever came to mind, or seeing what was going on and jumping in.

@SG I used them a great deal when I ran a 4E game, and have actually carried that on to 5E.

That said, I never used them in the way they're presented in the book, which is terribly flat and useless (roll this or a couple skills a bunch of times, hope you get X succ before Y fails).

I used them in a much more involved way, probably similarly to some of the ones on the link you give (I definitely took inspiration liberally from blogs at the time), or even more complicated than that. Generally I'd write up a whole slew of specific actions with different skills at different DCs (sometimes scaling on margin of success as well, etc). Some would gain successes toward 'winning' the challenge, others would grant bonuses to subsequent rolls, address secondary RP objectives, modify combats that would get triggered along the way, etc. Often characters could spend combat resources (surges, power uses, spell slots going on to 5E, etc) to get bonuses or could pick up statuses (like Exhaustion in 5E) that would transfer over. I experimented with a whole lot of different formats, and some worked really well, but it was also a huge amount of prep each time and they weren't very re-usable.

Basically they were a goto when the players wanted to do something really large-scale and sweeping in the campaign, or for setpiece battles or a few other things impossible to model in a fun way in the normal rules. But they were replacements for whole sessions or large parts of them, not ways of handling smaller things like chases etc unless they were really spectacular.

A remedial grid is built. Woo. I was super creative and named the Colony Alpha Complex.
A more informative Wiki, too. It's still hideous, though.

Next up:

statting gunz, and vehicles.

Finding someone to code the simple econ. I could probably run it off my google spreadsheet, but it'd be nice to have things done on the game instead of by hand.

Yay messing up my back to keep me from going out on weeknights 😄

I read over the Dark Pack a few times and it really reads to me like they're aware of just how much of their material is being reproduced without authorization by the gaming community.

I've been seeing some websites (that I once used as a resource site) shut off their content stating they'd been contacted by WW/Onyx. It does definitely seem that they are moving on this, at least to some degree. There's evidence of it, at least.

Fact of the matter is almost any of the WoD MU*s out there don't require a constant book/PDF open to play due to a shitload of content having been ported into the code. This Dark Pack reads a lot like: if you're not with the Dark Pack, we will shut you down for using our IP without authorization, and in joining the Dark Pack, you will have to identify yourself to us. In identifying yourself to us, we will get a better idea of how much of our stuff you're reproducing without approval, and potentially cease/desist you.

If I were a betting man, I'd put some money on that a lot of these MUs are gonna be getting visitors soon.

Guys. I know it's supposed to only be mildly constructive around here but we're stretching even that pretty thin.

@Ominous Ehhhh. I'd bill it post-post-apoc but general-genre-wise it probably can be counted post-apoc. When I say post-apoc I mean direct or near-direct aftermath of the apocalypse, rising from the ashes, the apocalypse is fresh in everyone's memory and/or possibly still ongoing but has largely destroyed civilization already, etc.

FS3 is designed around the concept that you should be able to make a skilled veteran right out of the gate. Now it's configurable so not all games use it that way, but that idea was central to its design. Many of the Battlestar games have used it along with a hodgepodge of other MUs (Game of Bones, 100, Wing Commander, at least one Star Wars game, etc.).

Because you can start high, XP is intended to be superfluous, and the slow advancement pisses some people off. Also some folks don't like it because not everyone starts out "even" in terms of their power level. But both of those things are by design, so c'est la vie. Can't please everyone.

@Ashen-Shugar Not sure. I haven't watched Supernatural on tv in a long, long time, but it wouldn't surprise me!

I'll check it out when you've got something concrete. Still iffy on doing unique theme over FS since it would just save you a lot of work and unique tends to be harder to get and keep players for, but I'd give it a go regardless.

@Lotherio said in What do you play most?:

Some suggest they do, some don't do anything unless staff run something.

Inversely I agree the most active places have no meta or its more open and not world shattering. Yet those highly active places seen to crop up in hog pit for reasons (too many staff alts, too little staff, staff doesn't do what I want ... More grief and gripe). I play on some and don't join in the slinging. Preception versus reality, just when I've pondered similar thoughts, what folks like in a mu*, answers always point to meta, staff keeping it active (including everyone), etc.

I'm saying I prefer less meta and my own stories. And maybe wrong perception on my part.

Many games put their metaplot on a wiki and promptly forget it exists. That's one of the reasons most sandbox games come to a grinding halt a couple of weeks after they open and once the early excitement which comes with that new character smell wears off, and everyone realizes there really isn't much to do around these parts after all. Sure, the opening page claims there's an invasion by the Pure or whatever but nothing's actually happening, so after the 6th time you end up in a bar scene bitching about those damn theoretical Pure taking your jobs and stealing your women ... well, it gets a bit repetitive.

Good metaplot is a roleplay-generating engine. The vast majority of MU* don't have good metaplot, they have a wiki with someone's fanfic scribbled hastily in a couple of its pages.