'Inspired by' rather 'This Work: The Mu'
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The Teen Wolf/Mercy Thompson interest check and my own experiences on MUs that were based on various media properties have me thinking about something I don't see much of in the MU world. Which is to say, MUs in the style of a genre, but not tied into any one media mythology.
Having played in games based on various urban fantasy series, from City by the Bay and Windy City to Devilshire and Let the End Times Roll to Dark Spires and that Dresden game set in Louisiana (I believe), the latest attempts at Supernatural and Shadowhunter games to the two 'ultimate crossover' games that popped up in the last few years, I've come to believe that a direct translation/adaptation of various properties is actually kind of limiting. Most of these shows only fill out their mythologies as far as they need for a given monster of the week episode, if they think about it at all.
On the other end of the scale, games like Mythara: At the Crossroads, which attempt to reconcile everything from Charmed to Teen Wolf under one roof, suffer from having no cohesion or tangible overarching theme to unify the various spheres and keep a game going. Not to mention, in a game where you have FCs, a lot of the play is going to be about having those FCs fuck. No judgement there, but it's not the sort of thing that attracts and keeps a wide player base.
I find myself wondering if a game that is inspired by a given genre, like TV Urban Fantasy might be a good way a go. Taking elements from Buffy, Teen Wolf, Charmed, Bitten, Dresden Files, True Blood and the rest but written from the ground up for a cohesive cosmology and setting, so the parts work together and your various spheres wouldn't be unevenly developed. I think all of those shows have enough things in common to be there own genre and have their own genre conventions, unique from even the literary versions some of them have.
Getting rid of Feature Characters and the various ways writers destroy their settings in the final seasons of a given show seems like it would open up a lot of fun for the players and using a broad setting but narrow theme could provide enough narrative framework to attract a population and keep a game going.
On the other hand, if what I'm proposing sounds like World of Darkness Lite, that's because it functionally is. WoD without the quirky and very distinct cosmology and mythology of those games and with a more 'monster of the week/big bad of the season' and 'Scooby Gang' focus.
Note, I'm not proposing a game yet, just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about something like that being viable or if it's been done and why that did or didn't work.
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While I am all in favor of not having FCs in a game, I think one of the big issues with inspired by a genre rather than a singular property is there is a lot more decision making over head before you start. For example lets take a vampire, are they affected by crosses? What about garlic? Wolfsbane? Running water? Will a stake in the heart kill them or render them immobile or kill them but if someone moves the stake from the corpse they pop back up? etc. All this leads to a big task of getting and keeping everyone on the same page.
If you have more than one super you then have even more things like how does a vamp biting a werewolf effect both sides, which race tends to be stronger and so on. I think that is the big reason single property games flourish is that someone has already made most of the decisions on how the world works. -
@thatguythere said in 'Inspired by' rather 'This Work: The Mu':
While I am all in favor of not having FCs in a game, I think one of the big issues with inspired by a genre rather than a singular property is there is a lot more decision making over head before you start. For example lets take a vampire, are they affected by crosses? What about garlic? Wolfsbane? Running water? Will a stake in the heart kill them or render them immobile or kill them but if someone moves the stake from the corpse they pop back up? etc. All this leads to a big task of getting and keeping everyone on the same page.
I do technical writing for a living. Weirdly enough, if you slap a semi-related graphic (even if it's a stock photo of an 'engineer' or 'doctor') up there beside a short list of bullet points, even your more, ah, 'hands on' learners tend to retain basic information. A concise, snappy wiki write-up can do wonders.
Something like:
Vampires: Welcome to the Suck
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Sunlight bad. Vampires can be active during the day, but they burn in the sun.
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Garlic is only a hazard if you're planning on kissing somebody.
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You can only be one kind of monster. Vampires can't infect werewolves. Werewolves can't infect vampires. Zombies can't infect either, but that doesn't stop them from biting all the things.
Etc.
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There's advantages of having 'This Work' over 'Based On'
- Basic familiarity. If you say, for example, you're building a Middle Earth game set 50 years before 'The Hobbit', fans both hardcore and casual have a general idea of what to expect: The One Ring hasn't been found, Gondor and Arnor are separate nations, the Dwarves have fled Lonley Mountain, etc. Also, they can use tons of online resources to familiarize themselves with more specifics. You can slide into the game easier.
If, on the other hand, you say your game is 'inspired by Middle Earth, about 50 years before The Hobbit', things get murky and assimilation isn't as quick. A prospective player needs to find out what's the same, what's different. Is there one Elven culture or has it been split into multiples? Are magic users possible or are the wizards demi-gods? Are the Harradrim, if they exist, good, evil, or neutral? Is there a single, all powerful artifact to quest for? It can make for a longer period of acclimatization.
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Being 'This Work' rather than 'Inspired By' means that, for better or worse, FC's that players can relate their characters to. I don't mean directly have ties to, but more 'Okay, this is a Buffy TVS game, and there's a Buffy, so there's this girl running around staking vampires; how does my character, who's an independent monster hunter, feel about/relate to that?' FC's also tie into the concept of 'points of reference' that make acclimatization easier.
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The pastiche/fan-fic effect. Many creative writers first express their creativity by writing in established universes. This isn't something to look down on or belittle, it just is. It's also not a comment on quality of writing, either. I find it's the same with 'This Work' MU's; people trying to express their creativity by working in an established universe. It helps in that you don't have to do any world-building; just create a character to plug in and go. Some people move beyond that, some people don't; either way, again, it goes to having direct points of references to work with.
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The 'What If?' Somewhat related to point 3, especially common in comic book games. It's a structured way of examining new aspects to a familiar character. What if Superman and Captain America actually co-existed in the same universe? Would Superman have grown up hearing about the heroics of Captain America and idolized him? How would Captain America react to meeting this living god that can shatter the world, but instead fights for the same values because he was an inspiration to Superman? How would you handle epic stories like 'The Dark Phoenix Saga' or 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' if you had been one of the major characters? Just having universes mix or playing in a single universe can cause players to examine other options, seek out 'better ways' than how things were resolved 'in canon'.
Anyways, just my .02
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I think that having an original setting that draws upon conventions is rewarding, though I do think it takes a really large investment of time and you'll never really be 'done' in explaining the world. Questions just not answered by a show or book series and pointedly ignored can also now be asked, so a creator can wind up pressured to define things they never would really want to address.
On the other hand, avoiding pedants who want to argue minutiae given in source material is imo very well worth it.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@apos said in 'Inspired by' rather 'This Work: The Mu':
I think that having an original setting that draws upon conventions is rewarding, though I do think it takes a really large investment of time and you'll never really be 'done' in explaining the world.
For me the greatest issue with original settings is that player buy-in is hard. A MU* needs to have way more work put into it both preemptively (setting up a wiki, in-game help files, etc) and reactively in terms of staff answering questions and addressing thematic discrepancies while being in tune with each other for it to function. It's sometimes a lot of work to ask of a newcomer to do *before they know if they like it enough to stay.
In comparison a "New 52" DCU MUSH is way easier in many regards. You are attracting players who're fans coming in and who have a pretty decent idea of what's happening right off the bat. Your major characters are known and recognizable, their powersets more or less set, and no one is asking "hey do cellphones exist on this game?". It's just easier to recruit since the minimum required effort put upfront is lower.
So that's a big factor.
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I generally prefer setting in the same world but in a different location ie, "But there IS a Hellmouth in Cleveland!", or in a "same rules apply" scenario where the FC's don't exist and are replaced by the PC characters created. The one exception to this are comic book settings, if only because there are so many characters to choose from that are "special", whereas anyone who plays on a purely canon with FCs game from most other properties are going to be in a battle royale for particular FCs (Teen Wolfers, take note: I WILL FIGHT YOU FOR LYDIA.) Add to that the politics and favoritism that can come into play when it comes to approving applications for Features.
Sometimes crossovers can be interesting, but universal rules really do need to apply in order to make them work, unless you build in some reasonable way for all the ways to work while co-existing. And that way, friends, lies Project Infinity. Nobody wants Project Infinity.
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@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.
