WoD - Storytellers Playground in Evennia

[Doozer]

It's been briefly discussed and mentioned in other topics so just going to post this up in it's own thread. So a couple of months back I've spoken with @ThatOneDude @Auspice, and a few others, about my idea using Evennia to create a WoD sandbox for player STs that allows any story they desire in a temporary setting. This is would be ideal for those who desire to create a WoD game but do not have the skill for coding an entire game based on rhost/tinymu/sh. It would be self managed including:

• Game and Web based Cgen
• Temporary rooms to create settings for the ST's story
• A command that gives permission for a handle to view the players completed +sheet
• A sign up system for the STs to manage how many players they'll allow, their rules, etc etc.

TT games are being ran in discord. There's plenty of active folk that enjoy the WoD theme but stay away from Mushes because the perception is toxic or they do not care to have to write paragraphs each turn. Whatever their reason I think this could help bridge in more players and story tellers.

The downfall is I do not know Python but I'm learning to make this vision of mine happen. Maybe folks want to play in a Victorian, island, western, small town setting without waiting for someone to create an entire Mux/mux dedicated to that theme.

This would support any theme, any setting. The other downfall I see is longevity of a character where folks last for years. This is as long as the ST keeps their story going.

At the moment we have Evennia up and running. There's plenty of code of there already shared in github that would allow us to get this half way up and running. The rest we have to figure out which I do not mind. I'm learning.

My goal is to also remove the role of Staff in a game. Administrative only for systems management. That's it.

Thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, or critiques?

Edit: A lot of these games turn into sandboxes. Why not have one giant fucking sandbox for people?

[Arkandel]

@shincashay said in WoD - Storytellers Playground in Evennia:

Why not have one giant fucking sandbox for people?

Allow me to play devil's advocate.

What's the main difference between your approach and any of the sandbox WoD which spawned over time the last couple of years? Why will this succeed where the others did not?

[Doozer]

@arkandel

My approach would eliminate the need to have any mu code knowledge to build up an entire game. In this someone can create their bubble of Fallcoast, San Fran, Australia or whatever. A WoD Hub for various settings and games. They can be ST ran or entirely freeform. This will also have ST tools for players to create NPC puppets. It can support bubbled 'worlds' as small or large as they want.

There are folks out there like me who have no desire to staff on a game or the headaches that come with it. There are folks out there who enjoy story telling for a small group of friends or their circle. There are folks out there who want to play Immortals or Demon and very few places have that sphere open. (This will be a 2e platform, just using those as an example)

The player/handle can build their own world and invite whoever they wish. They may also dis-invite players witch gives them control over who can see their sheets, what setting they create and who can be involved. They can also give this 'power' to others over their world.

So in essence they're their own administrator for as long as they want to be.

[Bobotron]

@shincashay

There is one of these out there right now. It's called Tempest and it uses MUX.

I don't think it gets used much. Last time I was on there it was about 20 players across.... 4-5 active mini-MU*s.

What are you going to do to actually get people to utilize this, to get some return on your investment?

[faraday]

@shincashay said in WoD - Storytellers Playground in Evennia:

There are folks out there who enjoy story telling for a small group of friends or their circle.

Storytelling for a small group in a MU environment is extraordinarily difficult. Given the synchronous nature of communication, you need to have a critical mass of people online at the same time - and that's tough to sustain on a small game. That's why forum games, platforms like Storium, and even Discord tend to do better for the "small group" mini-games than MU sandboxes. They all allow for asynchronous communication.

And once you get to talking about a large group... you're still going to have most of the headaches involved with running a game. Is not needing to install the code really enough of a draw for folks to want to share a server with other games? Dunno.

Not to say it's futile or anything - just some things to consider.

[Doozer]

@bobotron

Not defining it as a Mush/mux but a Story Teller system for WoD will help.

There is plenty of interest in that as I've been watching the Discord discussions in WoD Codex and there are games hosted in discord.

Having a platform that bridges the mushers and the TT'ers into one game can grow the audience. If not then I have somewhere to play that 80's Miami setting.

@faraday Time for gaming is one of those things I've considered. As I'm one of those who play for a few months then disappear only to return again. I don't have the stamina and/or availability to dedicate myself to something every day. Once a week sure.

This is not meant to be a solution or to replace other games out there built on other platforms but an additional option for the hobbiest who can create their own pop-up world/setting.

[Apos]

My advice would be to think of the different tools and approaches you can lean hard into making a sandbox that's easier to use and more convenient than other options. I think full automation is a great starting spot, but what imo really needs to be nailed is giving tools for people to create content that drives activity in a sandbox.

Tools for GMs to very easily run plots, for people to very easily manage information in how to get involved, or how people can gate involvement, the ability to very easily filter bad actors from contacting them and manage how little or how much people want to be involved, making finding people easy, introducing people to each other, making it easy for stories to overlap or split off, and not relying on any person to keep track of it but having automated tools to do so. Like in most sandbox games there's not actually like... 'story' code. This is just people trying to remember who is involved in what, with maybe some vague jobs or request strings or board posts. Just focus on the tools to make it easy for people to find RP, find the things they want, and avoid what they don't. And that will be a popular sandbox.

[mietze]

Sounds great to me. It's been awhile since I played WoD but when I was an active player in that genre I often went to other MU*s to use temprooms if all of the ones were occupied (or in a few cases, if I was being harassed/alt-stalked by someone who game staff wouldn't do anything about). As long as you don't care about bragging rights for numbers, I do think it would a) be used and b) be valued by WoD gamers who like me, felt super guilty about keeping an alt on another game that they weren't playing much just so they'd have access to a coded temproom with rolls, ect.

I bet being able to do either 2e or old NWoD would probaby be way too much work, but that would give that kind of access to just about all games in existance using that system.

[skew]

@shincashay I think the idea is solid. I've used Roll20 and there's very little value-added in it for my WoD games. Often we end up having to manually roll dice anyways, as an example. I've wished to be on my MUX game more than a few times, because it simply had better tools.

If your goal is to facilitate story telling, and that's it, I'd have to agree with some others and ask "why Evennia?".

I'm almost done converting @Thenomain's WoD code to Rhost. You could set up a Rhost server and dump this code in and you're good to go! Web integration can be done using the myriad API features in Rhost. Alternately, you could snag the WoD Penn code that someone else
( @Volund ?) made.

With a few minor tweaks you could enable certain commands to be used by ST-level people. You could also even group people into "Guilds" (a Rhost feature) and there's your build in "you can only affect people in your own story".

Is it a better solution? I don't think it's "better". But it's faster.

[Griatch]

@Shincashay As a side project, I was at one time working on a contrib for Evennia that implements what is summarized in the Evennia for tabletop RPGs tutorial and then some. What I had in mind was the ability for a GM (or group of GMs) to announce stories for a limited number of players signed up for their particular game using a lobby-like setup. I pictured this literally as a way for people to run text-based tabletop systems for others rather than something MUSH-like though.

The project stalled since I work on finishing Evennia 0.8. But it's an interesting project I might pick up again some time. So if you have any technical questions concerning implementing your storyteller playground I'm happy to help trying to answer them!
.
Griatch

[Thenomain]

The entire Evennia IRC crew are amazing. Their ability to answer the questions and do the things without making you feel like a newb is fantastic, and people there are always sharing thoughts and concepts on how to do things, for themselves and others.

A++, This Is How You Succeed at Interneting.

[Doozer]

@skew The web integration was an appealing feature. Ideally it started off as a project to become a plug and play platform for anyone wishing to set up a WoD setting lacking a dedicated coder. Then branched into a concept of having all the ST tools available to anyone given the approval/flag from a handle.

I don't know anything about Rhost unfortunately but I'm willing to play with that as well once you finish. I've been following your progress. (Doozer)

Those folks on the discord/IRC are +1