Sci-fi MU idea

Ifrit

So I have been considering building a new MU for a long time, but I've been struggling on theme. This morning, while driving to work, a half-formed idea came to me, and I thought I'd record it here to gauge interest. If I do ever decide to build this it probably won't be for a long time - for many reasons such as 'time', 'effort' and 'far too many other non-MU projects on the go', but hey, I'm curious to see if it's even interesting to people other than me.

Fifty years (or so) ago, humanity finally reached the stars and made contact with other civilisations. In the course of doing so they landed slap-bang into the middle of a galactic conflict that has been going on for centuries. As one of the most junior civilisations, humanity has nothing to defend itself with, so instead pushed its way into a peacemaking role. For the last few decades humans have been working tirelessly to bring an end to the wars, using the powers of diplomacy, mediation and empathy.

They succeeded, and peace has (mostly) fallen across the galaxy. In recognition of this exceptional feat, and to further the new role humanity has found itself in, they have been gifted a space station, renamed as the Arbiter. Neutral ground where species from all over the galaxy can come to resolve their conflicts under the watchful gaze of human mediators. The station is perfect for it too, with many rooms that can accommodate the variety of requirements for species across the galaxy.

No one's quite sure who originally built the Arbiter, and large sections of it are off-limits and locked down by the eccentric AI that runs the station, but a lot of records have been lost in the wars, and AI-run stations are pretty common, so it's not that surprising. Some species refuse to set foot on the station, swearing it's haunted, but that's just superstition. The AI seems happy enough with permanent residents, occasionally opening up new spaces as needed, and the station grows to the point where it might as well be called a city. There are shops, hotels, homes, everything you could want.

Conflict is still only a wrong syllable away, and the mediators will need to work hard to stop the galaxy falling into chaos once more. Beyond the bounds of the Arbiter, raiders denied the rich pickings of war wait, picking off easy targets. The more shrewd pirates hope to sabotage negotiations, to tilt the galaxy into war once more.

I have some serious thoughts about metaplot, which obviously I'm not going to spoil, just in case I do build it. I'm trying not to make it -too- Mass Effect-y, but that's obviously an influence. My hope would be to make aliens fairly different to humans, some communicating only by light flashes, pheromones, etc.. with communication achieved by freely available translation drones (~~until someone turns the power off~~ I mean, what?)

There we go, my 8am driving to work half-baked MU idea.

Arkandel

@ifrit A couple of questions for you:

The theme sounds interesting! Do you have ideas on what your players will be able to do when there isn't staff explicitly running metaplot things for them?
Do you have ideas on the systems (mechanics, etc) you want to use for this?
Is the game cooperative or antagonistic between PCs? Do you see it focusing more on action, politics or something else?

Ifrit

@arkandel said in Sci-fi MU idea:

@ifrit A couple of questions for you:

The theme sounds interesting! Do you have ideas on what your players will be able to do when there isn't staff explicitly running metaplot things for them?

Do you have ideas on the systems (mechanics, etc) you want to use for this?

Is the game cooperative or antagonistic between PCs? Do you see it focusing more on action, politics or something else?

This is always where I fall down on things - I have some themey ideas but not always good at actually making the game fun. Beyond Bar/Cafe/RetailRP, I'd probably want to give players fair scope around conflict management. Perhaps a board of staff-built conflicts so you can have players GMing a mediation, taking on the alien NPCs and reporting back as to how it ended. Though now I've typed that it sounds far more like paperwork-central than I intended it, and also not great for players that aren't mediation-focused.
There's definitely space for combat as well, and I'm not averse to building/using something like @Sparks's exploration system for exploring parts of the station, or other planets for resources to keep themselves/the station going. While I would intend for the main plot to be built around the station, leaving it should always be an option to go do other things, which leaves space for a trading/crafting mingame style thing. I'm trying not to take all the ideas from Arx here, of course, but I find it doesn't do half-bad at giving players things to do without direct GM input. (And yes, I'd ideally want an +actions like system too. DAMNIT ARX STOP HAVING ALL THE GOOD IDEAS)
I'm also aware that as a GMTer I'm fairly in the minority so having things for people not on my timezone to do/interact with will be key.
No clue at present. Most MUs I've played on or staffed have had fairly homegrown systems, so I'd probably end up rolling something together. I'm not fantastic at game design, but have a few friends with fingers in that business so likely would end up leaning on them
I'd want it to be fairly coop, but there's always room for a bit of antagonism. The theme itself leans pretty political, and I don't see it all being rosey between PCs. There could be some interesting faction interplay between those that want to learn more about their new home and those that think that the computer knows best (hell, a religion around it is not completely unpossible). Plus plenty of space for alien cultures to interact - I really want to emphasis alienness here, and not Planet Of Hats every species (These are the warrior aliens, these are the science aliens, etc)
I know that not everyone wants all politics RP all the time either, so the idea of the raiders is to give it that sense of danger (of course that immediately illuminates a theme-hole for me, which is if the Arbiter is so important to galactic peace, surely it'd be the best defended place in the galaxy, but I could work on that). Also everyone likes a bit of engineering RP, right? "Quick, we must fix the beryllium matrix or life support will die!"

Reading back I know a lot of the answers seem vaguey - they are because I'm still fairly vague on the idea. I'm mostly just throwing it down a) in case it appeals to people and b) writing it down firms it up.

Seraphim73

To ride along on @Arkandel's coat-tails, I think that the most important question any prospective MU*-runner can ask themselves is: What are my players going to do with their characters?

Between work, exploration, clues, etc, Arx has done a fantastic job with this. This is also where my own attempt with The Eighth Sea fell down (okay, one of a couple of places).

Even the most involved Staff can't be running things for players constantly, and you'll need to have a good idea on what you'd like your players to be doing day in and day out. And then you need to incentivize the heck out of doing that, and make it easy to do.

Coin

It's very Mass Effect-ish, yes, but also very Valerian and Fifth Element with touches of Farscape, among a dozen other sc-fi settings I've read/watched over the years.

I think the "haunted AI runs the place" is in part something that will make it stand out so try to focus on that (but not to the exclusion of anything else).

Arkandel

@ifrit At the stage you're at right now I think the most imperative question you'll want to ask yourself is "what do I want from this project?".

If you mostly want a discussion then this can be as good a place as any. You can shoot ideas, other people will toss their own, and it can be a lot of fun if you're content with this whole thing remaining at the brainstorming phase. At this level it's similar to creating a table-top campaign since it can live entirely in someone's head, and the upfront commitment in time or effort is somewhat small, and mostly enjoyable for all involved.

If what you're after is collaborators to actually shape it into a potential game - as in, for it to have any chance of becoming a MUSH - that's where the investment starts piling up. To do so you'll either want to call on people who already know you or impress those who don't with your creativity, work ethic, code skills... something to get them to invest as well. Building an actual MUSH is a lot of work, some of it not very exciting or 'fun' per se, so before folks throw in their hats they'll need to know it's not vaporware; you'd need to come up with concrete ideas of what the mechanics would be, if you have any killer OMG-features in mind... basically any way to generate excitement and get the help you'll need, if any. Creating a game single-handedly isn't easy, much more so if you haven't done so before. You'll need help.

You need to distinguish what your goals are, IMHO. Either way though, good luck!

Ifrit

Thanks folks, some really good points raised there. I feel generally pretty positive about the idea, but know that at the moment I couldn't devote it the attention it would need, so we're definitely in the "living in my head" phase at the moment and likely to stay there for now.

Re @Arkandel's points, yeah, absolutely agreed. Have built a MUSH before (it ran for a year or so) but there were 6 of us then - very unlikely that I could do this all by myself. For the foreseeable it's probably not going to leave my head, though I might start playing around with systems in Evennia (I'm primarily a Python programmer) to see if it's something that I could work with long term.

Arkandel

@ifrit You can consider volunteering your services to an ongoing project if you can find one that's close enough to your preferences in the mean time.

That lets you network more, hone your skills and help out while you're at it - new developers are usually in high demand, and with less pressure on you to get too much done right away.