What Types of Games Would People Like To See?
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@Auspice Brain surgery without modern equipment done by candlelight? NO problem. Swish.
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Yeah, I definitely agree and that's why I've been keen on the reset model for a long time. It also allows you to eventually close to new characters so you don't have the ones that die simply getting replaced without having a real sense of profound and widespread loss. That particular approach to storytelling was one of the main features that drew me to HorrorMU* and it works pretty well there. You're more likely to see players trying too hard to get killed than trying to avoid it.
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@Auspice said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
Apocalypse settings in general are tough because people gravitate towards making things easy/normal and a lot of people hate playing 'shortage' plots (food shortage, water contamination, illness with no medicine) which are almost necessary to Apocalypse settings.
I see this as being more of an issue than the lack of character death. I think at the end of the day most players don't really want to play the apocalypse. And I don't quite get that, because to me it's like logging onto a Vampire WoD game and being all: "Yeah, I don't want anything to do with Vampires. They're a drag." Like... you're entitled to that opinion, sure, but WTF are you doing there, then?!
The majority of players seem to want to either "fix" the apocalypse (which is okay, to a point, since improving quality of life is a legit plotline, but mostly these folks seem to want the Easy Mode version) or ignore it altogether. Frankly I don't think killing people off is going to help with that fundamental behavior. But if somebody wants to try it - I wish them luck.
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@faraday said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
@Auspice said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
Apocalypse settings in general are tough because people gravitate towards making things easy/normal and a lot of people hate playing 'shortage' plots (food shortage, water contamination, illness with no medicine) which are almost necessary to Apocalypse settings.
I see this as being more of an issue than the lack of character death. I think at the end of the day most players don't really want to play the apocalypse. And I don't quite get that, because to me it's like logging onto a Vampire WoD game and being all: "Yeah, I don't want anything to do with Vampires. They're a drag." Like... you're entitled to that opinion, sure, but WTF are you doing there, then?!
The majority of players seem to want to either "fix" the apocalypse (which is okay, to a point, since improving quality of life is a legit plotline, but mostly these folks seem to want the Easy Mode version) or ignore it altogether. Frankly I don't think killing people off is going to help with that fundamental behavior. But if somebody wants to try it - I wish them luck.
I completely agree. I mean, you could definitely have a core group of people who continue to survive....but the rest is necessary.
It reminds me of the first LARP I was ever in. oWoD Werewolf. The cairn was written as an office building in downtown. You introduced yourself with a phone call (instead of the classic howl I mean cmon :P).
It was easy mode. It took away so much of the theme of survival and struggle that I just couldn't take the game seriously at all.
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Omg Xanth.
Or conversely, Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept books. Have sci-fi and fantasy for those of us who like BOTH.
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@faraday said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
I think at the end of the day most players don't really want to play the apocalypse
Perhaps my take on PC mortality is just my take on the genre itself, but on this above point I agree.
I've often heard "The Walking Dead" referred to as misery porn, and I think it's accurate for the zombie/apocalypse genre. Shit. Is. Miserable. Bands of terminally ill WarBoys kidnap people for fresh organs while their boss collects pretty women as his concubines.
Be it zombies or Mad Max (another good MU idea, that), my personal opinion is that the key to apocalypse settings is that survival is difficult. It's far easier to die than it is to thrive. From the genre we learn that every character (except Max) hangs on a set of scales. The question isn't IF a character will die, it's when and in the genre itself the death machine needs to be constantly satisfied to uphold that survival/apocalypse feel.
Even in Walking Dead, major cast members (no spoilers!) are done. Gone. Zombied. The point of the series would have been lost if Negan hadn't gone through with his game of "eenie-meenie-miney-deathByBaseballBat" because the core of the genre exists in the dread of knowing that death is coming and you hope it's not your preferred Final Girl. Risk is required for survival, but risk can be often fatal.
Respectfully, I disagree. To each their own, but I don't think that a zombie apocalypse game where the only time PCs die is if they choose to will ever feel like a zombie genre. You've got to make your players understand that life in the apocalypse is fragile, and if given the choice they'll always choose no risk.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
I've often heard "The Walking Dead" referred to as misery porn, and I think it's accurate for the zombie/apocalypse genre. Shit. Is. Miserable. Bands of terminally ill WarBoys kidnap people for fresh organs while their boss collects pretty women as his concubines.
Well, I was talking about the broader post-apoc genre and not zombies specifically. I'm not interested in zombie settings.
What appeals to me about post-apoc settings are the ones that aren't "misery porn". Battlestar. Falling Skies. 100 (kinda). Revolution. Last Ship. Jericho. Sure there are times when everyone's miserable and life is harder than it is today, but most of these have over-arching themes of hope and people banding together, struggling with difficult moral choices, etc. Notably, there's not a lot of "PC death" in these series. Some, sure, but it's not the meat grinder that it sounds like Walking Dead is.
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@faraday Agree 100%. The non-misery porn apocalypse genre (I.e. not Walking Dead or Fear Of...) are great fodder for RPGs. Mad Max is swashbuckling with car chases. The 100 is fantastic. Lots of good stuff there that isn't misery.
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About the only post-apocalyptic stuff I can stand, because it doesn't posit that everybody is going to turn into an asshole when the lights go out is solarpunk or whatever they are calling it this year.
Stories about small communities coming together to form collectives and work for the common good against a backdrop of a failed capitalist/industrialist world are fascinating to me. Something about the genre scratches my sci-fi 'colony stories' itch.
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In a kind of post apocalyptic vein, I'd love a game based on Grendel War Child. Maybe in an area with a vampire problem. Man, 90s Dark Horse comics were the best. Everyone could play cynical soldiers with Crow tattoos on their faces who mirthlessly die horrible deaths at the hands of their friends and allies.
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Since we're discussing post-apocalyptic stuff I'd like to mention that - for me - either such games can be aimed to create a Flintstones kind of setting (impromptu generators, utopian gardens and funky steampunk inventions recreating civilization as we know it) or a more lets-make-sure-we-survive-the-winter kind of world full of scavenge hunts and diplomatic missions between settlements, but not a mix of them.
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I know it keeps being mentioned as a problem with the type of game, but I would dearly love an apocalypse game where the point IS to solve it and build safe and get back to life as normal (with monsters outside oooooh).
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I feel like a lot of post-Apocalyptic stuff tends towards some kind of reskinned Western (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I would also like to play on a Western game). But some really do lean more into what that means, thematically, than others.
What i like is all about small communities trying to survive, hopefully thrive, while figuring out what they want to be like, and how the world might make that difficult. Rebuilding engines is boring, rebuilding society is what it's all about. And also being basically a cowgirl but, like... with spiky cars, or a mohawk or something.
But also, I don't really like settings where the apocalypse happened yesterday. I like it when characters have been born into it and it's a fine line between looting and archeology.
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@SG That does sound awesome, except the "Jedi" problem will inevitably pop up: too many will want to play the equivalent of a Grendel Prime badass and not "Dogshit the Grendel impostor & local extortionist"
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@fatefan said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
@SG That does sound awesome, except the "Jedi" problem will inevitably pop up: too many will want to play the equivalent of a Grendel Prime badass and not "Dogshit the Grendel impostor & local extortionist"
I don't know, Prime was specifically a unique creation for moving the plot. If anything screamed Staff Cutscene NPC, it's Grendel Prime.
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Mouseguard RPG or Mouseguard RPG only with humans. Add some Ars Magica-ish wizards and a dash of Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild and that would be nice.
For sci-fi Instellar Trading Company, Blade Runner, Mass Effect, Firefly and Tales from the Borderlands in a blender. You get the dystopian megacorporation cyberpunk mixed with the rogue trader/Traveller-esque small crew trying to make money mixed with explorative Indiana Jones sci-fi style, letting players explore whichever appeals most to them.
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@peasoupling said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
I feel like a lot of post-Apocalyptic stuff tends towards some kind of reskinned Western (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I would also like to play on a Western game). But some really do lean more into what that means, thematically, than others.
I'd love to play a Western game. Hell on Wheels or Deadwood would be perfect.
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I want to see post-post-apocalyptic solarpunk or hopepunk games. The apocalypse happened, society collapsed and crumbled, and now it's much later. Humanity has rebuilt, but things are different and the ruins of the world from before the apocalypse are the relics that dot theirs.
It doesn't have to be idyllic (that would be boring), but it shouldn't just be a blasted landscape full of people trying to survive. I want to see what they built afterwards, and where society goes after that. I want immense buildings now overgrown by forests and retaken by nature. I want the world that came before to be remembered only in those ruins and in stories carried on for generations.
City of Ember. Broken Empire. Elger and the Moon. Nausicaä. Horizon Zero Dawn.
...actually, wait, forget just the "general post-post-apocalyptic setting" part. What I want is a game literally based on either Nausicaä or Horizon Zero Dawn, or with a very similar feel to one or the other. Probably the latter, as it'd be more accessible to people.
a.k.a. Packetdancer (or "Pax" for short)
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@Ominous So I've been curious about the Mouse Guard RPG for a while now. What about it would lend it well to a Dark Souls-ish style game? I'm eyeing the box set on Amazon now and tempted to give it a buy.
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@Sparks said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
...actually, wait, forget just the "general post-post-apocalyptic setting" part. What I want is a game literally based on either Nausicaä or Horizon Zero Dawn, or with a very similar feel to one or the other. Probably the latter, as it'd be more accessible to people.
10/10 would play this game.
