A Post-Mortem for Kingsmouth

[Jaded]

I will say the game was thoroughly enjoyable for me. I had fun being the creepiest creepster that ever did creep. They played politics. I stole Humanity.

[Groth]

If someone wanted to create their own heavily political vampire game, we (That is the former staff of RfK) would most likely be willing to help create a more streamlined version of the systems we used and pass on the lessons we've learned. We're not going to create that game ourselves partly because we want to take the opportunity to experience something different and partly because the players would expect it to be a continuation of RfK and we'd rather it be a fresh start.

Most of the systems (Boons, status, influence, feeding, beats etc) were relatively easy to maintain, the system that would have to be redesigned is the system for taking over and managing territory. The problems that became obvious as time went on was partly that time became an unlimited resource as the characters grew in XP (Actions per week should probably not scale), dogpiling became the way to get territory once territory got scarce (Teamwork should be sharply limited) and having every territory disruption handled manually by staff requires way to much work(Something more automated by code would be more manageable).

[Arkandel]

@Pyrephox said:

Too often, WoD games try to be everything to everyone in order to garner the most butts in chargen

That's true, and it's sad, but it's also what it is. WoD games gain the most players through familiarity - for many reasons - and so they are often made to be... generic. I've played in Vampire spheres set in Austria, in Russia, in rural and metropolitan settings in the States... and I honestly didn't see many differences. Even the political systems were often quite similar, substituting only rank names but not their functions.

RfK seems to have done an excellent job at what it was, but make no mistake, unless someone sets out to redo the exact thing you won't find it again. @Coin is right about that. For starters there are damn few if any single-sphere games being even in the works (@EmmahSue's Mage project, @Cobaltasaurus mentioned the possibility hers miiight be it I think?) since people want to play different kinds of things.

My advice to the OP: While it's still early and you guys still form a community, put it together. If you wait six months to start trying to put a game together it'll probably be harder to find the same interest.

[Sundown]

@Arkandel said:

My advice to the OP: While it's still early and you guys still form a community, put it together. If you wait six months to start trying to put a game together it'll probably be harder to find the same interest.

While I have tried to assist in a more general way, by writing out the post, it will not be me who makes the next game. I will most certainly come play on it and try to help in other ways. Not all of us were made to staff. I have too much other stuff going on. Even just playing on RfK felt like a part-time job at times. I'm looking forward to just chilling, for a while.

Also, there /are/ attempts to make a new game, at least two that I know of. However, I heard one is suffering from the predicament of 'too many cooks'. I am not interested in such things. A good game will come from two-three people's focused vision and investment. If I can help, I'd be glad to, but I don't think it's in anyone's interest to add to the cacophony of desires and ideas.

This post wasn't just meant for former RfK players, it was meant for others who might make a vampire game in the future to think on ways to improve on their ideas. Just a springboard of possibilities, really, for anyone to run with.

[Lisse24]

@Groth said:

Most of the systems (Boons, status, influence, feeding, beats etc) were relatively easy to maintain, the system that would have to be redesigned is the system for taking over and managing territory. The problems that became obvious as time went on was partly that time became an unlimited resource as the characters grew in XP (Actions per week should probably not scale), dogpiling became the way to get territory once territory got scarce (Teamwork should be sharply limited) and having every territory disruption handled manually by staff requires way to much work(Something more automated by code would be more manageable).

I think that probably the problem with territory was more numbers. I'd like to keep the system mainly as it was, including the staff involvement. Especially in a political game, territory is going to be the main thing that is driving everything else. What I would do, is make thresholds higher and severely limit what characters could do. I would probably trash DT, which seemed fiddly and confusing and replace it with a much more streamlined "action" system, where vampires got 1 action per week and ghouls got 2. Actions could be defensive, (i.e., I'm protecting my hold on this territory above and beyond normal defenses) or offensive (I'm going to try and obtain status 3 in infrastructure, or I'm going to investigate <blah>).

One of the problems that I saw with Kingsmouth that really made it hard on players and characters alike was that it just moved too fast. At the same time, I've heard several former players say things like, "I never rolled anything." So there was a lot going on for some people to the extent that they didn't have enough time to do everything and staff struggled to keep up with them and others didn't have much going on at all. It seems like any derivative game will want to put the breaks on for everyone and make sure that actions are more equitably distributed.

[Cobalt]

@Arkandel said:
@Cobaltasaurus mentioned the possibility hers miiight be it I think?

I have no idea what I'm doing, if I'm doing anything. All I have right now is a GMC CG installed (and it presumably works) with the same code that Eldritch is using for it and nothing else (no theme, no setting, no life, no love. I do have a freaking awesome limbo tho.)

That said: Even if I were to do a single-sphere game it wouldn't very likely be at all like RfK. Since that game sounded basically like the antithesis of fun to me.

[Coin]

Once 2e Mage comes out, someone should try to build a Kingsmouth-modeled Mage game. See how long it takes for magic to break that system in half (and it will, it may just take a while). You could add things like people competing to solve the same Mysteries, have systems for ramping up possible Paradox/Disbelief in other people's territories while dragging it down in yours, competitive Astral Realm holding, etc.

I mean, like @Cobaltasaurus said above, for some people this is the antithesis of fun, and that's perfectly fine. But others might get a kick out of it.

[Alzie]

From a personal standpoint, I really liked territory. It annoyed me really that we had these splats that really focused on territory and had entire systems around territory that no one ever bothered to use. Downtime was a system that was adapted to a MU environment from LARPs. It was somewhat effective at limiting actions but I think that a MU runs in a way different than a LARP and needs its own system. We just never made one. That's something that will likely be fixed in the changeling game.

That being said, even our current project (Our being Cthugha, Groth, Becca and I) features a territory lite system. Mostly because territory is an easy source of conflict and something that is easily relatable to anyone in almost any splat, timeline, theme or setting in any game franchise.

@coin it will not be me, because i hate everything i have seen about 2E mage

[Sundown]

See, I would've thought a mechanics, systems-heavy game would never be something I'd enjoy, but it was. I just let my friend handle the crunchy bits and I did the diplomatic schmoozing. Because on this game, the subtle intrigue play was actually finally possible.

Also, all I see when @Coin says "narrative game" is "make your own fun." Which is okay, but ultimately it's an empty game unless /someone/ runs plots in which most of the playerbase can be included. Even then, if the playerbase is fragmented, it'll end up sandboxy, with consequences not really propagating over the entire game world.

I do agree that every game is different. There's something else I haven't expressed, and it's... Basically, it's not polite to run roughshod over someone's game just because you want it to be something else. I have personally tried to be polite when I chargenned elsewhere; to learn about the game rather than impose my expectations on it. Even if I might think the game is silly for what it is. It's up to me whether I want to keep playing or not, under the conditions offered.

However, it is a bit sad to go from a game where staffers were eager to help you figure out some grand scheme and even push you along; to games filled with limitations and 'no you can't do this', 'no you can't have that', 'no we don't allow this or support that'. It's just sad. Creative hobby, meh.

[Arkandel]

@Sundown said:

However, it is a bit sad to go from a game where staffers were eager to help you figure out some grand scheme and even push you along; to games filled with limitations and 'no you can't do this', 'no you can't have that', 'no we don't allow this or support that'. It's just sad. Creative hobby, meh.

I think that's a bit unfair. Unless you can provide specific examples which we can discuss on their own merit or lack thereof, most games are already being ran a certain way; they support certain themes, too. They might not be the ways you're used to or want but that doesn't mean that they lack them.

Going into environments created for different styles of gaming and expect what you had will be an exercise in frustration. It's not staff who are the problem, it's the management of your expectations.

[Groth]

@Sundown said:

See, I would've thought a mechanics, systems-heavy game would never be something I'd enjoy, but it was. I just let my friend handle the crunchy bits and I did the diplomatic schmoozing. Because on this game, the subtle intrigue play was actually finally possible.

Also, all I see when @Coin says "narrative game" is "make your own fun." Which is okay, but ultimately it's an empty game unless /someone/ runs plots in which most of the playerbase can be included. Even then, if the playerbase is fragmented, it'll end up sandboxy, with consequences not really propagating over the entire game world.

The fundamental limitation of MU* when compared to TT is that the Storyteller is a very limited resource. There will never be enough dedicated Staff to run scenes for a non-trivial playerbase at a regular basis and Player-Storytellers will always have a hard time to run anything with impact because they're players and the setting is managed by Staff by necessity, any other arrangement and the world would not be consistent.

Keeping that in mind the inevitable conclusion is that the vast majority of RP that is going to take place on a MU* is going to be social RP. Characters interacting with eachother with no direct NPC/Plot involvement. The question then becomes, how do we make social RP fun?

The approach attempted by RfK for that question was to give the characters something to RP about. The purpose of territories/influences etc were not to let players play online RISK when not RP'ng, it was to provide a constant source of recent events to bring to the on-screen RP.

For the most part it was very successful, characters would constantly RP about territory negotiations, alliances, political backstabbing etc even to the extent we'd sometimes get mock complaints of 'I don't have the time to TS because I'm too busy with politics!'.

[Sundown]

@Arkandel said:

I think that's a bit unfair. Unless you can provide specific examples which we can discuss on their own merit or lack thereof, most games are already being ran a certain way; they support certain themes, too. They might not be the ways you're used to or want but that doesn't mean that they lack them.

Going into environments created for different styles of gaming and expect what you had will be an exercise in frustration. It's not staff who are the problem, it's the management of your expectations.

That's not actually my criticism. I criticize the mindset and approach, not the specific things I might've been denied. I criticize the mindset which made HM staffers deny things outright because of some fear that players might abuse it. Nebulously, somewhere down the road, maybe.

The complete opposite of it is, for instance, if I ask Shava "can I release hundreds of butterflies in this character's mansion" and she figures out a way for me. Even though my initial idea didn't work with how she saw the background system, she figured out (unbidden) another way to do it. It's the approach in which I don't have to beg, or fear refusal of anything non-standard, where I can trust staff to help me work on my ideas so they fit the theme. It's just a completely different mindset.

[Sundown]

@Groth said:

The approach attempted by RfK for that question was to give the characters something to RP about. The purpose of territories/influences etc were not to let players play online RISK when not RP'ng, it was to provide a constant source of recent events to bring to the on-screen RP.

That's actually the point I was trying to make.

For the most part it was very successful, characters would constantly RP about territory negotiations, alliances, political backstabbing etc even to the extent we'd sometimes get mock complaints of 'I don't have the time to TS because I'm too busy with politics!'.

That was me. >.>

[Ganymede]

@Coin said:

I would honestly encourage people who like this model to try their hand at making a game that follows it.

I tried to do this on Fallcoast.

I am putting together a proposal for coders to set up a game that follows RfK's model.

[Groth]

@Ganymede said:

I tried to do this on Fallcoast.

I am putting together a proposal for coders to set up a game that follows RfK's model.

The hardest part is that a game like this requires a very dedicated Head Staff with a strong vision of what they want to achieve, those can be hard to find.

[ThatGuyThere]

I think Kingsmouth should be praised. In my opinion it was the type of game we need more of. Like The Lost/Greatest Generation before it, both had a tight focus that made them unique, coded the systems to help this focus and then when they had run their course for whatever reason the staff allowed the game to pass on rather then have a linger period of animate morbidity that most other games go through.
Now I will say that a lot of the things Kingsmouth did would be hell on a multi-spehere game it was focused on being a good vampire game, and there is a big difference between being on a vampire game and being part of a vampire sphere on a hey we gots it all type of game.
As far as recreating an RfK type of game even with the code that could be very hard to do for two reasons. First the seeming boundless energy and effort Shava put into things, even things like the beat sheets, it was rare that a week happened when she didn't find extra beats when she went over my sheet that I missed, that is not something most staff would do, even great staff, with out that effort of actively looking for how to help folk I don't think you would get the same place, which leads to the second, the trust factor between staff and the player base. I honestly have never seen a game that rivaled RfK in this point, even full consent games without mechanics tend to still have a divide between players and staff, and I did not notice that divide on RfK. trust is a very hard thing to build especially over electronic communications like a MUSH to be that would be the biggest issue to address when trying to make a spiritual successor to RfK, how to you reforge/maintain that trust level.

[Coin]

@Sundown said:

Also, all I see when @Coin says "narrative game" is "make your own fun." Which is okay, but ultimately it's an empty game unless /someone/ runs plots in which most of the playerbase can be included. Even then, if the playerbase is fragmented, it'll end up sandboxy, with consequences not really propagating over the entire game world.

If that's all you see, then you're not interpreting my comment to the fullest. But it is in part that, yes. But it always has been. If anything, my comment of "make your own game" is more "make your own fun", because god, yes, go, make your own game. Make ten games. Make all the games. Even if all you can contribute is ideas for metaplot, or an idea for a resources system, or anything--just get together with people and contribute.

In the end, if the game is only good because of staff involvement and boundless energy, as @TheGuyThere mentions above, then it is necessarily going to crash and burn, because no one can keep that up for long.

[Coin]

@Ganymede said:

@Coin said:

I would honestly encourage people who like this model to try their hand at making a game that follows it.

I tried to do this on Fallcoast.

I am putting together a proposal for coders to set up a game that follows RfK's model.

This was a horrible idea, mostly because this sort of system would flounder and be to the detriment of the laissez-faire attitude that Fallcoast was bringing from The Reach. I mean, I get why you wanted to--but it wasn't going to work, which I guess is why you bowed out early.

[Sundown]

@Coin said:

@Sundown said:

Also, all I see when @Coin says "narrative game" is "make your own fun." Which is okay, but ultimately it's an empty game unless /someone/ runs plots in which most of the playerbase can be included. Even then, if the playerbase is fragmented, it'll end up sandboxy, with consequences not really propagating over the entire game world.

If that's all you see, then you're not interpreting my comment to the fullest. But it is in part that, yes. But it always has been. If anything, my comment of "make your own game" is more "make your own fun", because god, yes, go, make your own game. Make ten games. Make all the games. Even if all you can contribute is ideas for metaplot, or an idea for a resources system, or anything--just get together with people and contribute.

Heh, I'm actually pretty good at finding and building my own fun. It's not something I even see as problematic about your game. As you said, it's just different, not better or worse. I completely agree with that.

It is just another "cultural" difference that I observe, when comparing with my experience with RfK. From that perspective, "narrative" feels like a euphemism. It's not all I see, just another difference I commented on.

However, committed staffers are a scarce resource. I appreciate that you've built a game which takes care not to overtax that resource.

In the end, if the game is only good because of staff involvement and boundless energy, as @TheGuyThere mentions above, then it is necessarily going to crash and burn, because no one can keep that up for long.

Well, I've done my best to outline reasons other than Shava's boundless energy which made the game good. Things that could conceivably be implemented elsewhere, in this form or another.

[Ganymede]

@Coin said:

This was a horrible idea, mostly because this sort of system would flounder and be to the detriment of the laissez-faire attitude that Fallcoast was bringing from The Reach. I mean, I get why you wanted to--but it wasn't going to work, which I guess is why you bowed out early.

You're presuming it would fail. That would presume I had not taken, or would not take, into consideration The Reach's background and Fallcoast's direction.

It was not going to work because, despite having not been given any deadlines to propose a theme and setting, Troy and Spider wanted to bring the Vampire Sphere online upon opening, a date and time for which I was never asked about. I very clearly stated what I wanted to do, and that it would take time to develop and implement, but this objection to opening was essentially overruled because they wanted to get the game up sooner rather than later.

I have always been a proponent of carefully planning out a game before bringing it up. I left staff because I took objection to the rapid, haphazard manner in which Fallcoast was created and developed. I knew I could not work in a staff environment where, having been given the responsibility to do something with no set timeline, I would be expected to fall in line with others. That's simply not how I operate, or will operate.

The split was not acrimonious, but, if it were, I would be one throwing my hands up and saying "I can't work like this."