What Types of Games Would People Like To See?
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You just want that opium air, I'm onto you.
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@Jeshin lol honestly it would be a cool game, just I have no idea how you could manage the magic system
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@bear_necessities wrist flexibility as a stat
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@WildBaboons said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
wrist flexibility as a stat
It is for WoD games.
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@Ganymede said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
@WildBaboons said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
wrist flexibility as a stat
It is for WoD games.
I thought that was typing one-handed.
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Does anyone remember and still care about David Brin Upliftverse?
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Fate-verse. Like, Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero, etc.
Outside of the Holy Grail War, it's actually a pretty complex and interesting setting, with a lot of political intrigue between all these different magical families, and magic itself is like this really cool blend of both WoD Mage games and --
WAIT COME BACK
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I would like to see a game based on the Powered by the Apocalypse ruleset by Vincent D. Baker (of Dogs in the Vineyard quasi-fame). Monsterhearts would be fairly simple to transition to a MU* environment given the emphasis on romance and interpersonal drama. It would be pretty neat to see something like Uncharted Worlds as well.
Inherently, Apocalypse World itself would be a good analog to a WoD game, given that you could use playbooks like Hardholder or Chopper in the same way that characters with lots of Allies/Contacts/Retainers work in WoD.
Setting-wise, I'd want to do something set around a colony in the Jovian or some far-flung system where the characters would be attempting to survive in an incredibly hostile place and have chargen built based on colonial waves. So, the first open (or beta open) would be the original colonists (engineers, chemists, scientists, etc.) trying to carve out a small holding in the planet/moon. Full open/release would have incentives for the second wave of colonists to be laborers, non-PhD scientists (botanists, ecologists, social workers, etc.), then additional waves of colonization focusing on where the fiction is going. All humans, no complex alien life. I wouldn't be adverse to adding in alien intelligence if the players wanted it, but I think it's important to focus on the human drama. The theme would very much be "where will we go and what will we bring with us" in a political, social, scientific, and spiritual way.
In this sort of setting I would also push for joint ownership of the game itself, where the players have some ability to speak to where the overall plot and story line of the planet/moon winds up going which could be done with voting softcode and tailored events run by volunteer STs. If, for example, people want to go for an automated luxury gay space communist utopia, then there would be stories to further that goal with the colonists pushing back against the governance of whatever entity brought them to the moon/planet and attempting to establish an AI revolution (as an example) that allows people to live within a post-scarcity society. If, on the other hand, the players think it would be more interesting to play characters under tyrannical rule and explore the stories involved in that, there could be stories and scenes played out showing the tightening grip of the home office. Admin-wise, no one would be a head-honcho. It would, for all intents and purposes, be a co-op.
Stories would rotate in a system similar to the Legacy style of games in the PbtA line. We'd run a countdown of, say, 6 months where a story plays out and the PCs work to figure out how to play within it, then the basic structure of story line changes. So, using my example above, you could have your tyrannical rulership and through a series of scenes, the players manage to go through a soft revolution, turning society into a liberal moralist democratic republic that has to deal with outposts of extreme views peppered throughout the planet/moon. The game advances a number of years by consensus and the drama begins anew.
Small map, largely abstract and conceptual rather than a full on grid. Much of the space would be liminal, with rooms like "Wilderness" or "Colony Center," with a command that allows for breaking out into private sessions. I would personally be opposed to private permanent rooms; it would be preferable to have +temproom code with locking capability if people want to bang it out.
You could use Apocalypse World's rules to create playbooks that allow for characters that have more stake in the creation of the world's elements. For more granularity, one could also use the Uncharted Worlds or Impulse Drive playbooks (albeit not the alien ones), which would allow for more specific functions with each character. Since XP in this system is handled by failing rolls, you could have a fairly easily automated system where an individual sets a flag on a room indicating an active scene that requires +rolls to be made, which would auto-provide XP upon a fail.
If you're not familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse, it is based on a 2d6 system where 6 or lower (6-) is an absolute failure, 7-10 is a success with cost (you shot the pirate but they managed to get you in the ribs with a throwing knife), and 11+ means you get exactly what you want. You utilize a series of moves based on four stats (in Apocalypse World they are...
Cool: cool under fire, rational, clear-thinking, calm, calculating, unfazed. (Roll 2d6+cool to perform under fire.)
Hard: hard-hearted, violent, aggressive, strong-willed, mean, physically and emotionally strong. (Roll 2d6+hard to go aggro on someone.)
Hot: fucking hot, attractive, subtle, gracious, sexy, beautiful, inspiring, exciting. (Roll 2d6+hot to seduce someone.)
Sharp: Sharp-witted, clever, alert, smart, perceptive, educated, skilled, trained. (Roll 2d6+sharp to read a person or read a situation.)...And I would probably not include Weird: weirdo, psychic, genius, uncanny, lucky, strange, prophetic, touched. (Roll 2d6+weird to do some kinda supernatural ability)
Everyone selects a suite of stats from their playbook that allows them to spread their stat points around with a variance of -1 to +3. Each playbook also has a suite of Moves that allow them to do things that other character types cannot.
Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. So, my friends, this is my heartbreaker game. I doubt I will ever make this or work on something like this, but I've been thinking about this question for about 2 years now and wanted to answer.
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I was literally just talking to someone about how well Monsterhearts 2 would translate to an MU environment. Like just 10 minutes ago.
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@ZombieGenesis Hell yeah, it would be almost seamless.
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My biggest concern was strings. On MUs characters need to be largely independent and self-contained. Strings complicate that quite a bit. Keeping track of them, spending them, and having players buy into them seems pretty problematic I think.
And if we're talking about Monsterhearts specifically(as opposed to Urban Shadows or something) the game is geared pretty specifically towards older teens/young adult characters. This is fine but, as we've seen in other threads, games that allow characters under the age of 21 are often viewed with suspicion at best, and hostility at worst.
I'm not saying it couldn't work necessarily, these are just the biggest hurdles we saw while we were discussing it.
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True, I think that Monsterhearts would have to exist on its own with the goal of trying to emulate a very specific fictional genre, like you're suggesting. As I was writing out my game idea, I figured that the core AW ruleset would probably be more effective.
That said I would absolutely love to play in a MH game. We could port it to a college campus with limited adjustment to the rules. College student politics work differently than high school politics (you wouldn't have the regular touchstones like prom and whatnot) however there are enough similarities to allow for most of the moves to function as they should. I think the main issue with attempting to port it to where the PCs are universally adults is that MH includes a lot of familial drama regarding your characters' playbooks. A family of werewolves, for example, is going to be angry when their darling hooks up with the local vamp. At a college, it's likely that the werewolf PC won't tell their family about their indiscretions with the vamp they met.
What are your thoughts on that?
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I think a MH game would be best set in a college town, for sure. One where the college is maybe even assimilated right into the town and caters as much to townies as to outsiders.
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It would be a pretty neat thing to do, IMO. Since my last MU* excursion I really got into the indie RPG scene rather than my usual WoD joint.
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@somasatori said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
True, I think that Monsterhearts would have to exist on its own with the goal of trying to emulate a very specific fictional genre, like you're suggesting. As I was writing out my game idea, I figured that the core AW ruleset would probably be more effective.
That said I would absolutely love to play in a MH game. We could port it to a college campus with limited adjustment to the rules. College student politics work differently than high school politics (you wouldn't have the regular touchstones like prom and whatnot) however there are enough similarities to allow for most of the moves to function as they should. I think the main issue with attempting to port it to where the PCs are universally adults is that MH includes a lot of familial drama regarding your characters' playbooks. A family of werewolves, for example, is going to be angry when their darling hooks up with the local vamp. At a college, it's likely that the werewolf PC won't tell their family about their indiscretions with the vamp they met.
What are your thoughts on that?
@ZombieGenesis said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
I think a MH game would be best set in a college town, for sure. One where the college is maybe even assimilated right into the town and caters as much to townies as to outsiders.
PbtA games should probably be small ones, not the hulking behemoths so many people seem to want their games to be.
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That's my thought, honestly. I think, in theory, MH/PbtA should be a grand slam for how MU's mostly function(cooperative RP) but I think there'd be immediate natural resistance when someone used a string on their character. Players seem okay when a dice pool says they lost a round of combat and take X damage but I can see a lot of resistance to someone spending a string and trying to apply a condition to a character. Damage X is okay but telling someone "I just dredged up some crap from your past and gave you the OUTSIDER condition" would likely be met with "I'm not comfortable with that" and lots of arguments.
That said, I do think a WoD alternative would be fantastic. I've been pondering trying something using a hack of the Dresden Files Accelerated Edition rules. Gives more crunch than regular Fate Accelerated but is still fast-paced and easy to consume.
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@ZombieGenesis said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
That's my thought, honestly. I think, in theory, MH/PbtA should be a grand slam for how MU's mostly function(cooperative RP) but I think there'd be immediate natural resistance when someone used a string on their character. Players seem okay when a dice pool says they lost a round of combat and take X damage but I can see a lot of resistance to someone spending a string and trying to apply a condition to a character. Damage X is okay but telling someone "I just dredged up some crap from your past and gave you the OUTSIDER condition" would likely be met with "I'm not comfortable with that" and lots of arguments.
That said, I do think a WoD alternative would be fantastic. I've been pondering trying something using a hack of the Dresden Files Accelerated Edition rules. Gives more crunch than regular Fate Accelerated but is still fast-paced and easy to consume.
It's just another version of the "social stats are mind-control" bullshit.
If you can't buy in to the system you're playing, then why are you playing that game? Because there's nothing else around? Lame.
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@Coin said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
If you can't buy in to the system you're playing, then why are you playing that game? Because there's nothing else around? Lame.
Yes.
Conversely that's also why people join a game then try to turn it into a different game. They want the audience so they go where players already are, but they want those to play what they think is right.
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@Coin said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:
If you can't buy in to the system you're playing, then why are you playing that game? Because there's nothing else around? Lame.
WoD is often the only game in town if you want a specific experience, so regardless of your views on the system, you more or less have to buy into it in order to play the sort of stories you want (I suppose you could play freeform on Shang or whatever, but that comes with its own problems and you don't have a larger community playing the same genre you are).
PbtA games should probably be small ones, not the hulking behemoths so many people seem to want their games to be.
In hindsight, and also being one of the people who were extremely focused on player-base sizes, I think the sprawling, massive games that people often want their games to be is due to the community's shared idea of what a successful game is. Even at its most bloated and kind of purposeless stage, I still was very proud that The Reach had amassed such a large following because it directly meant that it was successful. Personally, I feel like Darkwater was probably more successful than The Reach ever had been, given the caliber of the game Darkwater was, the attention and detail put into it, and how Cobalt & crew (including me I guess) wanted to get one specific thing right rather than a used car lot full of character types for mass appeal. I can't say that TR ever approached the same level of quality that DW did.
The attribution of "health" to game's size is unique to the online format, and certainly important for ensuring the game is consistently accessible, which is a sign of success - after all, you want your players in Europe and Asia to have people around when they have time to log in, given how frequently the MU* community caters to the Western hemisphere (and global north, but that's a digression from this). That said, there aren't a lot of ways to prevent bloat that feel fair. In the past, at least in the WoD community, slots were used to figure out how many supernatural PCs a character could have; however, a player was often able to have as many Mortal/+ PCs they wanted. If one were to simply shut off chargen entirely for a prolonged period there would be significant acrimony and you'd likely see a dip in interest as players looking to bring friends dropped off, and other people protested "authoritarian" admins.
@Coin and @Arkandel, you've probably thought of this more than me: what do you think is a good way to balance player investment, new player growth, etc. without it getting out of hand?
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I don't think that game size equates to success. Right now the only games I play on have about 5 players on them and I have a blast. I think the issue is PbtA games become trickier the second you're out of that "tabletop group" size environment. Given the nature of conditions and strings(and I think this crosses over into Fate related games as well) that I think will meet instant resistance by the average MUSH player.
PbtA games, and MH in particular, emphasize character vulnerabilities and, in my experience, most MU players don't want their characters to be vulnerable. They're unshakable badasses that may take physical damage, sure, but I'm not gonna RP that my character is damaged and hurt. If you get a group of 5 or 7 people that you know and trust, and that know and trust each other, and this isn't a problem. Start adding in general players and I think you'll start seeing things fall apart. It happens on games with much more straight forward systems, I shudder to think about the drama that would crop up on a game where you can inflict the "Afraid" or "Turned On" condition on another character.
I think these systems are great, myself, as I feel they encourage players to RP outside of their comfort zones. At least that has been my experience in small groups. There are opportunistic RP predators out there, however, so I can see the flip side of the above argument too; players creating a super charismatic sexual predator going around and trying to "turn other characters on".
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe a game could run MH(or Urban Shadows or whatever) and be fine. The fact that these things are possibilities, however, are enough to kind of make me shy away from the system. Possibly even Fate as well and just fall back on Witchcraft or the Buffy RPG for a WoD alt game.