Spitballing for a supers Mush

[Mr.Johnson]

Alright so let's get this ball rolling. First off: Yes I am doing another attempt at a capes game.

I realize it might not be the best idea given my track record of health issues getting in the way of staffing but recent events have given me a bit of a now or never view on a lot of things.

I realize that I've got a track record as well of doing overly oddball ideas that don't gain much traction, examples of note being the 4 different iterations of 4tMU, my Marvel Civil War game set during the Civil War, my 15th century Pirates superhero game, my Matrix game (More an example of not having the playerbase for the setting), my Fallout Lone Star mush that never got players (I'd chalk that one up to my decision to have the entire thing set in an Enclave Training vault and not getting peoples interest long enough for the vault to open), my Star Trek TOS game (A failure I chalk up to ST:O existing as well as just another case of building a product for a market that doesn't exist), Wild West Superheroes game, Prohibition Mobsters game. Point is I've always had a bit of a bad habit of trying something incredibly niche that doesn't have the customer base to see itself reach that magic number of player stability.

So this time around I've decided to try and make something a bit more simple, and a bit more straight forward as a main grid with the potential for minigrids that I can use as... off the beaten trail connected areas to try out my more oddball ideas as little on rotation events.

So. Right now the concept is this. The main grid is a Year 5 game. It's 5 years after Superman first hit the scene. He's the second actually super powered hero to hit the scene the first being a single super powered villain who showed up during WW2 and took the combined might of the Allied, Comintern, and the worlds unpowered heroes to defeat and lock up frozen in ice in the worlds most secure prison to keep him from effectively being able to take over the world.

All of the superhero comic company universes exist in the multiverse of this game. I'll put some restrictions on the ones that can appear on our main grid but somewhere out there in the multiverse if it's had a superhero comicbook written? It's in our games multiverse. This allows little stories to cross over for one off stories or plots and give people a bit more variety.

The one thing I've decided is that in this game Time Travel does not exist. Full stop. Anything that looks like time travel is actually travel between dimensions. I would liken dimensional travel to what space travel was in the 1960's. It's dangerous, takes a LOT of money, takes a LOT of power, and isn't something you just do on a whim.

Now on the subject of the universe itself my inclination is to make the universe that our grid is on a DC universe. That means we have Therymyscia, and all the good old fashioned fictional nations of the DC universe on one planet. I plan once my disability actually gets approved (God willing it will be with how bad my health is.) doing a commission with a cartographer to work out a global map that sandwiches together all the fictional DC nations on one big ol map and gives us some solid ground for what the world actually looks like.

We are going to be a Year 5 game, what that means is that it's 5 years since super powered soldiers became a thing. Prior to that five year marker what you had was the classics like The Shaddow, and Wesley Dodds sandman. Masked heroes have been a thing, but superheroes are new.

This I think gives some room for people to sandwich in characters without having too much guff and fluff getting in the way of new people (And OC's) breaking in.

How will Marvel characters work? If you adjust it to fit into this world that is DC focused and adjust accordingly to the DC lore I'm perfectly fine with Marvel characters being used. You don't have to rename them, and most won't require radical changes.

The main thing it means is Superman is the cap of what a hero can do being able to lift 700 tonnes travel at a speed of Mach 25. Lex Luthor is the smartest non mutated human on earth. And a few other little things that are true on characters. I'm going to be aiming at using Superman as the benchmark for the top of our chart of what's available to a player. Think of Superman as a rating 10, the average Human as a Rating 3

Now why is this a thread in development instead of on an advert or the like? Because I'm still working on it.

I've got a codebase, got a server host, got a basic outline for the grid I intend to make. I'm going to be reusing what I can from 4TMU just because I worked very hard on that grid and like how it turned out. What I want is some feedback. I realize MuSoap might not be the best place for ideas and feedback but I'm not the most intellectual person.

We're not going to be using Aresmu*. While I LOVE the codebase and working in it is a breeze I just can't afford the hosting costs on my zero income, and I can't just keep hoping to get approved for disability to pay for it. I've got to use the hosting options that are available to me and make the most of my resources.

I think we're using Rhost? I'm not entirely sure. It's almost six in the morning as I'm writing this, but I'll edit this when I'm more with it and can remember the codebase. I think it's Rhost though.

So to cover again: Year 5 game, most supers are just getting their start. DC Universe but Marvel is completely allowed. You can app characters from the multiverse within reason. Game is set modern day. This time around the twist is something simple that won't affect the majority of players but I intend to use on several events. Power level is slightly on the lower side for the most part. No time travel. Focused on earth on the area around Metropolis and Gotham State.

Why is this called spitballing? Because I'm looking for some feedback and further ideas that I can use as the basis for my work on this project. I'm making the damn thing come hell or high water so there's that at least. I'm just doing this part so people can throw their two cents at me like I'm a little dancing monkey in a cage. Gotta earn them shekles.

[SixRegrets]

Please don't interpret this as an attempt to argue with you about your decision to run Rhost or anything not Ares, but Ares is perfectly capable of running on a self hosted machine (or VM, even), though it's not as easy to set up. Is it a matter of Ares's additional requirements not being available on the host you have access to?

I'm somewhat new to the MUSH scene, but not particularly new to MU*s. I feel pretty strongly that Ares is the way of the future in terms of accessibility and growing the community's player base, with a lot of younger folks not quite being willing to learn what 'telnet' is..

[Mr.Johnson]

I've been perfectly fine using it in the past but the bandwith that Ares requires is insane, and just not available to me during the process of trying to get approved for disability. It's a major resource hog, and the free providers just don't support that insane resource load when compared to more traditional systems.

[GreenFlashlight]

For my part, setting is less a big deal than the community. Not trying to merge universes sounds good to me, though.

[Mr.Johnson]

@GreenFlashlight I can understand that completely, however I will say that my oddball settings have never helped matters. I do not need a game to be super duper popular at all. All I'm looking for is to get enough players invested enough to keep a stable player base. Which admittedly is fairly difficult

[faraday]

@Mr-Johnson said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:

I've been perfectly fine using it in the past but the bandwith that Ares requires is insane

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, it does require more resources than Penn/Rhost/Tiny (when used in conjunction with an external wiki like wikidot). Even so, all but the biggest Ares games run perfectly fine on the "Tiny" size VMs, such as the $5/month Digital Ocean plan. These are the same resource requirements and pricing you'd need for a small, self-hosted blog (ETA: Or running MediaWiki locally). By modern web standards, that's hardly "insane". Cost-wise it's actually on par with most MU hosting plans, like GenesisMUDs.

Not trying to convince you to do one thing or the other. $5/month is still not free, and if you're trying to live off a fixed income you've got to make every dollar count. Ares isn't right for everyone, and you should do what works for you. I just don't want folks coming away from the conversation thinking that the resource requirements of Ares are insanely expensive or anything.

[Mr.Johnson]

@faraday I should have said in comparison to the usage of other platforms. It's really not that insane when compared to almost anything else it's just insane for an amount to ask for FREE hosting from anyone. That's more what I'm getting at and yeah I'm stuck on fixed income. @-@

[faraday]

@Mr-Johnson Totally understandable. Unfortunately MUs don't really generate enough traffic to make something like an ad-sponsored Squarespace/Wikidot free tier feasible as a business model. If a free shared MUD host is all you have available, you've got to work within your constraints. Rhost is a fine choice.

[Paradox]

I would throw out to you Mr-Johnson that I don't think the problems lie in the 'niche' factor. In fact I'd submit that it may not be a bad thing. If you look at the huge supers games it's easy for people to get lost in them (happens to me constantly and so I drift away from them).

A small directed game isn't bad but that's the problem, the direction. Are you creating an environment for people to just be in? Are you looking to have a storyline that plays out and evolves?

I know something I learned with @auspice on SGM was that we tried to do both, we wanted to have a story that played out (and things fell apart when RL swallowed us up) but also wanted an environment for players to be in. Turns out I think that doing both just didn't work for us. Having visited your games before, the environments were interesting, the niche not being the problem. But after awhile just RPing in those environments (for me) wasn't enough, I needed something happening to get involved with. Iunno, just some early morning thoughts.

[Runescryer]

I'll say: go for it. Just keep a few things in mind going forward...

1. Power Level Gap: Always a problem balancing Marvel & DC power levels.

2. 'Anything Comics Goes': Along with the obvious Staff issues, this concept really harmed United Heroes, IMO. What or who defines a 'superhero' or a 'comic book'? Inspector Gadget could realistically be defined as a 'superhero', but is totally unsuited for mixing with 'regular' supers in stories. This just dilutes the focus of the theme more and adds in characters & genre tropes that not every player is going to want to deal with.

[reversed]

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[Ghost]

Advice: MUers are habitual.

SuperMUs are a double-edged sword.

ON THE PLUS SIDE:

• SuperMUs have a regular audience
• SuperMUs have a large casting call and general appeal

ON THE DOWNSIDE:

• SuperMUs using anything other than the "describe your traits and argue with each other whether they apply" approach do not do well. SuperMU players are habitual and seem to prefer this system
• SuperMUs have a LONG history of players playing specific heroes, which includes a laundry list of creep issues flagged to X player and Y character.
• I personally disagree with the "everyverse/multiverse" approach, but this seems to be possible.
• Some people are diehard OC players, but when some of these players make an OC (Original Character) using a "trait-based" character system, some tend to make very overpowered concepts with vague wording that ends up being a sort of fish-hook after CGen. Example: An OC with "the ability to make and control iron" will likely not just bend metal and bend bars. Within days they tend to want to instakill things by sucking all of the iron out of their bodies. I've seen this with gravity, gold, etc.

By all means, make whatever game you want, but in my experience the built-in crowd of 20-30 players who habitually play SuperMU games will not necessarily join a SuperMU game if it means learning a new system, not getting their OC, etc. Point in case; you're already being asked why Rhost and not Ares.

[reversed]

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[Rucket]

I honestly don't know why, at this point in time, you'd use Rhost over Ares for a traits-based game. You could have Ares up and running along with most of the game done in like a week. The only real work would be theme.

This is just my own rando thoughts though. But yeah, it just seems like Ares would save a lot of time and you'd have a codebase a lot more people are becoming very adept at using.

[Ghost]

@reversed said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:

If anything, instituting changes to "the usual" that might make "the same 20-30 players" not want to jump on board instantly sounds like a positive move to me.

It could be! I have my own personal opinions on repetitiveness that I gained over the years that aren't really conducive to the topic, but change is never an inherently BAD thing.

I think an "Original Theme" game could be really great, to be honest. Doing so would nix the following "traps" that could free the game up to be something really special.

• Existing Theme (Marvel, DC, etc) tend to have characters played as "locked in" to their canon stories, romances, etc. This can be intimidating to players who don't know what happened in "Spider-Man #201", but also discourage making a character their own
• Original Theme wouldn't be limited by specific characters being in charge, limited character availability, etc. Fighting over character availability, "sitting on PCs" etc

[Mr.Johnson]

@Rucket Money. It comes down to money. I'm on fixed income. I need to rely on what I can get for free for this games hosting. Ares costs money that I don't have. What I do have is time and energy to fully dedicate to the project and plenty of it. So it being slower to do non ares doesn't factor in as much as me not having the money to spend on ares even though it's relatively small amount of money.

My current income is ZERO. Until I get approved for disability for my laundry list of medical issues I have NO income, and that is also a problem because if I get donations Disability will see that I am able to work and will deny me the disability I need to be able to survive. so I can not do anything that requires money but I can do everything that requires time.

[Mr.Johnson]

@Paradox The main reason I wasn't able to direct as much as I wanted was because my health took a nose dive which eventually resulted in my going to the ICU. I had a bunch of plans and was already starting to put them into motion with the business with the Assassination of Gillian Leob, and the possessions in Gotham storyline that was intended to start to ingulf poor ol metropolis.

It really is just a case of the best laid plans of mice and men.

Now hopefully I'll be able to actually run more now that my health is mostly stabilized.

[Auspice]

@Mr-Johnson said in Spitballing for a supers Mush:

@Rucket Money. It comes down to money. I'm on fixed income. I need to rely on what I can get for free for this games hosting. Ares costs money that I don't have. What I do have is time and energy to fully dedicate to the project and plenty of it. So it being slower to do non ares doesn't factor in as much as me not having the money to spend on ares even though it's relatively small amount of money.

My current income is ZERO. Until I get approved for disability for my laundry list of medical issues I have NO income, and that is also a problem because if I get donations Disability will see that I am able to work and will deny me the disability I need to be able to survive. so I can not do anything that requires money but I can do everything that requires time.

Ares doesn't cost money. It's just that putting it on DigitalOcean is the easiest method and the one Faraday can handhold pretty much anyone through.

I've gotten it going on my friend's hosting. It took some hacking, but it was doable. I've run it on my Windows machine, as well, to tool around on it locally. DO isn't required, it's just the recommended method.

[Mr.Johnson]

Honestly my other superheros concept I was going to run before I was advised by half my friends list to try something normal was: Fallout pre nukes, but it's superheroes.

[ZombieGenesis]

@Mr-Johnson I think the pre-nuke Fallout supers game could be really neat. Do you mean pre-nuke as in "modern day 50's feel"? Cause, again, sounds awesome to me.