Coming in 2016 - Bump in the Night

Bobotron · Feb 14, 2016, 9:01 PM

@skew
Why is that an 'oh god' project? It should be a pretty simple, straightforward process (unless you're building every street/cross-street, then you're just doing extra work you don't need to do).

tragedyjones · Feb 14, 2016, 9:17 PM

@Bobotron Digging is just a pain in the ass to most folks, myself included.

Pyrephox · Feb 14, 2016, 9:50 PM

@tragedyjones said:

@Bobotron Digging is just a pain in the ass to most folks, myself included.

Yeah. It's not that it's hard - even someone who is the complete opposite of a coder like myself can do it. It's just tedious as all hell.

skew · Feb 14, 2016, 10:18 PM

@Bobotron It will go way, way, way faster than the desc work did, that's for sure. But it's still a big undertaking that I, personally, have never done before. Of course I have my diggy diggy hole tool, which will save a lot of time, but it'll still be a little trial and error and getting the process down correctly. Unless, of course, someone else does it. Then woo!

Bobotron · Feb 14, 2016, 10:28 PM

@skew
Good luck. And yeah, having a tool often helps; I used to use MUSHroom a lot so I could set things up visually, which usually helps me out.

skew · Feb 14, 2016, 10:33 PM

@Bobotron I do not know what this thing is! Link?

nevermind! Found it... http://www.mushcode.com/MushRoom

Bobotron · Feb 14, 2016, 10:39 PM

http://mushcode.com/MushRoom

I built an entire Earth and Cybertron planet grids for a game once using it; it made things a little easier for a big project like that.

skew · Feb 16, 2016, 1:49 AM

Gettin' closer...

skew · Feb 16, 2016, 9:24 PM

And the grid is built!

Huge thanks to @Bobotron for showing off MUSHroom. That seriously made things go faaaast.

Arkandel · Feb 18, 2016, 4:45 PM

One of the things I'd like to see for BITN (and any Hunter game out there) is to have the monsters be on the winning side. It should never be that Hunters are actually pushing them out, where they are a factor to be reckoned with - the city should never be clean other than for the occasional, quickly dispatched horror who manages to get in only to become slaughtered.

My vision of such a game would be one where they're trying to make a dent - that's it. Now and then they score a victory and stake a bloodsucker but more often than not their car is mysteriously blown up and they get fired from their day-job because they keep going to work bruised and sporting black eyes.

Mind you, it'd be the lazy way to do this strictly or mostly through killing a few PCs - which should happen, I'm just saying it shouldn't be the go-to way as you can't roleplay the consequences of your own PC dying and if people around you die all the time you'll simply grow jaded; there are other, more fun ways to incorporate loss. The more theme itself has characters swimming against the tide, doing all they can just to stay afloat, the more successful it'll be.

Coin · Feb 18, 2016, 4:47 PM

@Arkandel I do think this is the idea, at least in part.

Liberal use of Sanctity of Merits to assuage your Allies and Contacts constantly dying should be a thing.

Pyrephox · Feb 18, 2016, 4:53 PM

@Arkandel said:

One of the things I'd like to see for BITN (and any Hunter game out there) is to have the monsters be on the winning side. It should never be that Hunters are actually pushing them out, where they are a factor to be reckoned with - the city should never be clean other than for the occasional, quickly dispatched horror who manages to get in only to become slaughtered.

Agree completely with this. It's hard to be a horror game when you can own the mayor, when your posse of unstoppable bros patrol the streets, etc. Horror typically comes from a feeling of helplessness, of isolation, of having to violate your deeply held principles for survival, or from something vastly important to you being at stake. Your life can be one of those things, but there's more variety than that.

Much better for a horror setting for the mayor to be owned by horrible things that demand blood sacrifice and protection in exchange for his continued political success, for example.

Which isn't to say characters should be all-powerless all-the-time. That's no fun. But the focus should be on, you know, "You can't save the world, but you might be able to save the neighborhood TONIGHT. Tomorrow is another day."

tragedyjones · Feb 18, 2016, 4:58 PM

In regards to BITN and winning. Winning is keeping your loved ones safe. Winning is stopping the horrors out there from taking a life on this block, at least for now. Winning is making a difference and standing up for humanity. Ridding the world of BITN of the supernatural is simply not possible. The monsters don't present a unified front, there is no direct war to fight. There is only survival and trying your best to make the world a little better.

Arkandel · Feb 18, 2016, 5:00 PM

@Pyrephox Agreed. And how players (and thus characters) respond to such desperate choices is equally as important.

My ideal Hunter game would offer characters the chance to lay their hands on equalizers - a weapon, a flask with a mysterious potion, something that evens out the odds and temporarily lets them go toe to toe with the monsters... only to find themselves changed in the process, becoming closer to the things they hunt than who they were before.

But to do that takes work and creativity otherwise they'll just be... perks. Rather than "woohoo, I got a magical glowing sword, bitches!" it should be "holySHIT did this damn knife just tell me I need to kill someone every day or it'll take my soul?". And other PCs' reactions should be mistrust, antipathy and GET RID OF THAT FUCKING THING DUDE instead of 'hey, let's bring Bob with his magical glowing sword to our next adventure!'.

You know?

Pyrephox · Feb 18, 2016, 5:06 PM

@Arkandel I can dig that. In CoD, I'd probably put conditions for every awesome use of artifact. Want to hulk out from that alchemical potion you found? First, break something precious that belongs to a close friend or ally to get the Essence of Loss that is the potion's active ingredient. I'd always have it be something that the player has to CHOOSE to have their character do, rather than something that was imposed on them, but power should cost. And, in a horror game, it should never be "enough" - the PC should always wonder, "Could I do more, could I protect more people if I were just willing to sacrifice more?"

skew · Feb 18, 2016, 5:13 PM

@Arkandel To add to what @tragedyjones just said above...

We've set BITN in Southern Maryland, and not in DC or Baltimore, which are just a stone throws away. The fight in those cities would be something entirely different, and likely make your career far more brief.

We're also looking at "monsters" from a lot of different angles. Yeah, maybe you burnt out a vampire nest, but what about the reports of a rabid crocodile in the swamps? What about that new werewolf pack? What about that autopsy that found cockroaches inside a man's skull?

Coin · Feb 18, 2016, 5:28 PM

@skew said:

We're also looking at "monsters" from a lot of different angles. Yeah, maybe you burnt out a vampire nest, but what about the reports of a rabid crocodile in the swamps? What about that new werewolf pack? What about that autopsy that found cockroaches inside a man's skull?

What about your mom?

(Too easy.)

Olsson · Feb 25, 2016, 2:23 AM

So did we have a date/website something on this?

tragedyjones · Feb 25, 2016, 2:50 AM

@Olsson said:

So did we have a date/website something on this?

On or before March 1, 2016.

tragedyjones · Feb 25, 2016, 6:34 PM

So the opening is Real Soon Now. Anyone have any particular questions or anything before then?