Eldritch - A World of Darkness MUX

[Arkandel]

@Coin said:

@Arkandel, your mom was a drama queen last night, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

That... that doesn't even make sense!

[Coin]

@Creepy said:

I can see your points and understand where you're coming from. I think the main translation issue is a matter of visually wrapping one's head around the size and scope of the grid, in comparison to a real life representation.

Based on the wiki data present, the city has a Total Metro Land Area of 73.5 sq. mi with a Metro Population of 732,521.

That's double the land area of Manhattan (33.77 sq miles, not counting the boroughs) with a little less than half its population (1.6 million). So the scale of Eldritch, physically, isn't huge but I wonder if the available space would really equate to such a compact demographic. I suppose it does, depending on the historical development as various ethnic groups arrived and pretty much "found space where they could".

I can't talk with any real degree of authority on this since @Eerie is the one that came up with the numbers and I trust her implicitly in that they make sense. And if they don't, blame the God-Machine. I know I will.

Edited to add: those are figures for the city; they don't take into account other areas, of which there are many: desert, mountains, island, forest.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

@Arkandel, your mom was a drama queen last night, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

That... that doesn't even make sense!

You're just not trying hard enough. Unlike your mom.

[HelloRaptor]

@Coin

@Eerie is the one that came up with the numbers and I trust her implicitly

She seems dubious. Are you sure you vetted her properly? Look at all the words she uses in her posts. She's clearly hiding something.

[Coin]

Like you can talk, @HelloRaptor. Your entire existence is dubious.

[HelloRaptor]

I exist to provide thought provoking inquiries:

[Eerie]

@Creepy said:

Based on the wiki data present, the city has a Total Metro Land Area of 73.5 sq. mi with a Metro Population of 732,521.

That's double the land area of Manhattan (33.77 sq miles, not counting the boroughs) with a little less than half its population (1.6 million)... BTW, the setting places Detroit's population into Savannah's footprint.

So, yes, the parallels you quoted are pretty accurate I think. For reference when creating a mental picture, Eldritch is sort of Seattle and San Francisco squished together and settled on the California coast an hour or two south of the Oregon border. I’m from Seattle and have family in the Bay Area, and @Coin lived in San Francisco. We borrowed features from both cities we thought would make for interesting settings and then mixed in other things purely from imagination.

Density-wise, it’s also worth noting that some bits of the grid are much denser and more urban than others. We have a downtown core of four main grid rooms which will be highly dense and very urban, with skyscrapers and high rise apartments. Places like Carson Hill will be moderately dense – lots of retail and apartments, but probably nothing over 5-6 stories. And then there are sections of the grid that, while within the city limits, are probably more akin to what people would consider ‘suburban’, with single family houses and low-rise apartments, which would include places like Ashtown, Breakwater, the area around the University. This will ultimately be reflected in the neighborhood numbers an area has to work with. So, on Carson Hill, there maybe 6 neighborhood points (but we haven’t set figures so don’t quote me on that) to go around in that area, while a very low-density neighborhood might have half that many. Some probably will not have any at all at the start at least. Likewise, as @Coin said, the numbers for the ‘city’ only include the city and not the outlying territory that is still part of our grid, but is run by the county – that would be the desert, the mountains, the national forest, etc.

@HelloRaptor said:

She seems dubious. Are you sure you vetted her properly? Look at all the words she uses in her posts. She's clearly hiding something.

And aww... ~@Raptor~, I bet your fretting about me ~blows~ over in short order. I know you just enjoy getting everyone’s ~goats~.

But come on, its not like I’m hiding coded messages in my wordy posts, right? That's just silly.

(Also hi, @Creepy! We know each other. I played Zephirine on HM back in the day and your fembot and my rosebush were in a motley together.)

[Wizz]

Seriously, I'm liking the direction. It wasn't long ago I didn't feel like coming back to MU*s.
Unreal, in some ways how much time I've put into the hobby versus sticking with games.
Can it be not too soon to imagine that the new wave of games will be Reachkillers?
Knowing that people hate that term aside, haha, I'm really looking forward to starting.

I think we've got a lot to look forward to this year.
The new line-up Onyx is pushing out just keeps looking better and better.

Really though, my main question is this:
At what point did "gonzo" weirdness come into the equation at Eldritch? I'm not saying
Please no, but it seems kind of a strange fit for WoD, where the mood is always a bit dark.
That's not always how I like to play, but it's how the setting fits in my mind.
Otherwise it starts looking like some other IPs getting their own MU* revivals, y'know?
Random point, maybe, but it's been itching at me.

oh my god secret messages are so hard

[Bobotron]

@Wizz said:

All that stuff...

Welp, I didn't need those nostrils.

[surreality]

@Wizz said:

Really though, my main question is this:
At what point did "gonzo" weirdness come into the equation at Eldritch? I'm not saying
Please no, but it seems kind of a strange fit for WoD, where the mood is always a bit dark.

I don't know about Eldritch, but Reno has tried it with some success. I'm not sure if that's the same intention/direction, but anyone I've heard talk about it had positive experiences.

I don't talk to a heck of a lot of people, admittedly, but the once-in-a-while round of 'what on earth is that... ' with a bit of humor rolled in, even if it's humor on the OOC level for the players to enjoy while the characters are freaking right out, is something I've admittedly always found pretty entertaining and engaging on any given game. I tend to think of it this way: sometimes a little amusing weirdness can provide more depth to the dark, and keep things from getting a little too heavy on the OOC front.

I should be taken with a grain of salt on this front, though: I love some level humor in RP generally, no matter what the subject matter is. Every so often, a round of beer&pretzels-style 'wanna go blast the crap out of a bunch of zombie sorority girls?' is good for dispelling a case of my grumpy-cat-face, pretty much.

[Eerie]

@Wizz - Well, I’m going to take off my staffy hat here and answer more personally... For one, while the individual themes and tone of a lot of WoD is dark, I think that it’s very hard to escape the aura of surreal ridiculousness that sometimes ensues when you have a hundred or whatever people playing supernatural creatures of all shapes and stripes and tell them to all go nuts with it in the same place at the same time. ‘Two demons, a vampire and a dog that’s really a werewolf walk into a bar’ is not the start of a joke on a WoD MU*, its Tuesday. I think it’s better to just embrace some of that.

Also I know us. There are many moments that I take a tongue in cheek attitude towards stuff, and I like humor... I think @Coin does too and I know he likes BIG things, broad strokes, and the “occasional” touch of irreverence*... And truthfully, I think that trying to impose a tone of unremitting and constant darkness would actually undermine the themes of these games. You can’t have just the one note all the time in a story if you actually want to feel that note. The moments of ridiculousness and hilarity make a wonderful contrast to the moments of sorrow and despair. When I think back to Buffy, that’s one of the things I loved about it. The silly bits didn’t make the characters one dimensional cartoons. They didn’t detract from the moments of real pathos, they enhanced them. So I think that’s what we’re shooting for here in tone, and hopefully there will be something in it to suit everyone.

Which is, of course, the other aspect of this. What @Coin and I want as STs here is one part of it, but, at best, it’s like a third of the overall formula. MU*s are truly collaborative experiences, and what Eldritch ultimately turns out to be is still going to largely depend on the players. First they have to show up, and next they’re going to create their PCs and those PCs are going to have their own interests and their own ways of doing things, their own hates and loves, and that is a huge and by far the biggest part of what the game will be. I hope stuff like the Territory system furthers that.

The first thing @Coin and I did was basically to sit around and make up something like 500 years of history populated with a number of NPCs that I have lost count of long ago. There is a lot of ‘stuff’ here to use in stories, but my expectation is that some of it, maybe even most of it, will never get played with. What ends up being important, at least in some degree, is going to depend on the PCs and what is important to THEM. And within that, individual people are going to choose the tone and character of their individual story...and that’s exactly how it should be. But we’re not afraid of stuff is what you should probably take away from this. This week could be a heartfelt tragedy and next week could be tentacle monsters assaulting the college synchronized swimming team.

[Coin]

@Eerie, tentacle monsters are our friends. Don't slander, it's not nice.

---

That said, what Eerie put up above is spot on. It's also that we're not making a game that ignores the community as a whole; we're making one that tries to embrace it. Or at least it tries to embrace its more creative and less pathological aspects. I took a pretty hard look at what I wanted, what Eerie wanted, what the other staff members working with us wanted, and then I looked at what I've seen run and what people were most into. Invariably, I found that people like shit that's funny. Look, people are going to go balls-to-the-wall ridiculous whether we want them to or not, so it felt wise to integrate it into the theme. You don't want to shake your finger at people and go, "you're doing it wrong", when it's just as easy (and fun) to make what they're doing right.

I mean, there's limits, but those tend to be self-imposed. I'm not going to want to run around participating in only gonzo-style plots, and I certainly don't want to just run those. But the balance has to be organic. I think people will have more fun if the game tries, at least in small part, to account for their preferences, rather than being uniform in tone and making them go elsewhere for their fun when they feel like something slightly different.

[Darinelle]

Constant, unrelenting darkness is almost never sustainable (except IRL). What's the point of a dismal death march? But the times in between, the occasional light and hope give people reasons to soldier on, to try to make the world better. Which in turn gives more hopes and dreams for the GMs to crush while cackling maniacally.

It's win-win, really.

The wiki, btw guys, looks awesome. And I'm excited to hear you're nearing launch! HUZZAH!

[Coin]

Guyz, I just want to 1) thank my wiki-person because she made a sexy, sexy sidebar code that I love to use; and 2) apologize to you guys because I am likely to abuse the fucking shit out of it.

That is all.

[Bobotron]

@Coin said:

Guyz, I just want to 1) thank my wiki-person because she made a sexy, sexy sidebar code that I love to use; and 2) apologize to you guys because I am likely to abuse the fucking shit out of it.

That is all.

Why? Sidebars are awesome, so that you have consistency on the link-outs on every page. That's why I love the Vector collapsible sidebar extension.

[Coin]

@Bobotron, wrong type of sidebar. I'm talking sidebars a la "when you want to isolate a statement in text". You know, like the actual sidebars in the books.

[Arkandel]

@Darinelle said:

Constant, unrelenting darkness is almost never sustainable (except IRL). What's the point of a dismal death march?

Theme is the key to everything, and theme is very rarely set by an entry in a wiki page, post or document.

The most major factor is your actual playerbase and their culture, and new games absolutely come with pre-built cultures. For example it's obvious entire nWoD spheres come with baggage since it's the same players each MU* inherits who were usually playing in them before. So if they're used to ultra-cutthroat political Changeling but your goal for theme is a fantastical adventuring faerie tale cooperative Changeling, you'll have an uphill battle.

Then it comes down to Storytellers. Do you have any? Are they cooperating with you, is communication happening? Some STs really like combat so if you want to run a VampSphere focused on subtle manoeuvring, devastating verbal jabs or Elder/neonate contrasts and all the plot that gets thrown involves hordes of Brood ripping throats then I hope you like the sound of throats ripping.

It would stand to reason that players would be attracted to the kind of game you (as staff) want to run but that's not the case. Look at us here - the question that keeps getting asked is "what is the Next Big Thing going to be?". There are a ton of people who want to jump ship from the crapfest that is TR these days and are just waiting to see if others take the plunge first, if its staff are deemed sane, if their policies involve no deal breakers, if they have the right spheres. Once they make that move they will define that new MU's culture as much or more as its staff possibly will or even can.

So embracing the community isn't just a good idea, it's the only one that makes sense, otherwise you're swimming against the current. Because yes you can absolutely change culture but it'd only happen over time and through day to day effort. When every +job, most PrPs and staff mandate points the way the playerbase will slowly adjust to it - but it's what you do, not put on (even a great) wiki that will count towards that.

Conversely it's where TR truly failed. They are posting one thing but then doing another.

[Creepy]

@Darinelle said:

Constant, unrelenting darkness is almost never sustainable (except IRL). What's the point of a dismal death march? But the times in between, the occasional light and hope give people reasons to soldier on, to try to make the world better. Which in turn gives more hopes and dreams for the GMs to crush while cackling maniacally.

It's win-win, really.

The wiki, btw guys, looks awesome. And I'm excited to hear you're nearing launch! HUZZAH!

Yeah. I really enjoy some heavy dark RP, but it can wear you out quick if you never get a chance to achieve some sort of victory. Its the little wins and a sense that you're slowly winning the overall battle that makes it a challenge, rather than tedious monotony.

And yesh. The wiki is quality product. Visually and content-wise.

[tragedyjones]

Throwing this out there, I am going to be playing a badass motherfucking Rahu of Doom. He will be swagger and testosterone and alpha male and good intentions and bad judgement. Anger and soul, fist of iron and a heart of gold.

I am probably going to be packing up with some staffers from Reno, but anyone else looking for wolf-tie or something, let me know as well.

[Deleted]

The only concept I've had so far is...

Ripping off the Strike Team from The Shield and making a wolfblood detective.

Because The Shield kicked ass.

[Thenomain]

@tragedyjones
When I get my hands on a copy of the Idagram Chronicles (Idiot Chronicles? I seriously cannot remember any Werewolf pseudo-language nonsense), I will start the long process of converting it to code.

The sooner the better, if anyone wants to help in that regard.