What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?
-
@Lithium Would seem so, yup.
-
One: This is the Construcive part of the board, so cut it out.
Two: Show your work. You may not agree with @Lithium (or apparently even respect her), but she explained her view and made a case.
-
It's difficult to constructively reply to a statement made up of out right lies, made up half truths, and passive aggressive innuendo but I'll do my best.
You can't expect a bunch of strangers to behave as a team and function as a well oiled machine and work things out together and push through the plots together.
Then why play on a game where you play with a bunch of strangers that are expected to behave as a team?
Empire Bay had /1/ staffer. 1. I've yet to see a /single/ MU* work with just a single staffer because of sheer time constraints.
A lie.
Not everyone can make the 'scheduled' times, not everyone is interested in the same stories, not everyone's characters even have the same drive and focus to /get/ involved in many stories.
If you don't have the drive to RP why are you on the game? Why are you here? I had one dedicated staffer and 2 volunteer players (in addition to me) creating multiple plots for a variety of different character types. We ran regular scenes as well as offered our time when it was convenient for players. Not sure what else is needed here.
A game needs staff as much as it needs players, staff to help guide players, to run stuff, to just answer questions without waiting for an @mail to get answered, or a job to get processed.
Again, I have 1 dedicated staffer in addition to myself as well as 2 volunteer players handling things. Given our modest player base this has proven to be more than enough.
With only one staffer it can feel more like play by post than it does anything else because it's just social RP in between waiting for mails/requests to get answered, or if you're lucky enough to be able to make a scheduled scene that the /1/ staffer can run.
Another statement predicated on an outright falsehood.
Empire Bay was understaffed. That simple. Once on the grid there was no real direction at all other than put in a request to check up on one lead or another... which doesn't really make for a lot of RP opportunities while waiting.
There was and is plenty of direction to be had for those looking for it. I also note the snarky passive aggressive way you keep implying the game is closed. It's not. It's been open for over 3 years now and will be up for another 3 years for as far as I'm concerned. It'l have it's ups and downs and I'm fine with that too.
My team provided ample opportunities for dedicated RP scenes as well as flexible plot nuggets that could be followed up in individual scenes as dictated by anyone looking to investigate them. Some players took advantage of it and others didn't. The point I made is that simply providing things to do for a playerbase is not guarantee that said playerbase will be active.
-
@ZombieGenesis If you have more staffers now, then great. When I played there was just you. And only you.
So it wasn't a 'lie', I was 'mistaken' if that is indeed the case.
Please look up the definition of something before you start bandying it about willy nilly.
I also never implied the game was closed, you are reading WAY to much crap into what I posted.
Think I'm just going to write you off as a loss to try and communicate with.
Like.
Ever.
-
@ZombieGenesis @Lithium I made a character on Empire Bay about four weeks ago and have yet to see anyone do much of anything. I'm not sure what the problem is (or was) but a lack of current activity seems to be part of it. It doesn't look like anyone has even BBPosted anything since mid-April. There were/are at least two staffers though.
-
I hate that....You join a game, can't get plots and stuff going because no-ones ever roleplay, they just sit in ooc, or they only play in private rooms and when you mention it, everyones all "We're not gonna make rp for you, you gotta put in the work..."
-
Man, I hate that. I CAN'T GET INTO THINGS IF NOTHING IS OPEN, ASSBUTTS.
-
@silentsophia said in What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?:
ASSBUTTS.
You get an upvote just for the Supernatural reference.
-
Thanks to all for the input. I'm making some headway with Fate-related chargen & point economy commands. Hopefully soon I'll slap an alpha version online for interested parties to test out and maybe contribute to the building of a skeleton for the game world.
-
@Bennie said in What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?:
I remember a fun Marvel system that used colored markers for fun ways to succeed at any given heroic act. It represented how much of a reserve your character had and how many you used represented how willing your character was to tax themselves with their abilities, means of attacking villains, or how much they defended themselves. Basically you just selected those numbers from your pool and compared them to determine who succeeded and who failed. Rather like bluffing in poker. How much you succeeded depended on how much you won by in a comparison. In some cases, take the Hulk using strength, the obvious answer is: he can win by a lot!
Then to do ordinary things, you set the threshold of the challenge, and the hero just spent that many markers to succeed, and again by how much. This meant that if Spider-Man went around saving hundreds of lives in a single night, by morning he could be pretty taxed. It would be possible he just would have nothing left in the tank to deal with the Abomination and Titania.
The entire system was appallingly simple, but at the same time a lot of fun because of the comparisons and factoring time. Did Mr. Fantastic really expend himself so blatantly? Or was he doing just enough to succeed so he would have a little something left when he had to try and track the signal controlling the Doom Bot he just defeated?
Furthermore, to keep from murdering everything, attacks could be pulled so that they did knock-out instead of health damage. So even Cyclops could shoot a tank with his ruby beams and not necessarily murder a squad of soldiers. All-in-all, it would be a fun thing to code for a MU* environment, where you simply allocate for your turn, with perhaps an emit that tells the room that they have finished their allocation (thusly they couldn't sneak back and change them) and then everyone using a second command to reveal their choices, resetting the character so they can make new allocations the next turn.
Sounds a lot like the ill-fated Marvel Universe game that didn't last past two supplements. Used red and white stones for just that sort of bidding conflict, which opened the door up for a lot of puns, "Do you have the stones to take on Wolverine?" (; Always thought it'd make a great MU system, save for the fact it was flavored heavily towards Marvel-type superheroing.
Wild Talents would be a decent online system, without all the IP balderdash.
"'Disreputable Urban Magicians and Sorcerers Union'. Oh... sorry."
"S'not your fault. You learn the basics, have a hideous experience in a graveyard, they give you a trenchcoat and steal your razor. Like an assembly line, really." -
@Midgardener said in What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?:
Wild Talents would be a decent online system, without all the IP balderdash.
And teaching people the ORE system, which is difficult to learn with their twenty-eight types of die resolution setups. (Kind of kidding: Wild Talents, if memory serves, has three, tho it's the only system I know of that it's entirely possible to over-power your abilities and cause huge amounts of destruction. It's mostly by choice, tho, so it's not like The Tick.)
