NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot
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Wiki: http://nola.orcpie.fun/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Game Address: nola.orcpie.fun:2018Welcome to NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot
NOLA is a game set - perhaps not entirely unexpectedly - in a city very similar to New Orleans, Louisiana. It is in the same geographical location, it bears the same name, and much of the same history. The staff of NOLA love the real-world city, which is why we've chosen to set it in this particular place - but it is based on that city, only, and does not seek to replicate it exactly. The New Orleans of this game is one where you do not need to know all the details (although they certainly help), and if something's slightly off (whether on staff's side or players') we won't stress about it too hard. It is, after all, a game we're playing. If most of the nation wouldn't blink at an inaccuracy in a television show based in New Orleans, we certainly won't stress about it here.
The main theme of our game is one of a melting pot. In New Orleans, the supernatural world doesn't have any sharp lines of division. Where the supernatural ends and the mundane begins is a fuzzy question in a world with mortals who can sense the things that walk in the darkness, read minds, and light things on fire with their brains. In a world where vampires and werewolves claim overlapping territories, alliances and rivalries will form across the lines of the species. Vampires, Werewolves, and Mortals all interact in New Orleans as part of a greater community, bound under the Shadow Accords that govern the expected ways in which alliances and disputes will be handled.
The Spheres available on NOLA are Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, and Mortal. Mortal characters can be pure Human, Hurt Locker Templates (except Dreamer), Wolfblooded, Ghouls, and Fae-Touched and can undergo Becomings into any supernatural sphere. Human characters who meet certain (not difficult) criteria may be considered a part of the Shadow Accords, and become eligible to take part (relatively) safely in the world of the supernatural, including membership in vampire coteries, werewolf packs, changeling motleys, or mingled cabals.
NOLA is open again. Beast is no longer available. Our wiki is STILL unfinished. We've probably still got bugs. There's probably new ones. And yes, we'll allow Bloodlines...as soon as someone steps up to be a Bloodlines Gremlin and do the research, data entry, and wikiwork. That means yes, we're hiring staff if you want to sign up. Also: we will allow SotC content as soon as someone's willing to go over the work that's already done and finish up the data entry. It's not hard work, I've just got a weird mental block about it and I've been letting it keep me from re-opening for too long. No, we didn't scrap the Accords - they're still there. The NPCs are still in place, we didn't scrap those either. Hell, Beasts are still in the city - they're just NPCs and unavailable for character creation.
TL;DR: A CofD 2e game with Vampire, Werewolf, and Humans set in New Orleans where everybody's up in everybody else's business.
<< Edit: Ownership was switched to Ganymede to preserve this particular post for other players while respecting the original poster's request to have all posts deleted. >>
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@RDC
Speaking from a LARP standpoint...There are no LARP versions of any CoD- game. The last NWoD LARP version that came out was 1e Mage the Awakening back in 2007. BNS has the rights to release LARP versions and they have said nothing about CoD/NWoD versions (many of them are also notoriously anti-NWoD as a genre). Many people don't expect there to be new CoD-compliant LARP rules,
I haven't read all of BNS Apocalypse yet, so I can't comment there.
For BNS Masquerade status to Requiem, you'd have to rejigger vampire's Status methods from BNS a bit to work for Requiem. It doesn't rely on dot-rated status; you have a limit based on whether you're a full sect member, recognized as a partial member (like your clan just joined the sect and doesn't have full recommendation) or under some sort of 'status ban' which reduces how much fleeing (temporary pull) status you have.
Normally someone can have Abiding Status from a position (such as Prince, Harpy, or Primogen) and then up to five Fleeting Status, which are set up as descriptive words and you can use to 'pull weight' to do things (IE: As a Noble member of this organization, your accusations have no merit...), and Negative Status which incurs punishments (IE: Consider yourself Warned, Neonate; speak again in the presence of your betters and suffer the consequences...).
No idea if 2e Requiem requires any dots in status for any specific Covenant positions. I like the Status system from BNS Masquerade, and I feel like it adds a lot to a game when you use it properly. BNS Status makes a good roleplay tool as it fits really well into general social RP since you can work the traits into conversation.
But the big question is: do you think people would use it? If so, do it. If not, then stick with RAW Requiem status.
If you just wanted to adapt the Requiem LARP status rules, those are... alright? There's benefits for being Ascendant and Eminent (most status total of Clan and Covenant), but some of it is... a bit underwhelming, and there's guidelines for 'how many of each 5/4/3/2/1 dot status can exist in each covenant' type situations.
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I printed a copy of the MET Requiem status to a separate PDF; it's located at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34012794/MET Requiem Status.pdf. That's a starting point for you.
There's nothing that's CoD-compliant; work on NWoD MET stopped in 2007 and core games like Forsaken and Lost didn't get MET versions. Status mechanics are VERY bare bones in any NWoD-compliant versions.
If you're going to rework Status in a 'spend for bonus' manner, I'd say build something that works for your game in general; I don't think core BNS MET would work without some people going 'Huh?' and not using it to its full potential. Maybe use the trait names, but give them the bonuses you want to work with the tabletop dot-status mechanics. It'll save issues in the end.
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@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:
Speaking of LARP: Do people think there'd be any interest in borrowing certain concepts from LARP games, particularly some concepts relating to Boons, Status, and Renown effects from the BNS books? I'm on the fence as to whether they'd add or subtract from a MU* setting - there are a lot of similarities between MU* and LARP, and they're certainly more similar to each other than either are to tabletop, but I'm unsure as to whether borrowing would be better than not.
Bonus, status, and Renown generally doesn't work in MU* settings, I've found. It just, unfortunately, doesn't work for a couple reasons:
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Buying Status & Renown in Cgen: Everyone does it if its an option and most games don't police if the amount of either being purchased because it becomes so ubiquitous that it loses all of its meaning and value. Players easily and readily ignore it in a way you can't in a live action setting unless you want to die.
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The Revolving Door Nature of PC Leadership: Status and especially boons are often swept away in Sept Alpha and Praxis Seizure changes. The PCs that might be recording and tracking this information to any meaningful end tend to eventually fade out, these records get fubar, and it's all meaningless. In a Larp setting, even if there's a new Prince every month-- they are generally at the game and you have ways of getting their attendance. Not so in MU* where tracking down people is hard and getting them to RP with you about this stuff can be harder.
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Status and Boon Enforcement: In Larp settings, its a lot harder to get away with ducking out of a boon and being a turd to someone with higher status than you, 9 times out of 10 - if you do either, it's on and cracking and usually ends with your PC getting dragged to a boot party. In a MU* setting, its a lot easier to just hang out in your hideyhole and never come out as staff is often loathe to allow haven raids, etc. PC leaders will evade every chance to enforce these things because there is such a resistance to PvP because it goes so poorly and players react so badly when it doesn't go their way that its exhausting and it burns out PC leadership.
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Immediate Consequences and Benefits In General: In larp, your status and boons can be an immediate button you push when you want something and you want it 2 minutes ago because everyone's assembled for play that night, you only have 4ish hours to pack in your to-do list for the month, etc -- basically, created immediacy. In MU* you have to find the person/people, get them to agree to something, get them to show up to something, deal with the scene over a course or days if people can't all be on at once, and then finally execute. That's exhausting and so people stop bothering.
I think therefore if you want to try and include that in your game then it becomes something staff has to track and enforce, which generally comes with a lot of conflict so you have to have staff willing to take it on the chin and crack skulls when they must.
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@GangOfDolls I'd say RfK proved all of that wrong.
It had boons and it had status and they both worked exceptionally well together.
The problem on most MUs is that they are sandboxes. Boons, status, leadership positions and politics in general are pretty pointless in a sandbox.
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@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:
@Thenomain, if there's documentation on your github anywhere, we couldn't find it!
Er, no player chargen documentation. Most of it has been written by other people for other games, like Eldritch. This may be somewhere in my "to do" notes. Somewhere. Maybe. Sigh.
Creating and coding new stats is kind of mentioned in File 1a, the introduction to the Data Dictionary, which could also be called "abandon hope ye who are about to try to figure this out".
I'm more than willing to explain concepts and come up with examples for people who have installed the system and are standing there with a kind of "now what?" glazed look on their face. PM me here or Friend me on Skype with an explanation of who you are/why you're friending me so I don't outright reject it.
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@lordbelh Yeah I'd say that's true. The problem as you point out is you have to get everyone on board with it which in a lot of online games is the central point where it falls apart.
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@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:
it's more the "everything else we stole wholesale from Theno's github of wonder" that we need helpfiles for.
c.f. the wiki for any game I've coded for in the past eight years. You have my permission to steal the text wholesale, since it was written by either me, @Glitch, @coin, @skew, @Chime, @Cobaltasaurus, or any half dozen other people who couldn't care less.
But yeah, some of them have help files. The more modern ones don't. It's like I'm hitting burnout earlier these days.
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Just send a message if you need help with anything specifically. Don't think I have the capacity to volunteer to "formally staff", but I'm quite happy loitering in a @Thenomain like capacity to answer questions.
As it stands, I thiiiiiink I know his code better than anyone else (besides him, obvs, except for when I know it better than him). Though I might need to fight @Cobaltasaurus not sure.
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Double post: Fallen World was the latest game I (with T-main working close) worked on. The help files should be pretty good!
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Do you have custom writeups for the bloodlines, or no? If no, what is your plan there?
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@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:
There is a surprising amount of stuff checked off on my to-do list that is not actually done. Please be patient with us on the wiki front, and feel free to log in and ask all sorts of questions if there's blank spots!
New to-do list item: double check accuracy of previous to-do list items.
