What do you WANT to play most?
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Once @faraday is ready for more people to use AresMUSH and the new FS3 stuff, I will more than likely be starting a Magicians game.
I've got a lot of it knocking around in my head. I even know how I'd structure FS3. But I am shit at code.
![😕](http://musoapbox.net/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=4vfms5ns7sl ":\")
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Also in my ideal theme:
There's no preexisting factions. Or if there have to be for some reason, it's explicit that a few bad decisions (or bad luck) could and will lead to it's downfall. The heads of these factions are PC and not NPC. They don't hold any kind of monopoly nor are they too big to fall.
It's survival based. Something about the world makes staying alive a constant challenge and you're told to expect to die in an arbitrarily unfulfilling way. Maybe a lack of resources, maybe a hostile external threat or maybe even something as dumb as being on a reality tv show where the producers have a god complex.
@Autumn said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Original themes often aren't well-presented, and that can make it difficult to get and retain players. Say what you like about George R. R. Martin, but he's a much more entertaining writer than the average person who decides they want to start a game and make up their own setting for it.
Sometimes less is more. You don't have to be a fantastic writer to make a theme that's simplistically entertaining like one day you woke up then SUDDENLY ZOMBIES.
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Although I did not vote this I think my dream MU* would be a Castle Falkenstien game that focused on adventure, that said I know it would never happen.
Edit: My actual vote went to Superhero but with the caveat that is be all OC and actually using a game system of some sort, and having that system not be Mutants and Masterminds. -
I'd love to see a focused superhero game that doesn't tread old material again.
- I'd love to see a Beyond-era DC-focused game focusing on legacy characters. Focused solely on Earth or a couple of cities connected by a hypertrain and such. Neo-Gotham and Megatropolis, perhaps.
- I'd love to see something based on the new X-Men Movieverse and focus ONLY on X-Men (yes, I know X-factor exists...)
- I'd love to see a school-focused X-Men MUSH not unlike the X-Men Evolution or the early 2000s New X-Men: Academy X books. But that won't happen because of all the teenage boning that'll go on.
- I'd love to see a DCAU JLU MUSH, integrating later aspects of the world like the other Latern Corps and stuff.
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@Autumn This is both reasonable and... not at all reasonable to me at once.
Expecting a 'this is how the world works' document written by an unpaid amateur writer to be as engaging as a professionally written novel by one of the most popular authors of fiction writing in the world today is just not the most realistic expectation to have. From another perspective, this is like expecting the script for a GoT episode, consisting of names, basic stage directions, and dialogue to be as engaging as an actual episode of the show or one of the books it's based on; it's just not going to happen.
World information (or a script, or stageplay, etc.) and a story that reveals that information as the story progresses are completely different animals and one is almost always going to be considerably more engaging than the other: namely, the one where there's a story being told at the same time. That's the role the players take in the game: it's their story being told in a setting, often with characters they create themselves (unless the game has a roster setup).
A single-author setting also only has to take into account the things that affect the story they already know they want to be telling, usually from the outset. If you, as the author, know you're never going to go to Keep X, what it's for, who lives there, where it is don't matter; that information may be relevant in a game world players are going to explore in their stories and you'd better have those answers unless you want to open that up to players to create themselves (which, IMHO, people should be a lot more open to doing than they often are). There are questions players are going to have that as a single-author of a story you don't ever need to consider for an instant, let alone have an answer for, because you are in full control of the story and whether that ever becomes relevant or not; it isn't the case for a world built for the purpose of others telling stories.
On the flip side, if you build in too much story? You run the risk of considering your players to be actors following a script, and that way lies railroading and the entirely wrong sort of attention to detail.
Someone writing a novel is essentially preparing a stage, costumes, props, dialogue, and stage directions for the participants.
Someone creating a game world has to create a much more fully-fleshed out stage, costumes, props, directions for how the world will react to actions taken by the participants, a handful of improv scenarios, and the willingness to let go enough to allow those improv scenarios unfold as they will.
It's the difference between writing a bed time story and creating a playroom; while they have some elements in common, they're just not the same at all, and expecting all the qualities of each in the other is a bigger (and inherently more problematic) ask than most folks realize.
Oh fucking well.
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@Auspice @Ghost and @Jennkryst -- @GirlCalledBlu has been poking at the idea of a Magicians game as well. She was thinking of setting it around 1940, for major events in the world and in the magical world (from what she's told me, I only watched the first couple of episodes).
@Arkandel I fully expect to see the results of this poll vary a lot more than the What Are You Playing poll. I thought that the comparison would be interesting, however.
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@Seraphim73 To paraphrase the show: 'What do you mean, they made a time travel artifact to go back and kill Hitler... did somebody forget to tell them he was a master at battle magic?'
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Original theme superheroes that allowed for the typical breadth of characters - normal humans, people with powers, aliens, robots, animal people, etc - and presented it in a logical, 'realistic' format. Street-level general RP, global-level staff plots.
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@Seraphim73 if I got a vote, I'd vote modern era. There's already a Hogwarts game set in that era, and there's something I like about the mix of modern technology and magic in the show that would be lost in the 40s setting. Further yet, the pop culture references wouldn't be as snappy.
It's just harder for me to get invested in older settings when the source material shows how neatly it ties into modern setting.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost said in What do you WANT to play most?:
@Seraphim73 if I got a vote, I'd vote modern era. There's already a Hogwarts game set in that era, and there's something I like about the mix of modern technology and magic in the show that would be lost in the 40s setting. Further yet, the pop culture references wouldn't be as snappy.
It's just harder for me to get invested in older settings when the source material shows how neatly it ties into modern setting.
If I ever get coder / stuff I need, I'd be going with modern era. I've played games set in the 40s and I end up feeling limited more than anything. It's just not my cuppa.
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To add to my opinion: I feel like the 40s era would really take away from the modern, less repressed, free to explore feel that is central to the source material.
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I put "Other" because there wasn't an "ABW" choice (Anything but WoD).
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@Three-Eyed-Crow said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Original theme sci-fi. Though I'd also just like to see some not-overdone sci-fi, like something based off Star Trek or a newer property like The Expanse.
More harder sci-fi too... Blue Planet, Eclipse Phase, etc.
@Ghost said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Matrix
Only if you retcon that stupid "humans are for heat because we don't understand basic thermodynamics lol" nonsense in the movies.
Farscape
Playable ships?
Conan
By CROM! I have more fondness for that IP than I should. Somewhat helpfully, it has a rich history of trading hands through the years so likely it's easier to avoid infringement claims than you'd think-- much like the Cthulhu mythos, it has been fanfic'd for over a hundred years.
Street Fighter
...but why? Freaking capcommunists.
If you want to make a mush out of a fighting game, then you should
LET MORTAL KOMBAT BEGIN! *Gongggg* o/~ test your MIGHT o/~
Horror that isn't WoD
Hell yes. I'd love to see a game set in the world of the Laundry Files (Charles Stross)-- there's even an RPG book for it already. It's fantastically detailed and appeals to me thematically in a great many ways.
Problem is, as has been pointed out to me repeatedly... this devolves to a bureaucratic infighting simulator if you take it to anything larger than tabletop.
Dark, original fantasy theme
We don't need more song of ice&fire clones.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Coffea arabica that thoughts acquire speed, the table acquires stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
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On a side note, being curious, are you and/or @GirlCalledBlu pondering another game? I am probably miles off base, but the last couple topics seems like you two have some ideas and are trying to narrow down what you may settle on.
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@WTFE That's how I feel about superhero.
Although, to be honest, while theme is important, it's probably the least important factor to me when choosing a game. I look first for player size, game atmosphere, how easy it is to find RP, how easy it is to get involved in plot, etc.
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@Lisse24 I could tolerate a well-made superhero game, I think. (I'll let you know for sure when I find one.) I've tried WoD on several different MU*es and several different spheres now. I just can't stand anything about it, starting with the game system and moving on up to setting, themes, etc. Just drives me up the fucking wall. The typical WoD player is the final nail in the coffin of my interest.
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Mortal Kombat
Yeah, but is there enough backstory to it? Still, could be fun.
Matrix
To be pedantic, it was 'human body heat plus fusion = electricity', but yeah. Go back to a draft version of Human Mass Computer and there you go.
Conan
Is it bad that my vision of a Conan MUSH is very much a more adult version of the Conan the Adventurer cartoon?
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@Lotherio Not really. We're playing a couple of places, and helping out, but we're not StoryStaff or HeadStaff or anything like that anywhere, nor are we planning to (unless Blu ends up working on a Magicians game--I probably still wouldn't do any more Staff-stuff than helping set up FS3 for her).
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@ThatGuyThere said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Although I did not vote this I think my dream MU* would be a Castle Falkenstien game that focused on adventure, that said I know it would never happen.
Nowadays we call that 7th Sea.
I bet it will happen.
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@Ghost said in What do you WANT to play most?:
HOW IN GODS NAME DO WE NOT HAVE A GAME IN THIS UNIVERSE YET?
The perhaps obvious but incorrect reason is the books may be excellent but only a niche part of the playerbase has read them. So you either have to loosen things up thematically to allow non-readers to have a nicer experience, but perhaps alienate the hardcore players, or you adhere closely and lose most of your potential players.
But really the reason is we all have books we love and would really want to see made into a MU* we play, but they are different books for each of us. So it's hard to find a set of staff to begin with whose top preference is the same. It's much easier to pick a genre than a novel series.
@Autumn said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Original themes often aren't well-presented, and that can make it difficult to get and retain players. Say what you like about George R. R. Martin, but he's a much more entertaining writer than the average person who decides they want to start a game and make up their own setting for it.
Yeah, and for me it's also a matter of not wanting to pollute my mindscape of beloved works of literature with the usual MU* idiocy. It's why I haven't and would never play a Lord of the Rings game. I don't need to deal with stupid homicidal sex-starved Elves fucking in Elrond Half-elven's bedroom on a drunken wager.
