Something similar to WoD, but not quite
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Persona MUX would also be pretty sweet, with the whole Normal World + World With Monsters thing, especially if it were based around Persona 3.
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@somasatori
I don't know how active or anything it is, but there IS a Persona MUSH ( done by some of the people from the M3 et al. circuit): http://www.mysterymeep.net/mw/index.php?title=Main_PageNevermind, it's dead.
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Don't Rest Your Head has a theme pretty much like that. The normal world, and Mad City.
I sort of remember someone on here talking about a similar idea they had going, set in Chicago maybe?
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@Bobotron said in Something similar to WoD, but not quite:
@somasatori
I don't know how active or anything it is, but there IS a Persona MUSH ( done by some of the people from the M3 et al. circuit): http://www.mysterymeep.net/mw/index.php?title=Main_PageNevermind, it's dead.
Well! At least you tried. Thank you!
@Ide
I love DRYH. It'd be interesting to see a game like that. Speaking of small indie games (though a game that's not similar to WoD at all) a Dogs In The Vineyard game would also be pretty cool. -
I retract any suggestion of Dark Spires. Magdalen (head staffer) in her infinite wisdom just decided to remove a wizard's ability to advance magically. At all.
Can't get more potion slots. Can't get new enchanted items. Can't improve your enchanted items. Can't learn the two elements you can't start with, at all.
Ever.
It's the SILLIEST knee jerk I've seen in a long long time.
Her reasoning? There are PC's who are more powerful than some of the NPC's /AS THE NPC'S WERE WRITTEN IN THE SOURCE MATERIAL/.
Instead of limiting the problem children, or capping advancement at a reasonable level, now Wizards are just fucked. Any magic user is just fucked.
If someone tells me how to spoiler this I will edit and fix:
=============================== Announcements ================================
Message: 1/99 Posted Author
Refinement Sun May 01 MagdalenFor a while now, Dark Spires has been struggling with an increasing imbalance of power levels on the grid. In part, this is due to the fact that the site has been up for over 2 years and we have PCs that have been an active part of our community for that entire time. As we do not intend to reset our environment, create alternate locations for higher power levels, nor do we intend to place an XP cap on our players, Staff has had to come up with a way to keep our balance functional.
A huge cause of the imbalance on grid has been determined to be the Refinement power. As it stands, we have people walking the grid that can, in one shot, kill the Merlin, easily cripple the Gatekeeper, and even take down the Blackstaff. Obviously, this isn't a viable situation.
Staff has been discussing a solution to the balance problem for over a month now and the only resolution to this issue that we can see is to remove the Refinement power entirely. We know this will have massive repercussions for our Wizards and other magic users but it is an essential move to maintain the balance of power and PCs on grid.
Going forward, we will be opening jobs for each person to reformat their characters. This will require adjusting any rotes/foci/enchanted items as necessary.
In addition, due to the lack of cohesion between the delineated PC templates, we will no longer be allowing the Powers From Magic option.
Magdalen
TL;DR
Dark Spires is now the world of Scions and Faithful/Artifact Users. All hail the children of the gods.
Should be called British Rick Riordan World now.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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Seriously? I have no idea who or what the Blackstaff is, but what have they been doing the last two years? Playing cribbage?
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@Lithium said in Something similar to WoD, but not quite:
I retract any suggestion of Dark Spires. Magdalen (head staffer) in her infinite wisdom just decided to remove a wizard's ability to advance magically. At all.
Can't get more potion slots. Can't get new enchanted items. Can't improve your enchanted items. Can't learn the two elements you can't start with, at all.
Ever.
It's the SILLIEST knee jerk I've seen in a long long time.
Her reasoning? There are PC's who are more powerful than some of the NPC's /AS THE NPC'S WERE WRITTEN IN THE SOURCE MATERIAL/.
Instead of limiting the problem children, or capping advancement at a reasonable level, now Wizards are just fucked. Any magic user is just fucked.
If someone tells me how to spoiler this I will edit and fix:
=============================== Announcements ================================
Message: 1/99 Posted Author
Refinement Sun May 01 MagdalenFor a while now, Dark Spires has been struggling with an increasing imbalance of power levels on the grid. In part, this is due to the fact that the site has been up for over 2 years and we have PCs that have been an active part of our community for that entire time. As we do not intend to reset our environment, create alternate locations for higher power levels, nor do we intend to place an XP cap on our players, Staff has had to come up with a way to keep our balance functional.
A huge cause of the imbalance on grid has been determined to be the Refinement power. As it stands, we have people walking the grid that can, in one shot, kill the Merlin, easily cripple the Gatekeeper, and even take down the Blackstaff. Obviously, this isn't a viable situation.
Staff has been discussing a solution to the balance problem for over a month now and the only resolution to this issue that we can see is to remove the Refinement power entirely. We know this will have massive repercussions for our Wizards and other magic users but it is an essential move to maintain the balance of power and PCs on grid.
Going forward, we will be opening jobs for each person to reformat their characters. This will require adjusting any rotes/foci/enchanted items as necessary.
In addition, due to the lack of cohesion between the delineated PC templates, we will no longer be allowing the Powers From Magic option.
Magdalen
TL;DR
Dark Spires is now the world of Scions and Faithful/Artifact Users. All hail the children of the gods.
Should be called British Rick Riordan World now.
Wow... sounds like most people's reactions to Mage from nWoD >.>
I love the Dresden verse but I could see where that could get out of hand. More so with how they handle "XP" over there. Seems like a cap would have been one of the best options. Though... If we're talking the source material, a wizard could get level/power capped on the whole magic side of the house and then chose to be one of the fae Knights for a boost right? >.>
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I'd be all over an urban fantasy MU that isn't WOD in a hot minute. Just saying.
(Preferably with original-ish theme, but beggars can't be choosers or something)
eta: @Bennie
for Stargate tie in. >> -
A cap would make much more sense than this
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I agree, a cap was the way to go, not just saying you can never advance, ever.
That's just stupid. Essentially all wizards are stuck at chargen level magic powers for all time. No new enchanted items, no new potion slots, no new foci, no new anything other than skills and stunts.
So a wizard will eventually buy lore, discipline, conviction to 6 and then.... that's it. Forever and ever. You just become better at human stunts. Have fun.
Ugh I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea. Power creep is a thing, but there are much much much better ways to handle it than this.
Now scions, changelings, and shapeshifters are going to pwn everyone and everything.
The rules for magic in Dresden were already fairly restrictive just due to stress requirements for /using/ magic at all.
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The Deal With Dark Spires:
It's been around for a long time (3+ years-ish) and like games who've been around for a long time its been coasting around on whatever former reputation it had and that at some point maybe, possibly Jim Butcher logged in and looked around (or someone who was impersonating Jim Butcher because maybe, who knows, on the internet you can claim to be anyone lol).
My first contact with the game was a while back when a player was sexually harassing several female players OOC. When staff was confronted by the overwhelming evidence to this fact, staff wrung its hands, quibbled, victim blamed, and refused to address for it a long time because the player doing the harassing claimed to have some kind of head injury and that any and all of his bad behavior couldn't be separated out from having a literally broken brain. So, y'know, sorry players who are being made to feel like shit by this player but he says he has a brain boo boo so I guess we're just gonna let him keep on doing this ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Eventually he either was asked to leave or left of his own volition as a sort of split the baby resolution (I don't remember anymore) to the escalating drama but he's back now and I'm told back to his old tricks. I left shortly thereafter because I was just kinda bored with the game and a lot of other players were leaving because of this and other reasons and it seemed like at the time, the game was going through its last gasps. I guess it was able to pull up out of its stall but I don't think the game can be considered 'improved'.
This is a problem for a couple reasons but included in this is the current game is full of social justice warriors in the OOC room that like to sit around and make lists of all the terrible things happening to every marginalized group in the world but refuse to acknowledge that someone who has a documented problem has been allowed back in. That, and even though there's a fixation with being the type of game culture that doesn't stand for racism -- they sure do approve enough kind of racist concepts into the game as my last tour of the wiki seems to suggest.
My point is: It's the kind of feel good "social activism" that doesn't require them to really address any of the salient problems that actually exist in the game or within its players. Sorta like being overly concerned with your neighbor's lawn decorations from inside your burning house.
Magic users are way overpowered last time I checked but the fixes to these problems are often over reactions or under reactions or this doesn't make sense reactions. The headstaffer Magdalen isn't around a lot these days I guess but when they are, it's mostly to declare weird fiats that basically over correct known problems (like above) and create a new kind of suck or new fiats that create new balance issues. The wheel: they like to re-invent it.
Blackstaff has been a staff member for kind of a while I think but has never, I'm told, interacted with the game population. It's not even clear what they do if they do anything at all as a staff member but staffing generally implies that you interact with the game you staff on but I guess that's not a... a thing?
There is plot, which is good but plot is basically you and 29 other PCs all packed into a plot scene. 29 is an embellishment but seriously not that much of an embellishment. The last time I visited in consideration of maybe returning to the game there was some kind of plot scene happening. There were by my count 14 PCs in the scene and one staff member. Why? I have no idea why but I can't think of any good reason to ever run a 14 person plot scene including combat, unless you have 12 hours at a go to do nothing else with and you're unemployed because this is apparently a regular feature of all plot on the game lately. Early vanilla WOW dungeon crawls take less time than these plot scenes. So basically this is plot if you're unemployed and snorting Adderall; otherwise there is no plot you can participate in with any sort of consistency unless you enjoy scenes that include you and 17 of your closest IC friends.
So yeah, TL;DR:
Dark spires was about as good as any urban fantasy game can be for the genre and the medium (warts and all) but that came and went and now it's just a checked out staff, terribly run plot, and notably nightmare players mixed in with a few people who just haven't gotten exhausted of all this bullshit and left shitshow.
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@Ide said in Something similar to WoD, but not quite:
Seriously? I have no idea who or what the Blackstaff is, but what have they been doing the last two years? Playing cribbage?
Not sure of the exact context of Blackstaff in the announcement, but if it's the Blackstaff from the Dresden Files books, basically it means that there's PC Wizards that are running around able to smash in the face of arguably the strongest mortal wizard in the Dresden Files series. Blackstaff is a title given to a secret assassin type position for the council of wizards, and is usually given to someone excellent with the smashy magic.
I'm actually super disappointed in that change. I was looking at Dark Spires a while back, and seeing such a drastic change definitely puts me off ever even considering trying the game again. I love the Dresden Files, but I don't think it translates super well to a MU with a half decent population size, given the scale of power in that setting. Not unless you place hard caps, or have PCs dying regularly.
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@GangOfDolls said in Something similar to WoD, but not quite:
The Deal With Dark Spires:
It's been around for a long time (3+ years-ish) and like games who've been around for a long time its been coasting around on whatever former reputation it had and that at some point maybe, possibly Jim Butcher logged in and looked around (or someone who was impersonating Jim Butcher because maybe, who knows, on the internet you can claim to be anyone lol).
My first contact with the game was a while back when a player was sexually harassing several female players OOC. When staff was confronted by the overwhelming evidence to this fact, staff wrung its hands, quibbled, victim blamed, and refused to address for it a long time because the player doing the harassing claimed to have some kind of head injury and that any and all of his bad behavior couldn't be separated out from having a literally broken brain. So, y'know, sorry players who are being made to feel like shit by this player but he says he has a brain boo boo so I guess we're just gonna let him keep on doing this ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Eventually he either was asked to leave or left of his own volition as a sort of split the baby resolution (I don't remember anymore) to the escalating drama but he's back now and I'm told back to his old tricks. I left shortly thereafter because I was just kinda bored with the game and a lot of other players were leaving because of this and other reasons and it seemed like at the time, the game was going through its last gasps. I guess it was able to pull up out of its stall but I don't think the game can be considered 'improved'.
This is a problem for a couple reasons but included in this is the current game is full of social justice warriors in the OOC room that like to sit around and make lists of all the terrible things happening to every marginalized group in the world but refuse to acknowledge that someone who has a documented problem has been allowed back in. That, and even though there's a fixation with being the type of game culture that doesn't stand for racism -- they sure do approve enough kind of racist concepts into the game as my last tour of the wiki seems to suggest.
My point is: It's the kind of feel good "social activism" that doesn't require them to really address any of the salient problems that actually exist in the game or within its players. Sorta like being overly concerned with your neighbor's lawn decorations from inside your burning house.
Magic users are way overpowered last time I checked but the fixes to these problems are often over reactions or under reactions or this doesn't make sense reactions. The headstaffer Magdalen isn't around a lot these days I guess but when they are, it's mostly to declare weird fiats that basically over correct known problems (like above) and create a new kind of suck or new fiats that create new balance issues. The wheel: they like to re-invent it.
Blackstaff has been a staff member for kind of a while I think but has never, I'm told, interacted with the game population. It's not even clear what they do if they do anything at all as a staff member but staffing generally implies that you interact with the game you staff on but I guess that's not a... a thing?
There is plot, which is good but plot is basically you and 29 other PCs all packed into a plot scene. 29 is an embellishment but seriously not that much of an embellishment. The last time I visited in consideration of maybe returning to the game there was some kind of plot scene happening. There were by my count 14 PCs in the scene and one staff member. Why? I have no idea why but I can't think of any good reason to ever run a 14 person plot scene including combat, unless you have 12 hours at a go to do nothing else with and you're unemployed because this is apparently a regular feature of all plot on the game lately. Early vanilla WOW dungeon crawls take less time than these plot scenes. So basically this is plot if you're unemployed and snorting Adderall; otherwise there is no plot you can participate in with any sort of consistency unless you enjoy scenes that include you and 17 of your closest IC friends.
So yeah, TL;DR:
Dark spires was about as good as any urban fantasy game can be for the genre and the medium (warts and all) but that came and went and now it's just a checked out staff, terribly run plot, and notably nightmare players mixed in with a few people who just haven't gotten exhausted of all this bullshit and left shitshow.
This is my problem with most games. People sit around and talk about shit that doesn't matter or pisses everyone off and no one plays... I want to log into a mu* and play, am I not the normal "player"?
Then when it's all over and the rest of you are ready for Dead Animal Pickup, I'm gonna go balls deep into Dahl. But only because she asked me to. Sweet-like. - Riddick (2013)
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@ThatOneDude Eh I call bullshit to an extent. I sit around in the OOC room off and on and I don't see it being full of SJW's but I don't hang out in the OOC room /that/ much. I tend to go IC and start RP up.
As for a Mr. Creepy... I don't know about sexually harassing people. I've not felt sexually harassed but I /have/ gotten Creepster vibes in the past from a couple individuals so I distance myself from those individuals.
The only drama I've had there was due to a former staffer's SO accusing me of stuff I didn't do but I got that taken care of.
My only complaint with the game, as it stands now, is the knee jerk rulings that absolutely nerf Wizards. Even starting level Scions and ShapeShifters will /eat/ most wizards for breakfast because wizards will do practically the same damage as a scion/shifter, but the scion/shifter won't take any stress doing so.
