@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
- A GMing system for players creating PRPs, that would temporarily grant GM, staff like powers and code support.
- Full social combat systems.
Could you give some more details on those two items please? No need to go into the coded parts if they're just not fully fleshed out or designed yet, but I'm curious about your policies regarding them - i.e. how they'll be handled once the systems are in place.
If you can include an example that'd be great.
Lemme talk a bit about #4, since PRPs in code heavy games are kind of tricky, in that you run into issues with concrete elements that need GM support that would normally be handwaved in MUSHes, and really needs to have PRP runners have code to keep things immersive and exactly what you'd expect.
Like a PRP in a normal MUSH, while it varies a lot we know the general idea- a player gives staff a heads up for approval or not, depending on the game, it's checked for consistency, then everything falls upon the player running the plot and depending on how it resolves, sheets are updated and so on. There's not really hard code in so much, since everyone ultimately has the tools to do what they need.
But for a game like Arx, when there's automated combat, NPCs are attackable objects, currency and items are in game objects, there's three issues at play I think.
First, there's total handwaving, where players are able to @emit and do whatever they want, but they don't have the ability to create objects that would be consistent with the story- finding a dragon's horde can't happen unless they'd get staff to swing by and create the actual money, items, whatever to actually demonstrate that, which leaves players in this unfortunate position of @emiting and getting people to play along, but unable to create any kind of consequences that aren't handwaved unless they have the code support to go along with that and enforce consequences. That's just a big part of the whole MUSH/RPI type divide of consequences (good or bad) being kept by code rather than by hand. So until there's code support, or staff wanting to sit in and create objects/update things accordingly for a plot, it is stuck in this handwave-y state. That's where it currently would be until I get code support.
So then there's full coded support for players, that would in effect temporarily turn them into staff, and give them access to the coded abilities they'd need to make the RP consequential in the sense of demonstrable, lasting change at a glance to outsiders that aren't involved in the plot. The tricky part there is doing it in a way that doesn't have abuse cases, where if you are trusting players to act as staff even for just a single plot, what kind of oversight is involved. My feeling there is just an increasing degree of leeway granted to GMs based on feedback from players. For example, unless staff wants to risk messy retcons and constant oversight, probably shouldn't give a new guy the ability to shatter the grid and get carried away on his first try. Or similarly, the ability to bankrupt a great house or give something worth millions or arbitrarily kill players or so on. So this would be inherent limitations on the commands a player acting as a GM would have access to, and then just gradually removing the limitations as a GM goes.
And then there's the whole, 'well, how do we keep stories consistent and accessible and avoid a sandbox feel where everything happens in isolation and has no impact on other people?' My feeling there is something very akin to version control as a tool to help GMs figure out what plot elements are currently in play and being changed, to prevent any GMs contradicting one another and making those weird continuity breaks that happen in some games, particularly larger ones. For example, a player in house Grayson wants to run a tinyplot about Iron Guard elements that have gone rogue and are working with Abandoned to raid pilgrims traveling to Arx, and have been murdering Knights of Solace trying to escort the pilgrims. This would highlight different plot elements as a searchable index so anyone making a plot would know story is happening there- Grayson, Iron Guard, Abandoned, Pilgrims, Knights of Solace. Probably with a synopsis of each plot searchable in a database, then automatic sorting of different plot elements, so later if some dude is doing a story about Iron Guards purging disloyal elements, they'd see that previous plot highlighted and pop up and let them know what happened there, so they wouldn't trip over their feet and make anything contradictory. This also would let staff very quickly review proposed PRPs and see, 'this isn't possible because X happened' or 'This fits neatly along with Y, and will create potential story crossovers'. That kinda thing. While this sounds complicated, I think this would actually be much much easier to implement than the previous thing of giving players carefully controlled code, and probably would not be so bad, and it would come down to implementation being clear and easy to use, and not something that felt like an administrative pain in the ass.
Social combat I'll post more about later, there's a lot of debate about that, but the one thing I can say I'd never ever do is put in a system that made someone feel like they were obligated to RP with a creeper. That way leads to horror.