@Bobotron If a system can't scale up it shouldn't be there, IMHO. Code can help but... if it leads to either burnout, delays or subpar responses (because eventually even the best staffers will need to pay less attention to each +job) there has to be some trimming.
@Ganymede said in Politics etc.:
@Lisse24 said in Politics etc.:
And when are you opening a game, hrm?
Shut up.
My system needs playtesting. I'm this close to getting the rule set ready for alpha. Then it falls to my trusty coders to do their work on their time.
I've heard this before.
Also, your system has no politics in it; only combat!
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
@Thenomain Sounds ideal.
War is the continuation of politics by other means.
@Thenomain said in Politics etc.:
Also, your system has no politics in it; only combat!
True. The mechanics there are more crunchy. The political part of it need not be so, for countless reasons.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
I've yet to see a game in which non-physical stats were somehow as needed as physical ones. It tends to go completely one way or the other.
If your system has mental/social stats aren't filled with fluff that's at best circumstantial or basically just XP sinks you'd already be ahead. If it was handy to use in actual on-grid RP without a huge cheat sheet it'd be great. 
@Arkandel said in Politics etc.:
I've yet to see a game in which non-physical stats were somehow as needed as physical ones. It tends to go completely one way or the other.
Sure. In this case, physical shit takes primacy. Mass Effect is a war story; the system I'm making is essentially a strategic war game.
If your system has mental/social stats aren't filled with fluff that's at best circumstantial or basically just XP sinks you'd already be ahead.
Funny you should mention that. I sort of mashed Mental + Social stuff together. Where you had 6 stats in WoD, for instance, you have 3 here: Mind; Guile; and Resolve.
Success on skills is simple. Compare the scores of your PC's statistic (Mind, for example) against a static difficulty (if it is a task that is based purely on the PC's skill) or the target PC's statistic (Resolve, for example). Apply modifiers. If the scores are equal, you roll 1d6; if your score is greater, you roll 2d6 and pick the best result; if your score is greater than 2x the target's, you roll 3d6 and pick the best; but if the target's score is greater, you roll 2d6 and the target picks the result; and if the target's score is 2x greater, you roll 3d6 and the target picks. (Yes, I borrowed liberally from Blood Bowl.)
Consult the following table to determine the result for each die:
Roll Result
1 Failure.
2 Failure.
3 Failure, unless roller is proficient OR non-roller is proficient, if contested.
4 Success, if the roller is proficient.
5 Success
6 Success
PCs start off proficient in at least 2 of 18 skills, depending on the species they pick.
As far as mental/social rolls go, success indicates a basic, non-complex success. For instance, a successful Subterfuge roll might mean passing your fake ID off as genuine, but it would not mean that you convince a C-Sec Agent to turn in his badge because Commander Bailey is really a shape-shifted Salarian.
One time me and a pal made a pair of sibling Nosferatu blood bankers from Israel. We had each other, and a couple of ghoul PCs played by third parties who were knew OOC. Our strategy was to wait until someone really needed blood bad, and then charge them ridiculous interest rates on it. When they couldn't pay, we'd demand favors from them by pain of "enforcing" the debt, which just meant beating them up and then PKing them. Since there was a group of us, we would rule-of-five them.
A few PCs ended up getting Diablerized, and we would brag about how they essentially consented to it in public, since owing us blood for a long time was not acceptable. However, we could always work something out if you can't pay. It was actually extremely effective, but it stopped working when the ST's stopped enforcing our rolls to track people down. We disbanded without getting banned.
@Ganymede
I did not end up playing there long mainly due to RL being chaotic at that time but I would add a number 6 to your list.
6. While politics were cutthroat on an IC level, on an OOC level the player base was probably the most welcoming, friendly and outgoing group of folks I have ever run into on a WoD game. They went out of their way to help newbies get involved and feel important, because influences were important I was recruited to help on a plot the first week I was on grid, and even received IC credit for what my char did, as a new player to the game that made me really feel like it mattered that I was around.
@ThatGuyThere said in Politics etc.:
While politics were cutthroat on an IC level, on an OOC level the player base was probably the most welcoming, friendly and outgoing group of folks I have ever run into on a WoD game. They went out of their way to help newbies get involved and feel important, because influences were important I was recruited to help on a plot the first week I was on grid, and even received IC credit for what my char did, as a new player to the game that made me really feel like it mattered that I was around.
That's because a good economy system, which the game had, made it more advantageous to have a lot of friends than to have a lot of enemies. If you wanted to get involved in the politics, you had to be friendly OOC; it was very easy to become a pariah.
At a minimum, you had to be involved politically. The system required it; the game enforced it. And that system generated an awful lot of RP because no one person could run or rule the place. It was literally impossible to do, based on the number of players and how it was set up. If you wanted to get far, you had to have allies; if you wanted allies, you had to get new players into the game.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede Pyramid Scheme - The Game.
@Admiral said in Politics etc.:
Pyramid Scheme - The Game.
Welcome to Real Life. You'll play it some day.
@Ganymede said in Politics etc.:
@ThatGuyThere said in Politics etc.:
While politics were cutthroat on an IC level, on an OOC level the player base was probably the most welcoming, friendly and outgoing group of folks I have ever run into on a WoD game. They went out of their way to help newbies get involved and feel important, because influences were important I was recruited to help on a plot the first week I was on grid, and even received IC credit for what my char did, as a new player to the game that made me really feel like it mattered that I was around.
That is really important and sometimes seems so much harder than it should be. Finding players who enjoy playing in ways where they challenge one another or compete IC but are friendly and inclusive OOC. Some of what @lordbelh mentioned about having things in place so that this Char against Char rp allows for ways to de-escalate and for multiple means of exploration and also where the system is robust enough Char v Char doesn't become just player OOC pride probably makes all the difference.
That's because a good economy system, which the game had, made it more advantageous to have a lot of friends than to have a lot of enemies. If you wanted to get involved in the politics, you had to be friendly OOC; it was very easy to become a pariah.
At a minimum, you had to be involved politically. The system required it; the game enforced it. And that system generated an awful lot of RP because no one person could run or rule the place. It was literally impossible to do, based on the number of players and how it was set up. If you wanted to get far, you had to have allies; if you wanted allies, you had to get new players into the game.
The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.
Thanks for all these great ideas. Just a philosophical exercise for me at this point, but one that I am enjoying.
@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:
The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.
I mean the system absolutely helps. But there's a... relationship between the MUSH, the mechanics and staff that helps shapes the culture, and there's nothing more important than that. It's why some games feel like they are going somewhere and others are deserted wastelands with sandbox pockets of activity behind locked doors.
It's also the hardest thing to change. You can fire staff, or if you're lucky to hire good people. You can change the rules, alter the code, tweak numbers... but changing culture is a bitch, there's no guaranteed way to do it, and it takes a long time even if you do end up taking the right measures.
What's far easier is keeping it consistent from the start, stomping on behaviors you don't approve and rewarding things you do.
@Arkandel said in Politics etc.:
@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:
The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.
I mean the system absolutely helps. But there's a... relationship between the MUSH, the mechanics and staff that helps shapes the culture, and there's nothing more important than that.
Policy and how things get done staff-side is as much a system of mechanics as any RPG mechanics are, and all of these things need to work hand in hand to foster the whole. Otherwise, you end up with policies that hobble game mechanics, or code that makes the policy impossible, etc. A good implementation considers all of these things as part of a whole, as interconnected systems that necessarily must work together to support one another.
I keep sayin' this and people call me bonkers for it, but, essentially: yes, this, a hundred times, this.
Oh fucking well.
@surreality A very common way things turn to shit is because staff don't want to get their hands dirty. It's done so much it's cliche.
"No, I know Bob has been toeing the line of acceptable behavior but it's not a big deal. I have more important things to do than that shit. I have plots to run, good players are creating characters, a ton of +jobs to answer, code to make, a wiki to fix".
Then six months later the game is a toxic shithole through these miniscule escalations of petty grievances and players being mean to each other. That's when you get staff turning into hardliners. The banhammer will fall.
Yeah dude, if half a year ago you had squinted your eyes at those starting incidents instead of letting them get out of hand you wouldn't have to nuke from orbit now.
@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:
The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.
Yeah, this is where I think most games fall on their head. They make their systems far too fiddly and opaque, and because of that, those systems will always favor the people who are online more often and like their minigames, rather than the RPer. (I'm looking at you, Arx's +tasks).
All you really need is a way to restrict actions (which is responsive to staff availability). The variations on hours/times has been brought up. I've advocated before for a much simpler system, one where each character gets 1 action per time period, which can be used offensively or defensively, or can be split up into two smaller 'support' actions.
This should be paired with a way to collect and call-in favors, and with limited resources providing a reason why characters/factions need to interact.
I try to look towards board games for ideas of how to handle mechanics in MU*s. Pen & paper RPGs is where our hobby was mainly birthed and draws the RP culture from, why not utilize the other side of the tabletop game hobby to inform our mechanics rather than trying to borrow from Crusader Kings, Civilization, etc. Our format seems much more suited for the simpler mechanics that board games have than the spreadsheets of computer strategy games.
I mentioned Republic of Rome in another thread as one game that has an interesting political premise. There is Twilight Struggle and it's mechanics for spreading and combating the spread of influence. Medici is a pretty simple and fun economic trading game. Pit is too. Pandemics, Dead of Winter, Forbidden Island, Shadows Over Camelot, etc. all demonstrate how to handle group management of limited actions and how to present a crisis needing organization with simple mechanics. A few of them also show how to keep a traitor element from detailing the game and instead snaking it more fun.
Now obviously just importing a game with no changes wouldn't work, but using these games as inspirations and references rather than trying to make Europa Universalis but with more roleplaying might be the better route to take.
@Bobotron If a system can't scale up it shouldn't be there, IMHO. Code can help but... if it leads to either burnout, delays or subpar responses (because eventually even the best staffers will need to pay less attention to each +job) there has to be some trimming.
