Eldritch - A World of Darkness MUX

surreality

Fun times. I should have gotten a free cigarette after that one.

Hell, woman. Have a clove. I remember hearing about that one -- and there's no doubting you earned it.

Bennie

It takes like three seconds or less to cut the BS I write in purely for my lulls and to read an actual point: Will abuses in the system be pre-defined with a rewrite of the system given, or will we have to wait six months after the game opens to see these clarifications? Will minor, arguably repetitious actions, that affect a minor number of people for 4 xp a week be allowed, or will they become about Staff hovering and having to resort to telling people no, repeatedly? And what happens when the threshold differs between Staff? What if one sort of minor submission is permissible to one Staffer, but not the other? An argument can be made that you're gearing up on multiple fronts for unappealing Staff-Player moments.

Nobody likes to read the files, see nothing wrong with the ideas they have in those files, only to do their thing, repeat it, and then get told 2 different responses by 2 different Staff. Or worse, to pit one Staff vs. the other over it. So maybe circling the system could be addressed before you open the game? Is there any chance? Or will we have to wait 6 months to see it addressed?

Eerie

Some of this is hard to answer in the abstract, like:

Will minor, arguably repetitious actions, that affect a minor number of people for 4 xp a week be allowed, or will they become about Staff hovering and having to resort to telling people no, repeatedly?

This could describe a lot of things. I think @Coin already intimated that, yes, staff would probably not approve the same things over and over again. If your aspiration was ‘brush my teeth’, despite you wanting to do that every day, it would not be a good fit for an aspiration, especially if you submitted it over and over. Aspirations should be a bit more significant than that, even if they don’t have to be OMG earth shattering in every case.

But I think that what you’re really asking is more along the lines of: If there’s a lot of confusion about what constitutes a good aspiration and people start getting mixed messages from different staffers, are we just going to let that go on till our six month review. Short answer: No. If it becomes a problem, we’ll address it! Either we’ll put together more specific guidelines for players and staffers to use or figure out something else that works. That help?

Thenomain

@Bennie said:

It takes like three seconds or less to cut the BS I write in purely for my lulls and to read an actual point:

It takes even less time to not muddle your point and even less time not complaining that someone lull'd on your lull, you poor boy.

(Some people's children, I swear.)

surreality

@Thenomain said:

@Bennie said:

It takes like three seconds or less to cut the BS I write in purely for my lulls and to read an actual point:

It takes even less time to not muddle your point and even less time not complaining that someone lull'd on your lull, you poor boy.

(Some people's children, I swear.)

He gets bonus points for missing the actual answers, though. I don't know what they're good for, exactly, but they must be good for something?

At least no one had the heart to point out he missed things like 'have a one night stand', 'indulge my addiction', and 'forget responsibility and enjoy myself' being listed as a short-term aspiration examples in the actual book. Something might have ruptured in there.

...oops.

Saulot

So will demon-blooded be allowed?

Coin

@Huzuruth
Not to the extent they are detailed in the book, no. We'll likely just allow it as flavor/fluff for Stigmatic characters, though we may do more with them. But if it's important to your character building decision process, especially mechanically, err on the side of "no".

Deleted

One thing that I thought HM did well was to open as Mortal-only before they rolled out the supernatural spheres.

I think you guys discussed something earlier in the thread about it, but do you guys have any plans for something like that? Or any kind of 'soft' open?

Sanguine

@Coin said:

In a few weeks, we open the doors for people to log into the game and start networking.

We soft-open for Mortals only (perhaps with minor templates of spheres, perhaps not) on the tentative date of March 16th, code-allowing.

Looks like it. And as I understand it, they're going to give the people to submit apps while they wait so they're approval ready when the super spheres launch. And the ability to backscene may be available as well.

Coin

@Admiral said:

One thing that I thought HM did well was to open as Mortal-only before they rolled out the supernatural spheres.

I think you guys discussed something earlier in the thread about it, but do you guys have any plans for something like that? Or any kind of 'soft' open?

This is essentially what we're doing.

Saulot

Not sure if this is the best place to put this. Anyone else playing Demon, or anything else really, that'd like to talk about hooks and the like?

Coin

@Huzuruth, in a week or two we're ging to open log-ins at the game proper for networking between players, etc. Not because you can't post here; just letting you know that that will be happening.

Creepy

I did a read-though of the wiki content thus far, including the news files. This looks like it will be an excellent and well thought out setting, pending Werewolf additions once the new core is released. I have my fingers crossed that they (they being Onyx, not you folks) don't wreck WtF overly much.

The neighborhood system is very interesting. Given the soft opening (or whatever else you'd like to call it) and initial player disorganization, do you intend to uphold the "3 players to claim a neighborhood" or will you allow smaller units to pitch ideas for neighborhoods without owning them?

I noticed in a few of the grid-square descriptions, notably MW1 and MW2, that there is a Pan-Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern component. That's a pretty huge and diverse ethnic and religious spread. Would my assumption that you intend the neighborhood system to allow for some narrow focus ethnic communities (Chinatown, Little Albania, etc.) be correct or did you want those areas to be a general ethnic mishmash?

"The Mob" seems to be a general clumping of organized crime that isn't Triad or Mexican Cartel. Do you intend to flesh out some sort of overall, loose structure that portrays how all the various mobs (Russian, Irish, Amish, Albanian, etc.) work together under this framework? Will players take a general Status-Mob merit or will they focus on their Status-Amish Mafia specification?

How involved in the God-Machine happenings will players from the non-Demon spheres be? How rare will knowledge of its existence be for the general supernatural population?

Great start guys. Looking forward to playing there.

Arkandel

When it comes to IC neighbourhoods (and I'm not talking about the grid size here), it's probably better to plan for a small playerbase and expand as needed than have to deal with swaths of domains being vacant.

Not only is it better overall to see them fleshed out than spread thin but the artificial scarcity of such resources will increase real estate value. After all if there is a ton of it per PC then it'll be taken for granted; they can, after all, get as much as they want. If it gets claustrophobic it might be used to generate RP, which would probably be a good thing.

Coin

@Creepy said:

The neighborhood system is very interesting. Given the soft opening (or whatever else you'd like to call it) and initial player disorganization, do you intend to uphold the "3 players to claim a neighborhood" or will you allow smaller units to pitch ideas for neighborhoods without owning them?

We'll be receptive to ideas for Neighborhoods, but we will likely be leaving the creation of Neighborhoods to 3+ groups. Neighborhoods aren't meant to represent the entirety of an area as a whole, but rather "powerful, representative areas of a larger area", that is to say, even if there are three Neighborhoods in a disrict, that doesn't mean that that's the extent to which the area exists. Locations, in general, are basically like Neighborhoods, but aren't claimed by players.

In short: sure, you can pitch locations within grid squares. Anyone can ask "can there be this sort of area here", really.

Of note: there will be a limit regarding how many Neighborhoods can exist in each area, and we'll probably be sticking to that pretty strongly.

I noticed in a few of the grid-square descriptions, notably MW1 and MW2, that there is a Pan-Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern component. That's a pretty huge and diverse ethnic and religious spread. Would my assumption that you intend the neighborhood system to allow for some narrow focus ethnic communities (Chinatown, Little Albania, etc.) be correct or did you want those areas to be a general ethnic mishmash?

There's the possibility that there could be a narrower focus in places, but we actually were aiming more for a mish-mash. This isn't to say that if someone manages to build a Neighborhood there, they can't build it around a narrower focus, but since one of the themes of the overall game is pushing diverse and different groups together (represented player-level by encouraging different splats to interact), having neighborhoods be a little less delimited is definitely a conscious choice not only on our part design-wise, but also probably in world, as the design of the people running the city in the game, forging its history and shape in a way that fits them (which is why you also see a very clear top-mentality in how Eldritch's classes are divided, to an almost archetypical degree).

"The Mob" seems to be a general clumping of organized crime that isn't Triad or Mexican Cartel. Do you intend to flesh out some sort of overall, loose structure that portrays how all the various mobs (Russian, Irish, Amish, Albanian, etc.) work together under this framework? Will players take a general Status-Mob merit or will they focus on their Status-Amish Mafia specification?

Here, we see the same concept as above represented again. Remember that "The Mob" is no more a clumping together as "The Triads" or "The Cartels" are. All three are unsteady alliances between different, smaller organizations (The Triads have the Yakuza, for example, while the Cartels are as much Colombian and they are Mexican as they are others). Again, this is sort of a theme in Eldritch: people come together and put aside differences while allowing said differences to rot them from the inside.

Sure, you can make your own Russian Mafias within the Mob. That works fine; you can make a Yakuza gang inside the Triad, and a bunch of Calaveras who work for the Cartels. The idea behind the Big Three Syndicates is that everyone needs friends, even if they don't trust them, and that big fish bring smaller fish under them. The leaders of these Syndicates are strong powerbrokers, undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean there aren't subdivisions.

The Status Merit is probably going to just remain either Syndicate-specific, or just in general Organized Crime-specific. Being a high-powered member of one still demands respect in the others, etc.

This was definitely inspired by our weirdly twisted version of "Come Together" theme, but I confess to probably also being influenced by how Gotham has structured their criminal families in the city.

How involved in the God-Machine happenings will players from the non-Demon spheres be? How rare will knowledge of its existence be for the general supernatural population?

People will be able to involve themselves in the God-Machine happenings pretty easily--they just need to partake of the plot hooks and events and stuff. It's unlikely we'll encourage Vampire or Werewolf characters who begin the game having a connection to or knowledge of the God-Machine, but that's honestly more a product of our wanting people to interact, and learning about something like that is a great excuse.

Great start guys. Looking forward to playing there.

Thanks!

Glitch

@Arkandel I'm actually going to disagree that this always has to be the case. If they want to limit play within their grid to certain areas to encourage that resource competition, I could see it, but just starting small and adding on is not great in my opinion. I played on a game where you could just basically make up an area and history of somewhere you were from and it got tacked on to the game. It ended up with a haphazard mess.

I think having a good sense of location is important, so having the broad strokes already present is my personal ideal. You can always fill in detail later.

Coin

@Glitch, this is essentially what we're doing. While we are letting people "create areas", we're also making sure those areas make sense within the scope of the larger area they're in. I doubt that Eldritch itself will ever get bigger on a size-level; it'll develop within itself, grow in complexity and detail rather than size.

But in short, I agree.

Creepy

I can see your points and understand where you're coming from. I think the main translation issue is a matter of visually wrapping one's head around the size and scope of the grid, in comparison to a real life representation.

Based on the wiki data present, the city has a Total Metro Land Area of 73.5 sq. mi with a Metro Population of 732,521.

That's double the land area of Manhattan (33.77 sq miles, not counting the boroughs) with a little less than half its population (1.6 million). So the scale of Eldritch, physically, isn't huge but I wonder if the available space would really equate to such a compact demographic. I suppose it does, depending on the historical development as various ethnic groups arrived and pretty much "found space where they could".

BTW, the setting places Detroit's population into Savannah's footprint. I think its a good mix to allow for a large diversity without a sprawling grid. Makes sense with your focus on claiming turf and struggling to keep it. Thought there's something to be said for having a large grid. Plenty of discussions regarding that topic to be had outside this thread though.

Arkandel

@Glitch said:

@Arkandel I'm actually going to disagree that this always has to be the case. If they want to limit play within their grid to certain areas to encourage that resource competition, I could see it, but just starting small and adding on is not great in my opinion. I played on a game where you could just basically make up an area and history of somewhere you were from and it got tacked on to the game. It ended up with a haphazard mess.

I think having a good sense of location is important, so having the broad strokes already present is my personal ideal. You can always fill in detail later.

It's not merely a matter of competition, although in my opinion several spheres absolutely depend on it or perfectly thematic elements are underused. But let's say that's not a goal for this particular game.

Even then it's not a good idea to fill in the blanks later because the devaluation of real estate means people aren't possessive of it. They have no reason to be. Ideally you want your players to feel their block is entrusted to their group, that it's special and important. But to encourage them to do so requires a paradigm shift from every other game ran so far where domain is just a very theoretical thing - it's in your coterie's or Covenant's wiki page perhaps, and it could come up in RP - maybe - but overall it doesn't have a personality, or write-ups, or really matters except in specific circumstances.

If there's more than enough domain to go around from the get go that culture will not emerge. If most of those swaths of land remain with the generic labels on them they'll remain generic, on account of no one being there that's exactly the opposite of what you want to see, which is creativity and theme carried by social momentum between players.

Another issue that might come up is how fast changes can happen. For instance @Coin is in charge of a block with his vampire LS PC, and it gets filled with spiritual centres, religious bookstores, it panders to academic types, etc. At some point he stops playing and freezes, so @Glitch rolls a Carthian anarchist in the same block. Does he get to change its writeup overnight? Is it important to micromanage such things or is it better to just let players play? What happens when @Coin thaws a couple of weeks later and has a hissing fit (we all know how he is, drama queen)?

The idea of neighborhoods being given the broad strokes by staff and have players fill in the details is good, I like that.

Coin

@Arkandel, your mom was a drama queen last night, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.