What do you WANT to play most?
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I'm still desperate for a decent Star Trek game. Doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking, just... decent.
He/Him
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@Chime said in What do you WANT to play most?:
We don't need more song of ice&fire clones.
When I say dark fantasy, I'm saying as grimdark as Bill Nighy and Nick Cave drinking motor oil atop a pile of bones while listening to the audiobook version of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
I'm thinking more akin to the middle ages scenes from Underworld, where there is the darkest, blackest, foulest magic out there in the night. Where piles of stripped bones line the entrance to the unsurvivable forest. Where the Midnight Queen awakens for the first time in a thousand years and marches with her army of the undead, adding to her ranks with every mortal they kill.Or some shit like that. I dunno.
Public Service Announcement: I would rather stab myself in the eyes than play another Lords and Ladies game where I'm all: "Hi! I'm Lord McImportant Pants! Hang out with me while I polish the McImportant armor with McImportant polish to show my McImportant Squire the importance of being an important McImportant! Cheer for me at tourney #23. I'm banging my sister but we don't log it so shhhhhhhh." That shit is boring as hell and for the most part, it's all predetermined outcomes by characters apped in to be important people whom you can't Red Wedding without their permission.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Tinuviel said in What do you WANT to play most?:
I'm still desperate for a decent Star Trek game. Doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking, just... decent.
What constitutes decent? Do you need a space system? Do you need RP by report? Hell, do you even need a game system?
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Is my understanding incorrect that many Star Trek games are afflicted by the same issue as Star Wars ones? I.e. the playerbase is split up between a zillion planets and space stations?
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@Arkandel That has been the case on some kinds of Star Trek games. Others staff just burn out trying to run things, the game is set in a timescale where promotions and advancement just don't happen, it becomes akin to RPing through jobs... and various other things.
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@WTFE No, no, and maybe. Though I did like that one place that used (I think) the FASA Star Trek system, a system itself probably isn't required depending on how the game is organised.
As a person that worked, extensively, with ASpace in the early 2000s... fuck space systems.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel I wish I could upvote that twice.
I'd be down for some Trek.
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WNOHGB (Where No One Has Gone Before), early '00s. It did have a playerbase spread out all over, but it was also big enough to manage it. Really rich space system, mercantile system, etc.. It was MOO, so I'm guessing fewer folks here knew it.
Loved that place (up until my ship was stolen, but yaknow).
Anyway, I think a Trek game now would have to focus on a single place. Probably a space station. And you'd need to allow for advancement for people in Fleet. The whole 'you must complete X number of projects and submit X number of logs each month' style of promotion may have worked when we were all in high school still, but it just doesn't anymore. Let people have their fun. Sure you don't want everyone being a Major, but ffs you can have more than three LTs.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@Auspice said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Anyway, I think a Trek game now would have to focus on a single place
...Like a single ship?
WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA
Before anyone jumps on my ass about reinventing the wheel or suggesting something that Star Trek has never done, I just want to say that I love you all dearly and please take it easy on me.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost That has been done before...
He/Him
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@Tinuviel On the tin it says where no man has gone before, not what no man has done before.
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@Tinuviel said in What do you WANT to play most?:
@Ghost That has been done before...
I want to play a Vulcan educator who has to teach sex-ed to a bunch of Ferengi children.
Has this been done before? Because I kind of feel like it needs to happen.
Edit:
"We will now discuss what the Ferengi refer to as oo-mox, which is spelled Oh-Oh-"
OH OH DONT STOP.The class erupts in laughter. The Vulcan sighs.
EDIT2:
"I believe there is a human phrase made popular in 20th century North America that comes to mind. I believe it is said," Slight heard turn. Raised eyebrow. "Jesus fucking Christ?"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?:
"We will now discuss what the Ferengi refer to as oo-mox, which is spelled Oh-Oh-"
OH OH DONT STOP.The class erupts in laughter. The Vulcan sighs.
Reminded me of: http://beka-tiddalik.tumblr.com/post/150425828285/roachpatrol-deadcatwithaflamethrower
Quote:
during orientation at a human college, vulcans are presented with a list of swear words.“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”
“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”
there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.
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@surreality said in What do you WANT to play most?:
@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.
Of course it's not. It's not an expectation I have, either! Original themes have some advantages. Use of existing media for themes also has some advantages, and "better-written and more engaging material than an original theme is likely to have" is one of them.
It's not that either is "better" in the abstract. It's just one of those things to be aware of when you're settling on a theme for a game.
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.
The point is not to expect them to be the same. The point is to be aware of the ways in which they're different, and take advantage of those differences to make the game you build around a theme better.
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I had a Vulcan whose name was T'kela. At Academy, her friends called her Tequila, complete with "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three T'kela, Floor" jokes when she'd drop someone for whatever reason. She never got the joke.
(I mean, as long as we're sharing ST game pun stories...)
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
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@Autumn said in What do you WANT to play most?:
Use of existing media for themes also has some advantages, and "better-written and more engaging material than an original theme is likely to have" is one of them.
I think the biggest thing that 'known themes' have going for them as settings is that all of the players have a similar (if not exactly the same) view on theme. The theme doesn't "belong to" a group of players (usually Staff) and everyone else is learning it for the first time.
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@Seraphim73 That's another big one, certainly. Although I have sometimes been surprised by just how differently some people can view the same theme.
Some of this is probably a result of variation in the source material, though. e.g., the Amber books with Corwin as protagonist have a different feel from the books with Merlin as protagonist; so naturally people who really didn't like the second series are going to have different ideas about what's "in theme" versus people who preferred it to the first.
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@Autumn said in What do you WANT to play most?:
@surreality said in What do you WANT to play most?:
@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.
Of course it's not. It's not an expectation I have, either! Original themes have some advantages. Use of existing media for themes also has some advantages, and "better-written and more engaging material than an original theme is likely to have" is one of them.
It's not that either is "better" in the abstract. It's just one of those things to be aware of when you're settling on a theme for a game.
I think this is part of the issue; it's a combination of both of these (paragraphs). My actual advice on this is actually pretty harsh but is something I think holds quite true.
If first you decide you want a game and have to decide what you're going to do? Use something that already exists. Don't try original theme/system unless the idea is 'big' enough in your head that it simply will not leave your poor brain alone long enough to not annoy the heck out of you at least a bit with how often new ideas and directions to go pop into your head/drag you out of bed/blindside you in the middle of dinner with the urge to write something down.
Which is essentially to say, 'this is the level of attention that went into those worlds, you're not going to get away with much less than that just because it's a different medium/expression'.
There's stuff that can be crowdsourced for it, but I think without a really solid foundation to build from, and a solid understanding of how your pet reality works, things become disjointed and glommed together very quickly. "That sounds cool!" is only one part of the process; 'how does it work' and 'does it even work in this reality at all' are more important and are things that a lot of folks (including some game designers) overlook or forget. You can only, "...uhm, MAGIC!!!" so many times, after all.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said in What do you WANT to play most?:
There's stuff that can be crowdsourced for it, but I think without a really solid foundation to build from, and a solid understanding of how your pet reality works, things become disjointed and glommed together very quickly.
Yeah. I don't think crowdsourcing works on any high-concept theme design. Too many cooks, it's easy for the result to be inconsistent or just uninspiring.
A handful of people who work really well together with a common vision, yes... but get seven people working on a 'gritty fantasy game' and it'll be harder to do than with three, not easier.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel Ideally, you can build a framework to consistently crowdsource ideas and additions not just at the start, but throughout the progress of the game.
That framework is just one hell of a lot of work, since it not only includes mechanisms for doing it functionally, but clear and understandable examples and guidelines for doing so. None of those things are at all easy to construct effectively in a way that doesn't invite the 'too divergent a notion of what is/isn't possible or is thematic' problem in for tea and crumpets on the regular.
