Original Sci-Fi?
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Does anyone here remember Atonement? Not Grungetown, fuck that noise. But the very beginning. Alpha.
Where's the original sci-fi? Is anyone working on anything like this? I miss being excited in a game, I miss change and danger and progress, things we are sorely lacking as we make ever more vampires and...yeah just more and more vampires. Someone please have mercy and/or originality out here.
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I don't remember Atonement, but I've had the desire to do this for ages. I lack resources (in code capability) and consistency (my RL eats me alive sometimes). I'm also not that into setting up any kind of dice-based system for it, and people who play in that genre seem to miss it when it isn't there. I think it's always a trade-off to be systemless/limited consent vs. having a system and letting it resolve consent issues, and I understand why people enjoy it, but I miss the unconstrained experiences I had on games where stats were not a thing.
I guess the tl;dr summary is that I just want to play and storytell on a game like that rather than being judge/jury/executioner. Selfishness, I guess. But there's definitely a spot in my mushclient's address book for a permissive, sprawling theme where staff gets to greenlight most player-run stuff instead of having to say 'no' constantly to defend an inflexible theme, and that spot is very, very empty right now.
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One of my poss. game ideas is original scifi.
I have a setting I develop and write in sometimes. It sort of lives in a world of 'if I ever write a pitch for a TV show' land.
The main thing holding me back is I'm really intimidated by the idea of fleshing out a wiki for it. I don't know why, but while I don't mind working on wikis after they're built, I hate doing the building itself.
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One of my dream projects or finds would be a mush that harkens back to the 'space trader' sci-fi of the 50s-60s but updated for a less 'retro-future' feel. Kind of like Elizabeth Moon's Vata series but more focus on the actual trading houses and the long-term exploration and intrigue than the 'let's set all of that up and then blow it up in the first chapter so the hero can be a pirate, yarrr!'
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I would really love to see a SF exploration/adventure game set on an alien world with a crashed colony ship. New characters could be thawed out colonists, a meta plot could be discovering ruins, native species, maybe a conspiracy that crashed the ship, but it could also just have a lot of awesome crazy world building and adventure plots.
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@pyrephox I had a great tabletop campaign with that idea. With the twist that it was supposed to be a penal colony. So the former guards and the former prisoners (who ranged from political prisoners to outright psychos) had to find a way to work together to survive and thrive.
Also, there may have been ruined alien step pyramid cities in the jungles.
Because, well, aliens.
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@pyrephox I think I have an unused grid built specifically to that theme around here somewhere. Maybe.
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I was working on a sci-fi crime saga game in the near future, but I put it on ice, I hit a developmental block in my work ethic. The code was nearly complete, and the grid is about half-described, but it was a mammoth work, and I was doing it alone. If anyone wants to help, I can resurrect it.
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Anyone remember OtherSpace?
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IT , Do @monogram said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Anyone remember OtherSpace?
I do, it was my first MUSH and taught me so many things about how a MUSH should not be run, especially after I made the mistake of agreeing to join staff and saw behind the curtain.
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I'm confused.
Talking about opening a new original sci-fi MU* on MSB results in some people having to change their underwear, but in reality, actually opening such a game results in little more than yet another empty server. What gives
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@packrat said in Original Sci-Fi?:
IT , Do @monogram said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Anyone remember OtherSpace?
I do, it was my first MUSH and taught me so many things about how a MUSH should not be run, especially after I made the mistake of agreeing to join staff and saw behind the curtain.
I feel bad for anyone who staffed on a Wes Platt game. And don't forget the trademark.
MUSH-free since 02/2017
This may or may not change in the future.
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@monogram said in Original Sci-Fi?:
@packrat said in Original Sci-Fi?:
IT , Do @monogram said in Original Sci-Fi?:
Anyone remember OtherSpace?
I do, it was my first MUSH and taught me so many things about how a MUSH should not be run, especially after I made the mistake of agreeing to join staff and saw behind the curtain.
I feel bad for anyone who staffed on a Wes Platt game. And don't forget the trademark.
omg. It looks like that game is actually still up. There's an RP log from this July on their website.
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It was dying a slow death back in 2010, when staff decided it was a smart idea to smash
threefour different games together into one. I can't imagine it's much more than a pile of bleached bones nowadways. -
@rnmissionrun said in Original Sci-Fi?:
I'm confused.
Talking about opening a new original sci-fi MU* on MSB results in some people having to change their underwear, but in reality, actually opening such a game results in little more than yet another empty server. What gives
You are confusing what people want and what people will go out of their way to actually do.
I am as guilty of this as anyone else. If you asked me if I would like a Rifts game using Fate I would salivate for it in theory; in fact I have yet to try the one that has existed for a while. The biggest reason is I have limited time and the games I am on are known quantities to me while a game I theoretically would like better also contains uncertainty to actual results. -
@rnmissionrun Yeah the last thing I'm looking for is yet another run of the mill sci-fi game based on this book or that comic using X, Y, or Z codebase. If I wanted zero-effort generic sandbox plug-n-play, I'd be taking up space on a WoD game.
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Here's the thing regarding original theme sci-fi (and why I'm reluctant to use my setting):
People are lazy.
At least with an existing IP, most of your incoming players will know it and those that don't have the plethora of knowledgeable players to help or can be told what episodes are 'musts' to get the feel for it. Like BSG? You can watch it all, sure, or just the mini-series.
I don't know how often @Seraphim73 and Co had to tell people on 5th World that just because there was nobility didn't mean it wasn't still a very futuristic setting. That yes there's CCTV everywhere. Yes, you grew up surrounded by tech; computers and similar devices are not 'foreign' to you. Etc, etc. All things clearly defined on the website, but enough players were too lazy to read/learn that you had to frequently stop RP to be like 'uh, this is wildly out of theme and it's kinda fucking up everyone else's immersion.'
I tried helping someone else with an original sci-fi game a few years ago. Never got off the ground because so many potential players were turned off by the amount of reading/learning required.
A lot of us love OT Sci-Fi, but there's also so fucking many people out there who won't pay a lick of attention to your setting while also throwing tantrums when people try to correct them.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@rnmissionrun Opening such a game isn't as easy as simply plopping in some code, building up a bit of a grid and hoping for the best. Original Sci-Fi needs original history and story, something which many previous original sci-fi games either had none of (or none in an easily accessible format) or had far too much to be doing with that all had to be read before you had a hope in hell of getting a character approved.
And they usually came with some homebrew dice system, or a system ripped from elsewhere that required an advanced mathematics degree to understand.
ETA: What @Auspice said better, a fraction of a moment before I hit submit.
He/Him
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Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@auspice How did you know that tonight is taco night?
He/Him
