World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings

[Arkandel]

@распутин said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

@selu Anything that requires actual research is going to be a hard sell to many.

The entire hobby of roleplaying is a hard sell to many.

Yeah but there are permutations within those pools.

It's hard to get someone to roleplay, sure, but it's easier to get someone to roleplay a character who starts in a familiar setting and whose theme borrows from popular works ("you're an Uber driver in NYC who manifested mutant powers, like they do in The Gifted TV show you're already watching") than sticking them somewhere they need to do considerable more work upfront just to begin ("you're a seamstress in Elizabethan London whose husband died in the Desmond Rebellion") since they might not have any idea what the technological level of that time was, what kind of rights widowed women had or what the hell that rebellion was about... or seamstressing for that matter.

[Распутин]

@arkandel I don't mind eliminating uneducated players who insist on staying that way from my games.

[Nightshade]

Yeah, I think this hesitation is why we've had a slew of boring, setting-less, theme-less WoD sandboxes over the last few years. You can be afraid that players won't engage with your game but what does it leave you with? If you suck your setting and theme dry of anything that might require a modicum of effort?

[faraday]

@nightshade said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

Yeah, I think this hesitation is why we've had a slew of boring, setting-less, theme-less WoD sandboxes over the last few years.

I think that extends beyond WoD games too, but on the flip side - it goes both ways, yo. If the overwhelming majority of players are either unwilling to expend any effort to learn an unfamiliar theme, or unwilling to expend the additional effort to find roleplay / stick with a smaller game with fewer players, then you reap what you sow. Niche games can work if people are willing to play them, but frankly most people aren't. So you end up with a niche graveyard.

[Lithium]

@faraday I think a niche game can work, and work well. The problem isn't just not understanding a system or setting, that can be gotten past relatively easy with good documentation and active staff.

The problem is that most 'niche' games are opened by a small group, who then only cater to that small group, and everyone else is left high and dry.

[Jennkryst]

Generic city by night sounds amazing. Add generic suburbia around it, and the follow it up with generic mad max/black forest/wilderness hellscape.

[faraday]

@lithium said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

The problem is that most 'niche' games are opened by a small group, who then only cater to that small group, and everyone else is left high and dry.

My problem with niche games has been that there is no "everyone else" and so the game never achieves the critical mass necessary to get people to stick around. It's quite possible we've just had different experiences, or different degrees of "niche".

[Lithium]

@faraday Quite possible. For some Niche is a genre, for others it is a rule set, for others still it is a setting.

I have seen some successful games using settings and rulesets that would be considered 'niche' here, but I have also seen games that are not niche die horribly.

There's a lot of things that make a successful game, but I don't personally believe that being 'niche' is one of them on general principle.

[faraday]

@lithium said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

There's a lot of things that make a successful game, but I don't personally believe that being 'niche' is one of them on general principle.

I agree. I was making the opposite point - that being niche is an additional challenge to a game's success. Not that it makes it impossible, just harder. Because as @Arkandel pointed out in another thread...

@arkandel said in Activity and Aid:

What it comes down to is... if I see a post like this then I might log on tonight (for example). If it happens to be when you're busy IRL taking care of perfectly important stuff, things no one can possibly blame you for prioritizing, it could still mean there are no plots being ran or things happening, and I'd just spend a few minutes bored before logging out. Well, you lost me. It's not your fault, it's not mine either... it just happened.

Lots of MUSHers are like this. A lack of RP when you want it is a major turn-off, and most people won't give a game many chances before they just bail completely. Wider appeal gives you the chance for more players. Then it's up to you to keep them, which gets into the other factors you mentioned.

Theoretically, a niche game could generate more enthusiasm, even though the audience was limited. In my experience, that's still not enough to overcome the lack of people.

[Arkandel]

@faraday said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

Theoretically, a niche game could generate more enthusiasm, even though the audience was limited. In my experience, that's still not enough to overcome the lack of people.

Worse; woe to you if you're a casual who's trying to play themselves into a tightly woven niche and you're caught doing it wrong.

[ThatGuyThere]

I think the biggest drawback to a small game is not being able to easily avoid those you want to.
Take a game with 100 people on, even if I want to avoid 4 or 5 that is not hard because there is plenty of folks around, even if each the the people you want to avoid is in a separate scene that still leaves people to seek rp with.
Take a small game with 10 people, and 1 person you really don't want to deal with, it is not that hard to see nights when most of the game is in one scene for you are left with the choice of dealing with someone you don't want to or bouncing.

[Thenomain]

@thatguythere said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

I think the biggest drawback to a small game is not being able to easily avoid those you want to.

Or learn how to play with people you don't want to. That's where we started, and it creates some stressful encounters but none so stressful as "now I can't play this game because xxx plays there".

Then again, we didn't have a culture of video games back in the 1600s where if someone wants to not engage there were a thousand other things to do.

[Nightshade]

I suppose that's why Haunted Memories was such an unsuccessful niche game that didn't attract any players.

Or why RfK didn't attract so many players that it imploded.

Fuck trying anything new, right? Where's the next smalltown Maine or Las Vegas game? Come on, read me the same story again mom.

[ThatGuyThere]

@thenomain said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

@thatguythere said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

I think the biggest drawback to a small game is not being able to easily avoid those you want to.

Or learn how to play with people you don't want to. That's where we started, and it creates some stressful encounters but none so stressful as "now I can't play this game because xxx plays there".

I am perfectly capable of playing with folks I would rather avoid.
I played with people i didn't care for a lot back in the 90s but now I ain't got time for that shit. Most of the time it isn't anything personal or an y real issue it is just, Person X's style doesn't gel with mine, so why wastes both folks time by forcing a scene?
Besides spider who I have only RPed with once to my knowledge there is no one I would avoid a game just because of their presence.

[Thenomain]

@thatguythere

The 'you' was a generic, hobby-wide statement, not meant for you specifically, unless your statement about the drawback of a small game was concerning you specifically. I assumed it wasn't, so made a similar generic statement.

The idea of "forcing a scene" is 95% Stupid to me. I think people should go into scenes to see what happens, not as part of a crafted storyline. If you didn't enjoy it then that's hard luck but it's going to happen.

Part of the fun to me in "forced" scenes is paging with people I know making table-talk. I cannot play an RPG without table-talk. I certainly can't go to sphere meetings, which is the closest thing I can imagine being a forced scene, without considering a good stiff drink to prepare me for all the player-drama.

No matter how IC things are, you can always see the player behind it.

The second kind of scene that I can think as "forced" is when someone has information, you want the information, and they make it a bloody chore to get that information. Here's an instance where asking staff to sidestep RP is probably a good idea.

The idea that one person doesn't enjoy RPing with another is fine, but I can think of multiple times where someone from Arx has said they were doing just that because there was something in it for them; information, planning, other people around, whatnot. And that is not a small game. And they seem to get over it.

[surreality]

@thatguythere I think, oddly enough, this works for and against a place.

One of the benefits of Reno1, back when, in the period between its opening rush (which every game had, after which 1/3-1/2 of the initial appers who just apped every new place at the time fall off in the first or second idle freeze) and WtF2 hitting (when a new wave hit, which was followed by the RfK closing wave), was the size.

It wasn't tiny but it certainly wasn't big. People had to be on better behavior and keep themselves in check and compromise to get anywhere -- all around. And people did, and in a reasonably peaceable manner, too. The environment at the time greatly benefited from this, and it was one of the healthier game communities I've seen during that period.

It's one of the reasons I find that 'active player group of around 10 or so players on most of the time + 20 or so players popping in 2-3 times/week + 20 or so more casual players popping in maybe once a week' to be pretty much the ideal 'sweet spot'; it's enough people around to allow for opportunities, but not so many that things become permanent niches or cliques or circlejerks if people want to actually do stuff.

[Selu]

@thenomain

On the other hand, why should we be forced to play games wirh abusive people in them because that was how we did it decades ago?

Times change. People no longer want or need to deal with that.

This kind of archaic thinking is why MU*ing is fading into the darkest reaches of ancient history.

Evolve or die.

[Tinuviel]

@selu There's an argument in my industry going about that bad teachers shouldn't be fired, as they prepare people for bad co-workers and bad bosses. That's just as ludicrous.

[Selu]

@tinuviel

Right?

I actually have anxiety attacks about making characters on new games now because of that.

All I can think is "How are people going to be Shitty to me on this game?"

Then I gotta reach for a xanax because I feel like I will physically die if I log on and make a character.

I used to love mu*ing, too. It was one of my greatest pleasures. I want to get into it so badly again.

But then I get war-veteran style flash backs of what I went through seventeen years ago and I get the shakes and the sweats and heart palpitations.

I want to have fun MU*ing again, but I automatically start going "oh god no no no I can't do this oh fuck this is bad I'm gonna panic" and I just log off.

I play on Shang and that is all I can handle, because it isn't difficult and emotionally labor-intensive to make a character on, and even that is too much for me sometimes.

I play for a day or two and then spend a week or two recovering.

[Selu]

@thenomain said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

I certainly can't go to sphere meetings, which is the closest thing I can imagine being a forced scene, without considering a good stiff drink to prepare me for all the player-drama.

Xanax is a godsend for this shit.