Potential Buffy Game
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@coin Yeah, and the First Evil is presumably at least as big a deal as the Senior Partners (bigger, conceptually?). But that's why I said her villains tended to be smaller scale.
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@wizz said in Potential Buffy Game:
@coin Yeah, and the First Evil is presumably at least as big a deal as the Senior Partners. But that's why I said her villains tended to be smaller scale.
I would say The First is like... like... the originator of the company that eventually became Wolfram & Hart. Like, I mean, The First is technically even older and worse than Illyria and she was old when the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart were bugs to be stepped on.
It's just that, like, the First is kind of old and tied to its ways (and maybe even mystically tied to a certain type of function).
There's a lot of theorycrafting one can do with all that.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@coin said in Potential Buffy Game:
she was old when the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart were bugs to be stepped on.
Can I just geek out for a second and say that to this day if I watch an episode, every time a character talks about them individually like that I still get crazy chills? God damn Angel was a great show.
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@wizz said in Potential Buffy Game:
@coin said in Potential Buffy Game:
she was old when the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart were bugs to be stepped on.
Can I just geek out for a second and say that to this day if I watch an episode, every time a character talks about them individually like that I still get crazy chills? God damn Angel was a great show.
Yesssssssssss, same. I think it's because at least two of them are so innocuous and one is literally often used as a symbol of purity (Hart) that to have them used so viscerally as the epitome of modern evil is just... yikes.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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LIKE OKAY
The First is the grandaddy of all Evil. It's scary, yeah. It has a lot of goons that are powerful, yeah. But it's not practically powerful right now and its army is kind of ehhhh.
If you talk to Illyria or Glory about The First, they'd go, "geez, that old geezer? i don't even wanna run into it, it just goes on and on about the good ol' days", and Jasmine's like the capitalist grandchild that is legit on non-speaking terms with the First on because she used all the things the First taught her and then totally dumped it in a home.
That's the First.
It's big. It's scary. But it's old and kind of tired and everything it does will be heinous if its wheelchair (the Hellmouth) doesn't get a stick shoved through it (Spike) by some upstart kids (Buffy and the Scoobies).
Glory and Jasmine got way closer to totally fucking everything up than the First (even if the First took Sunnydale with it).
I think the main difference here is that both Glory and Jasmine, for example, died. The First--well, did it really? No. Probably not. It's still there. Being annoying and old and shaking its cane at the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. "Poop on your own lawn!" it says, while some PTB-appointed champion ala Drogyn changes its metaphorical diapers.
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The whole concept of the Senior Partners as the kind of evil you can't even really fight, but you try because what else can you do is just....HRRRRRGGHHHHSOGOOD
*pain too real because good thing *
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@wizz said in Potential Buffy Game:
The whole concept of the Senior Partners as the kind of evil you can't even really fight, but you try because what else can you do is just....HRRRRRGGHHHHSOGOOD
*pain too real because good thing *
RIGHT. The Senior Partners to me feel like the actual legit inheritors of The First, because like it, they cannot be ended, they simply will continue to be.
The First can't die because good can't exist without evil; and the Senior Partners can't die because evil needs to be fought.
It's cray-cray shit, man.
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So to answer some questions quickly...
I'm leaning heavily towards Dayton, OH for the setting. It just seems like a Buffy kind of setting to me.
My plan is that after the slayers went active they managed to kill or chase most evil away with the world entering into a sort of peaceful period, even on Hellmouths. In reality evil just had to get smarter and hide. I want the idea that the characters are privy to things that normal people aren't to be prominent on the game. People and creatures have to work in the shadows.
For what "tier" the game will be on I'm thinking we're going to start small. The first "season" may focus on something localized and personal, something specific to Dayton. We may advance things as we play through but I'm envisioning this game as a "soft reboot" of the Buffy franchise so I'd like to start small and keep things personal for the time being.
Speaking of personal, I really liked the suggestion that personal drama needs to drive things as much as global(MUX wide) plots so I'm trying to find ways to make these things happen. Having characters submit 3 "dramatic hooks" as part of the c-gen process or having a "IC Drama" BBoard where people can post for things they're looking for or what not.
Anyway, it's all subject to change of course. These are just the things I'm pondering at the moment.
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@quinn said in Potential Buffy Game:
@ixokai I staffed Devilshire for three years. People would stack things (or try) that created ridiculously overpowered characters. We ended up making lots and lots of house rules about it and at one point rewrote a ton of the offered packages. Some of the pre-built demons were ridiculous. People were always finding ways to try to start with Dex 9 or 10. Or have that character that couldn't take damage or be killed. And they were very creative with how they tried to do it! We would think we wrote or ruled out ways to abuse the system and then we'd get another crazy app.
And I staffed at Mystick Krewe for...however long it was, I'm well aware of what people will try. I just don't think its really that hard to deal with. Disallow stacking packages, don't allow more then +4 to any one stat and +8(?) to all stats in particular in a package, limit how many drawbacks are allowed. Beyond that, app staff should just feel free to say no. Some combinations just aren't allowed. (That said can't take damage or be killed I don't see why those are considered a big deal)
The real problem is high dex itself needs to be HR'd so people don't TRY to start with Dex 9 or 10. The unisystem multi action rules are broken AF.
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@zombiegenesis The big thing for you - and I think the main challenge - is make plot match your player activity.
Buffy in its heart is a Hunter game from a certain point of view, and those tend to get either very sandbox-y and/or very reliant on Storytellers/GMs. Both of these traits can make a MU* inactive fast as their players become disconnected from each other then get stuck waiting for someone to do something.
What you could consider is giving a different kind of structure for them to do on their downtime. Classes, for example; set up a Watcher supernatural school-within-the-school complete with tests, grades, teacher aides, things going wrong during spellcasting 101... just hand things for PCs to do with each other other than fight monsters of the week or
TSrelationship drama which is great as gravy but very soon would get them idlying.Just an idea.
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@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
heart is a Hunter game from a certain point of view, and those tend to get either very sandbox-y and/or very reliant on Storytellers/GMs. Both of these traits can make a MU* inactive fast as their players become disconnected from each other then get stuck waiting for someone to do something.
What you could consider is giving a different kind of structure for them to do on their downtime. Classes, for example; set up a Watcher supernatural school-within-the-school complete with tests, grades, teacher aides, things going wrong during spellcasting 101... just hand things for PCs to do with each other other than fight monsters of the week or TSrelationship drama which is great as gravy but very soon would get them idlying.No helpful suggestions, but man, I would play the hell out of a Buffy game, so thanks for working on this!
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@bad-at-lurking No problem but I'm not the one working on this!
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I like the idea of the school within a school. I think that will def be a thing.
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@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
What you could consider is giving a different kind of structure for them to do on their downtime. Classes, for example; set up a Watcher supernatural school-within-the-school complete with tests, grades, teacher aides, things going wrong during spellcasting 101... just hand things for PCs to do with each other other than fight monsters of the week or
TSrelationship drama which is great as gravy but very soon would get them idlying.This sounds like it sorta assumes all the PCs are in a team, doesn't it, if they're all (or most) in some Watcher Academy? I mean in theory most people on a Buffy mush will be on the same side but they may not be actually affiliated directly.
I dunno about other peoples experiences on prior Buffy mushes, but establishing then doing team-building exercises with Sammy's team on MK was a lot of fun. We were aware of other teams in the city and would work together but it was organic.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any mush wide open for anyone stuff to do-- but I think you have to be careful you don't lose the smallness of the Buffy/scooby scale that's IMHO so important to the right feel of a game. Its a personal 'us vs monsters', if we're a part of the Watcher's Army that's a very different feel.
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@arkandel Doh! Misquote. The shame!
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Heh. Kind of Hogwarts meets Buffy, maybe? Or even a little X-Men vibe.
A secret school for monster hunters (slayers, spirit warriors, demons, etc.) hidden in a university with normal students getting pulled in with distressing regularity. (Gotta have the Xanders.)
That might give you a team/group dynamic of smaller groups, if people decide to group up. If not, they can rock the immaculately good hair that goes with the whole brooding loner thing.
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I am happy and excited. Elated, in fact.
As I said before, if you want assistance in putting the Grid in place, I'm your lawyerbot. Also, I'm pretty sure @hedgehog'd chip in.
Can I PM?
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@ixokai said in Potential Buffy Game:
The real problem is high dex itself needs to be HR'd so people don't TRY to start with Dex 9 or 10. The unisystem multi action rules are broken AF.
My understanding is that Unisystem can be nerfed in order to make sure that Dexterity isn't the ultimate statistic for everything awesome. But it's been a while since I fiddled widdit.
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If your definately going with Dayton, then the other big things you need to decide are tone related. I mean -I- think Buffy (as intended) isn't dissimilar from Angel in tone; just made a bit more juvenile for its intended audience at the time. But a lot of people here feel they /are/ different. So you'll have to decide if you are going with the 'everyone is a student and they are gossiping about mundane stuff most of the time' character drama, or the Angel 'jobs are hard and life is hard, and there is prejudice and bigotry out there and we all have to get along' stuff. They are both talking about the same thing; the monsters as metaphors for the darkness of our lives. Angel had more 'monsters as people' then Buffy did; but I think by Angel Whedon realized the importance of getting along with other people, and how the lack of it turned into another source of darkness and isolation.
I think what you were going for is a city small enough where you can mix that, and Dayton (being firmly in the rust belt) is in the middle where a lot of the....societal issues...that anything Whedon tackled would be front and center. I think you could easily find ways to integrate things; like Buffy had an evil Principle, you could have the Superintendent of the local district be a Trump-style hardnose hunter, who wants to crack down on immigrants whom are actually from a neighboring dimension; and has been harassing these immigrants children. Perhaps a local manufacturing plant is on the verge of shutting down - and the college students find out that an ancient spell, set in the 1920s, kept something sealed beneath it for as long as it was in operation.
But I don't think, from the beginning, you should really get into a 'rut'. I think the way you will be pushed is very, very strongly towards people who will just want to do school RP until the end of time, and if you do that, eventually the game will die (sooner rather then later). I think that RP can and should be important, but the focus has to be, from the beginning, integrating it into a larger 'community'. No matter how old the characters are, the rest of Dayton should affect their lives.
This also gives you ways to push drama. You don't need a 'hunter training school'. You just need 'major ongoing plot hooks' generic enough people can spin off of them, which will naturally 'set' different types of PCs into drama against each other, but not in a combative way. The rust belt is -filled- with tension right now, and its a potent way to mine it. In highschool, this is mostly 'outsiders' (buffy crew) vs Cheerleaders (Cordelia); you just need to find ways to broaden it. Give points of view to NPC groups that disagree with each other...strongly...without being necessarily entirely wrong.
This is a setting where you have armies of girls that can -kill anything-; but what happens when they hit problems they can't stab to death? Those were the things that stymied Buffy the most, and were exclusively what Angel grappled with.
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Or at least I'd try to help, anyway. My Daytonaica is decidedly based on just visiting and anecdotes from my mother in law.
It would be amusing if the Dragons actually were draconian, though. And the angry ghost of cancelled Blue Jacket.
