Midnight MUSH

[Wizz]

Midnight MUSH is an original horror game, tentatively set in Santa Monica in 1983. The game's tone will be intended to reflect both modern retro and classic horror media from the 80's and 90's, with influences like Stranger Things, Lost Boys, Near Dark, Carrie, An American Werewolf in London, and Hotline Miami, as well as a dash of the more absurd like Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, Wolf Cop, etc.

Players can make characters who are pure mortal, mortals with curses or strange powers, and monsters of all stripes. Monster characters will have a very informal hidden society, and there will be a Veil-Lite that prevents the masses from being aware of all the things that go bump, but several clued-in mortal organizations will exist. The game will use FATE Core with some modifications for a horror setting, and will be a largely open, Build Your Own Demon-style CG, with lists of stunts and powers as well as premade templates for players to use either whole-cloth or as examples.

There will also be a metaplot that kicks off with a bizarre solar eclipse that is somehow only local to Santa Monica, and has already lasted for weeks. (Monsters normally weakened or harmed by sunlight are suddenly discovering that they can come out and play, and word is spreading fast...)

What I'm Looking For:
A few people who are excited by the setting, the system, or both. I want to brainstorm out the fine details and plot, so there is a lot of room for big ideas and collaboration. I'll also obvs need builders, and probably someone familiar enough with code that we don't explode anything, though AresMUSH is super awesome and easy to utilize so far. A wiki-fu master wouldn't be amiss either.

I'm using Ares' FATE plugin, which actually means there isn't a ton of coding left to do, though I still need to clean up chargen and sheets. Building and hammering out theme will be the bulk of the work.

If you're interested, PM me here, or come on down to midnight.aresmush.com port 1983 and chat!! I'm usually on during business hours or later evenings on weekdays, puttering about!

[Wretched]

So this sounds cool as hell. If every ounce of my creative energy was not developing another game, I would be tempted. But this seems rad.

[Wizz]

@Wretched Thanks!

I'd like some input from anyone familiar with Fate!

So what I'm considering is two (2) types of characters, Mortal and Monster.

Monster PCs will be given a much higher pool of points in Cgen to spend on powers (still not 100% sure what this number should be), BUT they will not have a refresh score -- they can only earn Fate points through play by accepting compels like NPCs, and these disappear at the start of the week when mortal chars earn refresh. All Monsters will also have a Hunger stress track (for blood, flesh, human souls, baby heads, whatev) and I'm thinking that it would work to allow Monsters to take hits on this track to pay for the things people use Fate points for -- rerolls, bonuses, powers, refusing compels, tagging Aspects, etc, anything but narrative changes.

Thoughts?

[ZombieGenesis]

Have you thought about using Fate Accelerated ala Dresden Files? I'm in love with Dresden Acclerated and think it would work wonderfully for a game. Just curious if you looked at that at all and, if so, why you dismissed it for Fate Core?

I do love the idea of the game though regardless. If I wans't ass deep in my own projects I'd offer up whatever help I could!

[Wizz]

@zombiegenesis

I have! I like FAE a lot, but for this game I actually wanted something that is just a tad heavier. I want characters to be able to feel mechanically unique as much as possible, because I personally think that's a lot of the fun of making characters, and I want to implement some of the crunchier Core systems, because overall Core is still in my opinion fairly light and easy for most people to get into once you get used to the more abstract bits.

[ZombieGenesis]

Yeah, that's what I wanted from my FAE too and that's what Dresden Accelerated is. It's JUST enough crunch to give the system some real meat, IMO. Essentially it adds mantles that give mechanical elements to different character types. Vampires, for instance, get the Hunger condition track and can mark boxes of Hunger to power various Vampire stunts they get with their mantle.

Anyway, even though I can't help out I'll def stop by and play if/when you get this up and running.

[Wizz]

@zombiegenesis Please do!

[Cobalt]

@Thenomain loves him some FATE.

[Thenomain]

@cobaltasaurus said in Midnight MUSH:

@Thenomain loves him some FATE.

[Derp]

@thenomain

Upvoting because Damon Salvatore fans self.

[JinShei]

Happy to link you to our df rpg code base? Exeter@darkspires mush wrote it up. Anything I can do, let me know.

[Wizz]

@jinshei Holy crap, that'd be awesome! Thanks!

[JinShei]

Sent

[Wizz]

Thought it was more approps to reply to this here, haha:

@cobaltasaurus said in Reno - the New Reno (Portland?):

@wizz said in Reno - the New Reno (Portland?):

@pyrephox said in Reno - the New Reno (Portland?):

I don't like it as much when people say, "Okay, here's a real city as our setting. It's...pretty much the real city, here's some cool set pieces or places, Google the rest." Make the city your own, give it a compelling narrative hook that makes me want to make a character to play in THAT place, at THAT time.

I already feel a tangent coming oh god but this is what I like about FATE. Creating the city is explicit and upfront, rather than WoD's approach of tucking it into an index or doing an obscure splat book here and there.

My Angel game used FAE and I couldn’t get people to even let me walk them through chargen.

I completely sympathize with this and I think it's a legit struggle for FATE places, the system does look pretty arcane at first blush. I hope to overcome this with roughly a bajilliothousand example templates, big ol' honkin' lists of powers and stunts, and enthusiasm for the setting. We'll see how it goes, haha.

Just as a tiny update, I do have some basic organizational things like Waffle and Google Drive set up, and I have had some peeps offer help! Fell off the face of the planet for a minute due to the sicks but still planning on seeing this through.

[faraday]

@wizz What is Waffle? (in this context, I mean)

[Auspice]

@faraday said in Midnight MUSH:

@wizz What is Waffle? (in this context, I mean)

https://waffle.io/

I am trying to think of a way to summarize what it is, but it's sort of like a... to-do list / issue tracker that ties directly into GitHub. Very handy for development processes if you're working on a project that has a Git repo.
(And I am assuming that is what they are using, but considering it's a dev project...)

[Wizz]

@auspice @faraday

I'm loving it so far, it reminds me a lot of Jira, which I just started learning for work!

[Arkandel]

@wizz Jira is okay. We're migrating from SalesForce to Jira HelpDesk which is at least an upgrade, too.

[Auspice]

@arkandel said in Midnight MUSH:

@wizz Jira is okay. We're migrating from SalesForce to Jira HelpDesk which is at least an upgrade, too.

Zendesk is still the best.

Jira is fine for bug tracking.

Salesforce for cases is so. goddamn. clunky. I have to use it right now and it drives me insane. No merging. No mass emailing. I can't edit internal notes (accidentally put a note on the wrong case? linked the wrong file? TOO BAD). So many complaints about it.

Like Salesforce you can do so much WHY AREN'T YOUR CASES BETTER?!

(But the worst... the WORST was this one system I had to use that was... I forget the name of it, but it was some smaller company that M$ absorbed and then pretty much immediately decided to retire because they even realized it wasn't even worth the time/effort to try to fix.)

[Arkandel]

@auspice We are derailing this poor thread in the most unexpected way possible.