City of Shadows

Royal

Can we not? I'm tired as fuuuuuuck of this conversation. Let's move on from this 'Mage is OP' thing early, shall we?

Territories. That right there is what brought me to The Descent 1 and 2. @Ganymede hit it dead on. Give folks something to fight for, not against.

People dig building things and cross sphere alliances to improve turf/gain bonuses from said turf building?

Pretty neat.

Ganymede

@Royal said in City of Shadows:

Let's move on from this 'Mage is OP' thing early, shall we?

I concur.

Mage's flexibility makes territory management difficult, but not impossible.

Ominous

@Admiral How about blood magic, unless you cast it as a ritual?

Arkandel

@Royal said in City of Shadows:

Can we not? I'm tired as fuuuuuuck of this conversation. Let's move on from this 'Mage is OP' thing early, shall we?

I agree, especially since at some point staff has made a decision. Let's work with it instead of revisiting it.

Territories. That right there is what brought me to The Descent 1 and 2. @Ganymede hit it dead on. Give folks something to fight for, not against.

For and against. That's the beauty of territories, they can be imperiled by external threats and foes as well but also other characters. There are a few key concerns here, IMHO.

Making resources truly limited. If everyone gets to have amazing territory it invalidates the whole premise; why bother taking Gany's when I can build a new abandoned factory staff just gave me which is just as good?
Making it dynamic. If it plays out like a game of dancing chairs where the good spots go out in a first-come first-served fashion then it screws everyone over; if I already have great territory why put in any effort, and if I can't get it (or I 'theoretically can, but...') then why put in any effort either?
For all that is holy figure out a system where it's not all about punching people out of their territory. Sure, some things could come down to a brawl but that shouldn't be the primary way of taking it by any means; for example base it on Status, distribute it aspart of quest rewards, etc to encourage continuous engagement.

Just some thoughts.

Taika

There's just some arguments not worth having, and some things that, in the process of trying to fix them, get more broken.

For example:

I don't care about dinosaurs. We're low and slow xp, if someone is a dino? They busted their ass and helped build the game with their stories.

I don't care about trying to force an unnatural balance between spheres - I've seen it on a bunch of games and in debates here. People are never happy with the results, and often a handful of hr's throw things so out of wack tjat you need 10 more to try and fix it.

I hate hr's. It's hard enough for ST's to run stuff as it is, without adding 'Dig through an often disorganized wiki for obscure, badly written rulings' to the pile.

I find these things to be massive energy sinks with an itty bitty return that just isn't worth the amount of stress and burnout they can cause from arguing in circles.

@Ganymede is pretty familiar with my approach, by now, I feel. (Remember the dual praxes and the Diptheria plot, Gany? Man that was some backstabby fun.)

Make it easy for people to tell their stories. Hold people accountable and communicate about things. Be flexible as staff - if people wanna destroy chunks of grid? Let them. But you bet there will be consequences. @digging is easy. PK HAS to be warned of, and announced to staff ahead of time. No surprise kills, unless both parties are totally fine with it - yes, you can spend your own xp (mostly), yes staff will be watching and newspapering if a pk is requested/declared and someone dumps a bunch of xp.

Come, tell your crazy ass stories. DO over the top shit. Break things. Get your things broken. Live. Die. Start again. Fast, and fun, and simple. But also with a goal of creating that depth that makes people want to stick around. Some people want the kind of intensity and crazy from ye olde tabletop days of yore. Some people want the politics and the reasons to hold territory and work together. And I'm going to do my best to rally the growing team of folks on staff to give people that wild ride, those near death experiences that make people slump back in a chair after a scene and need a cigarette like: /fuck/.

Don't be afraid to lose, because losing can be amazing. Chicks dig scars.

This is where I'm coming from. I want to focus on story and building a fantastic game. I don't want to throw away energy worrying about things overly or getting sucked into arguments with no real end.

Tempest

If there are plans to start with multiple praxes, are there going to be multiple consiliums and freeholds, too?

I appreciate the vision to try and do something different, but this sounds like it's going to get pretty messy pretty quickly, lol.

Either way, good luck! The community needs more places to spring up. I'm sure lots of people are chomping at the bit for a 2e WoD game. The only place atm is...what, Reno 7.0?

Lisse24

@Taika I love everything you say there. Like really. I was skeptical of yet another multisphere WoD MU, but you seem to be thinking about how to keep momentum going. I don't know all the details, which is to be expected at this point, but the mere fact that you're thinking about it puts you several steps ahead of other games.

I'm also with you on not wanting to artificially limit a sphere just because. I think in a low-XP game, Mage won't be able to break stuff nearly as much. It's been so long since there's been a true low-XP game, that people are used to them having infinite abilities. Also, I wanna play a mage!

The only other thing I'd love to see is an extremely limited alt policy (1 major sphere + 1 mortal/m+?). That would have the benefit of limiting the number of mages running around without having to impose a cap. It would encourage cross-sphere RP, encourage investment in a single character (which will help with sustainability), and will help beef up the mortal sphere.

Tempest

@Lisse24 said in City of Shadows:

The only other thing I'd love to see is an extremely limited alt policy (1 major sphere + 1 mortal/m+?). That would have the benefit of limiting the number of mages running around without having to impose a cap. It would encourage cross-sphere RP, encourage investment in a single character (which will help with sustainability), and will help beef up the mortal sphere.

I feel like if you want the 'intensity' of actual conflict and territory and limited resources, etc, a heavily limited alt policy is required, IMO.

I also think in a multisphere game, where CROSSOVER is part of the staff philosophy, only 1 super char per player would...honestly be a lot of fun?

IDK, maybe I'm weird.

Taika

For alts, I'm currently leaning towards '1 per sphere'. So major template OR minor in a sphere, but not both. Have a vamp? Want to ghoul your mortal? Pick one.

As for Mage and Changeling having multiple things? I'm not sure. Part of that hesitancy comes from there not being a lot of experience with those two spheres on mushes. Changeling is brand spanking new and mage... I only remember one short lived game that had mage on it? And that was a few years ago? Squints

That said, IF players want to make their own and get people together to do it? Come talk to us. But don't expect it to 1) be easy, icly or 2) to not get fucked with by the other factions, the co-op, or the players/npcs. Big stuff needs big story or it's hollow.

I plan on most positions of power being npc's and have plans to handpick a few as people come in and things get going (as suggested earlier in the thread. I might be looking at @Ganymede. WANNA BE A PRINCE?!)

I also have plans for npc's that can keep shit from bottlenecking in case rl eats the pcs in those positions. Rules for all of that are on my to-do list for hammering out the specifics of what is reasonable and what is not, etc.

Oh, and as a side note, cause my mind wanders a lot: staff gets xp, same as pcs, when they st stuff. Dangles bait

Arkandel

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

Oh, and as a side note, cause my mind wanders a lot: staff gets xp, same as pcs, when they st stuff. Dangles bait

That ain't bait! Read it this way: "I can get the same amount of XP as a regular ST but without people bitching at me 24/7".

Taika

Yeah, but you get to run /anything/ vs prp limits (which need to be hashed out).

Arkandel

So, a few more suggestions.

Keep the highest rank levels as NPCs until some latter point in the game's lifespan when you think they'd be more useful as PCs. There are multiple reasons for it:

IC continuity. Players drop out or become inactive all the time, do you want the Prince to be constantly toppled every few weeks? Let us vie for other positions though, as well as there are tangible agencies to go with the responsibilities.
Plot hooks. It's such a simple, effective way to kick start plots by using important figures to hand out tasks.
Rewards are easier to met out in the same fashion in an objective, systematized fashion relatively free of complaints. It's one thing to have a Winter Queen whose player can be accused of being partial and that's why she handed out that sweet plot of forest glade, and another to have it controlled by having factions or individuals bid on them using their Status (or whatever other metric). Plus that way you can offer different kinds of rewards, too.
The big one... there's less OOC jealousy and bickering that way. You'll have it even with lower positions but not to the same degree. Ranks drive MUSHers nuts, but as unfortunate as that might be there are significant upsides to having them if the game is set up right. You just need to have the tradeoff be worth it.

Finally I can't stress this enough but I'd strongly suggest to offer multiple power ladders to climb in your game.

XP is just one way to track power but status, territory, rank can and ought to all be formidable ways to exert influence over the game. Sure, I might be playing the powerhouse Gangrel loner who can punch through walls but if you can fuck me over - not just theoretically but in a quite real fashion - by using your Status to kick me out of my territory so now I have to work much harder to replenish my vitae supply after using it like it's going out of fashion then things are far better balanced. If my punching abilities convey to demonstrative, amazing benefits - easy inclusion in PrPs, mouthing off to people I don't like - and your political connections are just some figures on your sheet with theoretical upsides that never actually do anything in practical terms, that's not the case.

Same thing in Werewolf. Spheres are often full of Rahu death machines because that pays off much better than mastery over spirits. It's, on a very fundamental level, a matter of returns for the investment.

TL;DR: In games like these offering characters multiple ways to advance is a good idea.

Ganymede

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

I plan on most positions of power being npc's and have plans to handpick a few as people come in and things get going (as suggested earlier in the thread. I might be looking at @Ganymede. WANNA BE A PRINCE?!)

I'd actually rather go staff-side to operate a territory system, if you're willing to give it a whirl.

I may need a couple of months to develop the system. I had been working with Arkandel and SunnyJ on a system, but it's been a while. At the time, we were working on a Dark Ages setting.

I would need to get a hold of a copy of the new Changeling game to figure how to get them involved in such a system.

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

For alts, I'm currently leaning towards '1 per sphere'. So major template OR minor in a sphere, but not both. Have a vamp? Want to ghoul your mortal? Pick one.

Please only allow a maximum of 2 alts period, 1 in each sphere. Otherwise, your administrative load is going to cause any reasonable territory system to collapse.

Please.

Taika

@ganymede Um. Yes. Fuck yes. All the yes. Let's do the amazing thing!

Arkandel

@Taika Since we're just throwing things around - this might be controversial (actually I don't know) but here it is.

I quite dislike how many MU* have handled Renown so far, either by copying each other's policies on justifying spends or putting hurdles no other sphere has to deal with.

How it should be done: "You need to explain why you have Glory 4. Write a note."

How it is actually done: "You need to justify why you have Glory 4, which we as staff will scrutinize and throw hoops for you to jump until you either say fuck it or if you're lucky and connected enough you can have an obligatory PrP ran whose outcome is predetermined just to check that checkbox in the least organic way possible. Also literally no other sphere in the game has to do this for their spends, just Werewolves, lol."

Let the poor wolves buy Renown. They can say how in ways that it makes sense for them and be done. Hell, give them incentives (make the spend cheaper for example) if they have matching IC logs but remove that bureaucratic procedural relic from your game.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said in City of Shadows:

How it should be done: "You need to explain why you have Glory 4. Write a note."

There really has to be a story.

Werewolf is a game of stories and legends. If you can write a nice epic story, that should be enough. I don't even think there needs to be IC logs of it. Just write something.

If there is a concern as to how fast someone can buy themselves up, throttle the Renown gain over time by enforcing a cooldown period for a particular Renown equal to the last level of that Renown purchased in months. So if you wanted to go from Wisdom 0 to 5, you'd have to take 10 months to do it.

Arkandel

@Ganymede said in City of Shadows:

If there is a concern as to how fast someone can buy themselves up, throttle the Renown gain over time by enforcing a cooldown period for a particular Renown equal to the last level of that Renown purchased in months. So if you wanted to go from Wisdom 0 to 5, you'd have to take 10 months to do it.

That's still not reasonable. I'll explain why.

For starters stretching disbelief for gameplay reasons is done regularly. Do we check if years have passed between raising Medicine from 3 (medical school graduate level) and 4 (experienced doctor level)? No, although it'd take that long. Likewise we don't require a neonate Vampire to spend years understanding the secrets locked in their vitae or a newly Awakened to study their Arcanum.

In fact attempts have been made in the past and failed very miserably because that's a shitty playing experience.

Think about it this way: Who benefits from such tactics?

So sure, if staff wanted a long story to explain why or how a Wolf earned their brands? Sure, that's fine. But don't artificially put hurdles in the way or timegate spends just to make your players 'prove' something. Let them play the game at their pace like literally every other sphere already can.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said in City of Shadows:

So sure, if staff wanted a long story to explain why or how a Wolf earned their brands? Sure, that's fine. But don't artificially put hurdles in the way or timegate spends just to make your players 'prove' something. Let them play the game at their pace like literally every other sphere already can.

I didn't say that you shouldn't also throttle the gain by players in other spheres.

faraday

@Arkandel said in City of Shadows:

Do we check if years have passed between raising Medicine from 3 (medical school graduate level) and 4 (experienced doctor level)? No, although it'd take that long.

Well umm... some of us in some of our systems do? Staff just has to decide what level of realism they want in their game and then stick to it. But I agree with you in general that if you don't want a player to have something, just say no. Don't make the obstacles silly.

Taika

There's only a handful of things that aren't self spend, and that's because they need notes to be set (like safe place, haven, vinculum cause no one should spend xp on that, etc).

Honestly, I figure if someone has the xp they should be able to buy the thing. They've put in time, or effort, or ST'd or whatever. OOC devotion to the game, to get the xpses, for the ic goodies.

I'd totally accept a note for renown, because there IS a story that needs to be there. A handful of small things, one big one, a mix? Whatever.

I don't care about sheets and xps or dice pools.

I care about the stories of the game, of the individual, of having fun. In the end, the sheet is just a tool, a guide. A means to an end.

And I -know- that's probably going to get me some side eye.

But this loosely feeds back into not dying on the xp hill, or the balancing the spheres hill.

I don't want to throttle one sphere or boost that one. By the book. Minimal hr's. Cause most of us, I believe, just want to tell our stories - violent, or sexy, or domestic, or sad, whatever rp is fulfilling - and the sheet is just a guideline. And if you have the xp, you've been active and playing and being the sticky stuff that helps hold a game together.

I don't even know if this makes sense. I'm super sleepy/tired after running errands all day and liable to nap for a bit real soon.