What Types of Games Would People Like To See?

[Ganymede]

@Ominous said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

As much as I love the setting for Mass Effect or really any space game, I always worry that the distances involved breaks up the playerbase too much.

Much like Arx, you can base the game in a single location, and have outward missions to other realms as PRPs or staff-run plots. The Citadel would be an ideal place to base the game, but so would Noveria. I think Arx's code-base lends itself just as well to exploring the Heleus Cluster from the Nexus.

The code's got everything I was conceiving of a few years ago, from a clue system to action points, to resource gathering. Adapting it would be a true labor.

[Ominous]

@Ganymede

Yeeeeeah, the teleportation that characters do to be in the city one moment and halfway across the continent the next in order to make those PRPs and plots happen has always put me off a bit and clashed with my suspension of disbelief. Yes, it's silly and minor, but it's one of those things that just rubs me the wrong way. Also, you can't do any space truckin' if players can instantly move between areas. Why load up your freighter with goods and haul them for an hour to the recipient when Bob can just fill the delivery order by picking up the goods and instantly moving to the recipient?

[TurtleStraw]

@Ominous said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Yeeeeeah, the teleportation that characters do to be in the city one moment and halfway across the continent the next in order to make those PRPs and plots happen has always put me off a bit and clashed with my suspension of disbelief. Yes, it's silly and minor, but it's one of those things that just rubs me the wrong way.

That's if you take it all happening in a linear timeline though. Some PRPs work off a slightly different one, or pause between sessions while RL several weeks might pass.

[Ominous]

@LWhiskey

I do take it all to be happening linearly.

I am aware of the logic behind it. It still bothers me. Much like the fact that I can't stand cottage cheese. A lot of people like it, but I think it is nasty flavored snot balls.

[Sunny]

@Ganymede

You ever get around to doing that shit, I'll help. It will get my old, lazy ass back on the dev train.

[silverfox]

My first Mu* didn't have a time correlation AT ALL. My Hazel has been 10 for... 7/8 years now? That's mostly because the game is dead, but for comparison, when I DID play, my Junipersky went from 5 years old to 12 in about eight months.

This doesn't add to the conversation at all. It just reminded me so I went down memory lane.

[SixRegrets]

Is there any interest in a game heavily inspired by paranormal/supernatural-themed media such as Control (the 2019 game, check it out if the rest of these are your thing), SCP, Fringe, X-Files, etc? It'd be heavily focused towards investigation, some sort of mysterious agency, yadda yadda yadda. Think monster of the week but with an overarching metaplot.

[Coin]

@SixRegrets said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Is there any interest in a game heavily inspired by paranormal/supernatural-themed media such as Control (the 2019 game, check it out if the rest of these are your thing), SCP, Fringe, X-Files, etc? It'd be heavily focused towards investigation, some sort of mysterious agency, yadda yadda yadda. Think monster of the week but with an overarching metaplot.

Fringe is my jam.

[Paradox]

Rather than theme. I'm curious about mechanics. Do people prefer

Starless pure consent

Narrative mechanics (coin flips etc) for resolution

Light stats and mechanics (fs3 etc)

Crunchy (wod dnd etc)

I know there's a lot of wiggle room in between but I kept it kind of loose and general

[Pyrephox]

@Paradox My preference is somewhere between your Light Stats and Crunchy categories. I want to be able to make meaningful choices to progress my character and distinguish them, mechanically, from other characters - which includes having to 'give up' certain things to gain others, but also includes (ideally) flavorful, interesting abilities and powers.

The difficulty, of course, is that such systems need to be balanced so that there's no One True Path that lets you do all things better than anyone else, and no Trap Paths which allow you to accidentally create a character which is equally useless at all possible endeavors.

Which is why it is super hard to come up with original mechanical systems for MU*s, I think. You have all your balance issues in regular design, AND the engine needs to be tuned for long-term, persistent play where you will be interacting with characters of very different power levels.

[ZombieGenesis]

System wise my preference is "not WoD or FS3". It's nothing against those systems(I very much like both of them) but they are everywhere. I know that helps in terms of familiarity but I'm suffering from system exhaustion when it comes to them both.

For something like this(X-Files, Fringe, Etc) I would probably suggest Conspiracy X by Eden Studios. It's literally designed for this type of theme. I also think it falls in between the areas of Light Stats and Crunchy.

[Coin]

For this sort of thing I'd like something close to Greg Stolze's O.R.E. system which is pretty narrative-driven while still being dice-dependent.

[Ominous]

@SixRegrets

Yes. Though, I was going to mix in Delta Green, Cultist Simulator, Vampire the Requiem, and Unknown Armies with the SCP, Control, and X-Files. Of the ideas I had had for games, this one has struck me as the most doable, as people can easily grok the theme and time period with little explanation, it would probably run decently with FS3 so I wouldn't have to code a resolution system, and it wouldn't require a bunch of work to set up a grid and start running stories.

As for using other systems, I had looked at Conspiracy X and placed it in the maybe category. I can't remember exactly why, but something about it made me go "Ehhhhh..." Though, I really liked incorporating Zenner cards as a resolution mechanic for using psychic powers.

[reimesu]

Pugmire/Monarchs of Mau.

[Ganymede]

@reimesu

[Ominous]

Now that I have reread some summaries of Conspiracy X, I think my "Ehhhh..." to Conspiracy X was its dice system, but I have the same reaction to FS3, which I am fine with using just to get a game going, so if I put away the "Ehhhh..." feeling to the dice system, Conspiracy X would likely be a great system to use.

[Darren]

@reimesu said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Pugmire/Monarchs of Mau.

If I wasn't 100% certain that it would turn into FurryMUCK Jr in short order, I'd have made that game ages ago!

[silverfox]

I honestly find it difficult to RP //without// some kind of dice rolling any more. I don't want it to be the be-all-end-all of the RP where the rolls matter MORE than the RP (rolling initiative and then everyone announcing what they're going to do ooc before they roll murders my desire to be in that scene). But I like having the option of rolling.

[Ominous]

Rolling can give you direction. Mark Rosewater, Head Designer for Magic the Gathering, has "Restrictions breed creativity" as one of his tenets. When you're just writing a scene where anything can happen, you may not think of something interesting to write. Add some chaos and randomly determined events and now you have something to work with possibly sending you in a direction you would never have thought of.

[Ganymede]

@Ominous