Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era)

Warma Sheen

@secretfire I'll admit that I'm not a fan of most of the HRs. But as long as everyone is playing by the same rules, you can find some place within them to enjoy the game in whatever form it is in without much issue. I've learned to go with the flow.

As for Tolssk, it just seems to be par for the course with the flippant, condescending comments and no regard for anyone else. As @Jynxbox mentioned, its like no time at all has passed when dealing with him. And I don't know why, but you have always been his apologist, showing up behind his disasters to try to make things better for him. You never seemed that bad, except that you're always associated with him. It was a shame really.

secretfire

So, normally (I've never, ever, ever done this before as I consider it 'unprofessional' and 'unsportsman-like') I don't go into the whole mu-story thing, but I'll do it, just this once. I'll give everyone an overview so everyone, once and for all, is on the same page. Forgive me for the length and seeming meandering of this, I do have a point but I'm not eloquent outside of poses, and I'm not a ranter by nature.

The original Generations of Darkness was started by Vaapad.
Vapaad was neurotic and insane and never around. The place was basically run by Ataru, who was an amazing GM until he took it over in a staff revolt when Vaapad kept getting more and more crazy. Not Tolssk Crazy. Not 'Hog Pit' Crazy. Bat!@#!#@ @!##!@!@# mad, crazy. Like, Trump Crazy, metaphorically speaking. It then became Dawn of Defiance. Eventually he got busy and left, and there was a third headwiz. I'd left by that point. That was years after the switchover.
As far as I know, both the two players above are as old as Tolssk's player and myself, or nearly so. One of them, by their own admittance, was banned. I cannot be 100% sure, but I remember Ataru banning ~3 people, two of them were for sexual harassment and one of them was for rampant cheating while attempting to PK people. Don't know for sure which the one was, no way to know. The other, who retains their bit, I looked through several years worth of logs and could not find a single scene with them, and I scened with pretty much everyone. I do recall them being around and vaugely nice, just not doing anything.
My previous bit was Einara. I basically ran the CIS for a number of years. I also ran a ton of plots. A lot. Eventually I stopped being a villain as I got tired of the Jedi (see above) relentlessly trying to PK me while constantly whining about having the moral high ground.

So, this was my experience on the game. I started Einara as a level 5. My first scene (my very first!) someone tried to PK me. And my second. My third was a GM'd scene. Not villains, mind you, whom I always had great rp with. The Jedi. I spent several years with the heroic Jedi, using overpowered stats, trying to PK me. Sometimes more then once a day. Once I had three random scenes (this only happened once mind you) and all three had Jedi trying to PK me. They would ONLY DO SO if they thought they could win.

This did not stop me from trying to do stuff. I beat most of them. It took me years to level up from 5 (I was not a stat hound and kept that level past having the XP for higher levels) - and I routinely, through clever rp, npcs, and running, managed to beat them. At one point, the ENTIRE PC JEDI ORDER + npcs + a high level Obi-Wan Kenobi NPC they'd summoned, showed up to try and kill me. 99.99999% chance of this including all of the above complaining players; I was so angry I didn't save the log. That was my experience. Over and over and over.

Meanwhile, I was feeding, icly, the Jedi intelligence on the Sith. You want to know why Order 66 happened? Because I'd fed the Jedi (through about 5-6 pcs) intel on the clones being programmed to kill them. I'd also, specifically, told the Jedi that Palpatine was a Sith, and they had several months, and did nothing.

Now, staff were going to explore the consequences of that slowly (if they could get the Jedi pcs to do anything) - but Vaapad logged on one day, had no knowledge of any of this, saw Dooku was dead (the CIS players got tired of Vaapad's shit early on and arranged for the Jedi to kill him in a big PRP), - decided he wanted to rp a lightsaber fight between Yoda (his alt) and Palpatine (also played by him RIGHT THEN, and gave Ataru ~20 minutes to do Order 66 or he'd @shutdown the place). This led to the staff revolt.

Following Order 66, which involved Tolssk herding the Jedi onto disguised ships I'd prepared or paid for on Coruscant (I couldn't go there myself as the Jedi would still have killed me) - and herding them off to a planet I personally had prepared for them - I was foolish enough to go visit the Jedi without him around, yes, SPECIFICALLY INCLUDING THE ABOVE HIGH AND MIGHTY PLAYERS, and specifically including the staffbit of this game, whereupon my bit was 'imprisoned for use of the dark side of the force' - for over a full real life year.

To note, on her entire time on that game, she never used a single darkside force power, and until very late in the game's life, never got more then a single DSP.

Oh, and the imprisonment bit? She got loose when I eventually came back and complained that she was still locked up, and then when I was assured the Jedi were better and different, they did the same again. Again to her. For several more months. In a cell.

Following that I decided (more out of OOC pity then anything else) to try and help the Jedi reassemble an order. They had some problems. You could fit them into a few camps.

Twinked out PK Jedi.
Jedi who were not twinked out, and would often not leave the Jedi Places for rp, no matter what RP hooks you dangled in front of them.
Jedi who were around for sex scenes.

Some of them were good players. They were drowned out by a chorus of people who would insist they be treated as heroes even while never generating plot, while doing bad things icly, and while (in general) acting nothing like contemplatives or a religious order.

Ataru, for the record, had hoped at one point to have a bunch of scenes with the Jedi being investigators, or police officers, so they could be loved and protected by the people. None of that could happen because they treated the whole thing like a videogame, constantly whined oocly that they were not treated as heroes, then relentlessly tried to PK villains.

Yes, we were absolutely afraid of you guys. And for most of the character-lifetimed of Tolssk and I, we were underleveled compared to them (we started off at level 5), and had to be more clever then you.

A fair amount of the really clever, amazing stuff I got credit for (repeatedly) was Tolssk behind the scenes. He's actually pretty smart. Do I like the lizard? Not always. Its a very simple, stupid character; unlike the player. I've seen him play other characters at other places (he does particularly compelling noblemen, for instance) - but he's not a bully.

In the scene above, to which I saw multiple versions of the log, he had actually gotten down to half health. Half. The freakout occured when the Jedi ran off into the woods rather then continue to fight him, and he tried to kill some NPC. The specific reason I was given, by multiple people including the headwiz, is that it wasn't fair for Tolssk, a villain, to chase after or 'win' without giving anything.

And the thing is, thats been a complaint about him even when he was level 5 or 6 and the people complaining were level 8+. If he's playing a bounty hunting Trandoshan, with a culture that literally worship "The Scorekeeper"; that's what he's going to do. Now, I think using tabletop ruleset to arbitrate fights between PCs is silly, personally. It makes winners and loosers. I prefer freeform. But that's not what the system is. Its a system where, by design, in a fight it gives specific results. I think I could have won that fight as a level 5 Einara, personally. I think that, probably, some OOC communication on both sides would have been better, and I think that's where the breakdown was. Not one-sided. Two sided.

Regardless, in the SAGA system, or any other (even freeform!) - a villain is not 'obligated' to loose. Is he as compelling a figure as Einara? Personally, I think she's a better villain. You can talk with her, she's sympathetic. But she's not scary.

But its wrong to say that, in a fight where he's outnumbered, where the staffer throws multiple clone troopers at him, and even threatens to shoot him with vehicle weapons - he can't chase NPCs because the Jedi need to be guaranteed a win. I literally personally was oocly watching in the room, and heard similar comments in the room and, more directly, via page. And I won't get into who I paged what with whom - but I will reiterate the above being the general attitude of entitlement.

I very strongly don't feel villains are obligated to loose. I do loose, and run plots whenever I play a villain. But typically I view being a villain as like being a fachead. I don't feel every player is obligated to do that. I know its the attitude here because I've been told that.

Do I think Tolssk, in this fight, was entirely right? No, not really? I watched the end then read the logs and said so at the time, in the room, and to multiple people. But do I feel he was, as was specifically noted - obligated to 'not chase' the running-away heroes or to let the NPCs go? Definitely not. And he basically never PKs anyone. I cannot, offhand, think of anyone he's ever PK'd in a star wars game. I'm sure they exist, I can't think of any.

One of the other biggest defenders of Tolssk on the old game was Ataru, who saw the crap he put up with. Was Tolssk perfect? Abosolutely not. Was he perfect in the above post or scene? Probably not.

Did he deserve to be treated, for years (and in the above!) as some hideous monster? No. No he did not. And he did nothing out of line. Really. As I was repeatedly told "the fight was fine until he tried to kill the NPCs". And then the freakout occured because of Jedi players who used to be in a clique, who were afraid of him.

And coming from people who locked up my bit, who spent years outnumbering her 3-1, 3-2, 5-1, 5-2, 6-1, and so on - I think that is saying a lot. Its really easy to say "we believe in fair play" and then expect the villain PCs to put up with this garbage.

I do know the headwiz is comitted to not running this place the way other SW games have been run, the way WOD games have been run. And I appreciate that. He won't tolerate what we put up with. But neither does that excuse the past behavior of the above people acting like Tolssk is some bully.

And neither does that excuse silently banning him, especially after he spent days saying he preferred not to play the character again even for Beta, because it would start issues. I literally personally saw him say that multiple times in cgen before bringing the bit IC. We both opposed bringing back the old bits, and said so.

So when I hear on this game "oh our last Jedi never did anything because Tolssk might have killed us" when he was literally there on the day of Order 66 on the past game saving you, and literally knew where your secret planet was and could have told Vader at any time - that's bull. When I hear 'oh he's just an overpowered character' - well, it took a lot of years for him to get that high a level. Years of being active and doing a lot of scenes. And everyone doing the complaining are on bits just as old as him, and have probably never seriously had a PK attempt against them.

But for me that was a daily experience. So, I'm not against this new place. I support the philosophy, and I think SW games, in the past, have been run competitively, and I don't think that was always a good thing. I prefer freeform, to be frank. I won't be returning after this though, and I must speak out against revisionist history.

Jynxbox

@secretfire I appreciate you illustrating the favoritism and absurdity involved in the previous game. It was indeed just that dumb. The fact that your "level 5" character was so involved and invested with every major NPC in the game says quite a bit.

However, if you expect anyone to believe your tiny little "level 5" survived and defeated all the odds and obstacles you describe on wits alone (everyone take a shot each time @secretfire ~~humble~~brags about how clever or smart she and Tolssk are), then you must think everyone reading this is an idiot. Anyone who has ever played a d20 game knows that's not a thing, especially over and over again. If you're winning that much against all those odds its because you cheesed the system.

And to be very clear, I'm not accusing you of anything and I don't know what your sheet looked like. I'm just telling you straight up that I don't believe you.

There's so much in your post that's eyerolly or just wrong that I'd be here all day addressing it so I'll just pick two parts that inform my opinion of your point of view.

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Vapaad was neurotic and insane and never around. The place was basically run by Ataru, who was an amazing GM until he took it over in a staff revolt when Vaapad kept getting more and more crazy. Not Tolssk Crazy. Not 'Hog Pit' Crazy. Bat!@#!#@ @!##!@!@# mad, crazy. Like, Trump Crazy, metaphorically speaking. It then became Dawn of Defiance. Eventually he got busy and left, and there was a third headwiz. I'd left by that point. That was years after the switchover.

Talk about revisionist history! "It then became Dawn of Defiance." So the game just up and turned itself into a brand new game? And gave itself to Ataru? The staff stole the game wholesale from Vaapad. I don't care how crazy Vaapad was, you don't steal someone's entire game. If you have issues with someone's game you leave and you start your own brand new game, not a stolen db where you continue on like nothing happened.

That's such a dick move. And you gloss over it like its nothing. Why? Because just like with Tolssk you seem to remember things, intentionally or unintentionally from your own very biased point of view where the people you like or get along with may do really bad things but its totally justified.

Just no.

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

And neither does that excuse silently banning him, especially after he spent days saying he preferred not to play the character again even for Beta, because it would start issues. I literally personally saw him say that multiple times in cgen before bringing the bit IC. We both opposed bringing back the old bits, and said so.

I also opposed bringing back the old bits. So I didn't. I made a new one. That was an option. Were you unaware? Both you and Tolssk seem to think it is somehow in your favor that despite not thinking this is a good idea, you went ahead and did it anyway. It is not. If you're doing something you know is bad for the game and shouldn't be done just cause you can, it doesn't mitigate the crappiness of what you're doing. It makes it worse.

Also, feel free to keep railing about how bad the Jedi players were. Everyone does on every SW game ever. That's nothing new. Same old complaints, on every game: "Jedi are all pompous, whiny, entitled brats who want everything to go their way." "Dark siders are all selfish, overpowered, twinks who just want to kill everything." Congrats, that's just describing the Star Wars trilogies.

KDraygo

I think the recent exchange of posts paints a very bright warning sign on Star War games in general. It is too easy to turn a cooperative RP game into one where people chase stats and try to buff their characters to insane levels so they can stomp on other players. Cooperation goes out the window, it becomes a cold war of stat and gear building until that eventually turns into a nuke launch by all sides with the losers royally pissed.

Now, twenty years ago, that might have sounded like fun to me because when you get that 7D, you're like ahmg this feels greeeeeeeat! Get an 8D? Holy shit, I just cast Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite on myself, fucking awesome. 9D??? I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid. It certainly made the player feel good like you're stomping on a bunch of lemmings without consequence or it took crazy amount of coordination to counter you. There is no cooperative RP there, no building of bonds between players to enrich the story of the setting and each character, even if it is between a good character and an evil character.

Star Wars is probably one of the hardest genre to create a MUSH on, especially if you open it to the entire galaxy, allow cross faction and PvP, allow Force powers since that multiplies their character strength. It's been over a decade since I've played on one of the old, really large Star Wars games like Minos Clusters or SW1 but those were the glaring issues at the time.

secretfire

@KDraygo Yes, I agree. MUSHING has moved on. SW games are hard to do, and I don't think tabletop style games work best. The best rp is character driven - people have stories to tell, and characters, and those PCs can learn and grow. ARES is best for that right now. I think the old days of things like "vast epic space opera" games are past us for that reason. And its not a bad thing. RP has to be cooperative and growth-oriented to be fun and interesting.

@Jynxbox (Seraph, I presume?)

I'm not going to go into a lesson on how to survive a fight here. This isn't the time or place for it. And I think the sort of game where this advice is warranted is is dead and buried, for good reason. However, I can say what I advise is this:

OOC communication. Even in fights where most people loathe your character and/or are trying to kill you, they are usually not OOC jerks. Talk to them. See how much they are willing to bend. 9/10 people, even people who will freely admit to killing you if they get a chance, will let you get away if you trap them under a rock and ask nicely. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Be prepared to eat crow and run away. Einara for the most part was a coward, because she ran away alot. Almost all the time, really. When PVP matters, most people get used to running if they want to 'be active'; either that or they do nothing.
PREPARE AND PLAN. Have traps set. Have NPCS ready. Know their weaknesses. Hit them with something and run. Toss them out a window and run. Throw a grenade and run. Make skill checks WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Lock a door behind you. Try a persuasion check on NPC guards if there are any. Make sure to always rp knowing the entrances and exits in a scene, if your someone whose liable to have tons of people icly after them. I took out Kenobi at one point by dropping a ton of sand on him. It buried him long enough for me to escape. I called it a win. I considered it a win.

Einara was not a cheese. She wasn't even a combat build. She had basically no to-hit roll. She was a force wizard, largely up against people who were combat monkeys. But the thing with people like them (you) - that they always miss, is there are always ways to win a fight via "roleplay" in these games. Look at the environment and how you can use it. Look for their personality and how you can use it. Keep in mind all the potential neutral parties who might be around and look the other way to help you escape.

Escaping from certain fights is enough to be a win. So is 'getting the mission done'. So like, if your mission is to "accomplish X" - and you then focus on the fight instead of "accomplish X"; you've failed. Whether it be to get a code disk away, or to save npcs, or whatever; if your first thought going into a fight is the conflict, you should ask yourself "is there a good character and story reason for this" and talk to the player. Really. You have no idea how often this kept me alive. That doesn't mean they won't spontaneously try and kill you again the next day, mind you. But if you are careful you can minimize the risks. It's not as hard or as impressive as it sounds.

Back on Dark Horizons Mush (this is ~15 years ago), I accomplished a lot, politically, with a level 1 political PC. I went around to other pcs and asked them to vote with me, whereas most people focused on 'their individual numbers' instead of what they would have icly done. At level 1 I had as much influence in the coded senate as Palpy, because mine came via rp. Combat on any coded game is like that. Think out of the box. If you think in the box, or think you'll loose, you'll probably get stomped. (This is part of why these games are no longer fun for anyone, as previously noted).

Often, character development done in advance will win a fight. You might not believe that, but its true. That's part of the problem here. You think numbers will win, stats will win, absent anything else - but then want it to be like freeform. Or so you say.

What you really mean (and I know this from personal experience) is you want to win, you don't want to have to do all that much for it, and you want to feel like a hero. But numbers don't win fights, not in a MUSH, and they don't make you a hero. Neither does saying your a hero.

Regarding the codebase, I did gloss over stuff. There was actually a lot more insanity then I portrayed. I mean, you didn't have to keep playing there either. But I wasn't staff, and that's other people's business.

Anyways, TL;DR: I agree, mushing has moved on. Alot. Everyone has moved on. Mushing is better (and smaller) then it was in many ways on the days of 'grand old mushes'. Character-driven RP means more.

Malkleth

@Jynxbox said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Talk about revisionist history! "It then became Dawn of Defiance." So the game just up and turned itself into a brand new game? And gave itself to Ataru? The staff stole the game wholesale from Vaapad. I don't care how crazy Vaapad was, you don't steal someone's entire game. If you have issues with someone's game you leave and you start your own brand new game, not a stolen db where you continue on like nothing happened.

Vapaad got the code base from someone else back in the day, just like Zero did before him. Neither of them knew how to set it up. Zero had Dahan set up NJO, and later on, Vapaad had either Dahan or Ashen-Shugar set up GoD. I think AS, because Dahan had quit due to Zero, who then persuaded AS to fix things on NJO until AS got fed up with him, too. I am honestly not certain if Vapaad got the code base from AS or from Dahan.

Vapaad left Ataru in charge while he was off doing other things (specifically he was telling Ataru he was too sick to mush, while hanging out on a vampire game). Fast forward a bit, Einara had won the clone wars and it was about to wrap up with a CIS victory, a reduced but still extant Republic with Tarkin in charge, and Palpatine defeated, As an aside: this judgement was made by Ataru and co, as the NPC Tarkin not Einara herself. We didn't find out until much later how close we got to an actually good star wars game.

Anyway, Vapaad peeked in. He discovered that Palpatine was about to lose, and he threw a fit. "Palpatine is Emperor as of today or I shut down the game forever." Ataru and his crew of staff caved. Einara's plotlines were overruled, Order 66 happened, Einara's contingency plans to save the jedi went into effect, Tolssk went to Coruscant in the middle of the battle and herded them on the ships, etc. etc. Vapaad also warned staff not to breathe a word about it to anyone and claim it was the plan all along or else, as above, he'd shut down the game forever. We all blamed Ataru, and only found out years later. About a third of the player base left.

Vapaad, satisfied, made some spooky poses as Palpatine, then went off to do other things again. A few months later he pops back on. Ataru was doing staff things, Vapaad told him, "drop whatever you are doing and run me a scene between Yoda (which was his exclusive npc) and Palpatine (also his exclusive npc) or i shut down the game right now" - so Ataru said "goodbye" and used AS's backup of the game to set up DoD, and that's the same copy Obie used to set up his new game.

Warma Sheen

Not to weigh in on anything specific, but it just generally sounds like everyone would be happier with their funtimes if they let go of 5 year old resentments.

BobGoblin

I've pleasured myself on the Saga games quite a bit over the years, a lot of familiar names and sadly familiar attitudes. A couple of non-profound insights for you all to chew over.

#1) D20 games are not meant for PvP encounters and are not balanced around such. This isn't even a Saga specific thing. Prior to Covid I have been getting paid to DM games at local stores (it's honestly a really fun gig, I suggest people look into it!) and the reality of PvP comes up every once in awhile. You know what I've discovered? It doesn't fucking work. These games are meant to be STORY TOLD by a GM against NPC threats. All of these fucking MUSHes are trying to be some kind of E-Peen contest and then it falls on its face and people wonder why.

#2) What the fuck does history from 5 years ago about who did what with whom have to do with jack, or shit? This thread is about a new game, ran by a guy named Obie who is trying from what I can see to do something for the community. A lot of this thread had Zero to do with his advertisement and more to do with people rehashing old issues. If you have suggestions for the game runner, make them to him but holy shit that's a lot of long posts.

#3) If you can do better; I bet you can get access to the Database by asking for it.

#4) Warma is spot on. Holy shit you people are stuck in the past. I remember all those games you listed and yeah, all of them had faults that eventually drove them to close. Too bad they're not all ike Firan that stayed open forever...oh wait. Well maybe like Reno that stayed open forev... or maybe more like... ALL FUCKING GAMES SHUT DOWN OVER TIME. You can learn from the mistakes they made but you'll make new mistakes. Enjoy what you have and if you don't enjoy it, do it yourself or move on.

#5) Revisit #1. PvP games are never going to be 'balanced' because the winners cheese and the losers cry. So don't play them or make them if you can't handle those outcomes.

(Additional Note: I know Rodney Thompson, the guy who wrote Saga Edition for WotC, relatively well. I've told him stories about what people have done on the games and he uproariously laughed at the concept of competitive Saga Edition.)

Obie

@KDraygo said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

I think the recent exchange of posts paints a very bright warning sign on Star War games in general. It is too easy to turn a cooperative RP game into one where people chase stats and try to buff their characters to insane levels so they can stomp on other players. Cooperation goes out the window, it becomes a cold war of stat and gear building until that eventually turns into a nuke launch by all sides with the losers royally pissed.

Now, twenty years ago, that might have sounded like fun to me because when you get that 7D, you're like ahmg this feels greeeeeeeat! Get an 8D? Holy shit, I just cast Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite on myself, fucking awesome. 9D??? I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid. It certainly made the player feel good like you're stomping on a bunch of lemmings without consequence or it took crazy amount of coordination to counter you. There is no cooperative RP there, no building of bonds between players to enrich the story of the setting and each character, even if it is between a good character and an evil character.

Star Wars is probably one of the hardest genre to create a MUSH on, especially if you open it to the entire galaxy, allow cross faction and PvP, allow Force powers since that multiplies their character strength. It's been over a decade since I've played on one of the old, really large Star Wars games like Minos Clusters or SW1 but those were the glaring issues at the time.

I absolutely agree with you. It's been a journey filled with tons of learning experiences for me. This theme has the ability to attract a lot of amazing people, but along with it, a lot of very competitive people too. Figuring out how to get all these different kinds of people to work together cooperatively OOCly is a real challenge, you can spend over a week explaining the vision of cooperation, give and take, and mutual fun, get the impression that people have bought into it, and only to find out in the span of four hours that it was all lip service acknowledgement.

There is a thriving Star Wars MUSH community with multiple factions though, so it can be done, and I'm sure their community members are happy with each other in general, otherwise how would it have gotten so big? I just got to keep the toxic tendencies of the MUSH community, and I know you guys got a generational jump on me at this but if we've done this for a few years I'm sure the list of toxic tendencies that we've seen are more or less the same, away from the community or minimize the impact of it to the broader player base. Which I am doing, and will continue to be doing. Mistakes will be made along the way, I'm sure, but will learn from each of them.

I like a place where the staff does their best to provide story to everyone, and not just only to their favourite faction and friends, and work with the players to get them used to trying to run plots of their own.

I like a place that is striving for a community culture that's OOCly about working together to make fun happy times, even though ICly they're competing against each other.

I like a place that aims to be character and narrative driven, and curbing the proliferation of hyper-optimized combat sheets with min/max stat builds of 20s and -1s, and strange character backstories that requires you to make mental gymnastics to accept but make most people question if they're still in a Star Wars setting after seeing it.

I like a place where the admin doesn't play favourites and acts decisively instead of pretending the community is a AAA gaming company, when it's really like a virtual home everyone gathers together to RP and people are expected to act like well-adjusted adults in a social setting rather than a Karen whenever things don't go their way. The admin knows this is just fun pretending time, the value of being a friendly host, and the necessity of well-behaved guests.

I like a place where players can speak to the admin with suggestions or concerns, and knows that while the admin may not necessarily agree or implement everything heard, an honest thought will be made on the matter.

I'd like to believe that there's more people here on the MUSH community that jives with that same train of thought as I do, because that's the kind of community I envision establishing and gathering together people who share that vision and values. If it turns out I'm in the minority when it comes to these style of thinking, and I can't reconcile it, that's fine there won't be enough people to keep the community going and it'll go as all things naturally should go. However, I'd like to believe that there's enough of us out there who has went through enough years of the list of toxicity in the MUSHing community, that we want to try something new without those same toxic elements following us, or at least not all of them.

Ganymede

Have you looked at Arx?

Take a look, and you will see how building a game from the ground up with systems to keep players from ripping each other apart physically can create a semi-cooperative world-building game that a large number of people seem to enjoy.

So, like, don't just start with "what era should we start in?" or "should we use WEG or Saga or FFG?" All of that is irrelevant if you don't have code to build the game you want to see.

And if you want to see people not go after each other with their pew-pew stats, I'd suggest providing them other mini-games to e-peen with.

Obie

@Ganymede said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Have you looked at Arx?

Take a look, and you will see how building a game from the ground up with systems to keep players from ripping each other apart physically can create a semi-cooperative world-building game that a large number of people seem to enjoy.

So, like, don't just start with "what era should we start in?" or "should we use WEG or Saga or FFG?" All of that is irrelevant if you don't have code to build the game you want to see.

And if you want to see people not go after each other with their pew-pew stats, I'd suggest providing them other mini-games to e-peen with.

I've actually never heard of Arx, but what you've said about what they accomplished is very compelling! I want to confirm, is Arx this? ---> https://play.arxgame.org/

And yes, you're right. I didn't understand what were the key questions are at the start, and asked the wrong ones unfortunately. I'm hoping to find some inspirations from Arx as you've mentioned. Thank you for letting know about this nugget of wisdom!

Jynxbox

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

@Jynxbox (Seraph, I presume?)

Nope. Cisstis.

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Escaping from certain fights is enough to be a win. So is 'getting the mission done'. So like, if your mission is to "accomplish X" - and you then focus on the fight instead of "accomplish X"; you've failed. Whether it be to get a code disk away, or to save npcs, or whatever; if your first thought going into a fight is the conflict, you should ask yourself "is there a good character and story reason for this" and talk to the player. Really. You have no idea how often this kept me alive. That doesn't mean they won't spontaneously try and kill you again the next day, mind you. But if you are careful you can minimize the risks. It's not as hard or as impressive as it sounds.

None of this applies to the nonsesnse about how everyone else is trying to kill you and you gloriously outwitted them all - without completely discounting the other players in the scene with you. You somehow believe that other people and other characters are not a factor in the outcome of a scene?

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

What you really mean (and I know this from personal experience) is you want to win, you don't want to have to do all that much for it, and you want to feel like a hero. But numbers don't win fights, not in a MUSH, and they don't make you a hero. Neither does saying your a hero.

No idea what weird tangent you spun off on here... Are you talking about rp or game system mechanics? Cause those are totally different things.

@secretfire said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Regarding the codebase, I did gloss over stuff. There was actually a lot more insanity then I portrayed. I mean, you didn't have to keep playing there either.

I didn't.

Ganymede

@Obie said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

I've actually never heard of Arx, but what you've said about what they accomplished is very compelling! I want to confirm, is Arx this? ---> https://play.arxgame.org/

Yes.

And yes, you're right. I didn't understand what were the key questions are at the start, and asked the wrong ones unfortunately. I'm hoping to find some inspirations from Arx as you've mentioned. Thank you for letting know about this nugget of wisdom!

You're welcome.

I played on DoD for a short bit. I ended up idling out with a small group I entered with because we didn't feel as if we could do anything. Sure, we had some fun RPing, and I was in a couple of combat scenes, but compared to some of the other PCs we were true newbs. No one likes that feeling.

The thing about Arx is its world-building systems. When you play and get immersed, your PC starts shaping the world about them in small, but noticeable ways. You can collaborate with folks to make larger changes. The staff ultimately control the major events, but that doesn't mean that PCs are mere players on the stage.

It's worth trying the game out and seeing how they do things there to get some inspiration.

Games like Star Wars and the World of Darkness aren't good for MUSHes because they are internally competitive. In my experience, where you have a world-building system in place players become less focused on killing each other and more focused on working towards goals. Goals can be competitive, but direct confrontation is less likely where you can make meaningful change without direct confrontation. It puts a premium on the "support" classes, which decreases the incentive to load up on combat-related talents and skills.

GreenFlashlight

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Not to weigh in on anything specific, but it just generally sounds like everyone would be happier with their funtimes if they let go of 5 year old resentments.

Nah, I think it all sounds super chill and inviting to new players.

Warma Sheen

@GreenFlashlight Well, if it helps, I don't think anyone involved in any of this plays on the game anymore, whether through their own choice or @Obie 's, so that might be a good thing for anyone still looking to play.

secretfire

This post is deleted!

Jynxbox

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

@GreenFlashlight Well, if it helps, I don't think anyone involved in any of this plays on the game anymore, whether through their own choice or @Obie 's, so that might be a good thing for anyone still looking to play.

Does that include you?

Alamias

@Ganymede said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

@Obie said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

I've actually never heard of Arx, but what you've said about what they accomplished is very compelling! I want to confirm, is Arx this? ---> https://play.arxgame.org/

I'll admit, ARX intimidates me. I've looked at playing it, and looked at the roster and even picked a few characters that look like they could be fun to play, but after that point I just look at all the lore and other things and nope out.

Obie

@Alamias said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

@Ganymede said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

@Obie said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

I've actually never heard of Arx, but what you've said about what they accomplished is very compelling! I want to confirm, is Arx this? ---> https://play.arxgame.org/

I'll admit, ARX intimidates me. I've looked at playing it, and looked at the roster and even picked a few characters that look like they could be fun to play, but after that point I just look at all the lore and other things and nope out.

I'm personally amazed by how in-depth, and just how much they've created! Some people in my community told me that it's not always drama-free over on Arx, but which place really is, right? It's amazing what that community has achieved!

Are any of you guys there when it first started? How'd they gain traction, get all the people needed to get the wheels moving?

Warma Sheen

@Jynxbox said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

Does that include you?

Unfortunately yes. I was super excited about this game but have since opted out. Apologies for bailing.

At least until the game is in a more completed state. Maybe after beta is over it might be better for me to go back and be a part of that community.

@Alamias said in Star Wars Republic d20 SAGA - (Prequel Era):

I'll admit, ARX intimidates me. I've looked at playing it, and looked at the roster and even picked a few characters that look like they could be fun to play, but after that point I just look at all the lore and other things and nope out.

I did the exact same thing. I didn't even know where to start. New is always more difficult to process. I guess it just matters how much time and energy you want to invest into it.