MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't)

[il-volpe]

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I still remember folks harping on someone here for saying Lego in a Battlestar Galactica game - basically making fun of someone wanting to have fun and not using a theme appropriate equivalent.

Haha. One mildly distracting thing about that show was that several household objects of the same model as ones I own(ed) appeared. A radio receiver, a dog's dish.

If that's not enough, everybody starts having auditory hallucinations of Bob Dylan, for pity's sake.

[faraday]

@il-volpe said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

If that's not enough, everybody starts having auditory hallucinations of Bob Dylan, for pity's sake.

Yeah on BSGU we had a policy that was like: OK try not to reference glaring things like Star Wars please but don't stress.
We understand that it's utterly impossible to eradicate all cultural and historical references from the entire freaking English language.

[Derp]

@faraday said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@il-volpe said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

If that's not enough, everybody starts having auditory hallucinations of Bob Dylan, for pity's sake.

Yeah on BSGU we had a policy that was like: OK try not to reference glaring things like Star Wars please but don't stress.
We understand that it's utterly impossible to eradicate all cultural and historical references from the entire freaking English language.

Wheel of Time is even worse.

Siobhan sits on a bench eating her peach.

Psst. Peaches in that world are deadly poison, you might wanna reconsider...

[Jennkryst]

@derp

[Rucket]

Well a more recent show taht could be a cool MU idea, or maybe a seasonal type thing on HorrorMU if that was still going would be that show From.

[PuppyBreath]

@rucket said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Well a more recent show taht could be a cool MU idea, or maybe a seasonal type thing on HorrorMU if that was still going would be that show From.

Yesss. I just told my partner about From as a MU concept the other day.

[il-volpe]

TV shows.

It's odd to me that we don't see Generic Television Drama MU. It's a crime drama, with both The Sopranos and Sons of Anarchy types. It's a police-procedural, with NYPD Blue and Monk and Hannibal elements all possible. It's a medical drama, Chicago Med and House. Your lawyer character is in Better Call Saul or is it Boston Legal?

[Jennkryst]

Forbidden West has me theorizing how to make Horizon MU again, and I'm all like 'heh, gonna ride the dinosaur robutt with gunz'

[faraday]

@il-volpe There was one - I forget its name. Ares game a year or two ago. But yeah it's a little strange there aren't more. I guess people want something a little further from RL.

[bear_necessities]

@il-volpe I think those games tend to be hard to run for longer than a few months, just because you have so many different factions and not enough people willing to tell stories for them. And then if you stick to one trope (like General Hospital or Chicago Med) then you end up telling the same stories over and over eventually.

It's not really hard to build a game like that, it's just difficult to keep people engaged and buying into the concept. Those types of games just too easily turn into sandbox mode, IMO.

[Derp]

@puppybreath said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@rucket said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Well a more recent show taht could be a cool MU idea, or maybe a seasonal type thing on HorrorMU if that was still going would be that show From.

Yesss. I just told my partner about From as a MU concept the other day.

What is this? I have a feeling that googling 'From TV show' will not be entirely useful.

[Jennkryst]

@derp 'TV show From' works, but I barely glaced at what it pulls up. At that glance, it is 'trapped in town, cannot get out!'

[Lotherio]

@bear_necessities said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@il-volpe I think those games tend to be hard to run for longer than a few months, just because you have so many different factions and not enough people willing to tell stories for them. And then if you stick to one trope (like General Hospital or Chicago Med) then you end up telling the same stories over and over eventually.

It's not really hard to build a game like that, it's just difficult to keep people engaged and buying into the concept. Those types of games just too easily turn into sandbox mode, IMO.

If it stuck to one thing and kept going, it'd be like any other show and jump the shark pretty quick. Like Grey's Anatomy, how many mass causality tragic events can occur in Seattle - Last week a tidal wave crashed an entire cruise ship, now two planes full of vacationers crashed into one of the interns houses.

I think folks have expectation that things need to keep happening on that scale, bigger and bigger. Myself, I could have fun doing like hotshots (the really good wild fire firefighters) but only doing occasionally fire fighting and the rest slice of life drama, whereas others would expect new bigger fires or something. I did start doing a serial once on City of Hope with a few mortal folks where we'd do a fire every couple of weeks. A forest fire one week, every does their WoD drama or whatever, then a warehouse fire a couple weeks later, then a house fire, etc.

More like a small play group I guess. I'm just rambling now.

[faraday]

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I could have fun doing like hotshots (the really good wild fire firefighters) but only doing occasionally fire fighting and the rest slice of life drama, whereas others would expect new bigger fires or something

I don't necessarily need it to be bigger better fires/catastrophes/etc. but I do need there to be a constant stream of something. Otherwise it just gets boring.

I haven't exactly done a scientific analysis, but just off the cuff I'd say that Chicago Fire has about a 30/30/30 split between "action" (fires, rescues, high drama), romance, and "fluff" (silly hijinks, slice of life, and randomness). That's always seemed like a pretty decent ratio to strike on a MUSH. The trouble is sustaining that 30% "action" for a much wider cast on a much more frequent basis.

[Pyrephox]

@faraday said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I could have fun doing like hotshots (the really good wild fire firefighters) but only doing occasionally fire fighting and the rest slice of life drama, whereas others would expect new bigger fires or something

I don't necessarily need it to be bigger better fires/catastrophes/etc. but I do need there to be a constant stream of something. Otherwise it just gets boring.

I haven't exactly done a scientific analysis, but just off the cuff I'd say that Chicago Fire has about a 30/30/30 split between "action" (fires, rescues, high drama), romance, and "fluff" (silly hijinks, slice of life, and randomness). That's always seemed like a pretty decent ratio to strike on a MUSH. The trouble is sustaining that 30% "action" for a much wider cast on a much more frequent basis.

I think something like this could really use a spotlight-focused metacurrency. Something that builds up (maybe by being a supporting character to other PCs' plots) and then lets you pitch a spotlight plot for your PC . If the inspiration is an ensemble drama, then the trading off of 'focus character' on a regular basis is an important part of maintaining that sense of forward progression while also not having to escalate to SAVING THE WORLD.

So, if you were doing a setting that encompassed, say, cops + hospital, and your PCs each had a personal plot that they wanted to progress, they could spend a certain amount of metacurrency and send in their pitch (Something like, "Victor is a talented surgeon, but I've been playing him as increasingly reliant on a combo of uppers and downers to stay focused and able to keep up with with his caseload and manage stress. I'd like to turn this into a full-blown addiction, and have him do something under the influence that he has to cover up.") and then staff could trigger that with their next big plot (let's say a Criminal Informant NPC is shot while trying to deliver some vital information to a couple of cops, goes under the knife and Victor screws up and the guy dies before he can pass on his message - now Victor scrambles to cover that up; his player can tap several other PCs to act as supporting cast if they're interested, whether it's the cops who have to figure out what happened, or nurses/other doctors who see Victor going off the rails and have grim suspicions about what happened to the patient).

If you set it very firmly in the TV World where these sorts of plots can happen without necessarily taking a PC out of play (where even if Victor's malpractice is uncovered, it just gives him a chance to angst and repent and be suspended from surgeries for a month while he does rehab, and then he can regain his status, etc.) and make those assumptions very explicit to players, then it could work! And be a whole lot of fun.

I think the biggest thing is that you'd have to have staff who are willing to be realistic about the number of people they can handle and close down apps when they reach that number, and who are firm about removing players who can't work with the theme - whether that's because they can't OOC handle unexpected IC drama or IC loss, or because they can't play a supporting character to someone else's even for a limited time, or because the lack of 'realistic' consequences drives them crazy. You'd really have to be willing to have those talks with players, and gently remove those who just can't jive with the theme.

[SixRegrets]

Lazy interest check: mostly-social sandbox on a space station above a mostly-fucked earth? I'd probably be inclined to run it statless, but there'd be some plot to it to keep things moving.

Different from The 100, in that the surface would be used for strip mining for resources, and the space station wouldn't be on the verge of falling apart.

[Pyrephox]

@sixregrets SF is always fun, and there's a lot of interesting stuff to do on a space station. I'd tend to not prefer statless - even something minimal like F3S lets you put additional tension into resolutions through uncertainty. But something like Fate might be fun, too. Just...something.

[faraday]

@pyrephox said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

you'd have to have staff who are willing to be realistic about the number of people they can handle

I mean... given that it takes an entire writer's room to generate that level of plotting for 6-10 characters on a weekly basis, I'm thinking the number of players a small staff can support is going to be pretty darn tiny. Well below the minimum threshold required to sustain a MUSH.

I think what you'd need is just a MU community willing to support each other - letting others take turns with the spotlight, running NPCs, all with the expectation that when it's your turn, they'll do the same for you.

Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but it'd be nice.

[ZombieGenesis]

RE: MU Community Supporting Each Other. I don't think people take advantage of sandbox opportunities enough. Either from laziness, fear/anxiety, or not being clearly shown the tools they have at their hand. I think people are also afraid of the dreaded word "cliques".

I'd love to see a gothic horror game(Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Dark Shadows, etc) set up like this. Players could app into certain plots run by staff or other players either with temporary characters or permanent, whichever. Run through the plot then either create a new character and enter another plot or move your current character to something new.

[Pyrephox]

@zombiegenesis One thing I've noticed about games meant to be sandbox is that they don't necessarily give people the tools they need to take full advantage of them. A sandbox game can't be too open or people get choice paralysis. But if you have 'mysteries' that only staff can know the answer to, or the setting/framework isn't well described, then people don't know how to create something that isn't disruptive or 'wrong'.

Sandbox games IMO really need to open the box, lay out the toys for players - and make sure those toys have clear, exciting hooks at several different levels: something that can easily be thrown into a single scene, something that can easily be spun into a 2-5 scene adventure, and then something that can play into an overarching, complex plotline (if you're doing those).