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

[Ganymede]

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

Which means I miss out on meeting new people and making unexpected connections, sometimes, but I accept that when it comes down to "playing the cards that RL is dealing me."

It should be said as well that, on Arx, sending and receiving messengers or engaging in flashbacks are equally valid forms of "social RP."

[Misadventure]

I thin social RP is the better term. It covers coffeeshop which seems to be more about meeting random characters, but also includes family, vocation, and special group interactions, and public events like holidays, religious days and festivals.

[silverfox]

Family rp is the best rp

Remind me to go shout outside people's doors again soon.

[Misadventure]

@silverfox its time. Right now.

In the hallway. Something juicy and none of their business that they have to get involved in.

[SixRegrets]

I keep having faint ideas of a PvE game of rebellion. Robots, or at least cybernetically-enhanced individuals - but I can't quite figure out if players would be the robots or not, or who would be in charge. Unimatrix Zero from Star Trek: Voyager comes to mind, but it wouldn't be something directly related to Voyager or even Star Trek.

[De Villefort]

@thebigd

The problem with most RPG settings and coffee shop chatter is that in most games you are keeping secrets. You are secretly the vampire slayer, you are secretly a witch, you are secretly a werewolf or an agent of the technocracy.

Most, but not all, games have a premise which require that you never talk about the thing that consumes most of your adult life with any strangers. On games where everyone is keeping secrets small talk has to be kept to the smallest, most boring stuff possible to protect the hidden truth.

[Lotherio]

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

The problem with most RPG settings and coffee shop chatter is that in most games you are keeping secrets.

Not to be rude but I think this is the issue I keep seeing in your responses. You keep speaking in absolutes. Modern moral/tech just can't be done, its boring. Most RPG settings are about keeping secrets. Literally, there are plenty that are PvE with open info (no OOC masques).

There are plenty of other games out there. Sure plenty of games where its kept a secret, but plenty of other games too. Its coming off argumentative. Most games are not WoD where you can't talk about whether or not your some supernatural being.

[Coin]

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

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

The problem with most RPG settings and coffee shop chatter is that in most games you are keeping secrets.

Not to be rude but I think this is the issue I keep seeing in your responses. You keep speaking in absolutes. Modern moral/tech just can't be done, its boring. Most RPG settings are about keeping secrets. Literally, there are plenty that are PvE with open info (no OOC masques).

There are plenty of other games out there. Sure plenty of games where its kept a secret, but plenty of other games too. Its coming off argumentative. Most games are not WoD where you can't talk about whether or not your some supernatural being.

lmao, for reals.

[Misadventure]

@lotherio to be fair all the serial killers I play rarely share that with anyone else.

JK.

They explain it to the corpses while they clean up.

---

I would think that most cyberpunk, medieval fantasy, or survival games would have secrets, but it's not something that is all anyone has going on, and often it's just secrets the players don't know as a group.

Do Lords and Ladies games have all consuming secrets like that? Other than who is really in love with who. (I'll take DMs if people don't want to derail this)

[Lotherio]

@misadventure Oh most places can have secrets but the absolute that its this secret that is consumes most of one's life that they must never share is pretty specific to like WoD as far as I know. The others depends on the level of politics. If the L&L allows politicking to like better oneself/station and ways to overthrow each other, sure there can be plenty of secrets that are not just who loves who and who dumped who.

But like I say, I and plenty others have played modern, no fantasy (no magic, no monsters, no nothing beyond what is in reality already) and are okay in social RP. Whether its just to pass time between the next life emergency/fire at the hospital or to plan some save the whale event. Its not for everyone, but some people like it.

This absolute that its mostly 'boring' or that everyone needs a super massive secret to be exciting is like hyperbole from some absolute stance. Just as mentioned, history and present says otherwise, folks will play 'mundane' games and do social RP. Not to bring it into the conversation or draw comments about it, but Crystal Springs is pretty much just modern, it has 30 players on most nights with 40 scenes going on. This seems far from boring.

[faraday]

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

But like I say, I and plenty others have played modern, no fantasy (no magic, no monsters, no nothing beyond what is in reality already) and are okay in social RP. Whether its just to pass time between the next life emergency/fire at the hospital or to plan some save the whale event. Its not for everyone, but some people like it.

This. On Battlestar games there was plenty of hanging-out between missions. Often it was just kibitzing in the lounge or gym, but it could also be training, debriefs, maintenance, etc. On my western games there were picnics, horse races, business deals, ranch work... the list goes on.

I'm personally not a huge fan of random people who have no reason to interact just meeting in the coffee shop/bar/park/whatever, but social RP can take many forms.

[Ominous]

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

Not to be rude but I think this is the issue I keep seeing in your responses. You keep speaking in absolutes. Modern moral/tech just can't be done, its boring. Most RPG settings are about keeping secrets. Literally, there are plenty that are PvE with open info (no OOC masques).

There are plenty of other games out there. Sure plenty of games where its kept a secret, but plenty of other games too. Its coming off argumentative. Most games are not WoD where you can't talk about whether or not your some supernatural being.

[TheBigD]

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

@thebigd

The problem with most RPG settings and coffee shop chatter is that in most games you are keeping secrets. You are secretly the vampire slayer, you are secretly a witch, you are secretly a werewolf or an agent of the technocracy.

Most, but not all, games have a premise which require that you never talk about the thing that consumes most of your adult life with any strangers. On games where everyone is keeping secrets small talk has to be kept to the smallest, most boring stuff possible to protect the hidden truth.

Uhm. No, I disagree. There may be some characters that cannot keep their mouths shut, who might engage in as little small talk as possible. But if we go with your premise, big secrets being kept, you're secretly a "insert super secret identity here"... then you are masquerading as something else. I would bet you a good lunch that many of these characters are probably trying to fit into society to a degree. So yeah... people are gregarious. Most of us talk. Even if a little. Clark Kent engages in small talk all the time. He may have revealed his identity to a few people, but I don't recall it being in the coffee shop between the order line and the pick up one. "How about those Flames? Also, I'm Superman..."

[Grayson]

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

The problem with most RPG settings and coffee shop chatter is that in most games you are keeping secrets. You are secretly the vampire slayer, you are secretly a witch, you are secretly a werewolf or an agent of the technocracy.

Most, but not all, games have a premise which require that you never talk about the thing that consumes most of your adult life with any strangers. On games where everyone is keeping secrets small talk has to be kept to the smallest, most boring stuff possible to protect the hidden truth.

The problem with most RL settings and coffee shop chatter is that I'm keeping secrets - yeah, that doesn't work.

Most, but not all, of my RL has entailed keeping secrets of a greater or lesser degree, from the one that would have ruined a man (and did bring him down when it finally came out) to just how often I'd had to pay the bills and thus not eat that month. And yet I still manage to chat with people in random places, like on the train or waiting for a bus, and the conversations cover all sorts of topics.

All-consuming secrets are things that people find different ways to deal with. In my case they almost demand that I find other things to talk about as yet another distraction technique. I mean, why would I talk about that when I can talk about this totally unrelated topic instead and therefore not risk conversational landmines and reactions that might give me away?

[Lilli]

Just to point out small talk is interesting for Reasons.

The question is.... is this thread boring to you? Seems like a very good small talk discussion.

[De Villefort]

@lotherio

I didn't think I needed to explain this but here we go...

There is no idea, no cause, no statement or even fact backed by thousands of years of research that everyone agrees on 100%.

We can't even get 100% of humans to agree that the earth is round.
There will always be some chucklefuck that will find something to argue about even the most obvious truths.

When I write, "Everyone thinks X" It means "A great many people" think X is true.
When I write "Games who do X result in Y" it means "Quite often games who do X result in Y"

There are no absolutes. I would have assumed that as adults, everyone here would understand this but that is my fault for assuming the intelligence and maturity of the posters here. I shouldn't have assumed. You have my sincerest apologies.

[Coin]

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

@lotherio

I didn't think I needed to explain this but here we go...

There is no idea, no cause, no statement or even fact backed by thousands of years of research that everyone agrees on 100%.

We can't even get 100% of humans to agree that the earth is round.
There will always be some chucklefuck that will find something to argue about even the most obvious truths.

When I write, "Everyone thinks X" It means "A great many people" think X is true.
When I write "Games who do X result in Y" it means "Quite often games who do X result in Y"

There are no absolutes. I would have assumed that as adults, everyone here would understand this but that is my fault for assuming the intelligence and maturity of the posters here. I shouldn't have assumed. You have my sincerest apologies.

lol, the level of pedantry you're shoveling here is amazing. maybe take it to the Hog Pit; this is the mildly constructive area.

if you want to be a chucklefuck, this is not the appropriate place in the forum.

[Lotherio]

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

When I write, "Everyone thinks X" It means "A great many people" think X is true.
When I write "Games who do X result in Y" it means "Quite often games who do X result in Y"

This is nearly the same thing. I am disagreeing, saying a good many games do not do as you say. Not even the large majority of Mu*s are played as you're insisting. So both everything is X or a great many are X are both wrong.

You don't like social RP, that's fine. I find most people I play with do. Unlike you - I'm not insisting the majority of anything or anyone plays the way I do.

What I am saying is more people than not do not agree with your near absolutes or play the way you insist majority of games just 'are'. Your points were mundane is boring and all Mu*s involve hiding a super big secret that you can't reveal ever. What I and others have said is - that just ain't so. You've not countered other than double down on your way is the only way people play, or the majority of people.

[Testament]

@de-villefort

[Arkandel]

Just to clarify an earlier post of mine, when I said I didn't like "bar RP" I probably didn't qualify it enough with the important clause that it's when it's the grand majority of what RP in general consists of.

Social RP, either to develop characters or to allow the aftermath of PrPs to branch off and develop 'off screen' is perfectly fine. I've no issues with it, especially since in fact those kinds of scenes can directly become lead-ins for more plot.

My issue is when it is not a choice but pretty much the only option in the absence of dynamic elements. Many games that I didn't enjoy were essentially just that - sandboxes with some kind of theme written on their wikis but lacking either plot runners or a large enough playerbase to keep things fresh.

In that light it's probably wrong to use very large, active games as the benchmark. MU* like Arx today, Haunted Memories or The Reach in their hayday, etc could get away with a lot of this because then there is enough stuff happening in the wild to keep it moving. There are ranks people want to get, disagreeable villains others plot to oppose, and that activity becomes self-sustainable through its own participants' sheer critical mass.

On a 'regular' game with 10-15 logins this is much harder. It's very easy for that environment to become stale and sterile, whether staff meant for it to be essentially a sandbox or not. Once that happens if I'm on and the only options I have is go to a bar and see if I can talk about paragraphs 3-4 from the wiki with someone else, do an introductory scene or scope out the chance for a romantic attachment then it's limiting. Not because any of those things in a vacuum is a bad thing, or not enjoyable, but because that's all there is.