Roster Characters & WoD?

[Tinuviel]

@devrex That just sounds like a problem with a dude being a dick rather than anything inherently wrong with the format.

[Devrex]

@tinuviel Could very well have been, but everyone on the board backed him? Said I didn't understand how to play. And I'm like...well ok maybe my old dinosaur ass doesn't, cause...in my head I was GMing for him until I suddenly wasn't, and you don't take control of the GM's NPCs. But I came out of tabletop long before I came to MUSH, and I think of things in a very specific way.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

Boom, full sheet done up with random stats to play with. Hit +random a bunch until you're happy.

It's been done before. Tartarus had a "random PC" generator. You drop in, pick a concept, make a couple of tweaks, and the char-gen would make the PC for you. Once you logged out, unless you put a flag on the PC, it would disappear. This was great for people who wanted to play the victim, but allowed them to keep the PC if they chose to.

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@ghost said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

Both good points, so really I think the only solution (since setting up SSL would be a bitch) would be to fall back on old-fashioned "gatekeeping" methods that clubs, parties, and other events fall back on.

Yeah, this is what I'm doing right now, and I suck at it in the sense that I don't check the approval queue often enough.

[Pyrephox]

@devrex This would not be a game for you, then. And that's okay. Not everything has to be a game for every player. I'm not even sure it would be a game for me, although I'd probably at least look at the actual setup before making a decision, if it were made.

[Tinuviel]

@ganymede said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

You drop in, pick a concept, make a couple of tweaks, and the char-gen would make the PC for you.

That would save me so much hassle. As you know I've got chronic "can't make a fucking decision" syndrome when it comes to concepts and stats.

[Devrex]

@pyrephox Oh sure, absolutely. I wasn't arguing that it shouldn't be made, just explaining why the concept activated my personal ???? response.

[Ominous]

@devrex

With my idea that is less likely to happen, as whatever PC or PCs you roll into a scene with are your PC or PCs and no one else can claim them until you've relinquished control of them back to the roster (or you idle out after 24 hours of holding onto a PC).

[Devrex]

@ominous Maybe with a slightly longer period? 72 hours? A week? Because I don't think anyone could manage to maintain solid control of a character if they had to log in every single day.

[faraday]

@devrex The whole point is that people don't maintain solid control of a character.

And yeah, that's a pretty 'out there' concept for most of us, but that doesn't mean that it's an inherently terrible idea.

I mean, TGG managed to have a game where your characters were killed off like the WWI cannon fodder they were. It was niche, but people still played. You never know.

There are also other online RP forums where there's more community control over characters (though probably not quite to this degree). Storium lets players have far more control over storyteller-run NPCs and other PCs to a degree that still makes me feel weird.

[Devrex]

@faraday Well yeah, I never said it was an inherently terrible idea. I'm having trouble understanding how it might create a better experience or how you would avoid another player completely jumping the shark with a character or even the entire story, but I mean, I'm very "You do you and have fun" by nature. If by design you absolutely don't want anyone ever keeping control of a character then yeah, 24 hours is the right call.

[Tinuviel]

@devrex said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

I'm having trouble understanding how it might create a better experience

That's where I'm at with a lot of this conversation. But ultimately, doesn't need to be our version of better. Different is fine too.

Better for me would be games running to my schedule at my pace with like five people and free coffee. Around my kitchen table. Without so much code.

You know I think I'm onto something there.

[Pyrephox]

@devrex said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@faraday Well yeah, I never said it was an inherently terrible idea. I'm having trouble understanding how it might create a better experience or how you would avoid another player completely jumping the shark with a character or even the entire story, but I mean, I'm very "You do you and have fun" by nature. If by design you absolutely don't want anyone ever keeping control of a character then yeah, 24 hours is the right call.

I think it could give a fun 'writer's room' sort of experience. You could actually work with people to set up very dramatic arcs involving different groups of characters, and work out things so that everyone could play their 'favorite bits' of those arcs - love the hurt, hate the comfort? Play a character while they're getting whumped, pass it on to someone who likes the comfort afterwards. Some things stress you out, but you'd like to see the character in the aftermath of them? Hand the character over to someone who enjoys that sort of thing, then get the experience of the aftermath.

I can see it working. I think, again, that it'd be a niche appeal, and it would be a very different experience than the 'one player one character' RPG experience that we're more accustomed to in this corner of the hobby. But it'd be interesting.

[mietze]

Yeah I don't think this is about "better" at all. Just different. It might be better for some people because it suits their personal taste?

[Ominous]

@devrex said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

I'm having trouble understanding how it might create a better experience or how you would avoid another player completely jumping the shark with a character or even the entire story

Communal expectations. With a small playerbase, there's more scrutiny of what you do with a character by other players. When you take Batman and have him drive the Batmobile off a cliff for no reason but for the lulz, everyone is going to be side-eyeing you and you'll be shown the door with the silliness retconned. It's like when someone comes to my D&D group and acts like a child or a total ass or both. They are asked to leave and never invited back.

As for how it creates a better experience, part of the hope is a reduction in snowflake characters and people refusing to accept consequences, because there is less personal investment in a single character.

I think I would probably go an Ars Magica route, and have one PC that is assigned specifically to each player that only they can play and control, similar to a magus in Ars Magica. Maybe give that character a couple of Fate points to get out of death a few times, then have all the other characters be on the roster like grogs.

[Tinuviel]

@mietze said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

Yeah I don't think this is about "better" at all. Just different. It might be better for some people because it suits their personal taste?

Aye. Whenever people bring up change, my first thought is, immediately "Okay, well what problem is this solving? What innovation is this making? Why is this change better than what we're currently doing?" And I was the same here. I'm too stuck in the mindset of... change needing to have a purpose, rather than simply accepting that different is okay.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

What innovation is this making? Why is this change better than what we're currently doing?

One of the problem World of Darkness games has is continuity over time. Many times PCs of importance idle-out and it causes a great deal of disruption if one wants to have a full, working vampiric court, for example, run by PCs. As a result, staff turns to the use of NPCs to keep things stable.

On roster games, those in power tend to stay there. This is kind of consistent with how a vampiric court is supposed to function. If a player idles-out, they can lose control of a PC, which then can be taken over by another player. Of course, the goal is to keep continuity, so staff still has to make sure that the new player doesn't go off the fucking rails or create alt-conflict problems.

But on a game like Arx, it allows the power structure to remain mostly intact. There are problems, of course, with abandoned Houses, but there are policies to help facilitate power transition where reasonable or necessary. And I think this isn't a bad thing to examine for use on a WoD game.

This does not mean one cannot make OCs or have OCs take over important positions; it simply means that it provides an option for staff to maintain a player-controlled environment while coping with inevitable player-turnover.

[Ominous]

@ganymede

I think they meant my idea of perma-rostering all or most characters.

[Ganymede]

@ominous

I don't think that's a bad idea at all, for the reasons stated above.

But, to be frank, I'm tired of trying to come up with ideas for making World of Darkness games last longer. I did that for twenty years.

I've earned my break.

[Pyrephox]

@ominous said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@ganymede

I think they meant my idea of perma-rostering all or most characters.

Amusingly enough, I remember when HorrorMU 1.0 first came up, one of the things I heard from a number of players in my circle at the time was disdain for the idea of 'Seasons' - how could anyone say that their PC's story would be 'up' in just a couple of months? How could anyone keep up with the pace? Why would you even DO something so weird as to have an anthology-type game, when most players clearly wanted to have one character that they played continuously from the start to the finish of that character's story, sometimes years?

And yet, now both The Network and HorrorMU* 2.0 are doing pretty well with exactly that format, with a few revisions. And it CAN BE hard to give up a character at the end of these Seasons or miniseries. But it also lets you take risks and push boundaries that people largely did not take or push when the loss of a character meant that a character was just gone in the ether forever. Neither game is for All Players, but they find enough people interested to do well, so far.

Experimentation is always good, in games. If it doesn't work, the worst you lose is a bit of time. And sometimes you discover something that works well for a good number of people.

[Ominous]

@pyrephox I really liked your seasonal approach. I had thought of doing something similar only in the Whodunnit genre. Each season would be a different novel in the series. I wasn't a fan of your archetype idea, since I felt people should be able to change what type of character they were playing, but I liked the overall idea.