Dust to Dust (Formerly the nWoD grenade thread)
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You are correct with original use MA, thogh now it pretty much means anything that would have that sort of book.
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Not going to lie... I never knew why they were called "Spheres".
I'm a rodeo clown.
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I would call things core rules, splats, a standalone (such things as s single book on a minority group like Mummies), or an expansion (like extra combat rules, a book on making mortals cool).
However, if we're talking slang, well, language is sloppy, and pointless to enforce.
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@Misadventure said:
Here I thought splatbooks were the subgenre books; factions, guilds, tribes, clans, orders, kiths, etc.
Well, that's technically the answer. Tribe/clan/tradition/etcbooks were referred to on newsgroups as "* books," since an asterisk represents a variable -- same reason we use "MU *" as shorthand for MUSH/MUX/MUD -- and since an asterisk kind of looks like something gone splat...
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Though now I want to start calling varieties of MU splats, just to further muddy the waters.
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@Glitch said:
Though now I want to start calling varieties of MU splats, just to further muddy the waters.
And to further muddy the waters, I'm going to start calling your mom a splat. Snnnnap.
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Somewhere between the shift from owod to nwod was when I started noticing any books associated with a particular line being called 'splats'. It went from 'Oh yeah, there's that Clan splat in the Vamp books that goes over the Ventrue in more depth' to 'Oh you wanna play a Ventrue? That's in the Vamp splats'. I think lazy verbage started implying a broader category for the term.
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@tragedyjones said:
Not going to lie... I never knew why they were called "Spheres".
Venn diagrams were really popular in the mid-90s.
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I always thought it game from the terms Sphere of influence, though that was just my guess. If Staffer X was in charge of vaps that was her Sphere of influence and we just shorted it ot sphere. Though like i said thatwas just my assumption.
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In my experience, Sphere was used much as it was for renaissance astrologists, it defined boundaries like the horizon of your flat/round known world, with vague influence extending across the vast unattainable distances, subject to hopes, fears and much superstition.
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@ThatGuyThere said:
I always thought it game from the terms Sphere of influence,
That's exactly the explanation I was given in my first WoD Mush so very long ago.
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We are going to be including Families on Dust, special things and all based on the Mystery Cult Initiation merit.
I'm midst developing city / family history. I would like to have all of my family heads in place prior to opening. Some of the families are fairly well defined, some of them are still just broad strokes. If you think you might be interested in taking a family and would like to work with me from step one, let me know here or on my site. Two are currently claimed and one is for sure NPC only, but that leaves quite a few. They're all full of hooks and being built in day one as part of the landscape of the city.
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@Sunny said:
I would like to have all of my family heads in place prior to opening. Some of the families are fairly well defined, some of them are still just broad strokes. If you think you might be interested in taking a family and would like to work with me from step one, let me know here or on my site.
What are your views on PCs holding ranks in general for your game, and what is the difference between 'ranks' and positions such as this Family Head idea?
I ask because for ever @EmmahSue leading the Carthians to glory there are three special snowflakes clenching those onto things like their life depends on it.
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Ranks/Positions/Titles/etc need to have play requirements that are enforced.
Sure, if you just wanna play your character, nobody else is entitled to your time. But as soon as you decide you want to be Sheriff/Family Head (assuming it's a staff-made family)/etc, you should be expected to be going out of your way to play outside your circle of friends.
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@Tempest said:
Ranks/Positions/Titles/etc need to have play requirements that are enforced.
Sure, if you just wanna play your character, nobody else is entitled to your time. But as soon as you decide you want to be Sheriff/Family Head (assuming it's a staff-made family)/etc, you should be expected to be going out of your way to play outside your circle of friends.
That's taking a problem then trying to apply a solution to it which is worse than the original; it introduces the issue of how it's going to be monitored, how the condition of "playing outside your circle of friends" is to be judged, etc.
In the process it doesn't actually solve the problem it was meant to fix in the first place, which is the generation of OOC drama by people chasing after ranks.
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True enough.
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There will be ranks in play, both within certain racial factions and with the families. There will not be hard activity lines drawn/enforced. In the cases of racial factions, the leadership will be starting out as NPC; whether we change that or not depends heavily on what the landscape ends up looking like. We're using Mystery Cult Initiation for the families, so that's a 1-5 merit; 5 is family head (or public family head, in some cases). Other positions (like Sheriff) correspond to the various factions' status merits.
Yes, status and ranks have the potential to cause drama. If I removed everything that had the potential for causing drama, there would be jack all for the PCs to do. Giving directed control to PCs means I don't have to bloody play 165 NPCs. While I can do it, I don't like doing it. There are better uses of my time than trying to keep each individual faction going with stuff happening. I'd rather focus on ones that haven't been adopted.
While the game is not PVP focused, we're not removing every aspect of PVP from the game. I know there are people that don't enjoy politics, but there are plenty of people that do. Not having these positions as PCs causes its own host of problems, and I'd rather have the problems that come with player investment/engagement than those that come from staff control of everything.
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@Sunny said:
There will be ranks in play, both within certain racial factions and with the families. There will not be hard activity lines drawn/enforced. In the cases of racial factions, the leadership will be starting out as NPC; whether we change that or not depends heavily on what the landscape ends up looking like. We're using Mystery Cult Initiation for the families, so that's a 1-5 merit; 5 is family head (or public family head, in some cases). Other positions (like Sheriff) correspond to the various factions' status merits.
Fair enough.
What turns me off is the idea of ranks acting in a musical chairs fashion. <Ranks> open and a bunch of people run-run-run to grab every position available. In fact it's already happened if you already have people snatching some of them weeks or months before the game even opens!
It's your game, obviously, but my suggestion is that since you want PCs to take over ranks, to let it happen as organically as possible. Let players prove themselves first, roleplay on the grid politicking and earning their stripes rather than +jobs asking staff for things before anyone else even has a chance to pose at all. You say you're planning to do that with factions, and that's great, so why not with Families as well?
My assertion is that, otherwise, much like in real-life politics, you end up with exactly the kind of folks who shouldn't hold positions hold positions.
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It's mostly a numbers game. How much do I want to handle, and how much can I let go of? It's why I'm advertising for these things now; that way when game opens there's already people in play, rather than a rapid series of IC changes across all of the families. It's my hope that peoples' engagement in the process will net me at least a third of the families run by solid candidates, leaving me to only have to replace part of them and the ability to do so gradually. The reason I am not handling racial and family factions the same boils down to workload, really.
