Fantasy MU*s?

[Patty]

@Rainbow-Unicorn said:

Can I make a suggestion?

To avoid getting bogged down too much in details, and to encourage plots, use the Reign company system to track people's individual power bases. It scales really well and can be added to any system.

This is fascinating. We've just re-written our mass combat system to be a lot better. Next on the list is campaigning, and economic bases. How does that system you're talking about work, exactly?

@Ide said in Fantasy MU*s?:

I think it depends on what the players want to do.

I'd like to see an economic/war game for one.

I didn't get to play on Star Crusade for as long as I wanted to (work got involved), but damned was it a cool setting. I remember coming back a few months after I'd had to step away and finding it completely abandoned. What happened?

[Rainbow Unicorn]

@Patty It's made to cover them, as well as an interactions between large systems and small ones. You have a city (size 5), a thieves guild in that city (size 2), in conflict. Both of them have different resources. The ratings you have in economics, size, and so on are meant to go up and down. The thieves guild burns down a district in the city (it becomes size 4) and then robs the treasury (decreasing the economic strength of the city from 5 to 4, and temporarily increasing it's from 2 to 3) and so on. It uses the One Roll Engine, so it's all abstracted but the idea is that players will do things to temporarily raise their status in conflict with other groups, and it all comes down to a set of rolls between both sides that determine how things go. If you're familiar at all with the One Roll Engine, the height and width of each sides rolls determine exactly how the conflict breaks down, and each side targets the others particular resources/size/influence trying to wear each other down.

It's fantastically simple and I think works /great/ in my experience.

It's written by Greg Stolze.

http://gregstolze.com/reign1/

Grab the Enchridion PDF. It's only $7.50 and focuses purely on the Company rules. Companies can reflect anything from the tiniest mercenary companies to empires that span star systems.

[Ide]

@Patty there is a decent summary here, http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15286.phtml, search for "organizations in a fantasy medieval setting"

(edit: ninja'd by @Rainbow-Unicorn -- it does sound cool btw).

There was a long thread on WORA when SC tanked, I don't remember details more specific than 'drama'. But there should be plenty of folks here who can tell it.

[ThatGuyThere]

There was a lot of drama. I played there for a while and while not involved first hand, it just started to sap the will of a lot of the players which characters in important positions and that trickled down until it slowly had people stop logging on. Fifth World opens and the numbers really fell, and eventually staff closed the doors. from what I saw it was not one big thing but more the death of a thousand cuts with smaller things. And well I do remember there being a big dust up between Custodius and some other folks. Sorry my memory is not good enough to give any juicy details.

[silentsophia]

Custodius was the root of a lot of why people started leaving SC. I kinda played towards the middle/end. It was a shame because it was interesting and I liked my character. But man, it sucked feeling like we were having Custodius' PC get away and do anything he wanted with no consequence while everyone else was holding on by the skin of their teeth.

[Songtress]

I agree, use the Reign system of powerbases, ect. ( Cities and holdings, can be made out of the company system, so that way Landed Nobles (or anyone really a shop, could be a 'company'), has some stake in what they do.

IDEA: a game called "StarDust". which is Fantasy-space esque ( so Dune/ Fading suns), but without being of those things directly. For me Dune had their 'awesome concentrated into a great set of novels, but makes it hard to game.

Fading Suns had the opposite problem- hints of 'greatness' burried under its religion an technophobia.

Why not shoot for a game which carries more of a 'Dune Flavor, high-tech,science near magic awesome, throw in a little Dragon Age (religion and magic, and depth of flavor)...

and build something awesome?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Songtress said:

IDEA: a game called "StarDust". which is Fantasy-space esque ( so Dune/ Fading suns), but without being of those things directly. For me Dune had their 'awesome concentrated into a great set of novels, but makes it hard to game.

Based on the Neil Gaiman novel and movie of the same name?

(Don't get me wrong, I'd get a kick out of an actual "Stardust" MU*, but I'm only one of a dozen people who would and this is probably not the thing you actually wanted to do.)

[Songtress]

I haven't read 'Neil Gaiman's "StarDust", I suppose I should, but perhaps drawn from that as well.

[Derp]

What about Dark Sun? As in, the harsh DnD setting thing? I know that it's been done at least once on a MU before, but I've always thought that it could be a really interesting setting to play in. Wizards are hunted and can totally fuck up the world, you have rules for how to scavenge together even basic equipment like armor and weapons, etc. It could be really fun to start something up fresh there.

[Arkandel]

@Derp Way I'd do a Dark Sun setting is stick the PCs in an oppressive theme; a very powerful Sorcerer-King whose rule is lax, allowing plenty of corruption to seep into every level of local government. Characters would need to hide their true intentions from the law, play nobles working on their own agendas, work as Templars or be wizards on the run themselves.

Throw in an external threat (another slightly more powerful City-State is looking their way seeking to enslave/kill everyone) to give people a second long-term baddie and reason to not allow the inevitable resistance movement have a quick victory - unless that's also part of the plan. The challenge is to offer the latter things to do which are meaningful and go somewhere in a sustainable way without allowing them an immediate resolution.

By pinning PC factions against each other but giving them a good reason due to the dual threat to not simply go into an all-out war you can have politics (traditionalists versus reformists, loyalists versus rebels), variety of roles for PCs to play, and the unstable balance of power could allow for some interesting twists (if you have the chance to off your Sorcerer King, do you take it, since he's one of the main reasons the city's enemies hesitate to attack?). Etc.

I'd play that.

[Derp]

@Arkandel

Shit, me too.

[Songtress]

@Arkandel said:

@Derp Way I'd do a Dark Sun setting is stick the PCs in an oppressive theme; a very powerful Sorcerer-King whose rule is lax, allowing plenty of corruption to seep into every level of local government. Characters would need to hide their true intentions from the law, play nobles working on their own agendas, work as Templars or be wizards on the run themselves.

Throw in an external threat (another slightly more powerful City-State is looking their way seeking to enslave/kill everyone) to give people a second long-term baddie and reason to not allow the inevitable resistance movement have a quick victory - unless that's also part of the plan. The challenge is to offer the latter things to do which are meaningful and go somewhere in a sustainable way without allowing them an immediate resolution.

By pinning PC factions against each other but giving them a good reason due to the dual threat to not simply go into an all-out war you can have politics (traditionalists versus reformists, loyalists versus rebels), variety of roles for PCs to play, and the unstable balance of power could allow for some interesting twists (if you have the chance to off your Sorcerer King, do you take it, since he's one of the main reasons the city's enemies hesitate to attack?). Etc.

I'd play that.
Good for a Tabletop game, but not nessacerily a MUSH also I think people try to get away from overly opressive settings. I mean the question is can the PCS make an actual difference?

[Derp]

@Songtress

What do you mean by actual change' ? Do you mean 'can they make a magic-broken scarred desert world where people are barely surviving a utopia' ? Probably not short of an end-game scenario, and if that's the goal, why play in Dark Sun at all. Do you mean can they manipulate a faction to try to make their own little slice of something a little less shitty? Sure.

Ultimately, the Dark Sun theme is... brutal. It's harsh, and violent, and very much about trying to survive at all costs. Sometimes that means cooperation, sometimes that means war.

[Songtress]

I suppose for me in a Fantasy MU* I don't want to play a brutal, harsh theme that has no hope of changing because my character and others work for it.

(I know a guy on an IRC channel that builds settings similar to Dark Sun, very dark, very harsh and pretty much wants to make the players 'understand ' ( his view point). And for me, I go play fantasy to get away from the doom and gloom of everyday life.

I think its just something you want to take into account. Building a game, that rewards players chances to struggle, and surivive and gain a foot hold, and then a handhold, until they climb that mountain!

I suppose its the difference between playing a Setting like Dark sun & something brighter.

[Arkandel]

That kind of reminds me of certain gaming reviews from back in the day which went "I didn't like Command and Conquer, but I hate real-time strategy games in general". It's a fair point of view, but perhaps not pertinent in the current context.

[Misadventure]

Really, it would depend on the time frame of play. If every month was a game year, sure you could rewrite the course of a region after 2-5 years. Pendragon relies on such a passage of time to move the Arthurian timeline along.

[Ganymede]

@Songtress said:

I suppose for me in a Fantasy MU* I don't want to play a brutal, harsh theme that has no hope of changing because my character and others work for it.

You need a system that will allow you to influence an area, similar to the Off-Screen System employed by Kingsmouth. That way, players can enact immediate, positive, lasting change, even if the circumstances around them are dire.

[Misadventure]

Does the Off Screen System allow you to upgrade an areas economy, safety, stability, emergency services, quality of life, education etc? Be it a dystopic cyberpunk future or the Old West or the newly colonized island taken from the Fish-People, being able to upgrade the setting is something some folks like to do.

[Songtress]

@Misadventure said:

Does the Off Screen System allow you to upgrade an areas economy, safety, stability, emergency services, quality of life, education etc? Be it a dystopic cyberpunk future or the Old West or the newly colonized island taken from the Fish-People, being able to upgrade the setting is something some folks like to do.

Agreed. I like seeing my 'plants' ( metaphorically speaking) grow. I think though a that if some kind of Off-Screen System were employed you'd need to make it a separate 'time scale' than the MU* Itself. ( Not sure how it'd work but...)

[Misadventure]

Oi, I forgot to mention that usually really changing things takes time and effort and isn't easy, and I would want such a system to reflect that. And make sure you don't have players able to bring in trillionaires and have that fix the problem.