So, what sort of design challenges would we have in designing a game FOR MU*s, system wise? For the moment, let's assume a "generic" system that could be theoretically used for several different genres of play. A couple I can think of:
- Character Growth. Most tabletop RPGs are designed around one of two philosophies of character growth. Either the event-based cinematic style, where it tends to model that movie trope where after a short period of intense training and challenges, the student will become the master, and characters advance quite rapidly because they're assumed to be embroiled in life-changing circumstances. (WoD tends to fall into this, IMO.) Or the style where it's expected where there will be a lot of timeskips and background growth involved - sometimes trainers and "level up costs" are involved in this philosophy. Neither of these really works well for a MU*, where much the RP isn't action based, but there aren't a lot of timeskips, either, so you can't brush off the "month spent in training". What would the ideal character growth philosophy look like for a MU*? It would have to be geared towards long-term play, assuming at least a year of "life" for a given character with play multiple times a week. It would need to be balanced towards experienced and inexperienced characters being on the same game, with each being able to meaningfully contribute. But, at the same time, growth has to MEAN something real for PC at any point in the life span, in order to get that sweet, sweet positive reinforcement.
I don't know that I have an answer for this one, but I do kinda like the idea of some sort of tagged skill-based system. Stats would be fairly static and set at chargen, providing a bonus (or penality) to skills. You could tag certain skills for "my character is practicing this" (maybe with a set "tagged boost" to rolls using those skills), and those skills will gain XP as you play, without you having to attend to it much (I like the idea of building a system that takes into account code and automation). Maybe with an aspect of other players being able to +witness that you've used certain skills in scenes, and if you have those skills tagged (or tag them before the +witness decays), you get a slight boost to XP gain for them. Slow, gradual XP gain, BUT with something like "perks" that can be chosen that give meaningful boosts and rewards for raising skills and abilities. So, for example, you might have - Player A has decided her PC is honing their investigative skills. So they've tagged Forensics (Base: 45, Bonus from Int: +10, priority 1), Interviewing (Base: 56, Bonus from Charisma: -10, priority 2), and Searching (Base: 48 Bonus from Awareness: +10, priority 3). Those skills being tagged means that she automatically gets a +10 to rolls using them (so they're now effectively 65, 56, and 68), and she has 2 Forensics Perks (Did You Just TASTE That? and Empathic Recreation), 3 Interviewing Perks (Good Cop, Respected By The Mob, and Columbo Questions), and 2 Searching Perks (Show Me the Blueprints, and City Tracker). She participates in a few scenes, earning 10 XP that's divided by priority - so Forensics gets 4, Interviewing gets 3, Searching gets 3. When she hits Searching 50, she gets the opportunity to add a new perk - in this case, she goes for Sherlock Scan, giving her the ability to make a reflexive Searching check when meeting a new person to determine important characteristics about them (occupation, recent history, etc.).
Throughout all of this, the only thing the character has to deal with, bookeeping wise, is choosing the tag skills and then choosing the perk. And if these are automated commands, staff doesn't have to process any of this, although it DOES mean work up front in defining the skills and perks appropriate to the genre of play. You can use the skill+perk system for Resources and magical powers/gun-fu/specific social connections, too. If you want to slow down (or speed up) character growth, you just tweak the rate of XP. Start Perk choice at, say, a base score of 20, add a Perk every 10 points, have 10 Perks per skill, and no one will ever have ALL the Perks in a given skill, allowing for even top level characters to retain some differentiation.
- Self-resolution. A lot of scenes on a MU* won't have a GM or an "uninterested party" arbitrating the action. So whatever system is in place, it shouldn't rely a lot on judgement calls or GM fiat, although it probably should give a "handwavium" version if players DO want to simply agree on something OOC and move on - players are going to do this anyway, so might as well enshrine it into the design philosophy.
