Outside the Box MU* Design/Theory
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@icanbeyourmuse Properly documenting WoD (or whatever) so that a person can play without having the sourcebooks/being very familiar with them would be a real copyright violation, republishing the system. Even if you don't quote it, but paraphrase it entirely, it's an IP issue. Original systems, or FS3, being made for the MU in question or for MUs in general and licensed for sharing, no such problem.
I'm all for original, simple systems. Better yet, FS3-like adaptable can-be-used-for-most-any-theme sort of things that are easy for us crappy coders to set up. And I'd certainly rather have a simple system that's quick and easy. I love complicated mechanics in table-top games, but they're boring and unfun on MUs.
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I would probably like WoD better if it was actual tabletop over a mu*. Though, it would likely still confuse the hell outta me.
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When nWoD came out I said, "FUCK YOU, WW, and your little FROG TOOO!!!" and other such utterances, and never bought it. oWoD, well, multi-sphere MUs ran into problems because the games ("spheres") had compatibility issues.
I did have a lotta fun playing various WoD games tabletop.
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@il-volpe and by 'compatibility issues' you mean 'people are dicks.'
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@Alzie Yeah.
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That's one thing I've never understood about the WoD OTT MU*s. Why spend all that time building a world, giving the options and such when you're just going to have people OTT and potentially ignore that stuff for their own thing? It feels like a supreme waste of time on the game developer part.
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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.
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@Pyrephox
As far as #2, this is why so many games have automated, coded combat systems, particularly if they do not use an existing RPG property for their system. If the system says you are hit, it does everything -- proccs status effects, assigns damage, and if you're KOed it sets you KOed. The expectation is that you'll roleplay around the combat system output dynamically. It's an ingrained thing in one line of MU*s and their culture, and allows people to freeform the results if they want to do so. -
@Bobotron said:
@Pyrephox
As far as #2, this is why so many games have automated, coded combat systems, particularly if they do not use an existing RPG property for their system. If the system says you are hit, it does everything -- proccs status effects, assigns damage, and if you're KOed it sets you KOed. The expectation is that you'll roleplay around the combat system output dynamically. It's an ingrained thing in one line of MU*s and their culture, and allows people to freeform the results if they want to do so.Yeah, and I do like that. It SHOULD make combat smoother, and faster. The problem with a lot of tabletop systems on MU* is that tabletop systems tend to have a lot of corner cases and weird interactions between different rules and powers (especially once supplements are added) which then negates the benefit of coding, since people have to stop and work out "Well, okay, but if I have this power, it says X, so I shouldn't even be able to be hit by that guy, because he doesn't have power Y. But he does have power Z, that doesn't SPECIFICALLY say it overrules power X, but logically it would seem to..."
So, I guess, to my further note of design challenges for a MU* RPG system, it'd be "Must be a clean system, where the code can resolve 99 percent of opposed contests without intervention."
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@Pyrephox
Yup. I theorized about doing the combat for various RPG-based MU*s (an NWoD MUSH I was thinking about back when NWoD first came out, and for TheatreMUSH where it's a lot simpler, and allowing for Retests in that manner) but ran up against the problem I always run up against: the fact that, in WoD at least, the target can do things like spend WP to boost defense or blood and such to boost physicals, and how to reasonably account for that. You can do it (you can save everything and send it to the other player to react to appropriately, and give all the output and stuff when the target uses the appropriate command to process), but you have to have players who are paying attention to what the fuck is going on around them, which seems to be another separate problem.Otherwise, things can be coded up as commands that set stats that later affect combat. Turning on/off a forcefield, turning on/off homing on a weapon, adding automatic status debuffs when someone is struck, etc. That's all really simple to code up.
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@Bobotron said:
@Pyrephox
Yup. I theorized about doing the combat for various RPG-based MU*s (an NWoD MUSH I was thinking about back when NWoD first came out, and for TheatreMUSH where it's a lot simpler, and allowing for Retests in that manner) but ran up against the problem I always run up against: the fact that, in WoD at least, the target can do things like spend WP to boost defense or blood and such to boost physicals, and how to reasonably account for that. You can do it (you can save everything and send it to the other player to react to appropriately, and give all the output and stuff when the target uses the appropriate command to process), but you have to have players who are paying attention to what the fuck is going on around them, which seems to be another separate problem.Otherwise, things can be coded up as commands that set stats that later affect combat. Turning on/off a forcefield, turning on/off homing on a weapon, adding automatic status debuffs when someone is struck, etc. That's all really simple to code up.
Yesss, I like that. Would definitely lean towards automated modifiers of that sort. Although I would also support there only being a small number of them - I think one reason people tend to "tune out" during combat is because it can get incredibly complex in most tabletop systems, especially when you have, like, 10 PCs in a combat scene who all want to bust out their big guns in the climactic conflict.
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@Pyrephox
Which is mostly why I gave up on any type of automation (even the really simple 'have them do the test, tell them who failed, allow them to retest, THEN show the output' so that it doesn't spam the fuck out of everyone) for RPG-based systems; there are waaaaaay too many variables to build an effective resolution code around. You really have to have something custom-built and tailored, or something that's already got all the options notated and easy to input (like D&D), or it won't work at the intended effect of making things easier.And I wouldn't say combat's the only time people tune out, but that's a separate discussion anyway.
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@Bobotron said:
@Pyrephox
Which is mostly why I gave up on any type of automation (even the really simple 'have them do the test, tell them who failed, allow them to retest, THEN show the output' so that it doesn't spam the fuck out of everyone) for RPG-based systems; there are waaaaaay too many variables to build an effective resolution code around. You really have to have something custom-built and tailored, or something that's already got all the options notated and easy to input (like D&D), or it won't work at the intended effect of making things easier.And I wouldn't say combat's the only time people tune out, but that's a separate discussion anyway.
I think anyone interested in how to make tabletop games work well online should really take a close look at Hearthstone and compare it to Magic the Gathering.
The problem with many Tabletop systems are:
- They're exception based. This allows you to design many cool powers however it also means that it becomes a nightmare to code and keep track of all the exceptions.
- They assume a lot of back and forth between players. "I cast this spell" "I counterspell." "I counter-spell your counterspell!" etc etc. On TT this works fine but online you can't assume the other player pays attention so it can go several minutes before they actually reply 'No, I don't want to counterspell'.
So when Blizzard designed Hearthstone as a game to be played online rather then tabletop, they made sure:
- All powers are keyword based and simple.
- Players can only make decisions on their own turn.
As long as you follow those principles, you should be able to build a MU* system that remains sane.
For the most part I don't think GMC combat would be too hard to program into a MU* as long as you take some liberties. For instance Celerity instead of being declared after your opponents action, would need to be declared before your opponents action effectively becoming the GMC equivalent of a Hearthstone 'secret'.
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Before I decided to jump back into ShadowRun I was writing up my own RPG system for use on my fantasy game. The problem I had, was confidence.
I figured if I wrote this whole thing, nobody would be familiar with it, and nobody would read all the rules on the wiki, and it would turn people off from the game because of a lack of familiarity.
Personally I build games not just for me, but also to make fun for other people. I do understand that I can't please everyone (As anyone who read my SR 2050 thread knows) but I also don't want to have a game so small and with systems so unfamiliar that nobody will run /anything/ but me.
That's why I didn't code up my own system, which I probably should, it's a pretty universal system with Tier support for power levels and can accomodate pretty much anything.
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This is the main reason, I think, that we use RPGs nowadays. We don't have as much in common with people online as we did back in the days when we all went to school together. If we set up an RPG, we instantly have something in common: Hey, I like this RPG too!
So we default to the more popular RPGs that we like. It makes sense, and I have no easy answer for how to overcome this.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
The only answer, is to write up our own RPG, and get it published, or go the FATE route and make it free'ish. Then our system will be known, and people will have exposure to it outside our MU
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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Absolutely.
Except I keep hearing how many people haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate Fate Core.
They are wrong, of course, but still.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
I don't hate Fate core, I can understand why it is confusing though because absolute Freedom can be a scary fucking thing. We're used to rules and boundaries and everything about FATE is designed to break those boundaries. Hell that's what Stunts /do/.
My only problem with FATE is it is really hard to have permanent consequences. Someone can 'take themselves out' and then they even gain fate for it.
The other problem I have with FATE is that it's designed around the whole group making the world, together, to all be invested in the world and the campaign as a group, which is something that is practically impossible to do in an online situation. It's this, more than anything else, which makes me dislike FATE for online. I enjoy playing it TT though (Or via Roll20).
As for people hating it, people can have their own opinion of course, but what I meant was more taking their distribution model, not their game design
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@Thenomain said:
This is the main reason, I think, that we use RPGs nowadays. We don't have as much in common with people online as we did back in the days when we all went to school together. If we set up an RPG, we instantly have something in common: Hey, I like this RPG too!
So we default to the more popular RPGs that we like. It makes sense, and I have no easy answer for how to overcome this.
One way would be to take the popular RPG and liberally rewrite all the mechanics to better work on MUSH. It's what most of us are effectively doing anyway with all our houserules, but by stopping to pretend we're playing TT all together we could probably create something less of a frankensteins monster.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
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@Groth said:
One way would be to take the popular RPG and liberally rewrite all the mechanics to better work on MUSH.
Thereby alienating everyone who knows that popular RPG.
Mind you, this is out-of-the-box thinking, so I shouldn't naysay it out of the box.
