Best posts made by acceleration

RP MUDs are 100% IC all the time. If your PC is in a certain location, they are considered to actually be in that location barring logoff time and therefore doing the OOC 'hey can I join' dance is unnecessary. This is beneficial in that it's much easier to jump in and play with people you don't know and experience a wide range of RP styles. It is also detrimental in that it's much easier to jump in and play with people you don't know and experience a wide range of RP styles.

RP MUSHes are 50/50 IC/OOC (or some variation of that percentage) and therefore it's expected by a large percentage of MUSHers that you ask before you join. I've never had anyone say 'no, you can't join this scene' unless it was an event I was late trying to get in on. MUSHers are, in my experience, pretty polite and welcoming OOCly and prioritize OOC friendliness. This may translate to pulling punches ICly or changing their IC playstyle to preserve OOC harmony. It also translates to expecting players to ask before joining scenes.

There is probably some major MUD/MUSH culture shock going on for OP right now, but really in MUSHes it's pretty much about finding who you're comfortable with. In a MUSH, embrace the clique, because cliques are basically people who have 'self-selected' (as we're apparently calling it in this thread) to play with other people who have similar comfort zones/playstyles. MUSHes have hugely varying playstyles not only MUSH to MUSH but with internal groups as well. This is something that's pretty hard to wrap your head around if you're going from RPI > RP MUSH, but don't overthink it.

This topic is one I've been thinking quite a bit about lately! I'm glad to see it show up here. It's giving me tons of food for thought

1. Tabletop vs MU*

Tabletops are like braiding a rope. There is a limited set of main characters and generally only one person controlling the environment. Unless you have materials that just completely don't work together, you can get something passable in the end without too much effort.

MU*s are like weaving a tapestry. Each person has an individual thread (or two, or three, or five), all of different lengths, and no one can agree on a color scheme or which corner to start from. Without excellent management and defined borders, it's bound to devolve into a mess of rainbow vomit. On the other hand, with that much going into it, you can get some pretty fucking awesome designs, too.

Tabletops are a much more controlled environment from the outset, so you know more or less what you're getting via knowing who you're playing with (or getting to know them via playing). MU*s are always changing and have great capacity for surprise. So with that in mind....

2. Social Dice vs. Physical Dice in a MU*

If a system has a social dice system, my view is PCs should not be exempted from it on the sole account of being PCs. It's better to either take the social dice and throw them out the window completely (which some systems do), or accept the dice as part of the system.

Here's an example of social dice used well as part of a tabletop game:

In a recent episode of Critical Role (a DnD 5e game played over a Twitch stream), a PC had his very rare and valuable flying broom stolen by another PC.

To deal with the theft, both players had to roll, one to steal, the other to detect. Then the thief's player rolled a bluff check to lie about where the broom went, and the victim rolled to detect the bluff. The victim failed both, so the thief got away with the broom scot free.

This is a pretty simple transaction between two players who were friendly (or friendly enough) OOCly. But if you threw the social dice out the window, half of it would be up in the air mechanically, and in a PVP MU* specifically, this interaction might have baited out some OOC drama with some particularly sore losers because the dice would have left an opening for it.

When social dice don't exist:

I have played RPIs that did not make use of social skills. The only social skills built into these types of games were essentially solely used for hiding and eavesdropping, which had all sorts of interesting repercussions. Social interaction was not governed by other skills and entirely left to the wits of the players. In these cases, however, staff NPCs being socially influenced was a rarity; in RPIs, much of the NPC stuff tends to be governed by code to essentially run shops, drop snippets of coded gossip/quest bait, or act as killables. Staff pulling out NPCs that were sentient and could be affected by negotiation of some sort didn't tend to need social code, rules or dice to play them out.

In the cases of these games, everything that had physical effects was solved by dice: combat, sneaking, thievery, assassination, magic (if applicable), and crafting. Everything else was left to RP. Game balance was designed around social interaction being ruled by something other than dice.

Social dice that exist but are not used well:

In many WoD-type MU*s, PVP social dice being nonexistent is often justified by an anti-creep policy. My opinion is this has the side effect of marginalizing social PCs in general. Unless a sphere has a powerful skill branch that makes use of social dice, that category is going to get dumped by a lot of people, because they can't really make use of it in general play. In addition, social resistance merits get dumped even more, because they're essentially worthless when you're hardly ever going to be defending against a social attack. If you're new to WoD MU*s and roll a social character, chances are high you'll never be able to display what your PC was optimized for unless you find the right ST.

Of course, these sort of policies tend to be pretty general, too. Players may roll the aforementioned subterfuge vs. empathy check anyway and staff might not care even if the lie was something completely bald-faced, like, "A unicorn ate your broom." However, they might draw the line at using persuasion to follow the 'unicorn ate your broom' line with 'and you need to give me your wallet so I can try to go buy it back.' Or, they might only draw the line if you then try a persuasion check to use the line, 'And you need to go home with me or else the world will end!!!'

WoD specifically is balanced to have primary, secondary and tertiary fields, but there's an advantage to playing a primarily physical PC in many setups, and to a lesser extent a mental PC, because of the research/crafting component. Socially powerful PCs certainly do exist, but very often it's in tandem with some particularly sweet sphere-specific powers that rely on social dice.

I realize this is not the case in all games. AFAIK, I think Requiem for Kingsmouth(?) had a built-in system for taking advantage of PCs with social skills, which I think is awesome. This is the only example off the top of my head of a game where social dice existed and were used to any effective extent.

3. Non-consent vs. Consent vs. Freeform RP

What's the dividing line between letting something physical be ruled by dice, but not something social? Particularly when physical dice can often have social ramifications? What's the difference between being thrown bodily in a basement and tortured for the location of a macguffin, vs. being bought a few drinks and letting it slip because the charming and pretty person next to you asked nicely?

I understand that many people do draw a line there, but I think it has less to do with the existence of social dice than a consent issue. In the above scenario, without the existence of social dice, a certain type of RPer would say 'I control the emotional impact of this!' and simply not let anything slip because they're too badass to suffer from pain.

4. The Importance of a Well-Defined Ruleset, Setting and Reducing the Sandbox Syndrome

Part of the reason I feel the way I do about social dice is because wiggle room with the rules and mechanics can lead to serious abuse. It's fine if everyone's in it to have fun and everyone accepts the same amount of wiggle room, whether it's for or against their PC, but that's never going to be the case in a large scale game of strangers who play from behind computer screens.

Defining the consent level, setting and ruleset in clear terms reduces confusion. In a tabletop setting the ST would be guiding the process the whole way through. In a MU*, staff simply can't be around 24/7 to simulate the same experience. I believe RPI MUDs tend to compensate by having scripted mobiles and much more emphasis on PVP. MU*s seem to prefer the player ST route, but this can get problematic with player STs not playing true to setting, or otherwise not running arcs that are big enough in scope to be any more than a one-shot.

When players are reduced to a sandbox setting, they tend to get bored and move away. Players have very limited power to change the world, so their storylines tend to stall out without major events to frame them around.

.... that's about as far as I've gotten in working this through my own head. Putting together a MU* is hard. Respect to those who manage to complete them.

Out of curiosity, because I've been putzing this idea around in my head, how many of you would take advantage of population code if it existed?

That is to say, for businesses built on a grid, if they provided hours of operation and a fire code maximum capacity, to basically build a formula that will give a numerical range of NPCs in the area, further subdivided by whether or not the locals are the type likely to call police or pull a shotgun on you?

Would you guys work that into your roleplay and/or find it beneficial? Or would you just ignore it?

Edit: Straw Poll

@Seraphim73
Immersion works both ways in your example there, though, re: interrogation vs seduction vs anything else. Why should a player get to ignore the results of social dice if they can't ignore the results of physical interrogation?

In a system where social dice exist, accepting your PC is weak-willed and gullible because you built them that way should absolutely be a thing, and I think using FTBs and avoidance to prevent rewarding 'pornomancers' is more true to the game system than saying 'no, you can't affect me because I'm a PC'. Properly used, social dice can be handled in a manner very similar to combat dice, which is the whole point of the doors system, although I admit I haven't used doors in a PVP situation.

It's better to avoid the construct entirely (avoid balancing around social dice at all, which can't be done in WoD's system, so it would involve going to something else, like maybe FATE) or accept that social dice are going to come into play, I think, or else legitimate social chars will probably end up having very little presence on a given MU*'s grid.

For the purpose of this example, @Duntada, I'm using the torture-as-interrogation story type. I realize IRL there's argument about whether or not it's actually effective and science supports that it isn't, but I don't think it'll go away in storytelling for awhile yet.

@Lotherio

To some extent I agree, but I think players should absolutely be pushing each other to be better writers. Players should be pushing each other to RP stuff that can be responded to and not just dead end a scene, try to use correct punctuation/capitalization, and otherwise improve their writing ability. But I don't think they should be prevented from trying concepts that would otherwise exist and be effective simply because people are more willing to deal with torture than mind control.

@Pandora

I think what they're saying is:

If A critically injures B and Doctor C isn't currently logged in, they would timelock the scene until Doctor C is logged in if:

1. A (or some other party) would take B to the doctor in the first place
2. it is feasible to take B to the doctor, e.g., they're not stuck in a bog with no cell service
3. for some reason that doctor is the only one they would take B to

If A wants to ambush B and make it look like an accident, there is usually a system in place for A to stalk B without their IC knowledge and wait to get B alone in a dark alley via a request that goes through staff. However, these kinds of jobs usually throw up red flags for the victim in a game where direct unscheduled ST attention is rare and can lead to complications.

Hi,

I'm @ThatOneDude's friend in question and we've been having this discussion for a couple of weeks. You guys have given some really cool feedback so far and we're basically trying to figure out how we would set this up and balance it.

So, first, what we like about WoD, or rather, what we envision it to be:

We like playing in this universe because we enjoy the danger that comes from being pushed into corners, badassery, politicking, backstabbing and genuinely dark elements that come with the genre. We want death and destruction, conspiracies (not Conspiracies, though those too), and struggle, but we also want to see character growth, heroism, and redeeming qualities. We love complexity, dark moments alongside humorous moments, and the question of 'What is it to be human?' that great stories can put out there.

The easiest way to do this would just be to run a tabletop with a few friends. I'm pro-this, but @ThatOneDude has rightly pointed out that MU*s offer the benefit of being able to really expand who you play with, which makes for great dynamics. But of course, putting everything into the hands of the players turns things into a sandbox, which typically isn't that interesting.

So, we've basically broken this down into several issues, but the main one is:

We need a metaplot.

The reason we all RP is because we enjoy a good interactive story, right? If the main goal was to run around and get to level 99, or to give you an alternate identity and social life, there are plenty of games out there that can accomplish it without us putting in all the effort of setting a game like this up.

However, running a metaplot is incredibly staff-intensive, which is likely to lead to burnout, particularly if the game gets bigger than we can plan for. Since no one's getting paid to run a game, we can't be around 24/7 to make stuff happen.

To take some of the pressure off, we'd like to:

1. Build as much lore infrastructure as possible that can be taken advantage of by PRP-runners.

More established lore, more pre-written NPCs and/or NPC templates at specific levels, and possibly a few 'stock plots' that can be retold and spun differently to have different effects on the landscape. My personal feeling is the more that's clearly written about the universe, the less likely it is people may run PRPs that are too unbelievable for the world, as well as make them easier to spot.

However, we understand PRPs have different quality levels and that providing XP bonuses for running them tends to lead to 4/5 of them being super railroad plots, monster-of-the-weeks which have no lasting impact, or becoming scenes indistinguishable from a social scene with a news bulletin at the end.

What's the solution to this? Well, we could force staff to read all the logs... but see above where this can't be our 24/7 job. So here's our working solution to that. Instead of giving a flat amount of beats and a checklist, we think we'd like to require basically 1-3 line answers to the following questions:

• Give a short summary (1-3 lines) of the plot.
• Who took the biggest risk in your plot? What was it? Did it pay off?
• Did any of your players take any surprising actions with their characters? What were they?
• Did any of your players manage to alter the direction you were going with this scene through IC action? How?
• Did this scene give your players any subsequent hooks for investigation into a bigger plot?

A flat amount of beats can be awarded to players as per the book rules, but I'm thinking giving small beat bonuses for risks taken by characters, particularly ones with negative consequences, is a decent model. I also think that putting STs into the mindset of moving stories along instead of checking beats off is a better recipe. We really would like to reward quality rather than quantity.

We want player STs to be able to influence the world, albeit possibly in limited ways. There's inherent possible unfairness that can come into running plots that specifically benefit your friends, for example. We haven't worked out exactly how to handle that yet, and it ties quite a bit into part B of this issue.

2. Encourage PVP in order to allow players to drive the plot themselves.

This one is hazier. Both @ThatOneDude and I love the dynamics that come from PVP. We've had some great times fighting each other ourselves, in fact! To us, player conflict is a valuable experience, but we know it often leads to OOC drama, and where there's OOC drama, well, there's the Hog Pit. So re: preventative measures, here's what we have so far:

• No PK until your PC has been active for a certain amount of time. I'm thinking from somewhere between 2-4 weeks of activity. I'm also leaning toward a no alts policy, only backup characters, but that's still under discussion.
• Any premeditated murder needs to be declared to staff via a job at least 24 in advance.
• Non-premeditated first time altercations between any two characters can only result in beat downs.
• You can kill in self-defense. Yes, that would mean you could be provoked into a fight that could end in your death! That's the risk you take by swinging first.

Of course, we will also declare that we want to be pro-player-conflict and discourage whining so as to prevent staff burnout. Them's the breaks, if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen, etc. etc.

Edit: (I forgot to write this part)

We also want to reward PVP, of course. And risk-taking in general! Therefore I'm for giving some sort of XP bonus for dying in a scene, but this too is mechanically very hazy. @ThatOneDude pointed out to me that large XP disparities between characters means stronger characters tend to snowball while weak characters can easily be picked off. This is why he's for reducing XP to 50% upon death, where I'm more pro-XP cap. More stuff that needs to be worked out that we haven't found a good solution to yet. Suggestions are welcome.

@mietze
Dramatic audiencing is an excellent term for exactly what I've seen way too much of. There's a danger as staff of getting way too excited about your own plot and forgetting that great plots need to be interactive and players should have as much control over their direction as the ST does.

@ThatGuyThere said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:

I have played mentor/ students scenes on both ends and while I would be find having my character ICly be a mentor for someone, any and all teaching scenes would be glossed over to the extreme because I find them eye stabbingly boring. You also mentioned a political mini-game for folks at the cap to do, that is well and good but again not something i have any interest in. I have yet to see any political play on a MUSH be above the level of office politics.

100% this. I've never played a MU* where I found the political play to be compelling. For real political play to work, I think active, invisibly observing staffers and an anti-logging atmosphere would need to be encouraged, which is somewhat anti-transparency. You would need serious hands-on staffing for politics to feel like they had any actual ramifications in a game, and depending on the scale of the game it just might not be feasible to try to do.

I definitely agree on the mentorship point, too. By the time you're at that level of XP if all the 'compelling' scenes you have to look forward to are typing out how-to-be-badass lectures, it's time to retire. I've never enjoyed 'justified spending' scenes from either end, because this is what they boil down to.

Rather than blaming the players, I personally think more emphasis should be put on how STs handle failure. Dramatic failures should be being treated as story opportunities, not scene enders or dead ends. Players don't ostrasize if they're having fun, and players take more risks if there is reward for doing so. A good ST needs to be able to read the mood and adjust vs boredom and OOC irritation. If you want to change how the game is played I think it needs to be from that end, unless you're talking about emphasizing PVP, in which case failure conditions and dramatic failures turn into a player trust issue.

IMO, the etiquette rules are typically harder to get a grasp on in MUSHes because MUDs have coded constructs to enforce the rules and are typically anti-OOC-chatting-while-playing. MUSH culture is highly dependent on who's playing the game and who you're playing the game with. Some people want minimal OOCness, on the ball posing, and are willing to get into PVP conflict. Some people don't want that at all and are likely to metapose or provide running OOC commentary. My advice is RP with different people and see who you like playing with. Unlike in a MUD construct, it's typically easier and even maybe encouraged that you avoid people whose company you don't enjoy.

IMO, people don't usually go out of their way to timelock to include another player unless the scales will be seriously tilted somehow by adding the third player via their skillset or position etc. The same is true in that I don't see a lot of passive aggressive 'You flaked out on me' unless adding Doc C would have been a game changer, or there was some underlying resentment toward Doc C already. There is an exception if A, B and C are all friends OOCly and want to wait for C to roll around so s/he can RP sweet, sweet medical godliness, which TBF is a niche area of expertise that doesn't get the sort of screen time combat primaries do.

MUSHes tend to be more about the idea of 'collaborative roleplay', and generally require a staff/ST ruling of some sort for non-social things to happen. There are a lot of reasons to ask for staff to handle antagonism which primarily come down to the idea that MUSHes don't have straight code as a replacement for mechanical rules, although if players are cool with each other OOCly they might proceed without one. MUSHers also like to ask for STs so there's some element of surprise to their stories and things don't just feel prewritten or too easy. MUSHes mostly differ from MUDs in that the level of danger tends to be set directly by character action in MUDs in addition to scripted but not necessarily predictable danger and invisible staffers. In MUSHes, you can adjust your danger level via a number of OOC means (RP preferences, who you play with, which events you attend, etc.), with events tending to be pre-scheduled and having their danger levels broadcasted in advance.

Timelocking typically takes place if:

1. antagonistic action is taken and B wants to call C in as backup vs. A, requiring all three players and an ST to show up to mediate. In my previous 'may lead to complications statement', in general if players are on their guard via ambush, an ST job that asks them about their whereabouts will get an answer like 'I'm not going anywhere without my my good friend C these days.'
2. A and B ran into trouble somewhere, B is critically injured and requires Doc C's medical godliness, but Doc C isn't online. STs may rule for or against waiting until Doc C is able to come online, but that's typically framed by the IC circumstances.

Edit: The above ignores the 'it's 3AM and everyone needs to pass out but we haven't finished killing this horrible monster' scenario. Those get timelocked too but no one really needs that explained, do they?

In an RP MUD, timelocking to wait for another player would be considered metagaming. RPIs typically already have built-in justifications for not being logged in. A lot of things are streamlined by code, the clock is considered to be running at all times barring significant OOC disruption, and there's no reason to pretend the 8 hours that elapse between X event and Y logging in don't exist. This helps immersion by instilling OOC pressure, ironically by hand-waving the inconvenient OOC influence of real life.

All that said, despite all the difference in playstyles between MUDs and MUSHes, I've seen plenty of vitriol about both types of gameplay floating around everywhere. Lack of staff transparency can be a major issue in either type of gameplay, with accusations of favoritism, cheating, metagaming etc. having been thrown around about probably 90% of the RP options there are out there these days. There are enjoyable things about both kinds of gameplay, too. It just depends on what you like and what you're willing to get used to.

People jumping into the RP genre typically don't need help fleshing out their own characters. Roster characters succeed when they are specifically seeded to fill a position in a staff metaplot, i.e., opening up 5 slots for a special antagonist clan or something. They fail when they're pre-written characters people will look at and go 'I can execute this better my own way'.

If you want to specifically help newbies get into the game, it'd be better to sheet up starter templates and let people do the creative work themselves. E.g., stat a typical soldier, stat a typical crafter, etc.

@ThatOneDude said:

The experience of my friends is theirs but I know they slipped away which as you say doesn't matter in the long run but they never got HOOKED in. I was lucky and got in on a great scene Eerie ran early on that made me excited. Maybe I'm just the kind of person that see's that half-full glass.

I'm one of @ThatOneDude's friends in question.

I got into WoD MUSHes on the nWoD 1.0 system. I had some fun with that in a very small playerbase (12 people max, I think?) which never had a ton of metaplot but had plenty of PvP action, then had some fun on The Reach in small scale monster-of-the-week scenes, but never really got into the same depth of character I had in the previous setting.

I am trying Fallcoast, and I have tried Eldritch and Kingsmouth. I've also tried City of Hope, but I had a hard time getting into it just because of unfamiliarity with the system.

About Eldritch:

I've had a lot of trouble finding an initial hook into RP. Social RP is not the sort of thing I log on to a MUSH to find. I like intrigue and action, which presumably many of you play WoD to find as well. There may be intrigue in social RP, but for me, social RP is a means to an end, as in you finally make a friend who's willing to cut you in on the crazy happenings around the local setting. It's very difficult for me to sit through those types of scenes, but since I tried Eldritch it's just about the only type of scene I've been involved in.

Getting into intrigue-and-action filled RP has been very difficult for me. I personally dislike scenes with over four people in them. My understanding is Eldritch staff attempts to limit attendance to staff-run scenes, too. Every time I've seen a new staff event pop up, it's gotten a flood of signups right off and/or have been oriented toward m/m+, so I haven't really bothered trying to try to make one.

I completely appreciate Eldritch trying to keep it small. Small groups have been the most fun for me and I think 3-4 people a scene is where you can maximize emotes:fun. That said, Eldritch's playerbase has quickly pushed past a manageable ratio for staff, and difficulty of getting in on a staff scene or hearing that the metaplot is moving forward is another obstacle in getting properly hooked into the game.

I haven't really gone out of my way to RP a lot with the playerbase due to lack of interest in social RP, so part of it's on me. As @ThatOneDude says, I just never got hooked into the game initially.

I've also tried Kingsmouth and felt the following (though this was awhile ago, so it could really be outdated):

Kingsmouth's staff seems great. The system seems great. They seem interested in their playerbase's fun and everything. But there's a definite time investment in order to progress that... I guess these days I'm less willing to make, and if you want to get into their downtime territory system, you need a lot of minimums that are very difficult to meet straight out of chargen. That can be frustrating. For me it was and I stopped logging in.

As for Fallcoast:

It's too early to say.

@ShelBeast said in The Descent MUX:

I wouldn't take the merits away entirely. Instead they would have to be earned ICly, like status. It makes sense. Feeding Grounds implies that you have a place you can go that is your hunting ground alone. In a setting where there's just a few small scattered camps of survivors, and the like... you're not really going to have easy access to a place to call your own. Not until you carve something out of nothing for yourself, at least. Herd, even more so, because there aren't millions of people living in a city anymore. There's small clusters of 10-30. Maybe a few hundred at the upper end of things.

I've had really good experiences with post-apoc games, but they were never run as tabletop MU*s, instead having a lot of scripted downtime stuff for scavenging and crafting. Post-apoc in my experience is very resource heavy and having self-running modules for support players/actions took a huge burden off staff shoulders.

While I understand and agree with the reasoning behind making merits, well, merit-based, what's your plan for staff burnout and dealing with a playerbase larger than 10? It sounds like you guys are getting quite a bit of interest in the game from a player side, but a post-apoc game needs a lot more staff work than a standard game due to outlining setting quirks. I've seen post-apoc games die very quickly without a metaplot to hold it together. Making merits go through staff approval sounds like it's going to put extra burden on your staff.

@somasatori

I like your metaplot idea and really want to incorporate elements like that into play. However, metaplot stuff is once again ST intensive, and @ThatOneDude and I are both in the States, so anything we run will end up being limited hours and not globally friendly. Also, we don't want only action scenes and combat-oriented players.

PVP is great, but it doesn't need to only take place with combat dice. I want to see social and intellectual characters have strong impact on the game as well. To that end I'm considering some sort of territory and politics system, but haven't figured out a good model yet either.

@Derp

You're right, a lot of MUSHes are about social RP. The thing is, nWoD MUSHes are based off a tabletop system, so translating that to a MUSH means you can reasonably expect some tabletop constructs, such a monster of the week plots. I should probably make some distinctions about social RP, too. I don't really want to RP going to the bar and making small talk about the weather and the local sports. I can do that IRL, plus real booze. I'd love to RP going to a bar and finding out about the ghosts haunting the old house on the corner of Oak and Vine, and then going to check them out.

@ShelBeast

I'm going to suggest you think about looking into the Evennia codebase. It runs off Python, which I'm actually in the process of learning right now, and @volund actually is working on a NWOD port for his existing PennMUSH stuff (last I heard he had some RL stuff going on though) so maybe you can chat with him about it a bit for more info. (He's written up all sorts of really neat stuff for Penn but has spoken very very highly of going to the Evennia codebase.) Softcode is, apparently, pretty byzantine to deal with and coders can be hard to get and keep around, so learning a little DIY might be beneficial even if it's nothing more than figuring out how to automate certain types of jobs.

@Taika

Aiming high is good, but it sounds like you guys have an end product in mind but haven't worked through a lot of the more basic mechanics yet. This impression is based solely on skimming through this thread, so I might be wrong.

If I am not wrong:

A conflict-oriented post-apocalyptic multisphere WoDverse seems to me that it would need a number of house rules and systems in order to account for sphere balance, scavenging, crafting, building, etc., and the best you can do to streamline the process is fully automate as much as you can. Because a post-apoc game needs what I would consider more than average staff attention for RP, at least to get started (where a standard WoDverse might be able to rely more on monster of the week PRPs to keep it alive), I guess I'm wondering how you guys plan to make it all work.

@somasatori

Really, any ideas you have for giving social and intellectual characters a leg up in a PVP environment would be welcome. Neither @ThatOneDude nor I have typically been big into politicking in games like these, so I'm not sure what kind of models tend to actually work for them.

@Derp

Bottlenecking via requiring staff approval is a troublesome model. We don't want to discourage PK that may happen as a result of escalation. That's why we ended up with the rules we've written out so far.

That would be these, for reiteration:

• No PK until your PC has been active for a certain amount of time. I'm thinking from somewhere between 2-4 weeks of activity. I'm also leaning toward a no alts policy, only backup characters, but that's still under discussion.
• Any premeditated murder needs to be declared to staff via a job at least 24 in advance.
• Non-premeditated first time altercations between any two characters can only result in beat downs.
• You can kill in self-defense. Yes, that would mean you could be provoked into a fight that could end in your death! That's the risk you take by swinging first.

In a conflict-oriented MU* we expect some form of troublemaking. That's part of the point of opening up a game that encourages PVP as a large part of the game's build, and part of the point of declaring it to be this type of game outright-- so that people who find they don't enjoy the ups and downs of investing a character who will eventually be killed can avoid it and go elsewhere.

Of course, an extended nemesis storyline is also something we'd like to encourage! I've bounced the idea of some sort of declared nemesis system off @ThatOneDude to some extent as well, but it's something that's still under discussion. A lot of these systems are, because it turns out building your own MU* is pretty tough... but that aside, what I would ideally like to do is give small beat bonuses or willpower back in a manner similar to awarding for fulfilling a vice/virtue. Do something in line with your nemesis storyline at the expense of another of your character's goals, get rewarded for it somehow.

The troublemakers who can't distinguish between IC and OOC will end up needing staff intervention, no doubt. As neither @ThatOneDude nor I are particularly patient people, we'd probably just give them one warning and then ban them.

Edit: (Forgot to add, again)

With regard to combat systems, naturally we have to make sure everyone is playing fair if PK is involved. Beat downs are something that can be shrugged off to some extent, but PK definitely can't be and would require some sort of staff or neutral presence to oversee the dice unless all parties agree to go forward without a moderator. Haven't worked out a perfect solution to that yet, either.

Maybe everything got destroyed and they released the nanite builders!