Best posts made by acceleration

@Arkandel
I think it really depends on what's happening in those public scenes. I'm going to be honest here and say I haven't read through the entire thread, so forgive me if I've missed anything or this has already been said. Specifically to answer your question:

I don't find incentivizing social scenes to be beneficial to finding roleplay. Your run of the mill coffee shop/bar/party RP isn't really particularly interesting and I see no reason to reward it with experience gain. Yeah, social scenes help you meet new characters, but is there any particular drive to seek out a character you talked about the weather and local sports with? Does it add anything other than a dimension of 'oh hey I recognize that guy' if you happen to run into them again? A +vote system, diminishing returns or not, isn't really an adequate substitute for RP creation.

Stuff that specifically drives a plotline (aspirations, if done correctly, or condition resolution, same) is what should be rewarded. Given the choice I'd probably want to reward conflict-driving aspirations with double beats or something along those lines. If 'start a bar brawl' or 'steal a wallet' is on your aspiration list and you fulfill it in some manner that creates in-game plot? You should definitely get extra beats for it. We're actually considering an +asp/conflict system for our game precisely for that purpose.

Incentivizing making stuff happen is what should be rewarded. This can be done from a player level or from an ST level. See above for player stuff.

@Pyrephox

Getting tied up in details that don't move a story along (by tossing out false information that doesn't go anywhere, putting players in a dead end or getting sidetracked by semi-relevant tangents) really seem to happen quite often, but I don't think it's specific to jobs so much as people who handle jobs tend to get into a rubber stamp, super mechanical mentality, or are those types of people naturally to begin with.

@Thenomain said in Population Code:

This is why my answer was convoluted. Before I can say if I'd use it, I'd want to know what it's useful for or, at least, an overview of how it works. I can see the footer for a room not only having a location's security ("Poor"), but its current population ("~7 NPCs here").

Yeah, that's basically all I want, something pretty simple that'll track the current scene time, default to standard game time when no PCs are in the room/no one has specifically set anything, and give a rough population and safety level.

I'm not really asking as a coder, I'm just asking if, as a player, people would incorporate the results of their code into their roleplay, or if they'd prefer to set all that stuff themselves.

What if you just controlled skill dot spending with a soft cap of some sort? For CoD, if you said: "You can't spend more than 66% and 33% of dots in your primary in your secondary and tertiary skill categories," you could prevent total specialization to some extent while allowing XP to still be able to be spent on merits and attributes while still leaving some room for improvement, at least until you hit 5 dots in everything in one category.

In my ideal game, dinosaurs would have their own tier of adventures that would be designed to be super high risk/high reward and there would be an XP bonus awarded for retiring into a staff-run NPC.

I really like the CoD beat system for various reasons, but I think in an MU* environment a lot of the opportunities CoD creates get missed.

Primarily this has to do with condition resolution and dramatic failures.

Dramatic failures are great for a variety of reasons. I'm all for rewarding story failures, but these are highly dependent on ST style, and the reality is in 90% of the types of PRPs I see run, there is either 1) no adequate opportunity for failure or 2) dramatic failure is simply treated as a particularly bad fumble that happens and is shortly forgotten.

With condition resolution, positive conditions appear to be very easy to resolve, particularly in a low XP setting. Have a problem you need to succeed on? Go ahead and resolve that Steadfast! Problem solved, free beat for resolving it. Oh hey, did you just get another exceptional success? Rinse, repeat.

Negative ones, particularly socially or terror-inducing negative ones, are much more difficult to resolve. Player STs might not be able to see a condition sheet, so they don't know what to tailor their plots to in order to create an opportunity to resolve a negative condition (and tailored plots tend to be, well, tailored to specific characters, meaning STs running general PRPs pretty much don't bother with this at all) and players can rack up numerous conditions fairly easily if they're following the book rules of breaking point rolls. The end result is probably a sheet full of unresolveable conditions without specifically finding a situation where negative conditions can be resolved.

@surreality
If players are actively bitching out another player or the ST (openly or not) in the middle of a plot, something is wrong with the flow of the plot. Engaged players will be busy thinking about how to salvage the situation or turn it to their own advantage ICly if the opportunity is created correctly.

Can players be bitchy, catty assholes? Absolutely.

Do they complain less when they're having fun? Definitely.

Can they have fun even when they're failing? My answer to that is hands down, yes.

This seems to be where you and I differ, @surreality , because my experience was that an engaging storyline would keep players, well, engaged and coming back even though one or two characters might have (quite often) made terrible decisions. I did see players choose to take dramatic failures and I didn't see people bitching about the OOC choice to do so (which may have just been me with the blinders on, but I'm judging mostly by the fact that they came back for more.)

Shaping OOC attitudes is to some extent in the hands of the ST.

I absolutely think wildcard characters and characters who fuck up make things interesting. I think wildcard characters create unexpected situations for everyone that can challenge problem-solving skills and encourage lateral thinking. It's the stuff of storytelling to deal with flaws and the unexpected, and even the winnering types of players can find these types of situations interesting if they're challenged to solve it and get rewarded at the end of the process.

This is a very difficult thing to learn as an ST, and I certainly don't claim to have mastered this talent, but like I said originally, I think the missed opportunities in negative condition resolution is a ball best resolved on the ST side of the court.

In many of the types of plots I've experienced, here are the common problems with STs addressing bad outcomes:

1. Railroad plots. There are one or two set ways to solve the plot, and the ST is inflexible about handling it. Due to the way this type of plot is written, failure will result in a dead end regardless of whether it is a rolled failure or not, leaving a player no choice but to go back to square one and try another option. This is a highly frustrating type of plot from the player side, and if multiple players are involved, bitching is likely. Because it's already likely, choosing to take a dramatic failure or resolve a condition in this type of plot is basically a free, very boring beat.

2. Combat one-shots. This type of plot has mixed results for a variety of reasons. Not all PCs are created equal and not all MU*ers prepare for combat plots even when they sign up for them. Player STs often cannot see sheets of participating players in advance (and may not even know who's showing up) and therefore cannot design combat antags for them. Taking risks (dramatic failures) in these types of plots can be a bad idea, and are difficult to handle from an ST side. If you dramatically fail a clairvoyance roll, an ST has a lot of potential story to throw at that, but with a dramatic failure on a roundhouse kick, what kind of story can you throw at it? "X PC puts his weight down too soon and with a sharp horrible crack and a sudden stab of pain, he buckles to the ground, finding a gleaming white piece of metatarsal bone sticking out of a gushing red gash on his left foot. Take the leg wrack tilt." A bunch of mechanical stuff that can't really be handled within the scope of a one-shot. BUT! This can have pretty interesting ramifications on an extended plotline which if properly handled can engage the rest of the players on this plot.

3. Splitting the party. I definitely concede this is an issue with certain types of conditions, but still can be handled by a good storyteller who knows their limits and doesn't try to juggle too much at once.

Players are free to act as idiots as their characters. It's the storyteller's job to capitalize on that idiocy. Yes, there might be a few oddball players who will never use conditions properly, but I guarantee you most would if it got them an engaging story in return. (It might take them a few tries to get used to it.) The problem with 1e was that no one failed, ever. You never saw the WoD equivalent to DnD 1 unless STs stacked on several penalties, which was pretty rare in my experience. What does never seriously failing do for story arcs? It makes them pretty uninteresting. Giving a beat for dramatic failure means more players are willing to do it, and if it ends up being an uninteresting failure, that's sort of the STs fault (unless it's a no-ST scene, in which case, well.)

@Lotherio

100% agree on the ease of chargen for RPIs. In my experience, there's also typically a cap/soft cap of how strong you can really get, and living long enough to grind will get you to par, so there aren't necessarily huge power gaps in PVP.

I don't think it necessarily means they are more willing to take risks because the initial hurdle is less painful. It's true they don't have to wait 3-4 days for staff to unbusy enough to approve an app, or really even need staff at all to stat their characters, but RP done right typically involves a certain amount of emotional investment in a character, and losing that character in any MU* setting might warrant a break regardless of what it takes to roll a new one.

IMO, RPIs/RP MUDs encourage risk taking by:

1. offering more PVE danger
2. reducing OOC communication and thereby minimizing any guilt tripping that might happen because a PC got killed, as well as minimizing any OOC manipulation attempts to get reduced consequences for any given PC
3. streamlining code so there's less opportunity to argue about fairness or accuracy of mechanics

Side tangent about wiki pages:

I'm not actually a huge fan of wiki pages for character development. I think things stated to be RP hooks on character wiki pages typically aren't actually RP hooks but rather more a resume of skills, and that they're usually used in a 'hey look how many friends my PC has and how awesome my sheet is' and a 'check out my mixtape!' capacity. I don't see them as improving the RP experience in any way. The main way they might be useful is in giving an OOC impression of who's playing and what might be a good PC to roll for a grid that's already balanced in some particular way.

@Arkandel
There are exceptions, but they're not really relevant to OP. Yes, MU*s are super niche and everything has its own culture, but RP MUDs (RPIs, mostly) have their own general corner and as a rule are 100% IC. Any construct that defines IC vs OOC areas outside of (maybe) a newbie channel wouldn't be lumped together with those. For the sake of simplicity, I'm comparing two opposite ends of the RP market. If you want to go down the spectrum, have at.

Heard about a Shadowrun MU* from a friend a while back, haven't gotten around to trying it myself since I'm not too familiar with the system. http://www.awakenedworlds.net/

While I haven't played much Shadowrun, the game's premise is specifically set up to involve skilled mercenary criminals that do whatever it takes to get paid. That may mean sweet-talking or sneaking your way past the front door, but it also involves guns, hacking, drones with guns and bombs, punches to the face, the occasional hurled fireball and probably someone running around with duct tape a med kit when things go wrong. There's lots to work with there but it's inherently built around action. With lots of action comes a risk of death.

Meanwhile, WoD specifically has built-in emphasis on social/political interaction. In WoD mushes, this is combined with a low ST:player ratio, which reduces incidences of dice rolling for violence. When you throw that in along with MU*ers tendency to freeform RP (no PVP social roll policies being common) then the pressure and unexpected outcomes that come from bad rolls are greatly reduced.

The system itself is quite capable of being used for development of min-maxed/specialized characters, it's just that character specialization gets little opportunity to be showcased in bar scenes or the overpopulated monster-of-the-week plots that are common PRP fodder.

The WoD books are designed for tabletop (Mind's Eye Theater aside, which tbh I've never played, on top of which I've never LARPed in general), as are a lot of the systems listed in this thread. How 'crunchy' a game is is always about how the GM runs their game, which in turn is about how GMs tailor their games to their players. MU* environments don't do this well, particularly ones which don't allow sheet sharing to other players via the system and don't have any GM-specific reference notes.

With a tabletop, GMs typically have some leeway to fill in a character's background themselves, which creates a very interesting interactive dynamic. MU*ers, on the other hand, seem to prefer the idea that their backgrounds are sacred and can never be influenced in that type of manner by a GM. STs therefore will never try to do this, and playing on something in the character's past or integral to that character's personality is generally something that needs serious hand-holding or trust between GM and player to be done.

This type of thought process has generally led to WoD MU*ers playing more freeform and erring on a conservative side when it comes to letting others influence what they believe their character to be. It encourages shying away from risk taking from both ends unless the parties involved are very familiar with one another. That's a culture thing, not a system crunch thing.

All that said, a Shadowrun game without good staff will probably die faster than a WoD game without good staff, because WoD games can theoretically get by just with players.

Voted 'other'. Would love to see a no-holds-barred post-apocalyptic RPI with active and engaged staff. (Armageddon is not post-apoc, no matter how it bills itself.)

@Ganymede maybe. I'm aware that most mux-in-a-box games have ooc lounges built in by design, and that's fine, but like op says, it's hard to stop ooc oversharing when there is no actual rule. As for making a rule, where do you draw the line between 'so how's it going' and the type of personal life oversharing that drives players away? How do you enforce it without a constant babysitter present? Most mu*s don't deal with problem players until they absolutely have to. I don't see a lot of staffers enjoying adding an additional arbitrary rule to their list of duties, and the ones who would enjoy it are generally not good staffers to begin with.

You can narrow down the channels for this type of communication and some games do make an effort to make it opt-in or push it outside of the gaming platform, but it's very unusual to see mushes do that. Similarly, it is unusual to see players actively asked to stop making running ooc commentary in the middle of an active scene in these types of games unless they get particularly disruptive, or the reverse but related problem of players asked not to overshare the details of their characters oocly when they should be role-playing it instead. Granted, the latter happens everywhere but some games are better at minimizing it, while other maximize it by encouraging posted logs and wiki's full of ic information.

I guess what I'm getting at is that op's complaint only seems to be recognized as a problem by certain types of games which want to encourage certain types of attitudes, and that's fine. I wouldn't complain at all if ooc lounges were removed as I use them to idle, I just think they are a byproduct and not a primary cause of the underlying problem of driving certain types of players away.