Posts made by Apollonius

It'll be interesting to see how the mechanics change @Runescryer , the old stuff was just difficult to work with and the angst that was generated by certain people trying to overlay CK2 on top was just a recipe for angst and dramarama.

FS, in my opinion, worked best as a quick tabletop campaign, but the mechanics were not at all quick. I know folks kinda trashed an online TT format for a Fading Suns game that I proposed a while back, but I always felt like some of the best stories were not about backroom politics but riding on top of a space ship and shooting down enemies galloping on horses.

I'll also be interested to see if the political system has been given a little more meat with the Kickstarter. FS has always had a tumultuous time both in print and in MU*s and I find myself kinda skeptical but cautiously optimistic.

I will take credit for this thread being topical (thanks @Runescryer ) but it's been about 2-3 years since the last Fading Suns thread fizzled out.

I guess it probably belongs more in the Shout in the Dark but it's just curiosity really of whether there has been any new projects envisioned or if the entire gang of players are even alive.

Kickstarter looks interesting though. It took them a long time to get things restarted on Ulisses Spiel's side of things... I thought they acquired back in 2018.

I had a bad dream that I was still playing a Fading Suns game.

Come at me.

GMs that cater to either one individual or to the lowest common denominator ("We want everyone to feel included/have fun") at the expense of the rest of the PCs. I'll focus on the latter.

Inclusion in a plot is not in itself bad. There is a lot to be said about a GM who can get a random room of strangers together towards building a story together. The problem is when the GM has to or wants to drag the weakest player along (whether s/he is not an appropriate PC for that scene, whether s/he has no real business in that milieu, and/or s/he is not well regarded in a given scene, IC or OOC). Obviously this is more endemic to MUs than TT but it's frustrating when a GM allows the weakest or most obnoxious player dominate the discourse because the GM feels sorry or otherwise wants to include that player into the game.

It's like that unpopular kid in school that you had to invite to your birthday party. No one liked the kid, he smells, and tells awful jokes about murdering babies, but you have to work him in and expend energy dealing with that kid to make him feel like he fits in, often by alienating the birthday kid and everyone else. My That kid's parents would be way more popular and wouldn't tank their kid's social standing by just not inviting that classmate who ends up being a meth abuser domestic violence local in later life.

Hypothetically of course.

A building/house/shop/church/grave is burning/destroyed by earthquake/flooded/swallowed by a sinkhole, time is running out, do we put out the fire/let Timmy burn alive/explore ancient ruins filled with unspeakable horrors/TS.

#sorrynotsorry for the thread necro but I have a certain story I usually like to tell and certain story motifs that get me excited so a lot of my characters have been cut from the same vein, er cloth. Inwardly lovable, gruff, broken.

What started to happen during my terminal phase of playing MUs was that I started to lock down into certain tropes or PCs to play and became exceedingly lazy in successive chargens to pretty much create two kinds of PCs that were interchangeable in any setting. Each new game and each new iteration, I found myself reusing more and more bits and pieces of the prior character wholesale instead of inventing something novel or interesting. What was sort of a repeating trope morphed into just pure laziness and resignation that a game is never a permanent thing but a temporary expedient rushing towards the inevitable unsatisfactory end (when was the last time a MU* satisfactorily ended for you instead of fizzling out)?

Post-MU* Apollonius is more or less left with side characters/support characters that desperately hide from the spotlight. Comic relief, niche concepts, or fetch quest givers. Different names but practically interchangeable.

@salty I think that would ruin any interest in RP for me, especially if it is in the context of a generally non-sexual RP MU.

Back when I used to TS more often with more RP partners, I could usually spot the female playing a male by their description of male orgasm. I would imagine the same can be said about a male playing a female for someone who is female.

I think that for me, it's a real downer when I TS that the person engaging in the act actually has never felt the sensations would happen in the meatspace. I don't have an issue with RPing females that play males and vice versa. But between the lack of a shared physical resonance (and my personal, anecdotal experience that many people that TS females as males or males as females have been batshit crazy, says the crazy person) I just really don't like that sort of TS experience. Doubly so if I find out they've gone beyond just intentionally concealing their sexuality to outright lying about it. Kinky TS requires a modicum of trust and shared empathy that cuts into RL... and someone who is lying to me... I can't extend that trust.

In my old age, I've accepted that I predominantly like men in both the meatspace and online and I just don't have the bandwidth to mess around with TS that I am not particularly attracted to IRL. I suppose that's another reason why if I'm going to be fucking or being fucked by men online, I better get the real thing.

That said, if Charlize Theron or Lucy Lawless walked up to me and told me to drop my pants, shoves a gag in my mouth and tells me we're going to fuck in an alley where there's a good chance someone will see us, I mean. Yes. RL or IC. Fuck Yes.

I've actually started to forget all the PCs I've played over the years. Or in some cases, the MU themselves. The running gag in recent memory is naming my PCs with L names.

Edit: I keep making errors. I'm old guys.

WORA: Arcosanti

Kushiel's Debut:
Leo - Duc Rousillon, Decadent Deviant

Terre d'Ange
Donato - Caerdicci Noble... uh, Deviant by Virtue of Not Being d'Angeline

Fading Suns: Star Crusade:
Lyov - Decados Viscount, Viscount Auberry, Decadent Deviant

Fading Suns:
Caius - Hawkwood Baron, Ruler of Sheva, Closet Republican
Leo - Gunslinging Closet Hawkwood

Haunted Memories:
Leon/Valent - Mad Architect of the Monolith
Legion - Multiple Personality Rotgrafen

St. Petersburg:
Lyov - Taifa Gangrel Invictus Miscreant

The Reach:
Leo - Secret Kallisti Sworn of the Axe
Haakon - Political Rotgrafen Viking Pirate

5th World:
Cid Lothario Orelle - Mad Scientist, 27th in Line of Succession

Corporate Expanse:
Ryan - Drunk Mercenary

Aether:
Cyril - Drunk Aesir

Aether II:
Valerian - Bureaucrat on the Aesir Side

Aether Odyssey:
Valens - Bad-Ass Aesir Soldier

Firan:
I don't remember

Reno:
Lee

@dvoraen :shoves:

That is all.

I'm a 90/10 Gay/Straight Bisexualish Gay Male IRL who plays a wide variety of characters. I had tried out a female PC a very long time ago on Firan, and the female PC I played on a pay-for-play MUD to get fancy in-game items but I don't play them anymore. At most, I will NPC one or two but in a strictly non-sexual manner.

I used to have very strict boundaries between hetero-normative straight male PCs in RPG MUs and openly gay males in Shangrila. As my tilt got from like 60-40 Gay/Straight Bisexual to 90/10 mostly Gay, my appetite for playing straight PCs in either genre declined accordingly although I do did play more polysexual/bisexual PCs for the most part in RPG MUs (until I basically dropped out of RPG MUs entirely).

My favorite PCs were brutally decadent in terms of their sexuality, where it was sort of an exploration of a world that isn't in austere gay/straight dichotomies but fluid and open to both relationships and flesh-on-flesh activities that are driven by innate desire. Even my hard sub gay male PC on Shang engaged in the occasional heterosexual activity to great and explosive effect. My more dominant PCs tend to be much more heterosexual for some reason.

I get totally squicked at women playing men and men playing women. I don't know why, I just do. I will RP with anyone but I don't dip into that sort of cognitive dissonance IRL or in-game (nothing wrong with it, just not my thing) but we can still do brunch.

Whatever historical misgivings, I'd still bite. I may be some sort of epic masochist.

That said... I know everyone wants Lords and Ladies in Space but I reiterate that every effort, Fading Suns-themed or original, has collapsed on the weight of its own bad decisions. Primarily, people don't fundamentally understand the economic and political system that they are being handed and modern analogues break the system that is already straining from a lack of comprehensive testing, auditing, enforcement, and staff transparency. Even the most vetted systems that have undergone vigorous QA end up in total disaster. Or often in my case, there is that situation where your PC has maxed out in IC advancement/achievement and you teeter out.

I'll be curious how XP will run if the game ever comes to life. It is the single most significant source of strife, entrenchment, and imbalance in a game. Successful games I have seen have a very loose XP transfer policy and the XP flows freely.

I suppose the elephant in the room is that a truly successful FS game will likely not have Paulus or Lextius or any of their cronies anywhere near staffing positions and probably none of them, Custodius, or myself even on the grid. I know in my case, it will be extremely difficult to play in a game with Paulus, Lextius, Yara, or Custodius ever again. I'm sure many folks will say the same about me.

If there's ever a lesson to be had from the prior iterations of Fading Suns, its that many of the players are a small pool of sometimes deeply flawed individuals and a second chance is a brand new day for them to abuse any good will in that chance.

I didn't realize I had posted this... this year (2017). Maybe it's the boredom speaking or old age but I'm vaguely interested in a viable Fading Suns game, but it looks like interest is scattered and the toxicity of Star Crusade has lasting ramifications to attracting interest.

Ever since the collapse of SC, I've always been interested in smaller tabletop adventures or conversely just playing out bad life decisions in CKII or EU4. I wouldn't mind an online TT campaign that is fully supportable out of the box without major customizations to theme or new game mechanics outside of the main game platform.

I feel like there was a lot of interest in a FS-themed adventure, but it got perverted by a lot of the horrific mechanics that were introduced to warp SC into a text-based reskin of CK2. And Paulus and Lextius managing to screw up their own game in a completely horrific manner.

I'd personally love fighting off Vuldrok raiders and various Houses racing towards some sort of Vau artifact with consequences based on the actions, teamwork, and timing of the story.

Not holding my breath, though. The track record of actually standing up any online game has been pretty poor. But looking back at the 15 odd years of being faithful to this theme, the experiment in trying to set up a viable economics and military system, particularly when they become debased due to bad staffing with no checks or balances, should be deemed a failure. MU*s just aren't structured for that kind of complexity to run autonomously outside of staff intervention or perceptions of improper staff interventions.

My concept was originally to be a down-on-his-luck bartender who smuggled guns on the side.

Assuming this hypothetical MU* has important stakes attached to the actions and skills, I will double down and make this bartender completely useless.

More attention needs to be put in, after all, into competing for the best hipster beard.

I'm on board for this game.

I'd like to just be a bartender in space. With a handsome beard. A bartender in space with a handsome beard.

That could be hydrochloric acid you are drinking. I don't know. I am not a doctor.

That is all.

It looks like in my absence, a Dune game that Ataru generated lots and lots of buzz for never happened either. Or if it did, people are being super quiet about it so I don't ruin it.

It's a new year and it looks like no Fading Suns games gained traction. I haven't been on this forum in many many months. Anything interesting? Anyone interested? Discuss wishlist items? Do people still play MU*s?

I'm so lost.

Edit: Good luck. Godspeed.

So. Are these numbers/spreadsheets going to be automated by code or hand statted and maintained by staff?

@Packrat This Vassal (Skye) was betrothed to Michael's right hand Hawkwood (Benoite). Benoite got Skye's League alt pregnant. Skye then had an affair with Benoite's Scraver alt and got knocked up by one of them.

Skye and Benoite were a RL married couple who spent their time TSing on Vargo.

I don't really understand how Custodius DIDN'T know that Skye was raiding the crap out of the Vargens. It was common knowledge that Skye had been delegated so much of the Hazat forces by Custodius that the Hawkwoods tolerated Skye and Benoite's shenanigans OOC so that Skye could push for a coup... that got aborted by baby troubles.