Posts made by Apollonius

@Packrat

Lextius went out of his way back on Fading Suns: Vargo to fuck up PCs in a toxic manner. It wasn't just a Star Crusade phenomenon. Maybe it was just fucking up PCs that were not in his faction (i.e. the Hawkwood contingent that I was a part of and the Hazat contingent that Custodius was a part of) back then.

@bored said:

I couldn't even tell you if Lyov had a boytoy tucked away somewhere, but far as I could tell he was 100% focused on politics and war.

Okay, 97% focused on politics and war. 1% trying to bribe @Monogram 's Solomon for his guns, ahem, and his actual guns with offers of sex. 1% Lyov was fucking his confessor/cousin/Renaud's bishop. 1% I spent pushing off Yara's creepy pre-teen that was humping Lyov's leg and RPing out her first menstruation in the name of spying on me for Principe and Lextius.

So... 99% focused on politics and war and related. 1% shoving away the staff creep/jail bait.

Compare to my experience as Duc de Rousillon (Leo Rousse, also Chris Hemsworth) where I politicked 5% of the time, gave fucking gifts of ochre to try and gain allies 45% of the time, and was trying to politick instead of being chased for marriage proposals 50% of the time.

@mietze There's just too much baggage in all MU*s that have a particular theme that repeats. Think about the baggage that comes with nWoD. If you thought FS players were bad, some nWoD players come with blood feuds. I suppose FS comes a close second. My recommendation is to create a totally new themed game that has similar conceits but different structural elements. A lot of the issue lies in players willfully repeating their mistakes in an FS game. Certain players playing certain archetypes and factions over and over and over again, certain players acquiring IC positions of power over and over and over again, certain players rising to OOC positions of power over and over and over again.

I think that @bored and @ThatGuyThere are getting entrenched in the discussion of pretty princess marriage and babies simulator. Whatever. The tl;dr version is that staff needs to keep activity up with fun stuff in the game story line (adventures! murder! politics! ripping my eyes out of my eye sockets as we steer our ship into a black hole to hell!) or people will default to things that they readily understand (well, sort of... insofar as men living in their parents' basement and never having been touched by someone of the same/opposite sex perpetuate their notions of romance, marriage, and children).

@deadculture I admittedly have no time or interest in staffing for a game other than as a theme manager and metaplot writer regardless of how people feel about me. The most successful times I have been staff have been when I am left to my own devices to write up things or run adventure-style plots and not have day-to-day adjudication of player requests. I was just not sure why my name popped up. I wouldn't volunteer to staff in any hypothetical game that Packrat stands up and I think a snowball has a better chance in being asked to be staff by Packrat.

I'm still waiting to see if this project advances or gets mothballed and forgotten as vaporware. This wouldn't be the first time. As I said before, the standing recommendation is to stop fretting about mechanics and theme and just stand something up, playtest it a little in a soft open, and then move forward. Getting the game started is 60% of the work and where most new game ideas seem to fail.

@ThatGuyThere said:

Not to be insulting but if his behavior on the channels on SC is inductive of his personality Appolonius is not particularly suited for it.

I am doing what now where and how?

Your lack of commitment to slaves in salt mines is disappointing. But now I do expect anti grav laser gunships in your game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROX9V4bKqKs

@Packrat A reason why Amber was considered to be favored over the other Counts was largely because of a few items:

1. While there may have been background raiding from the Kurgans against Renaud and Amber, most of the most brutal raiding and big scale Kurgan activity was pointed at Oultrejoyeaux (Antonio) and Auberry/Sidon (Lyov (me) and Karl (bored)). Auberry, for example, faced off with a super effective Kurgan leader with no real avenue for expansion, meaning we bore the most risk and the least possible reward. Karl might further complain Lyov did nothing to help but I was in the middle of making sure my operatives and regular troops were there to back Sidon should Sidon go into raids or on the front against the Kurgans... or bail out anyone who got into hot water (like Chiaka). This in turn limited my ability to do my own raiding for cash, but I shouldn't have apped for a Count-level PC if I wanted to raid instead of playing bureaucrat.

2. I actually had a pretty intense side conversation with P about Amber-as-Chancellor. This was both before her nomination, during the first round of voting when she got voted in by ONE vote, and then when a coalition of PCs tried to get that overruled by having that one vote change his mind, by which point P refused to reopen the vote and then packed the voting with a few more NPCs to make sure that we could not unseat her as Chancellor. Amber was going to be annointed Chancellor whether anyone liked her or not and it just happened that at one of the votes, the players, by one vote (who later changed his mind) accepted it. If that isn't structural, I don't know what is.

3. @Packrat I know you are trying to be fair minded but I do think the consensus was that Amber and Renaud got certain advantages that others did not. It may not necessarily be areas where you were privy or were aware of, and I do want to state that the advantages the rest of us got were totally thematic to native Fading Suns. While Lyov got a few interesting toys that other PCs may cry foul about, I believe Amber's biggest complaint about Lyov getting his toys was Decados Jakovian agents which hoisted twenty different issues including the fact that they really were not in Lyov's employ and could do whatever they wished (i.e. what P wanted them to do) in the name of the Decados. Antonio's major advantage were his Dervishes and later his fanatical Crusaders but again, the former was thematic, the latter he worked for. Amber was really complaining about theme and how her Van Gelder did not get the cool off-world toys that a hands-bound Decados and a crazy fanatical Crusader PC got.

4. At least in the beginning, Renaud and Amber both got to fill some of their host baronies with people that they brought in. Antonio and I got stuck with random people. Some were awesome like Lysandra (Antonio). Others like Chiaka (Lyov), were totally messed up and were being told to revolt against me while they were still in chargen.

The thing about Amber was that neither Lyov nor I, the player, ever considered her to be a rival. Amber was distant, we didn't share a border, and my interests lay in tearing out a few baronies from Renaud and keeping the super-Kurgans along my border at bay. Hell, my PC was half-Van Gelder and actually had sympathies about the house's plight under the thumb of the Decados. I never actually RPed a scene with her because she flat out refused to do so... so it's hard to call her a rival and therefore somehow call out any alleged bias.

I do echo @bored 's sentiment to just stand up a Fading Suns game. Just make the theme more gritty tech. Like Leagueheim.

@deadculture GM-endorsed entrenchment is a serious issue. Amber was given not just all the fun toys to play with but every logistical advantage to place her in her position where PCs faced enormous PC and NPC hurdles in removing her from her position.

This happens a lot on nWoD when a staff NPC Prince claims to step away from day-to-day affairs... and always designates a single Seneschal who may have some sort of good reason for being there (oldest PC on grid, oldest PC in terms of story) but is in a controversial and antagonistic position (usually Lancea Sanctum but sometimes Invictus) who is then free to terrorize the PCs and seems to have the heft of the GMs' approval to do so (i.e. rebelling against a Seneschal's decision at risk of pissing off the big scary Prince).

System design to allow players maximal control of their affairs is critical... and one that is pretty much an elusive holy grail for a self-sustaining political environment. I have grown to basically call for games that are totally removed from high politics and force a more collaborative approach amongst an ensemble of cast members but I know this is not what @Packrat is looking for and what a lot of players are looking for in a Lords and Ladies game.

I will say that there are two pivots in any political game: staff-driven and player-driven. They attract different people with different interests and they will color the tenor of any game. Dissonance comes when a player-driven political tries to shake things up in a staff-driven narrative or someone used to a staff-driven narrative finds themselves thrown to the wolves in a player-driven environment.

A GM has to be fair, yes. But a good GM has to have a lot more good qualities than that to move things forward as well as the general activity level to sustain excitement.

The best ST/GM brings together a random group of PCs into a story where they play an integral part as an ensemble. Some PCs may not get as much spotlight and others may indeed get relegated in a scene or two, but a good GM will know how to bring other people in. He or she will also limit the focus in advance so a pretty princess with no combat skills whatsoever is not in a heavily combat-oriented plot unless there's a good twist involved.

A good long-term showrunner will help each character feel like they are special in some way and make them the star of their own episode, even if they play tiny minute roles for the overall plot.

It's about trust with the ST/GM to help PCs move forward, grow, and sometimes die with dignity, explaining the risk of death or maiming and moving forward with a plot after everyone is aware of the risks. Sometimes death will have meaning. Other times, death will be totally pointless... but the goal of a game runner is to tell a good story where everyone is mature and able to have fun.

If a player cannot accept PC death gracefully, they probably shouldn't be playing on your game. If a PC goes Amber on you and refuses to RP except in staff sanctioned safe plots and only with a small niche of PCs, then that PC is going to have his or her toys taken away by someone more deserving. The system IC, as designed by staff, should accommodate for this but in a manner where players drive the change, not the staff as to seem like arbitrary staff fiat.

Everyone dies. Make it fun. Those that can't accept it don't belong on any game. I'm a jerk. Etc.

Speaking from experience, comingling of IC and OOC knowledge and power is impossible to avoid and lie in a fine line between successful leadership and collusion/abuse of power/conflict of interest. Transparency is a vague catch all word for all of MU* problems' issues. Some general musings:

In the situation where there is no designated faction head policy, does someone with IC power gain OOC power or does someone with OOC power gain IC power? Is there a propensity or pattern for fac heads to fall in one or the other categories?

What are the IC and OOC outlets for PCs/Players who disagree with their faction head? Is there staff intervention for the will of the minority against the judgment of a majority of a given faction?

What is staff's hand in a player's position with IC and/or OOC power? How transparent is this process?

Not all Lord and Ladies MU*s are doomed to become marriage simulators. People tilt towards whatever is en vogue. I'm not proposing to block out the fucking aspect in its entirety but this tendency towards pretty princesses and princes playing out their pregnancy fantasies was fairly uncommon in the past. Fading Suns Vargo only had one couple who were dead set on playing through marriage/relationship/pregnancy drama during my five odd years I was there (and that in itself is a much more convoluted web of alts fucking alts and a RL couple TSing in the game).

The proliferation of the modern L&L trope really started rearing its ugly head when Firan was no longer a viable platform for multigenerational fucking and the increasing popularity of Kushiel-themed MU*s during the absence of a viable Fading Suns or any other Lords and Ladies alternative while the hard adventuring/political players started to get crowded out of the space or adapt to changing conditions. Game of Thrones and its own sexualized version of nobility exacerbated this trend. I mean, noble etiquette used to be a nightmare to deal with because there were certain protocols demanded in the Fading Suns universe and if they were not met, you could be unwittingly committing major social faux pas that would translate to poor political play. What I am seeing today with a lot of noble-oriented games is an increased relaxation of those protocols, sometimes for the better, but often to break the often steep learning curve of playing a lords and ladies and making it easier for everyone to sleep with one another because this is easy and it is how to make a game popular.

The issue is in the players that a game attracts and which of the play styles dominate the lay of the land. Fucking, TS, and domestic drama are all a natural part of any MU* but it's really up to the theme makers in terms of the control of the variables of attracting certain players. Packrat can opt to pick a highly adventure-styled game and attract those players to swamp out the occasional ones that want to get married and have pretty children. Packrat can also opt to pick a highly political game that swamps out adventuring concepts and pretty princess and princes concepts. I stand by my point that there are variables that staff is in control of to alter the trajectory of their games by focusing on thematic elements that appeal to certain players and discouraging other players to never play at all or conform to what Rome does. The natural trajectory of any Lords and Ladies game in modern times is to rush towards a mess of marriage simulations and all sorts of domestic drama.

The question is when the carrot runs out, is there a viable stick? Maybe I'm some archaic dinosaur who is unable to fathom a world that now irrevocably and irreversibly has become a marriage simulator in any lords and ladies paradigm and the two cannot be divorced from each other. I'll concede that.

Free Loving was short hand for Devolving Into Marriage/Relationship Simulators. Part of the discussion was how to keep Lords and Ladies in an adventuring or high political context rather than what they all eventually gravitate towards. TS happens and it happens a lot. The point I am trying to make is that there are very few controls possible to prevent a game from collapsing into a mire of marriage simulators between pretty princesses and princes. One of those happens to be IC thematic incentivization of why devolving into marriage/relationship simulators is bad.

One of the major negative factors in a game that has devolved to marriage/relationships and TS over actual plot is that these activities result in weird and negative behaviors OOC amongst different players. Add to the mix a staffer running with his or her pants down and you have a textbook recipe of a game about to teeter into collapse.

Does that clear things up?

There are those that want to explore options to limit this behavior. There are those that think that limiting this behavior is totally for naught. One option is to maintain activity levels to such an extent that the playerbase cannot invest too much time in marriage simulation because they are too busy killing each other or killing a foreign foe. Even then, staff activity can only be maintained for so long. Or once foes start fucking each other.

I'm not sure how that became grossly misconstrued for enforcing societal norm myths against adultery and homosexuality. I have no philosophical intent here other than MU* theoreticals on the behavior of players and constructing game theme. Christ.

Is Fate/FUDGE too generic for you, @Packrat ?

@bored Let me rephrase. I feel like I am hijacking Packrat's board and I was already planning on easing off. That was self-deprecation. You could stop acting like every thing I do is an attempt to be a dick. It's getting kinda fucking old. This is why I hated interacting with you in Star Crusade and why I've given up on trying to hold a meaningful conversation with you here.

@deadculture I mention TS only because it is such a predominant theme for marriage simulators. I have nothing particularly against TS necessarily if it is part of the story and I have accepted that it is just a normal course of life. What would be nice is to enforce societal norms that do not promote free loving. A means to stamp down on marriage simulating in Lords and Ladies games.

The Amber example is pretty problematic. A flatter regime with unstable executive level positions would mean that someone intentionally avoiding someone else OOC will translate to avoiding someone IC. That should have a strongly negative effect on the game. The problem with Star Crusade was that the staff regime insulated Amber from those negative ramifications. Again, I think that creating a thematic society that allows the players to run their lives without

I'm out of recommendations and ideas. I can distill my points to two recommendations for @Packrat :

1. Have an active staff with clear and transparent theme that helps facilitate RP rather than drives a story. Said staff should build in player-driven avenues of thematic control and let things move organically.

2. Players need to be allowed to see their efforts with minimal staff intervention. Instead of artificially prolonging a game and enforcing rigid 'balance' of factions, let things flow organically. Worst case scenario, players force a reboot or a rewind of the game.

gl;hf

Back to Fallout 4.

I think someone else hit the nail on the topic a while back (and apologies to that person, I'm too lazy to scroll up to quote). Marriage simulators are in a lot of ways a function of nothing else better to do. It is, of the three: adventuring, politcking, marrying, the safest and socially most cost effective means of generating RP. It's why soap operas and telenovelas exist in the world and people used to stare at them endlessly until we got stupid drama crap like the Kardashians and the Real House Wives of X town.

There's really no way around it. A game that focuses on adventuring needs to have a staff that is dedicated to being servant leaders for players' fun but also have fun in telling stories and building a narrative with players. It requires a huge amount of time and resources and it also requires at least a bare majority of the staff to be reasonably sane so crazy people like myself or P or whomever don't drive the game into the ground before its time.

At the end of the day, I can whip up a game based on Fading Suns around Leminkainen or Gwennyth (Paltrow not withstanding) where the focus is on raids against Vuldrok raiders and petty Viking-style politicking with big Blots and drunken brawls that lead to death... in space. It's an environment where being a pretty pretty princess is actually a detriment and where being a TS whore is pretty much going to give you STDs, not give political favors. But I don't have time to run that shit even if I found a dedicated coder or out-of-box MU* kit to get things working. Marriage simulating is going to be between a bunch of rednecks or crazy knights or possibly crazy Vikings where the life expectancy is short and brutish. It'd be run TT style where your PC may not be standing at the end of the day but you will get compensation to jump back into the game if something happens. Your PC's actions will be logged in the game narrative and at the end of the day, most of the PCs will have some sort of effect on the overall metaplot, giving a sense of buy-in to the process where we are all storytellers rather than mere players.

I'm hijacking Packrat's thread because I know he wants a more stable political game but at the end of the day, I feel like any and all Lord and Ladies game will fight the trend of becoming a marriage simulator. It is staff's vision and drive to keep those forces away. Or blow up said weddings.

@Bobotron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0s8n3lvsFQ

http://theywillreturn.wikidot.com/cid I think his musical selection explains it all.

@bored re assassinations. To be honest, this is one of my grand theoreticals in a game I would theoretically run. It is also where I got a lot of opposition in a game that I did run and also where my grand idea of a perpetual TT rather than a static perpetual world came in (where player would be mature enough to give up their PCs for the overall narrative being built).

One idea I had was to build in social rules against certain things IC and create incentives for certain behavior with the hopes of encouraging decisions. Vague, I know. Some ideas:

1. IC disapproval of assassinations and murder based on telenukes or prevent telenuke scenarios entirely. Conversely, if telenukes do exist, create a cold war mentality where one telenuke can potentially result in a series of related and unrelated telenukes.

2. Encourage assassinations and PK based on defendable positions. Combat heavy society that allows for trials by combat where the loser typically dies. Give an XP incentive to all involved but give a higher XP incentive to those that get killed in the process.

I can foresee things getting toxic if either of the above are not handled in the most transparent manner. I expect players to be both mature about PK as well as being mature about IC consequences. I would personally keep a game small and tidy with like minded people rather than expand scope and have a more dynamic playerbase that is often OOCly at odds with each other philosophically. Again, a lot of these are my personal experiment ideas that may or may not ever come to fruition. I've been out of the MU* ecosystem other than Shangrila for months now for all the reasons why Lord and Ladies exist as a trope. My last game was Kushiel's Debut where an effort to do some paradigm busting politically was met with such stiff opposition that I was stuck in a position where I had effectively 'won' as much as I could in that position and there was no where else for my PC to go. So instead of trying to change things or get upset, I vacated out of the position. Sometimes things just don't happen.

I am still bitter about 5th World because I had an amazing PC out there and the very IC mindset of the PC was more or less a banned concept (high technology mad scientist with an interest in outright destroying the planet where a major existential threat to humanity existed). Like, it wasn't even something I could talk about because it was inconceivable as a topic for any PC because the game was predicated on fighting the enemy with sharp pointy sticks and that was the only way.

I tend to subscribe to the runaway freight train model of staffing. Let things run off the cliff. No game is so sacrosanct that player decisions are trumped by staff fiat. My PC was pushing for the development of nuclear weapons and planet destroyers (both which were somehow banned technologies... against a foe that EXISTED TO MURDER YOUR SPECIES' ENTIRE EXISTENCE with no real reason why IC such weapons were not allowed against such an existential foe). Granted, he was going to then use those weapons to plant in each of the major cities and threaten the monarchy to abdicate in favor of one of his House's members and threaten to detonate one each hour until his demands were met. But who's counting? It never got that far outside of a single scene on that topic that got funny looks. He was modeled after Kefka @ Final Fantasy 6. If you know the reference, you're awesome. Along with the theme song.

My gaming philosophy has always been one of letting players suffer through their decisions. If it is game ending, all you need to do is reboot it. World ends? Play in a post-apocalyptic setting. Staff should obviously manage the parameters of the game and rules, but let the players just hash it out. This requires some power balancing because most XP is driven up and dinosaurs exist. Give them reason to leave their dinosaurs. Or one option is to give plenty of warning that their PC will be subject to NPCization by staff if they achieve a position high enough or they can go quietly into the night. A mature player may be allowed to continue playing their PC-as-NPC but their growth and evolution is over and they are now a tapestry of the game. Literally a win condition.

The way I would formulate this is as follows: the game is played on one part of the total game universe, whether it is a single city, region, or planet. While there may be governors and councils and people that have day-to-day rulership, the aspiration isn't to stay on the planet but to get the fuck off it to the capital. If a PC is built to specifically want to rule on the planet, they should be aware that people and culture will think that they're insane, stupid, or both and will not be entrusted with the authority they seek. The end game for a PC should be to be a permanent part of the game tapestry but no longer actively involved.

It's kind of perverse and I know that entrenchment is very real. I know this because I play the entrenchment game all the time although I've been a lot better at it. Some may disagree. If I am the elected executor-general of the local council of nobles, this is my platform to being something bigger off screen. Hell, reroll with half the XP you gained as a son or a daughter or a sibling if you want continuity of story. Your old PC may not be able to give material benefits but you're not going to log into the very bottom of the totem pole. Which shouldn't matter anyway because the totem pole should be shallow.

The no-marriage thing is to block the propensity of Lord and Lady games to devolve into a very badly managed breeding program. I'd set up a randomized code that will result in a love pairing to either be politically exposed (resulting in lost benefits in terms of family resources) or otherwise put in such a disadvantage that their ability to 'succeed' in the political game is outright out. Now, maybe you just want to be a pretty princess who lives in (relative) squalor, is looked down upon by most of their peers, and in a hot romance with a knight against all odds. You know what? Go for it. People need to be soldiers and outcasts. Most aristocrats and privileged class by birth in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Europe and Asia were destitute second and third sons. But that love romance is not going to get you political benefits and favors... unless you have like a 10 inch penis and abs and the 60-year old duchess is needing some loving.

I think the general push is to have semi-disposable PCs. Part of the entrenchment game is the loss of XP and having to start over. How about a 1:1 carry over for a dead PC who died as a part of a plot or PK? They may need to rebuild social connections but they can start where they were before.

How do we keep dinosaurs from massing XP? Have an XP cap and the function of XP being both time (ex. 3 XP a week) + Activity (ex Up to 5 XP a week). This rewards activity but allows for the occasional player to keep up. Make XP readily easily convertible and less focus on buying attributes (which are permanent for a PC) and more of a focus on buying things with XP, like a new ship or a new bodyguard.

I'm throwing all sorts of game ideas right now. Not all of them will be good ideas. Some are theoretical ideas. But I'll be happy to know if something I propose is adopted and makes a game better.

Also, no staff power alts. Staff alts should primarily be NPC quest givers and maybe auxiliary roles with no political aspirations. See loveless marriages or no power gains by TS. Staff should promulgate rules that are independent of staff caprice and are handed out fairly and consistently. Staff can play and TS and do whatever they please, but give the players full power to destroy themselves.

Elective monarchy. Heredity and good breeding matters, but if you can't get along with your peers, you either have to be with enough guns and money to take control or you are not going to get elected. The overall system I envision is less feudal and more of an aristocratic environment that is halfway in-between a feudal state and a democratic republic.

Encourage assassinations.

Discourage marriages. Love marriages are frowned upon and unlikely to produce children other than those with severe birth defects due to some sort of planetary/biological agent. Children need to be engineered and your marriage is going to be chosen for you. You may be paired off with Ugly McGee because he may be homely and a dwarf but he has super genius genes that your parents want your offspring to have because you tend to drool on the table and can't multiply past the 6s.

Encourage assassinations.

Flatten decision making but make the important positions matter. Remember Star Crusade and the Curia? What was the whole point of an executive council of Counts if at the end of the day, they will be constantly overridden by the remainder? All players can elect a councilor to the council per family but they themselves have limited ability to make decisions other than a large scale referendum that should rarely work because of family rival interests. Councilors make the decisions and vote to have someone be the executive head of the council. Day to day decisions are devolved amongst the various factions and they operate differently with different rules. This gives players a sense of stake that isn't by luck of who you chargened in.

Encourage assassinations.

Organic game balancing. One of the issues that I keep seeing is that staff, because of theme, want to preserve game balances at the detriment to normal development. Sometimes a family is going to die off. Sometimes a faction is just built wrong and no one wants to play. Don't encourage people to try and join a dying faction. Let them march into that one faction that everyone is playing in. Know what happens when that happens? They start fighting within and the faction breaks apart into multiple factions.

Did I mention, encourage assassinations? Encourage a messy, bloody environment where life is brutally short for those who aspire high. The lowest grass doesn't get mowed first. The more distant they are to the political center, the more likely they're not going to have a bulls eye on their back and they can spend their money dating or killing monsters.

I dunno. Honestly, I'm with the understanding that most MU*s are going to collapse and implode some time in their life span. Why not just let the whole damn thing accelerate to chaos, have some fun, and then reboot? Many games just limp along too long for their own good anyway.

Kill Kill Kill.

Lurk lurk. I'm going to say it:

1. @Packrat The longer you keep brainstorming an idea, the more likelihood that RL or something else will result in the idea being stillborn. I don't mean to be discouraging. This has historically been the case with any of your game idea threads. Whether it is real life or getting distracted by a shiny object or just being bored of the topic, what you need to do is to stop dithering about details, stand up a prototype, and make it work if you have a clear vision. You are satisfying pent up demand. Waterfall development is going the way of the Dodo. Be Agile. Make a prototype, see how it plays, deploy.

2. Also @Packrat If you are going to make a game about Space Lords and Ladies, just make a game about Space Lords and Ladies, i.e. Fading Suns. Whatever my opinion of you in the past, present, or future, what you are trying to satisfy in terms of market need and what you really want is a Fading Suns variant. Just stand one up and you'll be doing everyone interested a huge benefit. You can have a planet full of purple monkey-like things that throw poop at people and you will still have people apping for Duke so-and-so or Countess so-and-so.

3. @Monogram If you want to try launching a game again, it can be done and scaled back appropriately to satisfy another niche need for such a space game. The theme that had been worked on is detailed and still very viable. Ping me on Skype because I log on here once every blue moon.

4. @ Everyone I'm not going to be playing in any MU*s unless I've been specifically asked to do so everyone's games are safe from my dark game-crushing evil soul that has been blamed for more game deaths than games exist at any given time.

Cool. Thumbs up. I expect to see something operational the next time I log on this forum again.