Best posts made by Arkandel

I can't tell which of you guys is trolling the other the hardest.

@Vorpal said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

Because we exist in a universe where the paranormal doesn't exist and isn't possible. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one.

That's true but in an axiomatic way. What I mean is, take a perfectly intelligent, reasonable person from three centuries ago into today's world and we'll see how much of what we've achieved would cross right into their idea of paranormal and supernatural.

There comes a point where actually defining these words may be a necessity and not just pedantic MSB crap.

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

Plot is the easy part. There's been a ton of idea tossing and I'm sitting on so many plot ideas. I'm super excited to run them and see them run.

Here's the helpfile from the game on xp gains. All pc's start with 10xp.

And all that is fine. You'll do well to incentivize PrPs but it's not all I was talking about when I was referring to plot. Consider the following:

• a simple fact: not everyone enjoys PrPs - I do, I know others don't.
• access to plot is not universal - I can run scenes for my cabal/coterie/pack, but how does that help Joe Newbie from a weird timezone?
• not every PC is created equal for PrPs; combat characters for example historically work in almost all scenarios because it's so much easier to throw a violent scenario together than, say, a hacker or well connected socialite.

So if you want your game to succeed you should cater to more people than that. IC politics is such a good motivator when done right because PCs can maneuver around each other, creating alliances and getting in each other's way as much as anything you throw at them from the top. Make a few positions open not right at the top but close enough to smell fresh air, for example, then have groups vie for them; enable things like loci, status, feeding grounds and territories have meaning, then see who controls them. Stuff like that - make characters engage in the world you're making for them.

That's as important to 'plot' as anything a Storyteller can do because it's so organic.

Another heavily underused trick I'm surprised games don't utilize is hand-pick faction heads from active, responsible people. Someone like Gany for example (I'm not pitching, the lawbot is an example but a good one) can get a faction going so you could build around players like that; populate a few of them properly and once you get enough buy-in from players to reach critical mass they are not going to leave. It's that investment you should really want, the feeling of wanting to log on and see what the next cool thing will be.

But that takes work. I'm not saying you should do it - it's a heavy ask. Games like Arx succeeded on similar principles because they are ran by insane people. What I'm suggesting are possibilities, and that encouraging plot is not (unfortunately) as simple as saying "okay, whoever runs a PrP gets an XP". It's way more hands-on than that.

I hope some of this helps and that it's constructive.

@Rook said:

I never understood why a simple +IGNORE-like command made you unfindable to people whom you don't want stalking you. Maybe another level could hide you from simple WHO, +WHO, +WHERE, +HANGOUTS when they run them.

<logs on an unknown alt>
<types "WHO", "WHERE", etc>
<profits>

@Pondscum I am really sorry.

@Taika Also if you have Mages mixing it up... they will rule your game. I'm a fan of the sphere itself but the power discrepancy is enormous. Just sayin'.

It's been a long time since I had implemented this on Tyme but if I remember correctly this is how it went:

Players had a flag to signify if they were IC or OOC. If you were flagged IC you couldn't claim your character wasn't in a room - this was so catching spies was feasible as there were ways to be invisible. If you were flagged OOC you could still explore the grid, go anywhere you liked, etc but you couldn't see other people's poses.

Players had a flag to signify they were looking for RP. It'd revert to off after a period of time and after certain events to help avoid false positives.

The +where command (well, its equivalent) showed you no names. It only showed you how many people flagged IC were in each room. If any of them was flagged as looking for RP you could also teleport there directly without need to go through the +meetme/+agree handshake, otherwise of course you could be summoned over.

It was an easy system so it saw good use.

I never found RP channels to be worth much since they're spammy when you don't want them and pretty serendipitous when you do - since everyone must be looking at the same time to see it.

@surreality The little bastards grow on us.

Izzy has... something on her stomach which feels like a tumour. We have an appointment to take her to the vet but it'll really suck if something happens to that damn pest.

@peasoupling The way I see it it's an option - it should be there, but it doesn't need to be utilized.

So for example I run into a random character at a coffee shop. I don't need to glance at their wiki to see which sphere they're in, or view their RP hooks to see how to best engage them. But I can, it's an option at my disposal. If I don't like being spoiled, or prefer to only act using purely IC information then nothing forces me to take a peek behind the curtain.

In a similar way I don't have to know which alts staff have, however I still consider it the sign of a healthy game if that information exists out there as part of checks and balances. Should there be a suspicion of wrongdoing and their +sheet is available, well, it can help tell me if there are any shenanigans going on.

@sunnyj said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):

The idea in Masquerade is that without strict ethos the Beast always prevails, and unlife is shock full of philosophical deathtraps, enough that vampires opt to travel time tested roads instead of venturing into the woods of whateverIwantness.

In my head canon it's pretty simple - being a Vampire is about the long game. Everything is measures on a different time scale since you stick around for so long; even if there's one chance in a thousand you'd yield to temptation, well, you're going to be around for centuries, and be exposed to thousands of different scenarios. You need to have something to hold onto else your moral downfall is inevitable (and, in fact, it's inevitable either way).

In the long term you'll always do something horrible.

@Cupcake You made me go google that up.

@mietze said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Arkandel I am not even sure I have a length of projected run standard anymore. To some degree I wish I had more bandwidth to play more games so I could support the experiments and sure why the hell not let's have fun while it lasts stuff, that is the only thing that keeps me from trying out interesting stuff. I would love to have a short lived but intensely fun run than spending months and months and months trying to break into a more stable place for uncertain acceptance/inclusion. But I can see why someone else with the time limits that I have might gravitate towards more stable games instead (since in theory the time invested wouldnt go to waste if things come to an abrupt end!).

I only have two reasons for caring about longevity at this point.

1. I hate CGen and I'm not a big fan of staff scrutinizing and nitpicking applications in general, so if it takes me 2 hours to do that - unfun - parts and only get 4 hours of fun out of it before the game dies down it's a poor investment.

2. I want some payoff for my characters' arcs. I have too many of them sitting in a Google Docs folder who barely got played before their games bit the dust - and it's actually worse if I take a liking to them in that time. But once everyone I know stops logging on everything crumbles. I've hit that point so many times that it's discouraging because it's not even overt when one of my regular partners doesn't log on for a couple of days, then maybe another as I'm not sure at first if it's a pattern or just RL.

I really don't expect games to be around for years - can they give me six months of a healthy playerbase? Because if I suspect otherwise then I won't commit, either.

@taika As much as I'd like to volunteer for some game somewhere, I can't even be trusted to play on MU* consistently these days without flaking out, let alone staffing them.

It is the best of tim... no, it's not. It's the worst of times and nothing else today, friends, for I bring you a roleplaying (?) tale straight out of the bowels of 4chan today featuring Edgardo and A Guy Called Squid.

Its format is horrid, some of the people in it are consistently horrible but also awesome or maybe just everyone in it is horrible all the time - you be the judge of that. I just couldn't stop reading until I read it all!

Enjoy.

Since we're discussing post-apocalyptic stuff I'd like to mention that - for me - either such games can be aimed to create a Flintstones kind of setting (impromptu generators, utopian gardens and funky steampunk inventions recreating civilization as we know it) or a more lets-make-sure-we-survive-the-winter kind of world full of scavenge hunts and diplomatic missions between settlements, but not a mix of them.

@ganymede said in San Francisco.:

Staff are players, and players can be staff. If you are entrusting staff with power, why not entrust players with the same?

Well, you heard the lawbot.

For the sake of this thread let's give up on trying to define what a "MUD" or a "MUSH" or whatever is and drill down to the essential question; can a roleplaying game be designed with little or even no staff necessary to run it?

I don't want to limit the thread too much by explaining how this is to be done - if it's via advanced automation, if the answer is 'code' or 'people' or 'systems', etc - but I'm curious to see what you all think.

And even if some parts of traditional staff powers do need to be in place (perhaps booting bad players out?) you can also mention that. But let's try to think outside the box here.

One final request: Let's not romanticize the past. Yes, I'm sure we've all been in that special, unique moment in time where that one game achieved nirvana and barely needed staff at all. That's great - but how can that feat be replicated? How can we make it happen again? What lessons, mechanics, in-game functions can we reuse with a different crowd of people but expect similar results?

@Cupcake said in Good TV:

Marco Polo season 2, y'all. I binged and watched it all in two days. Not historically accurate by a longshot, but well acted, beautifully choreographed fight scenes, amazing costumes, etc.

I just binge-watched the entire season 1 over 2.5 days. Fun!

I don't understand why they bother raising armies. Why not just send Hundred Eyes to take care of everything?

@Runescryer The reason I'm bringing this up isn't so much that we need to strip people of their characters, it's that there may be better ways to set a culture than to strong-arm the solution.

The issue here isn't Superman ruining Black Canary's plot. This can be approached organically by the GM or other players.

The real issue is how this skews the game's composition and, by association, theme itself. The example I gave before still stands; if 80% of your playerbase is made up by PL12 characters then not only are chances good most plots will be ran for that power level but also it creates a catch-22 situation where players see this and roll at that level too so they can fit in, perpetuating the demographic imbalance.

Or in other words if almost all of your characters are JLA level it's unlikely you'll have many plots ran in the streets of Gotham because... why would they be?

@ganymede How was @mietze's concern about thematic cohesion addressed by those games?

For example what (if anything) prevented me from doing completely irrelevant things, going after other players just to be a dick, cause OOC drama or any of the other issues staff typically take care of in 'traditional' MU*?

@Insomnia Nope!