Posts made by Arkandel

@blackdahlia Who is 'we'? You might want to give some more overall details about your game, goals, themes, etc.

@ganymede I've been the Storyteller for Mage many times and what I'm actually concerned about isn't so much how long people take in scenes to figure out what to do but what they do off stage.

Namely the tough part is Mage-proofing the plot so that it survives casual scrutiny by players throwing spells at it to see if they can resolve it in their downtime.

For example whodunnit questions can be trivialized by someone with enough Time and Space if you're not careful, and the worst case scenario for me would be to make that resolution a key part of my plot, then go into panic mode when that one character solved in one +job what I was planning to be a big reveal two scenes down the line.

@ganymede said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

But if it takes you 15 minutes to figure out which one to cast, you're fucking deadweight for the scene.

FTFY.

@tat said in Inspiration material for your current game:

I'd also add mythology of any sort, from ancient Egypt to American folk tales.

That's kind of a wide range of material and themes

What kind of game are you trying to make?

@pacha said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Firstly, I don't think any of us know Mage particularly well.

Aside from a few people with PhDs in Mageology, no one knows Mage well. That splat is a nightmare.

This is probably the best AskReddit thread I've read in a long time.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/98kyud/whats_the_most_laughable_concept_youve_ever_seen/

The Bane one had me in tears.

@admiral Theno thought you meant you've watched Disenchanted season 2. Which doesn't exist.

This thread disappoints

Do we know why they shut down?

Battle for Azeroth's quest lines and zone design are so well done. The production values are amazing, but at last we don't need to look at demon-green everywhere.

Some of these places are gorgeous to look at.

@thenomain said in Player buy-in:

Nor can I go to an Elf-Only Inn RP channel as Spock. This is not a lack of “buy-in”, this is outright disrespect to the game.

I think the typical case here isn't so visible and I don't think it's malicious; it might be as simple as people just trying to play what they know.

For example maybe I liked my party-going vampire from the last generic MUSH, and when you create your post-apocalyptic game... I create the same thing, with nearly no changes to his behavior. He still wants to meet chicks, arrange bar crawls and drink blud, which means I treat elements of your theme as obstacles and route around them. It's not malicious but... I recreate whatever doesn't already exist, including creating a bar, brewing my own beer, etc.

Here's the thing. A lot of this on paper can be as creative or even fun as anything else... or it might not be. I mean maybe I just buy Crafts 3 with a specialty, put in a +job ("Hey, I wanna run a bar, kk?") and otherwise I play my new Vampire exactly the same as my previous Vampire. Or maybe I do a whole storyline out of this and put some work into it.

Either way that may still not be the game you wanted to run, or the things you hoped your players want to be doing. Maybe you hoped they'd turn a suspicious eye on each other, wondering who'll steal their supplies, develop tightly knit groups stealing resources from other groups... and instead you have folks running a bar.

In that case they didn't do anything bad, it's not like they should be banned for it... but you failed to get them to buy into your vision. That's the kind of thing I'm referring to in this context.

You can also luck out and not have this be a game-closing problem. A solid player base will help you overcome many obstacles.

Yeah, all of these issues - I feel - can be resolved if you get lucky with your player base, especially at first. For example getting a couple of solid roleplayers people recognize placed into strategic positions (which isn't the same thing as ranks, mind you) to act as theme anchors might be good bait for others to follow their example and get a self-sustainable situation going.

@kay Basically let's say you want to run a MUSH where a secret government agency is slaughtering all Vampires, and with their depleted numbers the rest are trying to survive, forge alliances with Wolves, anything.

Instead your players don't seem to give a shit what you want. They date each other, treat this agency like just another monster, and basically ignore the nuances and details you thought would be cool to run an otherwise 'typical' Vamp sphere.

In that case they aren't buying in.

I didn't want to derail a different thread with this and it's been a while since we had a good ol' fashioned general discussion about MUSH related elements so let's see...

I consider player buy-in for games to be extremely important. Lacking it can damage the culture early or even make certain 'different' game concepts impossible to pull off; examples include gritty post-apocalyptic MU* played like the Flintstones instead, paranoid political settings turning into combat or dating simulations, historical setups ignoring built-in faction tensions to the point characters just get along, and so on.

My two questions are:

1. Do you agree with that premise? Is buy-in that important or doesn't it matter as much, and why?

2. How do you get that buy-in from players to treat your game unlike others that may kind of look similar at a glance? What can you do to induce the kind of culture you want, from all kinds of perspectives; game mechanics, policies, roster or rank systems, etc.

Discuss.

@rucket I don't see the reason as it stands. Just talk about something other than @magee101 instead and it'll be fine.

Another good read: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/13/17675708/great-battery-war-steve-levine-powerhouse-book-interview

@pyrephox said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

More seriously - @Cobaltasaurus does good design work, comes up with interesting settings and is willing to take risks on games that aren't a sure bet to get fifty log-ins a night. Sometimes that means that they don't catch on (and I hate every single one of you for not playing on the angel game, because I fucking loved that game), but MOST games don't catch on, or they have a brief honeymoon period and fall off into obscurity. That's just how the hobby goes.

More importantly (I think) no one knows if a project they're in love and want to do today will feel the same way months later when it comes to fruition, and any game worth a damn will require at least a few weeks before it's anywhere near a playable form.

That's before player buy-in and truly the main difference (again, to me) between running a MUSH and a table-top campaign. For the latter if I can imagine it I'm more than halfway there; I can make shit up on the fly, but as long as it's in my head I can get it out to a group of players, and if I tire of it or those players don't take to it the way I thought, or it's not as fun in reality as I imagined it... small loss. I can have a different idea the next day that I could put in front of a group the next night.

If no one but the most single-minded, obsessive, super determined workhorses made MU* we'd barely have any to complain about here.

But anyway, let's get back on topic to developing this one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/magazine/some-online-mobs-are-vicious-others-are-perfectly-rational.html

Good read.

@tinuviel I don't know if it counts but a friend a while ago was telling us about a dream he actually had in which he could control Starcraft units with his mind, thus making himself the best player.

People dream of riches, sex, superpowers... but hey, he shot for what truly mattered in his heart of hearts.

@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.

WoW's expansion launches and I was already peeved I'd miss the first couple of hours for my weekly basketball run.

In which I broke my finger in garbage time.

I fucking need that finger to play!