Posts made by Arkandel

@Shayd Maybe statless games? Not based on any system, no mechanics, just getting in there and playing anything you like.

It sounds like anathema to many people in here but it actually works quite well (or no worse than anything else I've seen).

What I suspect lately is that people create winners.

So take for example a special agent type; he's not created with the intention of being a combatant, he's made to be Batman, a wizard is intended to be Harry Dresden, a clever character to be Sherlock Holmes, an inventor to be Tony Stark... you get the idea. Those act as more than merely inspirations, it's what they are essentially created to be - legends, unstoppable juggernauts in their respective arenas, and they are characters who might even work on a table-top setting.

But they aren't played on a table-top setting, they're played on multiplayer games. I'm still surprised at times about how profoundly defensive people get about others who create anything close to their concept, and it might be because of this; it's not just that they don't want to lose, they don't even want to have competition, even though in the original material of the very archetypes they chose to create there is always antagonism from someone with comparable or even superior skills; Sherlock has Moriarty, Batman has Ra's (or the Joker, take your pick), etc.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Players write themselves into a corner because of the narrow-mindedness of these concepts they specifically set out to play - they roll to be unbeatable, and enter games where no one is supposed to be, and that it's the heart of the problem. I think the damage takes place as early in the conceptual stage of making a character and becomes baggage the player is burdened with for the remainder of that PC's life.

@Lotherio said in What do you play most?:

Some suggest they do, some don't do anything unless staff run something.

Inversely I agree the most active places have no meta or its more open and not world shattering. Yet those highly active places seen to crop up in hog pit for reasons (too many staff alts, too little staff, staff doesn't do what I want ... More grief and gripe). I play on some and don't join in the slinging. Preception versus reality, just when I've pondered similar thoughts, what folks like in a mu*, answers always point to meta, staff keeping it active (including everyone), etc.

I'm saying I prefer less meta and my own stories. And maybe wrong perception on my part.

Many games put their metaplot on a wiki and promptly forget it exists. That's one of the reasons most sandbox games come to a grinding halt a couple of weeks after they open and once the early excitement which comes with that new character smell wears off, and everyone realizes there really isn't much to do around these parts after all. Sure, the opening page claims there's an invasion by the Pure or whatever but nothing's actually happening, so after the 6th time you end up in a bar scene bitching about those damn theoretical Pure taking your jobs and stealing your women ... well, it gets a bit repetitive.

Good metaplot is a roleplay-generating engine. The vast majority of MU* don't have good metaplot, they have a wiki with someone's fanfic scribbled hastily in a couple of its pages.

@Auspice Now I'm hungry. THANKS SO MUCH.

I'm biased, but I'm also pretty fond of the way the Wheel of Time saga handled their flavor of magic.

Use too much at once and you can burn out - lose all your powers permanently and sink into a manic depression for the rest of your life. Women are weaker than men but they can pool their powers together, and men go insane from using it in the long run. Oh, and everyone hates magic-users because they broke the world that one time.

If there's no true, tangible stigma, drawback or risk I feel magic is too cheap in a MU* setting. And I'm not talking the paper tiger that is Paradox in the nWoD. Either make it really dangerous or don't bother so much.

@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:

I have notes in policy re: 'consent options don't mean you always 'win' and can never be on the losing end of a particular conflict', but when it comes to this particular crowd, I feel like I'm going to end up writing a monster of a long-winded thing about 'how to play nice with others' as a general advice/resource file on this specific point. (This is stuff that isn't policy, but gives examples, some of the reasoning behind why things are set up how they are, general advice to help someone find play, style guides, and general resource whatnots; that glossary thing is an example of the kind of thing that lives in 'resources' vs. The Rules, which live in 'policy'.)

I don't think policies work. I don't mean here, I mean in general - policies don't work. Maybe a general statement to set the tone so folks are informed ("don't be a dick"), but anything else is just wasted effort; to reasonable players it will be just common sense stuff they'd be doing anyhow and to bad ones... well, they won't read it, or they won't think is about them.

Players who can't handle IC rivalries at all, who'll go to each other and bitch OOC over pages then metagame the hell out of their response don't think that's what they're doing. The kind of person who tries to win the game instead of play a character won't second-guess themselves, and that's why it falls to MU-runners to change the rules and redefine what winning the game looks like to such players. Sure, it's a trick, a sleight of hand ("here's some XP for playing nice") but if it works who really cares, right?

When it comes to it good players won't mind if their rival gets some rewards out of such things - I feel all this thread really is (or should be) about is ways to mitigate drama by compensating the conditions which prevent it.

@Bobotron said in PC antagonism done right:

I think the person who talked about people not being able, or willing, to 'lose' when faced with an opposition or antagonist is one of the core problems. Especially when it's not a factionalized game. People want to have only the good things, not the bad things.

My suspicion is that, while that may be true, we might be able to at least sweeten the pot a little bit more.

In most games losing is just that - you gain nothing in return; maybe doors are shut in your face because of it (you didn't become Primogen so no getting into those top-end meetings), maybe you lose your character.

Obviously we won't fix human condition here, but perhaps there are steps we can take to ensure people don't feel that bad. Take death out of the equation by an adjustable level of consent, offer rewards for having long-term enemies, removing the veil of paranoia ("are they out to get me?" is a common one, even if the sad truth is most of the time no one gives a shit about us ), etc.

But what's important here is figuring out how to do these things. Come on guys, we mostly agree here; we know what we want to achieve. How, though? Let's put more thought into methods, systems, actionable systems staff can put into play to tilt the scales back into sanityville.

@Misadventure That's only because Gany uses OOC tactics to win on MSB. Fucking cheater.

Also, I could do much worse for an antagonist.

@Ganymede My favorite cost comes from Dark Sun... for a much larger-scale version of the same thing.

@Ganymede said in PC antagonism done right:

The objection is not with your use of the word, but with the presumptions regarding what that word should mean.

Like this?

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

... I don't necessarily mean bad guys - although that's possible - but handling concepts which are thematically supposed to clash for ideological or practical reasons.

I tried! And failed.

When you jerks come up with a better one-word term than 'antagonist' I'll be happy to use it from now on in the thread.

Joss Whedon to write/direct Batgirl movie. Wheee.

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

If you explain that this is your mindset to the players, OOCly, they will appreciate having something to fight against, so long as you're fair and appreciative of them.

Never. Ever. Ever. EVER. EVER forget to OOCly high five them for the attention they give your antagonists.

Unlike table-top though, where the antagonist is either the GM or at least a known face sitting at the same table, on MU* it's a bit more blurry. People expect parity and fairness - even if it can be argued a better story could be told without it - and the unfortunate part is historically we've seen this go really awry where staff blatantly favored their friends or even alts this way.

Darth Vader and his ilk are way more powerful than almost everyone else in the same settings. The resource staff usually lack to pull this off is trust.

Magic works the same way as any other element - you need to know why and how it adds to the experience of playing the game.

The key concept when it comes to staff using it as a way to settle disputes or write themselves out of dead ends is pretty well known to fiction; it's all about suspending disbelief. Did magic up to today involve subtle effects and suddenly a grey-bearded wizard started throwing fireballs around? It could be a problem. Did PCs capture and imprison a key NPC at considerable cost and he just teleported out of his meticulously guarded cell because magic even though no one had ever displayed that level of effect before and no one has since? Again, it can be a problem.

It can also render archetypes useless. Playing a kickass warrior if every fledgling spellcaster can make themselves invulnerable to sharp things might be less attractive. Being a smart investigative character with a perfect memory isn't as great as gazing back in time to see whodunnit. This sort of happened really prominently in every mixed-sphere Mage MU* ever - sure, you could play anything, but being a Mage meant you were better at it, plus you had other tricks at your disposal.

In other words magic is great... as long as you, as staff, are aware what its place is, and have a plan for it. It shouldn't just be added because lol, it's cool, and there should be reasonable limitations that make other things playable as well - unless of course your plan is for all the PCs to use it.

@surreality said in What do you WANT to play most?:

There's stuff that can be crowdsourced for it, but I think without a really solid foundation to build from, and a solid understanding of how your pet reality works, things become disjointed and glommed together very quickly.

Yeah. I don't think crowdsourcing works on any high-concept theme design. Too many cooks, it's easy for the result to be inconsistent or just uninspiring.

A handful of people who work really well together with a common vision, yes... but get seven people working on a 'gritty fantasy game' and it'll be harder to do than with three, not easier.

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

I also love the suggestion that @Lisse24 made about designating rivals. This would really only work on a political game where votes/decisions/influence attempts could be tracked, because that extra XP would be tied to times where they came down on opposite sides of an issue.

My concern with this is if people would try to 'designate' their allies into these roles. "Oh, Bob always likes to antagonize me" even though they're in it together for everything important.

I prefer a more organic approach; say, all game-wide political decisions involve NPCs as well, and they go through a centralized system. Characters vote (which might be a literal vote in a council or other means of applying pressure in the direction you like - say, if you have a wealthy merchant it could represent bribing nobles, if you're part of a criminal organization you lean on certain people, etc). Everyone's 'vote' has a different weight based on their stats, and it's fed into a formula to determine what the outcome was in the end of an alotted time period.

At this point it gets simple. Every time two characters' votes clash the code keeps track of it; the higher their disagreement, over time, the more rewards they get from it. Characters who usually agree get almost nothing from each other - their 'reward' is simply that they get a higher chance of winning IC goals. In this system there's no need to designate anything, probably no need for staff to track things 24/7 (which can be very tiresome) and probably just works. Maybe.

A slightly more subtle nudge to encourage both opposition and losing might be the idea that any time someone loses a fight (especially a political one) they get a little boost from NPC opposition as well (a plot hook, some information, something like that) because they've demonstrated that they're willing to stand up to "those in power" (or that they're aligned with those in power for those not-nearly-rare-enough times when PCs bloc together to vote in something wildly against the interests of the masses of NPCs).

I like that. There's some IC reasoning as well; almost everyone (NPC?) opponents. If an NPC sees you usually opposing the Baron, even if you lost, they act favorably toward you - it's in their best interests.

To @Arkandel 's question about how to "Make sure conflict is driven by character motivations..." one of the coolest little innovations that I like on Fires of Hope is that there is a +goals system--each character has to have 1-3 (I think, it might be 2+, or 2-4) goals. They assign logs toward achieving those goals (one per week max), and when they accomplish those goals, they can turn in the +goal for XP based on the number of logs they put toward the +goal (each +goal also has a minimum, mostly to keep really huge goals harder to attain).

That sounds a lot like the nWoD's Aspirations system. It can work, and I always liked it; the rewards as implemented on MU* have traditionally been a bit low for my liking - you can often outpace a major IC achievement (1 XP IIRC?) with a week's automatic XP from merely being on the game, but that's just a matter of tweaking numbers. It also has the IC advantage of staff getting a glimpse into your character's path over time.

I absolutely agree with the idea that choices need to have consequences--it's not just "which shiny do I want right now," it should (almost) always be, "What shiny do I want now, accepting that it will hinder me in some other way." You have no action without tension, and there is no tension without consequences to choices.

Yeah, I think that's a major piece missing from most games. Being a selfish bastard gets you nothing, since there's an infinite pool of goodies (or at least being a selfish bastard doesn't grant you better access to it). So why be one? It only makes you less likely to succeed, not more.

Now... Here's a more overall question for y'all.

If a game allowed players to pick their own level of required consent then, in the context of this thread, would you also adjust characters' IC advancement accordingly? For instance would you give someone who picks PvE engagements only fewer resources per week (since they risk less) than someone who's opened the door to conflict? Assume PC death is out of the question here to make things more clear.

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

Keep it IC. Always.

Let me rephrase this.

• Keep the antagonism IC. Always. Being an IC antagonist doesn't work well when you're an OOC bag of dicks.

Yeah, but other than people reporting each other over this, how do we make it happen?

I think a valid approach is by making being IC antagonized rewarding for you. Then you might (I dunno, might) be inclined to not be a complete asshole to the guy playing your political nemesis, who also happens to represent 40% of your total XP revenue in the last three months.

@Tinuviel On the tin it says where no man has gone before, not what no man has done before.