Posts made by Arkandel

@Darinelle said:

Constant, unrelenting darkness is almost never sustainable (except IRL). What's the point of a dismal death march?

Theme is the key to everything, and theme is very rarely set by an entry in a wiki page, post or document.

The most major factor is your actual playerbase and their culture, and new games absolutely come with pre-built cultures. For example it's obvious entire nWoD spheres come with baggage since it's the same players each MU* inherits who were usually playing in them before. So if they're used to ultra-cutthroat political Changeling but your goal for theme is a fantastical adventuring faerie tale cooperative Changeling, you'll have an uphill battle.

Then it comes down to Storytellers. Do you have any? Are they cooperating with you, is communication happening? Some STs really like combat so if you want to run a VampSphere focused on subtle manoeuvring, devastating verbal jabs or Elder/neonate contrasts and all the plot that gets thrown involves hordes of Brood ripping throats then I hope you like the sound of throats ripping.

It would stand to reason that players would be attracted to the kind of game you (as staff) want to run but that's not the case. Look at us here - the question that keeps getting asked is "what is the Next Big Thing going to be?". There are a ton of people who want to jump ship from the crapfest that is TR these days and are just waiting to see if others take the plunge first, if its staff are deemed sane, if their policies involve no deal breakers, if they have the right spheres. Once they make that move they will define that new MU's culture as much or more as its staff possibly will or even can.

So embracing the community isn't just a good idea, it's the only one that makes sense, otherwise you're swimming against the current. Because yes you can absolutely change culture but it'd only happen over time and through day to day effort. When every +job, most PrPs and staff mandate points the way the playerbase will slowly adjust to it - but it's what you do, not put on (even a great) wiki that will count towards that.

Conversely it's where TR truly failed. They are posting one thing but then doing another.

Stuck on the subway next to someone who was reading their book out loud to themselves the whole time. Maybe there's a disability involved, I don't know! But at 7:30 am on the commute, arghh.

The Wheel of Time would be so hard to shoot anyway without massive alterations to the plot. So many dangling threads. Especially after book 5-6 when Robert Jordan seemed to be letting it all get out of hand and the story was spinning all over the place, it would make for some really bad TV unless they edited things very heavily.

But for the first few books... they would make for one kick-ass series to watch.

... That trailer wasn't it though.

So this utterly shitty trailer for a Wheel of Time series was made, just so its shitty producing company can keep the TV rights.

Enjoy (?).

@tragedyjones said:

Also, Andrew Garfield done got fired.

Wut?

@tragedyjones said:

This thread should.be called the Marvel Cinematic Universe aka Earth-199999. It I mean, that said this is good news. Even if he does not remain a mainstay of the MCU, his presence makes it feel even larger.

We won't always have film stuff to bring up so I figured it could be about the MU in general. Dunno. If an admin prefers they can feel free to rename or reorganize it I certainly don't mind.

@Coin I doubt they will. After all Spider-man isn't their property, they want to receive a boost from his inclusion in their movies but they have no incentive to make him overshadow their own properties.

The obligatory reddit about Spidey in Marvel movies: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2vdu98/spiderman_is_coming_to_the_marvel_cinematic/

Notice Sony still owns all rights to the character. They just wanted to ride the gravy train.

In case you haven't seen it yet, Spider-man will be part of Marvel's cinematic universe from now on.

I really liked the banter between him and Logan in the comics so if someone like Whedon can tap into that, it'll be comedy gold.

@Coin said:

@Arkandel, your mom was a drama queen last night, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

That... that doesn't even make sense!

@Glitch said:

@Arkandel I'm actually going to disagree that this always has to be the case. If they want to limit play within their grid to certain areas to encourage that resource competition, I could see it, but just starting small and adding on is not great in my opinion. I played on a game where you could just basically make up an area and history of somewhere you were from and it got tacked on to the game. It ended up with a haphazard mess.

I think having a good sense of location is important, so having the broad strokes already present is my personal ideal. You can always fill in detail later.

It's not merely a matter of competition, although in my opinion several spheres absolutely depend on it or perfectly thematic elements are underused. But let's say that's not a goal for this particular game.

Even then it's not a good idea to fill in the blanks later because the devaluation of real estate means people aren't possessive of it. They have no reason to be. Ideally you want your players to feel their block is entrusted to their group, that it's special and important. But to encourage them to do so requires a paradigm shift from every other game ran so far where domain is just a very theoretical thing - it's in your coterie's or Covenant's wiki page perhaps, and it could come up in RP - maybe - but overall it doesn't have a personality, or write-ups, or really matters except in specific circumstances.

If there's more than enough domain to go around from the get go that culture will not emerge. If most of those swaths of land remain with the generic labels on them they'll remain generic, on account of no one being there that's exactly the opposite of what you want to see, which is creativity and theme carried by social momentum between players.

Another issue that might come up is how fast changes can happen. For instance @Coin is in charge of a block with his vampire LS PC, and it gets filled with spiritual centres, religious bookstores, it panders to academic types, etc. At some point he stops playing and freezes, so @Glitch rolls a Carthian anarchist in the same block. Does he get to change its writeup overnight? Is it important to micromanage such things or is it better to just let players play? What happens when @Coin thaws a couple of weeks later and has a hissing fit (we all know how he is, drama queen)?

The idea of neighborhoods being given the broad strokes by staff and have players fill in the details is good, I like that.

When it comes to IC neighbourhoods (and I'm not talking about the grid size here), it's probably better to plan for a small playerbase and expand as needed than have to deal with swaths of domains being vacant.

Not only is it better overall to see them fleshed out than spread thin but the artificial scarcity of such resources will increase real estate value. After all if there is a ton of it per PC then it'll be taken for granted; they can, after all, get as much as they want. If it gets claustrophobic it might be used to generate RP, which would probably be a good thing.

No thread about fitness should go without at least one mention of the strength training bible.

Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength.

There's no thread specifically about hardware stuff so let's have one.

Here's a question for you. Mechanical keyboards - are they worth it?

I haven't been on one in many years and I honestly don't remember feeling frustrated when I switched to the cheap plastic variety but some people positively swear on them. So for typing (in particular) but also for gaming, what have your experiences been like? Are they worth the $$$ ?

I always thought staffing on Shang must be ... quite an experience.

And again it's about game design goals. For instance I can see where @Ganymede is coming from and suspect her concern is legitimate if it comes to people outpacing her not because they participate in 'better' (something even harder to quantify than 'active') scenes but simply more of them. I don't want to put words in her mouth she didn't speak but yes, if someone who can simply afford to play a few hours every day can outpace people who can't, then some people would be alienated by that.

It would be a mistake in most cases to reward people with no lives to the detriment of the rest.

However caps and sanity checks of all sorts go a long way to help with that. Games like WoW have managed to keep things relatively streamlined for different players despite the fact some of them are dedicate absurd chunks of their lives to it - MU* can learn a thing or two from that. For example daily caps (how much you can gain) and delays (how much you can spend) in tandem while individually generous can do really well.

The other thing to watch out for is the distribution method. Most +vote based systems I've seen for example actively end up promoting cliques even when they are specifically made to prevent exactly that.

Still, until the system itself is fully fleshed out it's hard to comment whether it fits the design goals or not.

There's no such thing as a 'better' or 'worse' system in a vacuum. It all depends on what kind of game you want to run.

If @Coin says this is the goal for his game then that's the best system possible for it. Compromises are being made at different parts for any given possible implementation, with different advantages and disadvantages. So he intends to get a game where oldbies are ahead but newbies can catch up with a bit of effort and time; that is the goal. If someone presented him with an alternative that works better with that in mind I get the impression he'd consider it.

Conversely, TR gets to keep its people despite its shittiness because no game has been created yet intending to be as popular. Reno has only one sphere, SHH is invitation-only, @Coin or @Glitch+@ES' games are still not available, etc. It's not (just) the XP system - I can't imagine anyone who's played on SHH would feel short on XPs, for example, as they flow pretty liberally.

While @Glitch is correct that it's easier to add XP later than to take it away, it's also true that there are more players who feel comfortable playing with a few extra XP to spend than those who do not. Being stingy early on might inconvenience those players enough to leave, and it's easier to recruit a good playerbase early in a game's launch than to lure newcomers in later if you lack a critical mass of people to play with.

I agree that shifting the balance from a more or less automatically generated XP income to an activity and participation based on later on, allowing engaged newbies to catch up to the oldbies without making it easy or inevitable is a good compromise.

Just to reinforce the disclaimer: The whole premise of this forum - just as WORA before it - is the ability to speak freely. Any constraints (other than reasonable administration such as spam prevention or the such) would have pretty much rendered it useless.

New player (and not just character) integration should be at the foremost of any sphere TL. The distinction is important because it's virtually effortless for a player with existent OOC connections to find a place - plenty of times PCs srtaight from CG end up in a coterie/cabal within the day, if in all but name. So that's the easy part.

The best organic way to do this is through plot. On SHH some people were struggling to find reasons to meet (you can only do so much with bar random encounters) so when I started a crossover plot I got 8-9 players per scene, with several of them brand new characters. The key is to not make such PrPs entirely reliant on having a ST present but to encourage people to do research, network IC, talk to each other... then it gains momentum on their own, they hook each other in.

The easy way is to do it through boards but I've never trusted that. Y'know, that old "Ithaeur looking for pack!" posts. Whenever it can be done organically, it should be. Eventually though you're right @Glitch, it does come down to players accommodating each other and easing up on accepting new people into their fold.