The problem with being a dick because other people are being a dick to you is that you'll also end up turning off people who aren't being a dick to you. Which ... I mean, maybe this is just me, but if I were hoping to attract some of the lurkers and infrequent posters to the site I'm advertising, that's a thing I'd try to avoid
Savage Worlds strikes me as being too coarse-grained for a game that expects a large number of players. I played in a pirate-themed SW campaign that ran for about a year, and three of the four characters ended up looking an awful lot alike because there are a limited number of ways to be good at stabbing, and some of those ways are very obviously better than the others.
Something something pearls something something swine.
(Am I talking about your side? Yes. Yes, I am.)
@Arkandel said:
Otherwise I see no reason most background stories should be more than say, 2-3 paragraphs long tops, just giving out some basic facts about the character. Anything else is usually only done because it's been the way that's done and we're creatures of habit.
I think there's probably also a substantial number of people in the hobby who just like to write backgrounds. The joke used to be that all mudders are frustrated writers, and while that's not entirely fair there's an element of truth to it.
Mind you, we pretty much do it solely for our own benefit. I don't think I have ever, even once, had staff pull an element out of one of my characters' background writeups and use it in the game.
I spent a day or two last year reading Holland's book In the Shadow of the Sword, so I can't say this comes as a complete surprise. From my layperson's perspective it was an interesting read, and I enjoy Holland's prose style.
@Thenomain said:
Cool, because attempts at discussion with you guys here have been cold at best. I really do think you guys don't want to talk about things you think are right.
For what little it's worth, this has also been my impression. Oh, there are certainly areas in which you're prepared to have a discussion, but they all exist within a larger framework that doesn't seem particularly open to debate.
Now, I mean, there is nothing wrong with thinking you're right. If you've found a way to run games that works for you and that you're happy with and you just want to fill in around the corners, good on you! Congratulations, and I mean that in a genuinely sincere way. I hope it continues to work out for you.
But my Jehovah's Witnesses analogy, snarky though it was, was chosen deliberately. Y'all are evangelists. That's cool, but after a certain point people of other faiths are just not going to see the point in talking with you because it's a one way street.
I interpret "what are you going to do over the next 30 days?" more as an invitation for the applicant to demonstrate that they have some actual ideas about what to do with the character than as a request to accurately predict what kind of roleplaying you're doing. I'd be very surprised if staff checks to see whether your actual RP matches up with your predictions, and still more surprised to find that they even care.
I don't expect anyone to know what's going to happen with their character in 30 days, I just want to know they have something better in mind than "um, sit in the OOC room and hit on members of the appropriate sex."
@Alzie Well, we haven't seen the light yet, so someone's going to keep coming by with a new Watchtower every month.
@Cobaltasaurus said:
@Arkandel said:
Is the idea that more established players should be given more of a say in sphere affairs?
Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe?
I need to think about that a little bit. On the one hand, yes more established players should have some say, but on the other hand that doesn't seem very nice to newplayers.
Perhaps:
Limit the amount of extra say established players get relative to new players, and
Have a relatively liberal definition of "established players."
@Ide said:
Weren't there two Ars Magica mu*'s back in the day? I think the second one never really got off the ground. I remember chargen'ing on it at any rate. IIRC Amberyl (i.e. who later opened Road to Amber) had a hand in both.
There was at least one open, up-and-running ArM MUSH in the late '90s; I don't remember if Amberyl had a hand in that one. There was another one she was involved with that was set ... somewhere in Italy? I want to say Venice, but this was like 20 years ago at this point, and memory fails. I'm not sure whether or not it ever got off the ground.
I'm pretty sure some people who would later become part of Last Unicorn Games (Dune, Star Trek, Aria) were also involved with that one in some respect.
To the best of my knowledge she is no longer active in the hobby and has not been for many years (at least since ... around the turn of the century?). She is still working in the pen and paper games industry and writing fiction, however!
I'm sure she would be pleased to hear that her older work is still entertaining people; she's a lovely person. In the event that I run into her in the near- to mid-term future I'll be sure to pass your message along.
I read it as @Sammi and @HelloRaptor did (and I still read it that way now that I'm awake), though I hope the final edit improves on this version's, er, clarity. Pun not intended.
I feel like that Curse writeup needs some serious pronoun clarification.
ETA: Although it's also possible I just need to read it when I'm not sleep-depped.
@Sammi said:
How many such people did it take to destroy the Republic and erect the Empire? Mostly two, with supporting help from three or four others (and that's being generous and calling Greivous a person). Fifty Skywalkers? Nevermind rebuilding the Jedi Academy. They would have a galaxy to conquer.
I just can't see it this way, what with all the Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters who get mowed down in the prequels. Maybe if you gave them Skywalker's script immunity, along with his Jedi powers? I'd have to think about that.
But then, if I viewed his abilities as making for a galaxy-shaking juggernaut, I'd probably feel the same way you do. To me the abilities in and of themselves don't seem all that impressive. C'est la guerre!
Poor decisions have been made.
There's always a tension between what players want to do and what remaining true to the source material demands, and everyone who runs a game has to pick the point on the spectrum they want their game to occupy. I prefer to err on the side of allowing players to be awesome at the expense of the setting, rather than allowing the setting to be awesome at the expense of the players. If that's a poor decision, I cheerfully admit my guilt.
@Sammi said:
When the credits roll on Return of the Jedi, Luke is extremely powerful. Nobody in a Star Wars MU* ever gets to be Luke because that would just be silly.
Luke is a telekinetic master swordsman with unreliable precognitive and telepathic powers; if there were suddenly fifty or a hundred people who fit that description, the Star Wars universe wouldn't change all that much. The problems with allowing Luke Skywalker as a PC (which, historically speaking, several Star Wars MU* have done) are rooted in his importance to the plot of the saga, rather than in the capabilities of the character. Otherwise, prequel-era MU* would be unrecognizable as Star Wars.
I think the setting is hugely rich and would be tremendous fun to play in, but not so much with shenanigans that would make The Reach's Mage sphere jealous. Instead of teleportation, give people surprise mobility. Instead of dragon-control, they can have animal familiars.
Saying that I don't think settings where the viewpoint characters are far above the power level PCs are permitted to achieve are the best choices for MU* is not the same thing as saying I don't think they could be fun to play in. And some settings where PCs can be as powerful as the viewpoint would probably make for terrible games.
@FiranSurvivor I'm not sure I agree with your premise: a lot of people were introduced to Star Wars via the first trilogy, in which people who weren't Jedi were pretty important to the story.
But -- granting the premise for the sake of argument -- the prequel trilogy shows us a picture of a galaxy where there are many more Jedi in existence than the number of players even a pretty optimistic MU* creator could hope to draw, and the galaxy doesn't seem to have exploded. Some of them are certainly more powerful than others, but I don't get the feeling that any of them are so powerful that they're playing a whole different game than the rest. (I have not dived into Expanded Universe material -- I'm just going by what I see on screen.)
Now, if we imagined an alternate universe Star Wars saga where we see everything from the perspective of Palpatine, a vastly powerful bad-guy Jedi who's also a secretive master manipulator who has the entire galactic government in his pocket -- that's a saga I'd hesitate to turn into a game.
I tend to think that settings where equivalents to the viewpoint characters have to be extremely limited or else the whole setting collapses are maybe not the best choices for MU*.
Like, if someone had written a novel series from the viewpoints of what are in essence modern-day Antediluvians from VtM? I'd balk at making that game. If you let everybody play an Antediluvian the modern-day world will explode; and if everybody plays pawns of the Antediluvians, you're getting away from what the books are about, and a big chunk of your player base is, after all, mainly people who liked the books.
While you have to mold the game around what you're prepared to have PCs be able to do, I'd be a little bit leery of setting up a situation where the people through whose eyes we came to know and appreciate the setting in the first place are presented as being (or having been) much more awesome than PCs can ever aspire to be.
Or, to put it slightly differently: if I come to game about the siege of Troy, it's probably because I want to play one of the Greek or Trojan heroes. I don't insist that I be able to play an Achilles-equivalent, but at least let me be someone who'll prompt Homer to spend some time on it when Achilles kills me, rather than one of those guys who get named as part of a list of the fifty Trojans he slaughters to get to Hector.
(Unless the game is a high-concept thing where playing the metaphorical spear carriers is the whole point. Like, I'd play an Amber game where the players were all ordinary members of the Watch and the focus is on dealing with the mythic superhuman deeds of the various royal family members with darkly humorous understatement. If that makes sense.)
@Insomnia said:
Nope! Can't help! I a locker! You can't make me come out!
You ... are ... my ... LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY
@silentsophia said:
I liked my Void Engineer with her space van.
I wish I could play her somewhere. But not many places would allow the space van type character.
Prospect might! There's a guy there who essentially plays Were-Smaug, so a Void Engineer with a spacefacing Mystery Machine hardly seems out of the realm of possibility.
