Posts made by BallisticOrange

Alternative Victorian London is the way to go. Layout the basic historical elements in the setting and don't require everyone to have read Bram Stoker or reviewed their favourite steampunk or Gothic novel.

I'd really limit down your available spheres. Multi-sphere games have the place, sure, but there is a beauty to having a focus on one over the other. You could probably manage 'episodic' appearances of supernaturals beyond the norm, like Slasher or Inferno-inspired options. Have pregenerated characters or concepts to fill these out for a short run? Possibly have a focus like Eldritch's slots? On such a game, the 'out of the ordinary' sort of things being in a smaller number, and limited term, is fairly attractive.

Are you keeping this 2E alone or not? I'd second the notion don't have splats that aren't converted.

If you're worried about grid-size, then have a reason where only a core part of London is accessible and the outlying areas aren't. So you're focusing on the City or Cheapside, but not all the rest.

Alternatives:

• Glasgow (super smoky and critical to the Empire at the time without all the fuss; also lots of industry going on there, major transportation links);
• Liverpool, Birmingham or Manchester (lots and lots of industry, too; grim-dark and smoky feel);
• Amsterdam or one of the continental cities.

I'd play this.

@lordbelh I'd be all over that.

@lordbelh I've got the grid for this, and a few points besides if anyone is serious about a Requiem for Rome game.

I'll desc because I enjoy suffering.

Rule zero of large scenes to me: determine what the purpose of the scene is, and keep everyone focused on that goal. Assertively if need be.

Social scenes frequently devolve into piles of meaningless desc frivolity, several ongoing conversation, and no sense of cohesion. This works great if you are doing a general mixer, even if it becomes a spam magnet. It fails terribly in a vampire court scene, the judgment of four nobles accused of treason, or any kind of plot scene. I tend to avoid large scenes like the plague because of poor scene and time management.

So, a successful social scene needs a few elements not already mentioned.

1. Hack out introductory fluff and arrivals. Start in the height of the action. We're here for a wedding? Pose the ritual and get it over with. An assassin is trying to kill Jedi Loonyarfsa? Get to it.

2. Someone's appointed to bring new arrivals up to speed. A general what's going on post helps. Reward this person with cookies and appreciation.

3. Parking lot via +request. Good ideas go to a job. Extraneous requests go to a job. Rolls for various things go to a job. Get that out of your screen to focus on later, without losing the thread of a character or player's good idea. I find this follow up is easier when I'm not distracted 72 ways.

4. Ban OOC commentary to a channel. Use OOC for clarifications, rules, notifications.

5. Pose limits. I watched someone swan
   into a 12 person scene and drop a 3 paragraph limelight theft pose. The character was not participating in the action particularly much. Have no fear about asking people to rein it in.

6. Ask if the large scene is wholly necessary. Ask if players really need to pose between main poses. Otherwise prepare the players who have to talk in advance, and keep them moving to respect everyone's time. @Mietze was something of a master for balancing these things in court scenes, from what I can tell.

If that scene isn't necessary, then farm it out through other media. Use other storytellers to spread out and coordinate what is going on.

I did not want to say goodbye to Ziggy Stardust. Shit.

The relentless pressure to meet a certain physical metric, and all the challenges to stay there. I don't have two hours a day to be at the gym. I prioritize enjoying cooking over eating four leaves of lettuce for lunch. But apparently that leaves room for endless judgment at this time of year. Ugh.

I'm with @Misadventure to approach a theme breaking player OOC first, and apply consequences, be they OOC or IC, afterwards. I like to think the faux pas is unintentional unless proven otherwise.

The hobby is not always kind to new players unaware of the finer ins and outs. WoD shows rough disdain for someone a bit muddy on the rules, and it can't hurt for helpful admin to pull aside Merry and let her know changelings tend to be sterile. Harry needs to know throwing fireballs in the street at the meter maid is not kosher for the local Consilium and yeah, we need a paradox roll for that.

If a game is sandbox, how much theme enforcement is really needed?

Non-sandbox games need enforcement at different levels. Staff who don't approve every silly concept under the sun are the first gatekeepers. Have no fear to say 'You can't be a Japanese swordsman in our 16th century lords and ladies game, even if historically plausible.' Theme matters for a reason. Characters made to fit it suffer when unthematic concepts and RP become the rule of the day.

I can't tell you the number of times I've seen someone throw a fit because the Masquerade / rule of shade / lex magica got enforced. As long as it's clear we all play by a given set of rules and assumptions, hold those ICly accountable. All those IC power positions like sheriff are there to help enforce. NPCs in power positions are ways to keep theme intact. Or use RL laws and common sense consequences for shooting up Main Street.

On an Android client, Mukluk is the way to go. Combine with a swiping keyboard, like Swiftkey or Swype, you might manage to survive. A bluetooth keyboard is essential.

SImpleMU* is my preference for the insertion of spaces and carriage returns, cycling through poses, and inline spellchecking. It's abandonware and does not support 256+ colours, which also proves to be a drawback.

Potato gets close to this but it doesn't spellcheck while I'm typing.

Every game has its mistakes. Looking back, the deluge coming in from The Reach tipped the earlier model for a smaller, active player base administered by a relatively small cohesive staff past the breaking point. The influx in such a short time prevented many of those new players from setting down roots in the same way other PCs did in weeks or months before. Not everyone found RfK's model worked for them, sure. A good many did, and Shava went out of her way to link up similar characters or invest them with inroads. Older PCs helped me settle into the game, and the friendly atmosphere never really broke down but it did become hard to know other players/characters when the +who list jumped exponentially in a short time. That's common on multisphere games. On a single sphere game that underlined community, it marked a definite sea change. It makes me a little wistful for when times were manageable, though the influx brought some truly memorable and great players. So there's that.

How could two to five people give the same personal levels of attention for fifty-five people in short order that they had for thirty, many who trickled in week by week instead of a bulge that never stopped? It's no wonder beatsheets were taking so long to process. Pretty sure staff was burning out through real life commitments and trying to juggle a much more voracious demand on them. NPC interactions and scenes dwindled as staff turned more of their attention to balancing the many requests being put in. Don't know we can point the finger at any one source of activity overwhelming the rest. Investigations definitely ranked high as well as the usual complicated rules questions for blood sorcery rituals. Legwork could turn over pretty fast. XP spends were processed very quickly with a minimum of additional hoops, something that changed my personal opinion of automated spends.

RfK's crisis (and its overall downtime) system seemed to eat up more time than intended with several expansions between 1.0 and the intended 3.0 release. Much as I loved the OSS system, the extra layers of complication didn't do staff favours. Not with the playerbase size they had. Further tweaks to streamline may have made it workable, but it was still a very elaborate bit of work to learn. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea. If you learned and mastered it, you could have an incredible time and add new dimensions to RP. For vampires, it gave incentive to really RP with ghouls and mortals.

Dedicated territory/influence admins helped reduce the overhead somewhat. These admins still had to refer questions back to Shavalyoth and other staff for complicated questions, and there was commentary towards the end that big plots lacked sufficient notes to sustain.

I have a copy of most of the theme pages, bloodlines, and discipline-based content from the wiki from fairly late in the game (last few weeks). I'd intended to try a new format to display the information dynamically on the wiki when it went down, so everything is intact from a data perspective.

PM if you need a copy of something in particular.

The kiths seem to be having the issue they did in 1E, which is to say some serious bonuses to one or two and a few others that look a bit dodgy by compare.

@Tempest said:

I also poked at RfK as of 2 months ago, and played for a week or two, and the NPCs definitely still seemed to be active from my glance around, so yeah. Try again.

The only active NPCs in May-June I can think of were Lucinde and Raine (and her not so much). Duality and Emilie were used to resolve a few issues after players spent prestation to bring them into an action, briefly. Many NPCs died as a direct result of the Task-force Valkyrie plot and other plots. Shavalyoth was actively shedding NPCs to scale down her RP involvement and allow others to take the helm. Unless you can think of others?

And please. Around the time I stopped played, the game was up to 20+ active individuals at night, and Shav was hugely active on NPCs, shagging people on them, and her husband's PC maintained his connections to the NPC power structure.

So not recently.

@Coin You recommended modifying the RfK territory and downtime systems for Mage 2.0 when it comes out. That's actually something I plan to tinker with in the background if the opportunity comes up.

I'd love to commit to an out and out GMC 2.0 Mage game as soon as it shows up, but no telling when that suckered is going to publish. I can make a few assumptions though.

Edit: Reply did not include the quote and missed half the post.

It is legit. The bboard post stated that it was a difference in staff philosophies. To quote:

"It is no longer feasible to keep Kingsmouth open. We've been struggling for a while - as you know - and trying to fix everything while keeping the machine running.

"I've made a variety of compromises from what I'm comfortable with in order to entice volunteers onto staff. Tonight I reached a breaking point: a compromise I simply will not and cannot make, which unfortunately means that we won't have the manpower to run the game on a day to day basis.

"We are not going to switch the game off at the server-side so that anyone who wishes to has the opportunity to RP out their goodbyes and exchange contact information."

Soft RP remains open. Staff won't process jobs or do XP spends. It's at least a 6 month window. They are planning on something new and totally different. Shavalyoth is, at least.

Today Shavalyoth announced that RfK will be closing. It remains open for soft RP and any staff side activities will cease. Code is going down to the hunt, roll, and bare bones systems.

It's a sad day but the game goes out at its height rather than losing what made it so unique.

Much of that comes down to Shavalyoth herself. The grand vision she has, and her storytelling skills, pale next to her personal interest in all members of the game.

It's been a wild ride.

@Sunny I'd play on the strength of this premise. Very cool. Anticipated opening?

@2mspris Is it possible to get an address?

@2mspris That mean it's open for others at this point?