Posts made by Bargle

@Misadventure said:

Does succession ever really figure in? That would take an accelerated timeline I would think.

From what I've seen, most such games start at the cusp of a generational shift, with the older power players (often NPCs) likely only having a few years left at most. This allowing the folks that rush in at launch (or are buddies with the staffers) to app all the young and attractive heirs and their prospective mates before they inherit all that wealth and power.

So basically on most 1:1 timescale games succession is relevant....about once for each organization unless the game runs a long time or other circumstances cause IC turnover.

@Jennkryst said:

I am disappoint they didn't figure out how to connect Rokugan to Theah. For shame.

Yeah, but with AEG shedding it's RPGs it looks like John Wick was able to negotiate the rights for the long defunct 7th Sea but the more profitable L5R went to the more deep pocketed Fantasy Flight Games.

Gotta be careful, though. If the theme/idea is supposed to be Space Lords and Ladies and their political and social machinations, you don't want everyone to turn around and app Joe the Ship Captain.

A lot depends on the scope and scale you're going for, too.

Sounds like folks could just make another Dune game and it'd meet all or most of the criteria with a setting that's already at least partially defined (or greatly defined depending on how much of the various bits of written material one considers canon or not).

But anyway, since I've got a spot of time now, I'll see about responding point-by-point:

Key Ideas:

• Yes, though it needs to be decided early on how far that goes, and how the technology level of the setting affects it. Space Lords and Ladies may live in unimaginable luxury, but if the tech level is high enough space-serfs can live "OK" even if their jobs suck. Might be useful to play up a bread-and-circuses atmosphere for the working classes, but again...depends on how you want to go.

• Nothing really to add here. Agreed on all points..

• Definitely useful to have some kind of system in place for this stuff. The trick is trying to make something that's simple, reasonably fun, and not-so-easy to "game" to suddenly make your position unassailable.

• I mostly agree, but tying into the point above, Resources are what people mostly go to war over in the real world (even if they couch it in ways that make it seem like it's something else). Sounds like you want the political heavy atmosphere, which is fine, but it seems like a bit of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." Space Knights are gonna wanna Knight, but if you play the theme too war-heavy you get a bunch of combat twinks. Play the theme as pure politics and you get folks like this Custodius guy who right out of the gate are playing against the other players rather than having their character play against the other characters. I think this is why so many Lords and Ladies games have so many problems. They invite this atmosphere from the get go and it can rapidly become toxic. Seems like it's part and parcel of the genre, though.

• Me personally? I'd go with a combination of "genetically engineered" and "have the best equipment." ASome kind of potential drawback to the genetic engineering definitely makes sense.

Thoughts from Prior Games

• Yeah, though this starts to get into "character tiers" which can turn people off. Still, I agree in principle, even if it boils down to "Space Duke gets way better equipment and a higher degree of gene-therapy than random Space-Knight." And yes, Space Duke doesn't get to be Space Duke without making Space Enemies.

• I'm of two minds on the subject. Making the game reliant purely on players keeping up the inertia is laudable, but I think would lead to Space-Marriage Simulator and Space-Tea Drinking and often little else, leaving things wide open for that one player who thinks he or she is smarter than everyone else basically taking over Space because no one else gives a hoot as long as they get their TS partner with a hot actor/actress set for their picture.

• Yeah. Simple and automated is good, but see that bit about fief management and gaming the system above. Definitely not CKII though. Eeesh.

• I love the idea of kinda ineffectual/remote Space King/Emperor. Maybe the Space-Nobles are competing over a few resource-rich worlds on the fringes of Space Empire. Space Conquistadors that may have the authority from Space- King but in practice are so far "out there" that they're largely autonomous.

• Crazy high tech level sounds fun, but I would think adds more to the problem you're speaking of here than resolving it.

• From what I've seen it's more likely you'll get the entire generation of 18-30 year-olds apped quickly but all the old people will remain in the background with a few exceptions. Though borrowing from Jupiter Ascending again...you might avoid that if your 300 year old Space Duke/Duchess can still look like Channing Tatum or Scarlett Johansson or whoever. But yeah, encouraging older/better connected players is good, especially when they're more likely to be the power brokers.

• This sounds like fun. Maybe even more than one type of social currency. (Honor, Prestige, and Glory?)

• Maybe a middle ground, because doing all the family/houses/whatever yourselves will be a lot of work unless there's a very limited number. But yeah, if players get to write their own there should be some strict guidelines and a rigorous review. Though I wouldn't necessarily say that all houses/families should be created equal and that some really could be demonstrably "better" than others, even the lesser ones should have something they're better at than the bigger, badder house. Though that also depends on how much you want to veer into House/family stereotypes, too.

Don't worry, it's actually good. Not just good while doped up. But for shame! Going to the theater with the flu? Didn't you see Outbreak?!?

So I assume they'll license out the tabletop RPG stuff?

I recall Cyberpunk 2020 being alright but not great but it's been years. Wonder how they'll handle magic I that system though.

I was lukewarm on a lot of companions at first, but found that a lot of them start to shine a lot more when placed in various party configurations with other characters and you start getting their semi-random "exploration dialogue" as I call it.

Standouts off the top of my head: Solas/Iron Bull (especially after Iron Bull's companion quest), Vivienne/Iron Bull, Sera/Iron Bull (OK, pretty much Iron Bull and anyone), Blackwall/Sera, Cassandra/Varric, Solas/Sera, and Dorian and just about everyone. Blackwall/Iron Bull has some good bits, too. Really, Blackwall as a whole shines more for "inter party dialogue" than he does in any of his direct conversations with the Inquisitor.

The only Companion I've almost never used is Cole, but I hear he's got some very interesting dialogue with Solas in light of the game's ending.

Which leads me to another point: A lot of that inter-party dialogue takes on many different shades of meaning after you've played through the game and know more about these characters' stories.

Guess it depends on how much of it is politics-via-marriage which seems to be the thing on the Lords n' Ladies games. Would be kinda weird/squicky for a lot of players to find out they married their first cousins long after the fact, for example (might be "within theme" for history but still the kind of thing some players might not be comfy with).

Anyway, not really important either way. I can just see how such a thing might be useful.

@Ganymede said:

@Bargle said:

If a game is trying to have any type of feudal politics going on, I'd think some type of family tree would be pretty necessary.

Although primogeniture was used often, feudalism can still occur in the absence thereof. What matters is a line of succession.

OK, so not any type of feudal politics. Just the type of feudal politics most people are most familiar with and often most interested in playing with.

Outside of the history-buff players (and I'd imagine there are more than a few on Game-of-Thrones-esque games), I'd be surprised if very many were interested in the finer points of Agnatic/Cognatic/Bunch-of-other-words-I-had-to-look-up-when-playing-Crusader-Kings II-ic, etc...

I usually find when there's excruciating detail in odd places, it tends to come from having had issues with folks' in-game portrayal of whatever it is that got excessively detailed. It's reactionary, basically.

Tends to be the same with policies. Even ones written when a game is first made are reactionary to previous games the admin played on.

If a game is trying to have any type of feudal politics going on, I'd think some type of family tree would be pretty necessary.

And there does look to be a lot of backstory, but is there an unspoken players:backstory ratio? Some folks like the world-building stuff. Could be better organized though.

@Olsson said:

Wait, people have an issue with that the super soldier mutant is a super soldier?

Not at all! (At least in my case). I just mean the inherent imbalance of a setting where there is a "super class" (or two) who, theme-wise (depending on timeframe), are supposed to be rare and "everyone else." How do you attract players to "everyone else?" Or do you even bother?

Kind of like on Superhero MUs, you rarely see anyone playing the civilian supporting characters unless they are extremely well-developed/critical or someone has a favorite TS partner that they convince to app the "girl/boyfriend" (or more disturbingly and just as frequently someone apps the girl/boyfriend because they want to TS that particular character). You MIGHT see an Alfred Pennyworth and/or Jim Gordon in Gotham, but that'd be like having someone app Zoltan or Dandelion on a Witcher MU.

But there were some fun ideas kicked around in the theoretical Witcher MU* thread concerning those kinds of questions.

@SG said:

@Bargle Actually playing the game, I didn't find it quite as bad as people make out. The guards all seem to scale with the character so that no matter what you have to whack them 3-5 times with a longsword to kill them.

Well, gameplay vs. story segregation aside, there's still the part where one guy is taking on 7-10 normal human opponents at once and pretty much slaughtering them all. And it takes a lot more than 3-5 sword whacks to kill a/the Witcher.

Guess it also depends on whether you view the "high level" play to be more accurate to the story versus low-level play. It's a whole different ballgame once you can slap some poison on your sword, drink a few potions to prep up, lead-in with a bomb or two, mind-control two dudes to kill the other dudes, knock the remaining dude over with your force push and execute him on the ground, etc...

@FiranSurvivor said:

Clearly I need to get off my ass and make that Witcher game if Fantasy is so in demand.

Can I create the School of the Naked Mole Rat? (I kid, I kid).

But it's a great setting. If you can get through the "superfolks versus not-superfolks" hurdles it could be a lot of fun.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Bargle

This part particularly, which applies to "All Characters," not just FC roles:

2 months of no logs or memoirs of substance on the wiki, but your character is still logging in = Written Warning

3 months of no logs or memoirs of substance on the wiki, but your character is still logging in = Your character will be @newpassworded and the character noted as "available" at staff's discretion. You must wait at least two months if you wish to re-apply for the character (if they haven't been claimed in that time), during which you must be active and contributing with another alt.

Like, that's the game's prerogative if they think that's how they want to run things, but it's my prerogative to find it off-putting. The aforementioned friends who play there did tell me this basically isn't enforced now, but I'm not sure if that's better or worse, since it's still a posted game rule.

Also, what does "of substance" mean?

Dunno. Maybe some kind of attempt to avoid folks using entire logs of "<Name> sips his coffee/tea/wine and nods." as proof of their activity or something. Trying to distinguish between just doing stuff and doing stuff with "meaning." It is awfully subjective though.

The rest doesn't seem all that out of line with activity requirements I've seen elsewhere.

In a perfect world you have a big playerbase that's engaged and having fun on a well-managed game, but it's rarely a perfect world. I just find that generally speaking quality is better than quantity if you're in a situation where it's likely to be one or the other.

@Three-Eyed-Crow Maybe those policies were written by the old staffers? But out of curiosity, what's so off-putting about it?

The summer lull isn't in question. It's the combination of shrinking playerbase plus summer lull. In the two decades I've been part of this hobby, I've generally found that on low-population games, and especially those that seem to be losing rather than gaining players, the summer lull becomes the time when people move on from the game for greener pastures. Some will come back, but others won't, and the population of the game grows smaller still. The death spiral, if you will. Not every time, but a lot of the time.

Even so, better a tiny but active and engaged playerbase that's enjoying themselves than a massive but bored one, in my opinion.

It also looks about on the same spot on the "High vs. Low Fantasy" scale as Game of Thrones, if not lower.

Also I read "significantly smaller" and "summer lull" and that doesn't give me the impression a game is long for the world.