@HorrorHound said in Kinds of Mu*s Wanted:
The Witcher-esque Mush. Kplzthx.
I would pay to get that set up and learn how to keep it running and keep the door open long past unhealthy, like 10 years later, for a chance at a Witcher style storyline. People in convergence end up in another planet on the universal stack inhabited by everything we used to suggest was fairy tale fantastic. Aw hell yah. Dragons and Gryphons and Unicorns and Crones oh my.
@Sunny has a point. We know by now with a pretty empirical record that the community thrives off people being allowed to tell stories with very little oversight. While it will never be 100% possible to trust 100% of the people to run 100% of the things in a way that does not some % of the time turn out to be a spectacle the staff were never expecting. The general rule of thumb is, if the people invested in storytelling aren't telling any stories because your game system has so many hurdles in the way of their running something that it's a job to run anything... you only hurt your game. You're discouraging people from participating, and yet, you want them to go through this inordinate volume of hurdles to participate. It goes both ways. They want their contribution to be uncomplicated and fun, and you want them to participate.
This means a game's first line in defense of inactivity is to look at just what their PRP rules are, and to think about quickly rewriting them and relaxing them to the point that activity starts again.
I find much of PVP stems from the lack of PRPs. People have no Pure to rip apart, so they turn on one another. All the loud mouthed people you love to hate stop sitting around spewing vitriol at everybody and go out and eat something when there is something to be had. Take away the something, they only have other people to turn on.
Given the number of characters I see week after week that seem utterly predisposed to this Anita Blake worldview. The author may have issues. But fuck if she doesn't have a huge MU* following, apparently. Because I mean, damn. You see these sorts of characters described above on an almost weekly basis everywhere you look.
What do we like better, Player-Run Plots, or Staff-Run Plots, and why?
What are some examples of either that we liked, and want to share?
If I had a vote, I'll be honest. Demon: The Descent would be most interesting to me in a 1950s-1960s Cold War setting that had Agencies of Demons imbedded in mundane agencies like the CIA, FBI, and armed services of the period, in a war-torn place like East Berlin, or the Eastern Bloc. This is apocalyptic. This is where a lot of the apocalyptic imagery we discovered in Sci Fi came from, honestly. Ravaged places, rampant homelessness, famine, disease, mud, broken families, bullets whizzing outside your walls.
Even as early as 2 years after World War II, the character's Agencies solidify into the organizations we saw rise. Infrastructure is being rampantly worked on in the rebuilding of post-war governments. The space race, espionage, nuclear arms racing, Soviet power consolidation gives you more than enough fertile ground. Plus you have style, you have panache. Look at what the Incredibles and James Bond does with the time period. What comics did. The World of Darkness is just as fertile and interesting as much of the media we enjoy about the period.
And again, it's pretty frightening as a period, to pick your way through the ruble, and not know if your meeting is going to involve being shot by enemy forces you're trying to hide from. Add Angels and their own Agencies.
It seems rare that you ever see a (n)WOD game that has just 1 sphere - I can't speak for other styles of games. The question I posit is: do we make these games with many/most/every sphere just to get player numbers? Is there room for a human only game? A werewolf only game? Vampire?
Is it true that 'not enough players would log in' if your game didn't support this sphere, or that? Plenty of people seem to love Promethean, but I don't see any Promethean games running around. For that matter, I never saw, a Wraith the Oblivion game, and that game woulda been gold (ok maybe not).
So what is it? What would be the criteria if you wanted the perfect less-is-more set-up. Games are out there. But, this is the Mildly Constructive pit. What would your fantasy set-up be?
@somasatori said in Dune Coda Stuff:
I... I love you.
And I immediately go from Dune to You Only Live Twice's secret service code phrase.
I always thought it would be interesting if some of the old MUD coding was adapted to MUSHing. For example:
If the game handled things like Wits + Composure in a few minor ways. When you enter a room, you get a description, but what if you got an extra section, or paragraph? So for example the main description might describe the location in general terms but then you might see:
(Wits + Composure: 2 Successes) You notice behind the bar a security camera with an ample view of things. The red light on it gave it away. It doesn't seem unusual for a bar in this part of town to have closed circuit security. After all, things do become a little more upscale North of 10th street.
In another example, while most players do not even set an @desc per se. The same could be applied when looking at a character:
(Wits + Composure: 1 Success) You notice the telltale bulge of a concealed handgun in a holster at the small of the back right at the belt. In fact, you notice just under the hem of the jacket in front the glint of what must also be a badge clipped to the belt too.
Once upon a time, just having something set, like Heightened Senses as an Attribute = 1 on a character would enable a host of extra tidbits like small sentences of enhanced information that a Werewolf or a Vampire with Auspex might receive. With new games likely for Exalted and Mage on the horizon, seeing a sentence here or there for those with various extrasensory purchases, even Mage Sight (which I assume exists still), would go a long way toward shaping the game's culture, but most especially if they are labeled for what they are. If the game says you get this info because you succeeded in gleaming that information.
I was always partial to Splat, because it came from Splatbooks, which sort-of developed the same time as Convention Books, Tribe Books, Clan Books, and so on became the White Wolf thing.
It is curious where Spheres developed. It seemed to happen somewhere between quitting all the oWoD games and returning to nWoD much later. Magically there it was.