Posts made by BobGoblin

I'm basing this without anything related to Ares:

When dealing with channeling the most successful system I've seen is as you have a 'strain' attribute. As you utilize weaves that strain value decreases until you 'collapse'. Purchasing weaves allows you to use the weave, further 'leveling' in the weave reduces the strain cost.

Not being uber familiar with Ares I'm not sure if such a system is feasible; however it has been what I've experienced as closest to the book feel as I've come across and is very simple to implement.

My thought process has followed this path many times

How do you keep the playerbase together?
How do you keep it reasonable for characters to come in and out?
How do you incorporate new players to the game?
How do you have progression in a setting that is military without many times room to promote?
How do you provide opportunities for characters to lead in this setting?
How do you provide for player ran adventures while maintaining an overarching plot line?
How do you offer alternative cultures equal footing in said military setting? (Ie Klingons and romulans)

The best solution I've found would be a starfleet academy type setting. Not an 18-23 year old college Mush. But an advanced officers school in conjunction with the younger kids. You have player ran missions in form of holo assignments. You have progression in form of "grades". You have people able to come in and out smoothly. You can have Klingons and romulans in cross training programs. You have meta plot of actual starship assignments. You have people able to do leadership roles and everyone can be a captain at different times if that's their thing

Dunno. It makes the most sense to me. You get adventure. Exploration. Social. Combat and progression in theme and setting without being limiting to new people. Everyone's together in a central location as well

I've batted the idea of a Star Trek Mush around for a good chunk of years but just can never motivate myself to make it happen.

I see the breakdown coming with differences on setting and locations. Ships vs stations etc.

I also see Trek as being very dependent on story tellers in most designs which makes me nervous. Burnout is real bro

I never had an issue with the report RP in the sense of using it to generate information for players to then share. To me it was no different then when a DM hands you a sheet of paper that has the results of some of your investigations around town or some such. Just a way to pass information and share said information.

That said, I do get why some people felt it bogged down their RP. It's hard to file a +report about your most recent bout of sexual exploits.

Or is it...

I'd love to see a nice Star Trek game that had some meat to it beyond 'command consoles'.

But that's not the statement I'm making Ark. What I'm saying is there seems to be a divergence on the 'setting' of the theme. I don't see why the aspect of differing settings within the theme is adverse. Particularly if these two settings were working cooperatively. Provide a world set in the mainverse during Trolloc Wars and another world set in the post Dragon era.

Based on this thread, there seems to be enough general interest in a WoT setting game that maybe there's enough room for a pair of different flavors. At one time in the day there was like 3-4 WoT games in existence at once and all were doing relatively well (during high times of MU of course).

One of the angles that I would 'consider' in a balancing thing is sticking with theme; strengths related to specific elements. A lot of games I saw danced around thi s issue or made it so you could 'improve' your strengths in elements. If I were working on this system; I would make the elemental choices static or very limited on improvement then tie the available weaves. So as ark said, you don't have the Channelers who are Blademasters. But beyond that you also don't have Channelers that can do 'every' weave.

I find the issue of the 'balance' between Channelers and the mortals to be the same as Force Users and the average person . How do you reconcile this separation?

I was thinking what you just did but have it branching. Could do it via the wiki really in some way with a collapsible box or what not, who knows it's midnight. My brain is fog.

A suggestion I'd have is something like what Sera demonstrated but include areas where it could be 'this or this' options for players along with a brief description of what each does. There's so many ins and outs of Saga Edition that narrowing the 'common' choices for players while still providing choices might be a great move.

That would be one area I'd make sure to have a clear idea on. What do you want your White Hat faction to look like? Because you're going to have White Hat Jedi, Black Hat Sith, and a giant mixture of inbetweens and a lot of conflict arises from people wanting their own look of how things 'should be'.

@tempest
Wasn't there a char on aoa that did that?

That's why I preferred the mechanical penalty. If you played the game long enough to accrue enough 'credits' (or other resource) that could allow you to travel about at will, creating an advantage to the long time player. If I were to use a resource base I'd have it be a weekly refresh or something; but again -- you' re delving into an area where the 'systems' could end up restricting RP access.

I've considered the travel time element in various design spaces over the years. I think in some areas travel times are good and necessary; I also strongly believe they should never be a deterrent to RP.

This was an issue on a Star Wars game back in the day called Dark Horizons. If anyone is familiar with that game, they may remember incidents when a conflict would break out people would just 'appear' there to join the fight despite having been RPing hours before across the galaxy. It led to horrible ideas of 'time slowing' or putting people out of scenes because it didn't fit. But also the idea of this immediate join in without having 'been' there was problematic as well. In fact a lot of times I see this as an issue on games that have those large IC grids (space games come to mind mostly).

My suggestion to at least start a solution? Allow fast travel at a 'mechanic' penalty. If I'm going across the galaxy for the purpose of just RPing then who gives a shit if I have a mechanics penalty for a bit (it doesn't even have to be that long, just enough so that you can't immediate travel in order to 'game' the system). If I do want to jump the galaxy to join my buddy in a fight that I really shouldn't be at? Well I still can; I'm just at a disadvantage. Not restricting RP this way but still having accountability and a benefit to 'preparation'.

More comic games yo

Oh look. Another one just popped up. Nevermind

It's really a fine line between having something to do on a game when the RP is sparse and those things becoming something that replaces RP. But let's be honest as well, how many game runners/admin have within the past year bitched about how players have 'no self motivation to do things' or the like. That they constantly wait around for plots and events to happen but won't start stuff themselves and that as admin you're tired of feeling like you have to spoon feed players.

Flash back to the 90's and 2000's. I'm thinking of games like CrystalMUSH, Wing Commander Red Horizon that come to mind where the games went and there was activity and RP happening without the constant hand holding of staff. Yeah, staff dove in and made things happen but there seemed to as well constantly be something to do as well. Right now it seems most games exist for players to log on and mill around in rooms; hope that some plot or some person is interested in RP, and then if they aren't they wander off. They do this for a few weeks or months then they stop logging in and staff wonder why their game is dead; blame the players for not being self motivated and there you go.

There must be some kind of balance out there right? Somehow? Not a MUD where it's automated existence, but also not a MUSH (Multi-User Sit and Hover).

What I want is a Multi User Fantasy.
Something I can dive into.
That I can really eat up.
I just want a MUF.

Also darkest dungeon has an expansion coming out soon. It's their second. Support them indie

It might be IPad only

Darkest dungeon is available on iOS