Best posts made by Bobotron

@AlexRaymond

That stuff works. No MU* should be expected, and no MU* can ever support, having EVERY PLAYER involved in EVERY PLOT.

We had an entire world grid mapped at various Transformers and Megaman MU*s, and different things worked for different characters. People find out about Ming's invasion via spies. The people on the ground and closest to the launch sites get to go all Rogue One on it; the assassins? Intelligency types get to shine.

Build your plots to cater around, not just 'HERE'S A PLOT EVERYONE HAVE AT IT'. It's unrealistic and, in honesty, at least to me, not fun. If I'm a fighty guy, I'm not going to go be the head of an intelligence gathering or building something plot. If I have no raygun skills, I'm not going to grab a raygun and go to the front lines. You just have to have an understanding that, not all plots are made for all characters. I would HOPE that players on MU*s would think the same thing, but...

I'm going to speak to this on two fronts, particularly on the creation of stories on a grand vs. personal scale: the tabletop scale of a group of 4-6 players, and from the LARP perspective, which is much like a MUSH in interpretation and implementation.

From a tabletop perspective...
A lot of the 'balance' comes from expectations of what I, the storyteller, wants to do with the game (do I want to tell a game of epic intrigue? Do I want to create a world, and let you wander around and encounter plots at random? Do we want globe-trotting power players?) and what the players want from the game (I want to be the hero!, I want moral quandries and dilemmas!, I want to kill monsters and take their stuff!, I want personal stories that draw on my extensive backstory). It's then my responsibility as an ST to engage in dialogue with the players, and see what we can collaborate towards as a group that fulfils the desires of both groups.

For example, I ran a long-term Final Fantasy d6 game, where I had a 'save the world from the dark god' angle, and the players wanted to adventure in the vein of FF in this custom world, and wanted their personal histories involved in the game. So I built the game to do those things. This player group also was alright with some railroading, so we accounted for that to help them get from Point A to Point Z, but the world was open enough that they had multiple things to choose from to do.

From a LARP (and MUSH) perspective...
I do a very similiar setup, but the most significant difference is that I will make it very clear to the players that 'this is the theme/tone/setup for the LARP' and discuss how their characters would fit well into it. A big thing that we'll do is try to make it clear that, Staff have a lot of limited time, and we'll do our best to create personal stories for you, so help us along by providing us this information and helping us to weave your story into the game. This also dovetails into personal theme vs. global theme, I feel; we typically make it very clear that 'this is the theme of the game, and if you want to play in the world but not 100% engage with the theme, you're going to have to do more to make your own fun'. The onus then becomes a bit more on the player to figure out how to have things to do, if they're not 100% vested in the 'core theme' of the game. Like playing Anarchs on a Camarilla game, for example.

@surreality

BEEBO LOVES YOU!

@Bobotron
Continuing development, now that I'm not shoulders-deep in the End of the World for my LARP.

Going to try to knock out the rest of the Setting document tonight:

• The founding of the Houses - In which the nine Founders are turned by Titus and Licenia in an attempt to stave off their ennui, and save impressive mortals (or in Licenia's case, murder people who venerate Apollo and desecrate women)
• The Reckoning - When Titus and Licenia have their mythical falling out, and Licenia leaves along with Houses Leilia, Asinius and Fabia.
• The Modern Republic - The overall 'here's what happened when the vampires spread out with the Roman Empire and beyond', focusing on why they settle, what they do and the concepts in NYC.

Wish me luck!

@botulism
Then tell them not to play if they'e not willing to make the ties. Make the ties mandatory, none of this 'oh so dark and brooding loner' shit. Give them rules like a tabletop game. If they can't abide by them, they're not welcome to play. It's that simple.

I didn't know I needed Nailed It!, a funny cooking show on Netflix, in my life as much as I did. I haven't laughed SO HARD in a long while.

@darksabrz said:

@Bobotron Holy crap... we've got some history. I had several characters on BW Transmetals, including Electra (a Transmythic blue dragon), Nightshade/Whitewind (a "Doublespy" Fuzor in the basic vein of Punch/Counterpunch), and I was even Optimus Primal at one point (though I can't remember when). Had several different characters at H&V, was at Millennium Heroes (the second Beyond Superman, Jonny Kent, and was effectively headstaff there for nearly a year as Tal Rasha), and several characters at 2k5 (up through my Galvatron stint in 2007, after which I hadn't really bothered with the place).

I remember the Doublespy Fuzor character, I believe. We went through a lot of good Primal's too, but it's been so long I lost track of many of them. I haven't been on 2k5 in some time, though Geo was still there last time I logged in to chat. The MHX game, I sorely miss. I really loved the concept of Batman Beyond as a MU*, allowing people to update various DC characters to Beyond versions. If I ever have the punch/desire to dig heavy into a really heavy-build game, that would be something I'd tackle.

It's a shame your Transformers: Generations MUSH never got to take off -- I had a fun Headmaster concept that I was gonna play with, using the Machination as the means behind how the character became a Headmaster. It's good to see you around again, though.

Yeah; I was particularly happy with the theme melding we were doing, there just wasn't a market for it. I advertised, we were open, but... it just petered out due to lack of interest, and it's hard to maintain a TF game, especially one that is 1) based on the old franchises, which are getting more and more niche, and 2) folded in other stuff like we did. I still have the DB (I think I have the DBs from every MU* I ever ran, except for TF Genesis, which I sadly lost in an HD crash).

It's always good to hear from people who were on the same MU*s as me; I don't get around much anymore (MVC was my go-to place forever and a day).

@Auspice
Honestly, I think that really depends a lot on you. But generally, I've seen most of it set up in divisions, and on wiki, setting up DPL to sort. Give the pages tags like NEWS and POLICY and have DPL pull them. If you want to see how mine is organized (and feel free to steal the code if'n ya want), check out https://www.hotbmush.com/wiki/News

@zombiegenesis

Yeah, but what do you get out of allowing players to play more than one character, other than potentially neglected characters and an inflated player count?

It's become very clear in the past few years that, in the largest majority of MU*er cases, multi-playing is one of the biggest sources of distraction ('Lol, sorry, I got caught up in another window!' after a half hour of waiting on someone to pose, especially if someone is multi-scening on the same game) or someone jumps a character and does the barest minimum to maintain that character.

Having one character ideally promotes focus, so a guy playing Batman is focused on doing Batman stuff rather than trying to juggle Batman/Brainiac 5/Taserface/Thor/Rocket Raccoon. But a lot of this also stems from breadth of what is covered in a game as well, as I'm a proponent of focused games as well.

That aside, the 'tier' option is an okay idea and about the easiest one to implement, because after that month, as soon as one of the 'popular' guys drops, they're snapped up by the character hogs.

GLASS THIS WEEKEND I AM SO EXCITE.

Lilo

I will pay you (not real) money to do the 'My friends must be punished' pickle jar voodoo thing.

Easiest way is to change the Guest logins from 'guest' to something else that's hard to guess, which will cease those logins without messing with the Guest permissions.

Otherwise, good luck? There are a million ways around a siteban if they can just create characters (though then you'd disable character creation).

@zombiegenesis

Apparently GameKastle was under the impression Mophidius was sending the PDF codes directly. The link to submit their preorder stuff was supplied to them by at least 3 people I know, so I would expect to see it in soon.

I have the PDF and have been reading, and was going to post a full review once I was done. I have liked everything I've been reading so far. To touch on a couple of things in the first post:

• When you buy a Discipline level, you choose one power from that level OR an earlier level. So if you don't like any at that level, you can choose one you didn't take from a lower level.
• Amalgams require other prerequisite Discipline powers. So, to have Unerring Aim you need to have Auspex 2 when you buy Celerity 4 or 5 and want to take that power.
• Rouse checks are a bit of a luck thing, but in practice (mock tests so far) they have not been as intrusive as speculated in the OP. It's also assumed that, at least in play narrative, a lot of your feeding will be done shortly after awakening. So even if you incur a Hunger when you awake, if your schedule is 'wake up, eat 'breakfast' and attend to business' in a lot of instances. Obviously not every time, but it's a consideration.
• Agg damage is much rarer now, but your concern is appropriate. It's limited a lot to the Banes of the Kindred and Potence 5, or damage upgrading. Notably, Gangrel claws now do Superficial damage, BUT they ignore the vampire's natural resistance to Superficial damage which cuts it in half (which is blunt trauma, stabbing, etc.), and it grants +2 raw damage. It is an easy way to run a guy through his health boxes. And I feel like the agg healing is intentional; that it's meant for vampires to consider their risk (most of the system is risk management rather than resource management), and if they can go for a couple of nights with aggravated damage sitting on them while they build up blood stores to heal.
• The minimum number of dice on a Remorse check is 1, per pg. 239. Also, remember that doing bad things in defense/upholding/accordance with your Convictions reduces Stains by 1, to a minimum of 0.

And yeah, it looks like their PDF export fucked their bookmarks up. I've been redoing them; if anyone knows how to export them into something that can be imported, let me know!

I'm still reading, but I had thought about doing a review like Theno did. I probably will once I'm done.

I will note some other major changes:

• The core conceit of the game is that the players will be playing an established coterie, as the game is predicated on that, including coterie generation and bonuses.
• Generation is combined with Blood Potency in a pretty elegant method. Gen determines your starting and maximum Blood Potency, and BP dictates how much you heal, blood buff, Discipline bonuses, and feeding restrictions.
• Generation is no longer purchased as a Background. It is part of the character creation process, but it's more part of the narrative, which is written in the book as 'the players and ST decide, as a group, what Gens are appropriate; it's recommended that everyone play the same Gen, but if the players are good with it, play a variety'.
• Loresheets are the best addition to the game.
• Disciplines are a bit more... broad. It's probably not going to be to everyone's tastes, but I like what they did with them. Some powers were moved around to places where they thematically and mechanically make sense. For example, Blood Sorcery (which is Thaum Path of Blood essentially) also has powers from Quietus (as the power is all about manipulation of the Blood). Protean talks about changing into snakes, and one of the Protean 5 powers is the Serpentis 'move the heart' power. I like it, but it will probably be contentious for different people.
• The core book has the Cam 7, Caitiff and Thin Bloods as play options. The others get a 2-4 sentence write up, but aren't playable. The Sabbat is mentioned in a more 1e setting style as dangerous packs and such, which fits with the narrative established.

@silentsophia

My one piece of advice is, be willing to DO THINGS yourself. Assembling a staff team is difficult, especially for a non-genre original themed thing. AT least, that's been my experience.

@the-tree-of-woe

That's fair. But you also have people who essentially worship Onyx Path for 'inclusion' with things that are just as bad and tone-deaf (a prewritten group of C20 Changelings who are trying to kill the Patriarchy in the Dreaming to kill it in real life, male Crones self-castrating to appease the Goddess and veiled apology for the Patriarchy, and a number of other tasteless 'inclusive' things regarding gay characters, or the entirety of Beast and the overtones and direct pedo-rape character in one of the Beast book's fiction).

Long story short: WoD in a nutshell is far from perfect, and 'good' is only what you, as a player and a storyteller, make it.

@kumakun

I'm a fan of Cortex, but I still find all the 'make Assets and all that extra stuff' too fiddly for my tastes. I love the core mechanic, but reading through various ones I have (Marvel Heroic, Supernatural, and Cortex Plus core) I always go' Ehhhh... this is going to be so much bookkeeping.'

@Derp
But mayonnaise is disgusting.

@wizz

So ultimately you desire is a focused, story-driven game with enough periphery stuff to keep you occupied as things march inexorably to the end.

WISE FWOM YOUW GWAVE!

I finally got this, so I figured I'd share it here.

First I went through httpd.conf and changed every instance of AllowOverride to All

Then I did this...

getenforce
setenforce 0
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

I added the below under DocumentRoot in my virtual host config in sites-available:

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/YOURDOMAIN.COM/public_html>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

I rebooted the httpd.service again using the systemctl above.

Then I did my .htaccess in my public_html folder, and used this.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^wiki/(.)$ mw/index.php?title=$1 [PT,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^wiki/$ mw/index.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^wiki$ mw/index.php [L,QSA]

In LocalSettings.php, I added these under wgscriptpath:

$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";
$wgUsePathInfo= true;

It worked perfectly to redirect /mw/ to /wiki/.

I also used another setting to make the core .com redirect in the .htaccess as well, just putting this under the info above..

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} domain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /mw/$1 [L]

It's working perfectly now.