@ZombieGenesis said:
RE: Timeline - We're post season 7. We're treating season 7 like it happened in 2003 and we're opening in 2015 so 12 years have passed. We treat only the TV series as canon (Buffy and Angel) so no comic stories are canon.
Cool, cool. Some of the... decisions... for the comic stories were a little iffy, to me (even if we got one of the best Dracula-based quotes out of the comic series in Season 8 ).
Color me interested. I've been rewatching Angel and reading a few Buffy novels I picked up for cheap, so I am going to keep an eye on this project.
I didn't see it in the thread, but are you on a post-Season 7 'all the Potentials always activate' or an offspring timeline where Buffy and Faith are still the only Slayers?
Not specifically for 'revolving door players' but, has any MU* ever put in an XP floor? We do this in a LARP I am involved in, and it works out fairly well. The two systems for 'new character XP' the LARP uses, specifically, are an XP Floor and Longevity.
XP Floor
Upon creation of a new characterr, they gain an amount of XP for each month that the game has been open. The LARP I'm in has a 10XP per month cap, with an average of 8 per month, and the XP floor is 2, and has been open for 18 months. New characters gain the base XP from the book we use (30) plus 36 for the XP floor (as of January 2015), for a total of 66. This is roughly 25% of the max XP in the game from Earned XP. So not a total screwed noob Vampire, and it has worked out well.
The XP floor also applies to any characters who earned no XP or less than the floor per month. They automatically get the 2 if they missed both games or only submitted one downtime.
Longevity
Longevity is an expansion of the XP floor, and is a reward for players who lose characters in play, continuing to play on the game. This Longevity is 5XP per month that the character has been in play, and replaces the starting XP, unless starting XP would be higher (so a character who has been in play for 12 months has 60 XP, with XP floor added; a character who dies after 2 months in play gets the base 30, as the longevity is 10, which is less).
We've found that these work pretty well and don't have that 'total noob' syndrome which can be a big turnoff in Vampire; they're still lower on the XP totem pole than the older characters who haven't died, but they aren't so far behind that all they have is starting dots.
We also have some additional XP benefits, like a Development Document (can net 5-10 XP depending if a player fills out the 'dark secrets known by PCs/NPCs' section), and offer 10 XP if you purchase a copy of the core book. So far we have had no complaints, and this is with about 5 new people joining over the last month.
Might as well join the bandwagon; out of all the people that were on WORA, I think there were only four or five I'd actually RPed with on the MU*s I'd been on when it was up. A lot of these are from way back in the day when MU was my only real social outlet, and my playing has dropped off considerably since like, 2007. This list is starting in 1997 with Beast Wars MUSH and on to the most recent two, Multiverse Crisis and RenoMUSH, my last two apped places.
Active/Currently Being Apped PCs
Fallcoast: Bradley (Human Psychic)
Staff Bits for Active Games
Transformers: Genesis - Optimus Prime (codestaff)
Heroes and Villains MUX - Astronema (character staff)
Beast Wars: Transmetals - Aftershock (headstaff/founder)
Beast Wars: Shadow World - Elmer (code assistant)
Megaman MUSH - Venus (Civilian staff), then Luna (codestaff)
Megaman X MUSH - Sword Man (headstaff/founder)
Transformers: Robots in Disguise - Elmer (character staff)
Digimon MUSH - Tank (Codestaff)
Millenium Heroes MUX/SuperMUX - TPstaff (don't remember which bit, probably Garrett)
There are probably more that I am forgetting as well
Player Characters, in no particular order
Multiverse Crisis - Tsukino Usagi/Eternal Sailormoon (Sailormoon theme), Return X (Megaman X theme), Garrett (Saint Seiya Omega theme), Klein (Sword Art Online theme), Annie Oakley (Pokemon theme)
Transformers: Genesis - Optimus Prime, Velocity
Transformers: The Rebirth - Gavin/Vindicator, Velocity, Optimus Prime
Beast Wars: Transformers - Aftershock, Nightwind, Impact, Artemis
Beast Wars: Transmetals - Aftershock, Impact, Imp, Majesty (character transfer), Megatron, Riptide
Beast Wars: Shadow World - Majesty
Heroes and Villains - Astronema, Tomoe Hotaru/Sailorsaturn, Andros/Red Astro Ranger, Brooklyn (Gargoyles), Eudial, Kou Seiya/Sailorstarfighter, Harley Quinn
Megaman MUSH - Rock, Roll, Alia, Rainbow Stallion, Supragenius Labmouse, probably many others I can't remember
Megaman X MUSH - X, iX, Signas, Alia, Dr. Doppler, Necromancer Arachne, Aftershock Ankylosaur
He-Man MUSH: Mix (OC Horde Soldier, Chiemical Warfare Specialist), Adora/She-Ra
Transformers Victory 2nd - Karone
Millenium Heroes MUX/SuperMUX - 2035/Beyond Bruce Wayne, 2035/Beyond Garrett Miller/Clayface, Killer Croc, Psylocke
MetaMUX - Aya Brea
Beast Wars Complete - Optimus Primal
Beast Machines - Drillhorn
Transformers Robots in Disguise - Bumblebee
Masterforce MUSH - Hot Rod/Firebolt
Pokemon: Evolutions - Giovanni, Annie Oakley
X-Men: Evolutions - Gavin/Portal
X-Men Evo: Bayville - Gavin/Gate
Zelda MUSH - Bongo-Bongo, Aidan
Videoland MUSH - Master Hand (TPstaff/Brawl Tournament Organizer), Chai Xianghua (Soul Calibur cast)
Bishoujo Sensi SailorMUX - Kino Makoto/Salorjupiter, Chiba Mamoru/Tuxedo Mask
Phoenix MUCK - Ayeka (Tenchi Muyo theme), Screw Masaider (Rockman X theme), Kinomoto Sakura (CCS theme), X (Rockman X theme)
Transformers 2005 - Wildrider, Trailbreaker, Wheelie, Geo
PernWorld MUCK - Galen
Digimon MUSH - Gavin/Cubmon
MatrixMUSH - Medea
RenoMUSH - Paul (Lancea et Sanctum Nosferatu)
There's tons of others that I'm forgetting specific MU* names for, and just have general recollections, like the superhero MU* I played an OC who could absorb inorganic matter and take on its properties.
@silentsophia: Japan is terribly racist. That doesn't make the overall plotline terrible though.
I haven't thought about Higurashi (or Umineko, by the same author) in quite some time. I found Higurashi quite interesting (and it led me to read a bunch of the manga, which tell a variety of sequel, side and what-if stories based on the various aspects of the series).
Some things I'd like to second the recommendations on are JoJo and Gundam Build Fighters (particularly if you're a fan of Gundam as a mecha series, and want one that doesn't have a huge war focus).
Others I could recommend...
Turn-A Gundam: Kindof a 'future mindfuck' series, meant to essentially unite all Gundam franchise (barring a couple outliers) under more-or-less one timeline, with room for liberties to be taken. The concept behind it is very solid, it's very well animated and well written.
Log Horizon: People transported to the fantasy world of a not-VR MMO that they play, and find that they still have system limitations and system access (like menu windows). The series mixes MMO crazy like raids and PKing with a living world, and focuses on a lot of the society that builds up around the Adventurers (the players trapped in the world).
Record of Lodoss War/RoLW: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight: Want to watch D&D the anime? This is your series. You need to watch the 13 episode OVA before you watch CotHK, or it won't make sense.
Parasyte: For you gore and body horror fans out there, there's a recent adaptation of the Parasyte manga with modernized character designs. It's quite good though.
Terra Formars: Attempts to colonize Mars result (somehow) giant neandertal humanoid cockroaches, and the colonization attempts must destroy the enemy, using genetically-modified soldiers that have animal powers (primarily insects, but a few birds and fish and mammals). The series is action and politics, as the various countries of the overpopulated Earth try to gain advantage through the mission.
On the note of Sentai, if you want to watch a couple of good ones, try out Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (pirates) and Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters (high-tech spy-kinda-ish theme). Both were very enjoyable to me.
@Ganymede: Do you still have the devdoc that I wrote for you for when it was Mortals/Lost? If not, I can pop you the googledoc and anything else. I haven't worked on it (I've been neck-deep in RL, and only was pointed here a day or two ago).
On the note of using Demon for the post-apoc, I haven't read it, but it could work. It could also lend itself well to plots where, say, the GM is using the zombie virus as Infrastructure that got out of control, and after that occasionally has Angels that have to destroy that Infrastructure (IE: eliminate zombos) in addition to hunting the Demons.