Posts made by Bobotron

@ShelBeast
Why use CofD? Because it's known to many MU*ers?

@Taika

I don't skype, but feel free to ping me here or I'll ping you my MU*s address and we can bounce ideas. I have been thinking more heavily about 'attacking and defending' in automation and have some theories I'm putting down to paper to see how they go.

To me, Territory should offer t least one benefit. Theoretical benefits include

• spendable resource (Blood/Essence)
• connections (temporary Allies/Contacts/Influence)
• some other nebulous benefit (Skill bonus? Status trait?)

The big problem with Territory is staff. You need staff to manage it unless it's something extremely automated. Theoretically you could create a Territory system that allows players to use Merits, Downtimes and such to attack another person's Territory and erode their control. Things like making the people unfriendly to 'certain elements,' drawing the ire of the cops to non-Masquerade breach vampire business, etc. and have it go up and down based on defense actions and attack actions.

This is something I've been playing with for HotB, so I'm going to compile my ideas and post them here and pay attention to this thread for cool stuff.

@Auspice
Go for it. Like I said, feel free to steal the DPL. It's just a really simple set of DPL framework that works when things are tagged NEWS and another category.

@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

@Auspice
That is FUCKING AWESOME! Congratulations!

Finally watched 7th episode of GoT.

Holy fuck I need a time machine to go FORWARD IN TIME I need the next season NOW.

@Arkandel
... that's not my intent?

@Arkandel
Because there hasn't been anything new for The Matrix in years? It's the same reason Star Wars had a huge uptick during TFW and Rogue One. Something in people's eyes to draw them to it.

So the Masquerade LARP I was running ended on August 19th. Our last session was an insane crazy time, including:

• Characters involved in a Beckett-related 'meta event' where they went to Kaymakli came back to town, being followed by something that was claiming to be/they thought was Lasombra.
• It was really Lasombra, who had been following them from LA.
• The players had stumbled upon some Thaumaturgy warding rituals that use ley lines that they were trying to use to keep out things of a certain power scale in light of Gehenna happening.
• One player finally revealed himself as the Last Daughter of Eve (they had previously been involved in the killing or elimination of the REAL one, as well as her Magi such as Ferrox the Gargoyle and Smiling Jack).
• They got their shit together and their internal fighting almost overcame their desire to have a 'safe place' to exist in light of Gehenna.
• They worked on the ritual, even to the point that Troile (NPCed by a player whose character died two games prior), in the guise of the Gangrel Lizzie 'Borden' Hartwell, was helping to deal with Lasombra.
• Multiple PCs died, but they got the ritual off, which ended up creating a zone that would harm anything that was above a certain 'pay grade' (IE: rampaging Antediluvians). It drove out Lasombra and Troile.
• Our players got to declare their epilogues over the next 50 years as our game ended with the 'Caine rules for 1000 years' Gehenna ending, The Camarilla collapsed, the Sabbat eventually collapsed, the Nephtali became the rebellion against the rule of the 'sane' Antediluvians.... and our epilogue went very much Vampire Hunter D in the way the world works.

It feels good to not have to deal with writing and building things for the LARP any more, but also sad. I cried twice while building up and writing up the last of the story stuff before the last game.

This is the first LARP we've ever had a 'set ending' to. A little more than 4 years. I think we had a good run.

(And yes, we had 2 Antediluvians on site... it made sense in the context of our 'living world of darkness' setting, and things the players had done, including a local Brujah setting up and heading the anti-Troile movement after she got unsealed from the ruins of Carthage and her and the Baali started the Carthaginian faction of Infernalists. Our players loved it, and our game was for our players, so...)

@Ganymede
Right. So some benefits based on the game might be...

• XP: Especially for games using partial XPs.
• Plot Cookies: Something to turn over to staff for Plot Stuff later
• Roll Bonuses: Full Success or +X to a check

Re: Incentivize

On the note of the 'give a benefit for failure,' how often has that been tried? And how much benefit do you give? If you fail now, do you get a success to just spend later on?

I think one of the big things we're missing here (especially with the sheer amount of AUGH MY AUTONOMY!) is how to incentivize losing, or giving up that piece of information. Ignore 'using social stats to make someone want to typefuck you,' but focusing on 'I am going to flatter and wheedle you and if successful, you'll tell me that Baron McHugelarge is really passing information to the King Flooflemeier.' How do we INCENTIVIZE players being willing to take these kinds of failures? Since there seems to be a constant 'well, my character wouldn't say <X>'.

@Coin

CAOCAO-SENPAI NOTICED ME!!!!!

@Thenomain
I don't disagree. I'm the same way; flaws are there to be played out and being a 100% perfect character all the time is no fun.

As far as agency. Acting out your own agency is fine, but there's got to be a balance/point between acting out your own agency and adhering to the mechanical rules of social conflict. If I'm persuaded to give up a secret password to the Computer System of Doom and I've been appropriately placated and rolled no successes on the conflict, it's not fair of me to 'play my own agency' as being 'well I won't give it to you' because I, the player, don't want to.

That's the problem. People don't want to abide by mechanical enforcement of that.

On the topic of a game without social stats? Every MU* I've ever played except for the couple of WoD games I briefly played over the last few years was social stat-less. They were heavily combat coded and full consent games, and there was a penchant for people doing RP to... well, play to their characters and not design 'good at everything' PCs. It worked fine on those games, though the games were predisposed towards certain things (big dumb thug Gutsman was easily outsmarted by Dr. Doppler, for example).

@faraday
Your suggestions of 'how to do a thing' is how the SoIaF RPG does Intrigue, their social combat.

I'l agree with 'play stats hard,' but it will never work on a MU*. Players are too ingrained into their way of thinking to allow successful social tests to color their perceptions, convince them someone is telling the truth, and all the things that social conflict requires. You will never get all players to buy into it, and that is the stumbling block that needs to be overcome.

@Arkandel

BUT MUH REALISM! BUT MUH CALCULATIONS! BUT MUH MINUTIAE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@The-Tree-of-Woe

NNNNNNG DANGER!!!!!!!!!!