Posts made by Bobotron

It goes way off the bottom of the screen and half the time, you can't arrow down to see the last line where you're typing. Can we PLEASE fix that?

So. Keying off of the little bit of stuff that @Thenomain and I were bandying about in the MU*s That Are Desired thread, I figured I'd go ahead and split into this.

So, there's a lot of talk in a lot of threads about design and theory and outside the box thinking. But regarding MUs, what does that really mean or entail? I freely admit that my background for MU*s comes from a lot of different games and genres than the WORA/MSB crowd seems to be. And it seems like, a lot of times, when the topic of 'new MUs' comes up, there's always a push for 'how do you do this thing'.

So here's a question. What ARE some of the things that MUers here on MSB seem to see as difficulties in designing for a particular type of game. Anything, ranging from social mechanics to sclae to world building to grid management and design, post them here. I'd love to see what people have thoughts and concerns on. Maybe we, as a commmmunity, can help each other overcome the ideas and concerns that we have in game design.

@Thenomain
Oh, I get where you're coming from on the concept of scale. It takes some outside the box thinking and willingness to be expansionist in your design. The real world city I'm replacing with a fictional city for my WoD game, for example, I spent a lot of time looking at it, surrounding cities nearby (like LA and San Francisco) and determining what size would work, what would allow a good growth and what made SENSE in context.

I don't think it's undoable in the case of Fallout or any other genre, really. Some might be more funky than others (I've thought, many times before, about how to design the DC Beyond game I have in mind, but the scale ends up being a big issue because I can't reconcile things like Metropolis, Gotham and other cities... and I come from a background where games have entire Earth maps set up to account for movement and play), but you could come up with reasons and logic for it.

Or take some nibblet of info from the setting and go 'they mentioned this, said it was populous, but didn't show it... so let's use that'.

@Thenomain
Ahhh. I see. Thanks for the info!

@Thenomain

OtherSpace

Wow, that's still a thing?

@peasoupling said:

Fallout, or something Fallout-ish.

I'm surprised more people don't latch onto this idea. It has the dark and visceral thing that people like, and factions and reasons to politic and social, but also just crazy monster shit to deal with.

• Superhero MU* that doesn't use an insane system - specific genres include Batman Beyond and X-Men as of the New X-Men era (essentially X-Men allowing for the school focus)

@Groth

@Groth said:

@Bobotron said:

@Gingerlily
The Status system in MET: Vampire the Masquerade is built around social play and rewarding you for making good on what you do, and punishing you for fucking up.

You get lauded by positive Status, which gives you a variety of social (and sometimes mechanical) benefits, like allowing you to talk to your superiors without permission, to offset an offense when you fuck up, and a number of things.

You bet punished by Negative Status when you fuck up and can't offset it. Most Negative Status imposes some type of social punishment, though you can go so far as to get ejected from your sect for fucking up too much. There's also some interesting political play with some Negative Status, where people whoa re backstabbing vampire bitches to people with those specific Negative Status getting a special Positive Status for insulting and belittling the fuckup.

Overall it works really well for play in my experience, and I've been using in in live-play with a 30 or so player game for over 2 years. You'd need to tweak it to allow every joe to give positive/negative status a little though, since ia lot of it relies on people in positions of power giving out the status (harpies, prince, seneschal, elders, etc.)). You can look at it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1t3t1c455rcnlcw/METVtM Status.pdf?dl=0

RfK tried to use the MET status system as written and it worked 'ok' while the game still had a relatively small population but as the game grew it became increasingly impossible for the Prince/Harpies to actually keep track of what was going on and properly award/deduct status.

Yeah; Requiem MET system uses the same setup as tabletop, as dots-rated. MET:VtM uses adjective descriptors as things that you are recognized as, like Loyal or Courteous, which works well into RP AND is really easy to handle; you have a status cap, and in general, unless you use your status/pull your weight with it, and expend the trait (temporarily or permanently, depending), it's there as recognition for you. There are some punishments that might drop your status (like removing all your Fleeting Status without expenditure), but it doesn't require the overhead Requiem status does.

Here's a couple of examples of how Status in METVtM works and how it works itself into play. Positive status in italics, negative status in bold.

Sanderson the Nosferatu is known to be Courteous by Primogen Huxley of the Nosferatu, Loyal by the Seneschal Yamada and Favored by his sire, Prince Abraxus.
Sanderson makes a move at court, and surrounding by his supporters, openly insulting the Established Elder Toreador Mikaela. "That ungrateful bitch. She's gone behind the Prince's back one too many times, and I'll teach her a fucking lesson if she does it again."
Mikaela, overhearing from her table nearby, simply looks at the Nosferatu and smiles, "Such harsh words against an Established member of our sect, Sanderson. I'm going to give you a Warning about your behavior, before I see to it the Sheriff finds out about your side projects."
Sanderson does not back down. "As a Loyal member of the court, my words carry weight and your Warning won't stick under careful investigation, Mikaela."

This uses the effect of:

• Established to grant Warned (a negative status representing punishment) to someone who openly insults, threatens or attacks you
• The effect of Warned which would disallow Sanderson from talking to sect officers without being addressed first, among other things.
• And the effect of Loyal, which is removed in place of Sanderson being Warned.

Next up, the court has survived an assault by a Sabbat pack, and Girard the Ventrue and Tien the Assamite Vizier have aquitted themselves in taking out the ductus, a powerful Tzimisce and found a traitor. The Prince is holding court after the Sabbat have been driven out and eliminated.

Prince Abraxus stands, stepping forward. "These past nights have been trying for our court. However, two individuals have done above and beyond what was requested of them in the face of this adversity. Rise, Tien and Girard." After they rise, "By the Authority of the Praxis of this domain, I hereby declare Tien of the Assamites and Girard of the Ventrue Defenders of the court; their actions against the Sabbat invaders have proven their mettle and wit. They have also revealed a traitor in our midst..."
A chorus of murmurs comes from the court, as the Prince continues. "Sheriff Fallon, please bring forth the prisoner."
The Sheriff comes forward with a chained figure, a local Gangrel named Puck. The Prince steps forward, scowling. "Puck. This domain has offered you hospitality. This domain has offered you support in your bid to help the Gangrel regain status. However, the evidence is overwhelming. Sabbat ritual documents and... forbidden lore... were found in your haven, and your communications with the Malkavian Primogen implicate you in her destruction."
Abraxus sighs, rubbing his temples. "You, sir, are a glorious fuckup and it is with GREAT pleasure that I declare you Forsaken and that you shall be anathema. Sheriff Fallon, you know what to do."

In this instance, the Prince has used his Authority to:

• Grant the positive status Defender to two of his court, which he can use as a passive benefit of being in a position of Authority (Defender allows people to carry weapons in restricted areas as a passive bonus, and it has an active bonus of reducing gained Beast Traits by one, representing your resolve to do this thing that's giving you beast traits in service to the court)
• The Prince also hits the Gangrel with Forsaken, which expels him from the sect and removes all the protections he enjoyed as a member of the Camarilla. This is more of him 'pulling his weight' (temporarily expending the Status Trait) to get the bigger effect.

What I'd like to experiment with is a system where every character on the game is allowed to make one positive vote and one negative vote each time interval, these would be public and optional. In theory this could create an effective crowd-sourced harpy that would help make everyone in the game aware of what's been happening.

Isn't this what LAMUSH was doing, with votes for reputation?

@Sunny
I appreciate that. It's been fun running theory and helping you out with social system stuff!

@Gingerlily
Thanks! I'm hopeful that the game will go over well. And if not, well, I've done some neat code I could probably get use out of down the road.

@Gingerlily
The Status system in MET: Vampire the Masquerade is built around social play and rewarding you for making good on what you do, and punishing you for fucking up.

You get lauded by positive Status, which gives you a variety of social (and sometimes mechanical) benefits, like allowing you to talk to your superiors without permission, to offset an offense when you fuck up, and a number of things.

You bet punished by Negative Status when you fuck up and can't offset it. Most Negative Status imposes some type of social punishment, though you can go so far as to get ejected from your sect for fucking up too much. There's also some interesting political play with some Negative Status, where people whoa re backstabbing vampire bitches to people with those specific Negative Status getting a special Positive Status for insulting and belittling the fuckup.

Overall it works really well for play in my experience, and I've been using in in live-play with a 30 or so player game for over 2 years. You'd need to tweak it to allow every joe to give positive/negative status a little though, since ia lot of it relies on people in positions of power giving out the status (harpies, prince, seneschal, elders, etc.)). You can look at it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1t3t1c455rcnlcw/METVtM Status.pdf?dl=0

Continuing along. It looks like, if all goes well and my streak of catching my errors as I make them holds, I'll be ready for an alpha opening/viewing mid-October. Downtime rules are up on the wiki, Territory rules are in-progress, and the overall policies are going through finalization.

I'm going to continue to chug along and see what happens. The more I'm developing this, the more i'm seeing it as a little bit of a 'spiritual successor' to Requiem for Kingsmouth; I've designed the game to have a heavy socio-political push, particularly with what I've written but also by using Mind's Eye Theatre, I have permission from @Groth to use their play-tier system verbatin, which I like pretty well, and I will probably adjust that somewhat to fit my vision overall.

I am still hoping for one or two staffers; perhaps as I get closer to opening and people can login and check things out on the game proper, I might get a couple of more bites. I'm very easy to staff with and if you've never staffed, but feel like you have good ideas and a familiarity with Masquerade, feel free to hit me up. Some of my best staff in my MU* history came from players of the game, or people that had never staffed before but had good ideas.

Either way, I'm going to get it open; it's not hurting me to have a project to work on in general, and I really feel the game has a lot of potential. I just have to get it there to show off what it is and what it can do and be.

@Gingerlily
The MET system I play in for LARP and what i'm using for TheatreMUSH has status and reputation insofar as 'within your faction' that fluctuates and can be affected by players as you do fucked up shit. Hitting with Negative Status and stuff, which imposes actual in-game sanctions and rewards for being a jackass backbiting vampire, gets a LOT of play in the LARP.

@peasoupling
I think that's more of an issue of XP glut and overabundance than it is the time scale of a MU*.

I like the concept of diminishing returns/staggered XP. After you have X amount of XP or time or whatever, the max you get per period goes down. It's what I'm doing at TheatreMUSH and is a concept in the new MET: Vampire the Masquerade. It has worked out well in LARP so far, and it keeps people able to get XP without a cap.

My thoughts on 'newbies' is a combo of both XP floor (a flat bonus based on how long the game has been going) and potential other bonuses.

The world needs more single-sphere WoD games. Do the Forsaken 2e game.

@Miss-Demeanor
Eh. I'm going to be the dissenter here and, once more, say, we're splitting hairs about something that is NOT DESIGNED for MU* being NOT SUITED for MU* environment. Quelle suprise!

Kiths are meant to cover specific situations from fairy stories and fairy tales. In this instance, it's very much The Dancing Shoes. However. Using dancing to add to socialize, persuasion and subterfuge, IMO makes sense. There are plenty of media examples where someone dances super close with someone else, in order to wheedle information out of them while they're distracted, or plant false information, or whatever. It's meant to be a representation, IMO, of 'that dude there is distracted while I'm dancing him six ways from Sunday'.

It can be useless, yes, especially if social rolls don't matter, and in a MU* environment which they aren't built to be used in, but it CAN be useful if the ST makes it useful. MU* STs just seem to have a hard time finding out who will be there beyond 'I can throw eleventy-seven dice of damage at it AND become invisible while I do so!' and account for that or, better yet, build challenges that will take someone's unique abilities into account.

@Coin
God, you make me miss the days of the Harry Potter Greatestjournal RPG I was part of, which was one of the most fun RPs I've had.

@Groth
As someone who had had a lot of the 'can't police Feels' thing to deal with before, I'll chime in.

In my experience, what he's talking about is that we can't make someone feel a different way than they do. No matter how much maintenance of a good OOC atmosphere there will be on a game, there will be people who take it too much to heart or too seriously, and that will set in to those people. Many people won't want to deal with communication or determining rumors and lies from truth; they were hurt and that's all there is to it.