Posts made by Bobotron

... and now I'm crying. The little brown one was so sad looking.

Thanks a lot, @Arkandel.

Found this linked from another forum: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/892039034/undying

Looks like a WoD Heartbreaker; it's been funded and the full text is up, without formatting, online. Looks like a combo of pared-down stuff that we expect from WoD, drawing from the same sources, but set up as a diceless system.

@TNP
Mega Damage FTW. Also, yes, fun but terrible. It DOES have a WoD-esque setting already built though (written by CJ Carella no less) in Nightbane.

I have posted this before, and gotten distracted by RL stuff going on, but I'm back to work on the project. Rather than bump the old (derailed) topic, I figured I'd post a new one.

What is Theatre of Shadows MUSH?

Theatre of Shadows MUSH is an in-development Old World of Darkness MUSH set in the modern nights, with two planned venues: Vampire the Masquerade and Mortals. Set in an original port city in northern California, the MUSH plans to give equal attention to both the Mortal and Vampire Venues, starting with the Vampire Venue while we build up the specifics for the Mortal Venue (or starting with both if Mortals is finalized/finished when we're ready to open). Within all the venues, we plan to draw inspiration from a number of sources, primarily the themes and stylings of Vampire the Masquerade, but also such media as The Vampire Chronicles, Dark Shadows, American Gothic, Fringe, Forever Knight, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel and others. We will be endeavoring to create a world that focuses on two primary elements: gothic horror and supernatural intrigue, though these won't be the only stories to be told, not by far.

Our goal with this MUSH is to give prospective players the capability to not only affect and have plots that have a local focus in the city, through staff-run plots and PrPs, but also have interaction with and effect on the larger World of Darkness. There is also a great deal of long-term consideration for the metaplot of Vampire the Masquerade, and how we might tweak that to 1) allow it to play out in terms of the MUSH, and 2) tweak it so that the input and actions of the players affect the greater outcome This also might mean that at some point down the road, a full 'Gehenna to closing' event happens (but that's farther off the plate than anything right now). Same goes for the Mortals Venue.

Vampire Venue Plans

The current plan for the Vampire Venue is to focus on Cam/Anarch/Independent in a modern timeline, using elements of Revised, V20 and By Night Studios' default timeline. Of particular note:

• Gehenna has not happened (and likely not started beyond a couple of corner case events)
• The Assamite Schism happened and the Schismatic Assamites are recognized as a Pillar Clan of the Camarilla, with Tegyrius as their Justicar, having Primogen in most cities.
• The Gangrel split on leaving, now recognized as a Lesser Clan of the Camarilla (and in some cases, trying to regain their Pillar status), their representation on city courts with Primogen stripped long ago. About a third of the Gangrel stayed with the Camarilla, the rest leaving at Xaviar's behest.
• The Week of Nightmares has not happened.
• The Sabbat War has cooled down in many areas, though the most hotly-contested territory still is (NYC, for example).
• The Giovanni and Followers of Set have the beginnings of a clandestine alliance in the face of an expanded Camarilla, the Loyalist Assamites under ur-Shulgi's pogrom and Sabbat attacks on the holdings of both Independent Clans throughout the world. This has not yet broken The Promise, though may do so in the future.

For those interested, I am sorry, but Sabbat will be limited to NPCs only. I feel that having Sabbat and Cam/Anarch/Independent in the same city is just asking for the game to suffer. C/A/I also gives us a good political base to play with, with a heavily Camarilla city, with some Anarchs moving this way after successful control of areas (like the majority of nearby Los Angeles), and Independents playing wildcard to everyone.

For those interested in unique concepts and unusual Clans or Bloodlines in play, the LARP system has what is called Rarity; it's essentially boiled down to 'all of your cool stuff comes from Merits, and Rarity is one of those things'. So someone could easily play a Camarilla Acknowledged Lasombra Antitribu, but it would cost them some of their 'cool factor' to do so. This is one of the things that I feel the system will do in a positive way for the MUSH. We alter a few of the costs slightly from the book, but otherwise are using them (which leaves only very few things actually banned).

Mortals Venue Plans

Changed from the original draft, the Mortals Venue will be focusing on an experimental conglomeration of the three major OWoD hunter groups dealing with a shared set of apocalyptic omens and the investigation into such, as well as the oddities of Queens Point and its founding family. This gives us focus without having to divide mortals up into crime/law/etc. which can sometimes dilute focus; and of course, people can play independent mortals interacting with everything as well. Within mortals there is also the option for playable Psychics and Hedge Wizards (handled in the same manner that NPCs of those types are handled, by using Disciplines for those powers' mechanics).

Characters

Right now things are set up with an online character generation with self-serve stat setting and XP spending, with a policy of pre-approval allowances for RP. Characters are either apped as a baseline character (30 XP plus an XP Floor), or as Features (higher base XP plus the XP Floor, but Feature players are beholden to work with staff to make the game a better place). The current starting plan is for an NPC Court of Kindred and NPC leadership of the Round Table to be in place, until the playerbase can support PCs in those slots. Likely Features will be able to app into those pre-existing NPCs, but I haven't decided on that yet.

System and Codebase

We will be using a houseruled version of the new By Night Studios Mind's Eye Theatre: Vampire the Masquerade LARP ruleset, with houserules taken from a 2+ year ongoing LARP (primarily for balance rules), or created in order to balance certain things (such as not-a-weakness Weaknesses) or facilitate the Mortals Venue. This system has been chosen because of the similarities between LARP and MUSH in my opinion, and the systems in it that I feel would do well on a MUSH (Rarity, the new Status mechanics, the LARP-style challenge system).

The codebase will be done in PennMUSH (as that's what I'm most comfortable and familiar with), with familiar bells and whistles (though probably not as many as other places). And between the Quickstart, Alpha and Beta Documents, most everything you need is online.

MUSH Development Status

Right now, we're still a bit away from opening; I'd love to have an Alpha Viewing in the next couple of months though. The grid is done (except for the sewers/Warrens for the Nosferatu and contingent commands to get into them), the majority of newsfiles are done (there are always tweaks, but the majority of what is needed is there), the majority of code is in (major things left: softcode building, virtual room ownership commands, NPC database commands, one last step of chargen). Overall, if I can bear down on it (I will still be working a fair bit on LARP stuff as well but it won't be as much of a distraction now that my staff has increased on the LARP) I feel like I can have the rest of the code done in a few weeks.

What I Need

I am still looking for individuals who are interested in the following:

• Idea Sounding Board: I'd love to have a few individuals who are interested in OWoD, both from a canon standpoint and an original setting standpoint to work on finalizing the ideas (and to tell me if they suck or are full of holes). These people don't even have to take staff roles afterwards (though if you wanted to, I'd be cool with that)
• Vampire Staff: People with a desire to do something different on a MUSH and help push a focused venue. Vampire staff duties would include additional development of the core NPCs, development of other NPCs and antagonists, and working with the overarching ideas for the Vampire Venue metaplot. Vampire staff would also (duh) handle vampire approvals for all three available sects; ultimately if things grow to need it, splitting off into Cam/Anarch and everyone doing Indy will become the norm, but starting out everyone will be wearing a number of hats.
• Mortal Staff: People with a desire to actually assist in building the rest of the Mortal Venue. Particularly, I need some people who are good at organization development; I have the baseline and setup in place, but I need assistance expanding and finalizing it. From there, Mortal Staff would work to further develop the current stable of NPCs, other NPCs and antagonists, and working to expand the core Mortal Venue metaplot and work with that for other plotlines.
• General Staff: If you think you are a fit for staff and like OWoD but don't necessarily fit into the above, but have ideas for this type of game (plots, NPCs, building, teaching me AnomalyJobs), let me know. I can always go over idea with you, though general staff would probably be doing things like data entry and gofer work until we open.

My Staff Experience

I have staffed on a whole lot of MU*s in the past, and run two successful ones (as well as worked closely with headstaff as a head charstaffer or codestaff on other successful games). I also have 20 years of tabletop play, GM and ST experience, and 10 years of LARP ST experience, including running plots on a regional and national scale in a shared-continuity LARP organization.

Not that any of this means anything to a lot of you, but I felt like I should throw that out there as well. I have a lot of hope and ideas for this project, and want to see it through to the end. But in all honesty and reality, I can't do it alone (well, okay, I CAN but I would prefer not to have to do so; that way lies burnout).

In Closing

I still feel there is room for this game, particularly with the majority of games for OWoD out there being multi-sphere and lots of OTT-styled sandboxes; with the focus and push, I think we can give the WoD MUSH community something unique and fun to play.

Right now I am still pushing this primarily on my own, which is why development has been ongoing for quite a long time. I would love to get some interested individuals to help with the last stages of the project so that we can get things rolling. If you're interested, PM me here or email theatremush at gmail dot com with your interest and we can take it from there.

Or if you want to post questions for the general audience, feel free to throw them up here. I'm more than happy to try and answer them (even if that answer may be 'I haven't decided yet' or 'I'm not sure yet').

@Tempest
Mostly just using it as an anecdote of weird RP likes.

People be weird, yo. I mean, some communities out there enjoy RPing cannibalism, so...

shrug

@Olsson
So Vampire: Dark Ages then.

@Miss-Demeanor
Because it gives them a measure of control in-game that they may not have in any other manner, and as such fight tooth-and-nail for it? What it involves isn't the point; what it does for them, and how they feel about it, is.

@Misadventure
And for the majority of the courts, that's HOW IT FUCKING WORKS anyway.

@surreality
Yeah, that was a digichat game; digichats are setup like a MUSH in a way most of the time. They'll have chatrooms representing places, but no in between city streets/etc. type stuff, like we would do a grid. Dice rolling was done in a separate part of the site that kept things in a long log (rather than in the chatroom itself).

This sounds pretty cool; I am getting visions of a less apocalyptic version of MCWoD, with supernatural public reveal instead of a constant government coverup.

What were you thinking/looking at system-wise for it?

@Ide
Probably thinking of digichat games like Wanton Wicked or New Bremen.

@Wizz
From the sound of it, it's probably one of the two TF games that draws from the IDW comics.

@HelloRaptor
Am I the only one who thought 'Sith lord makes super Jedi baby by manipulating midichlorians and his apprentice, Sidious, takes an interest in the super Jedi sith baby' was at the same time, kinda interesting and kinda crazeballs?

@Trundlebot
Manly tears.

@RoguePotato
What they are meaning is, what is the FORMAT the powers are stored? Here's an example of the last superhero game I was on.

Trans-Spatial Gateways: Gavin's mutant power is the ability to open trans-spatial gateways, utilizing a psychic pull on points in the Material Plane and another small 'pocket dimension.' Gavin's portals have two functions: either point-to-point transportation, or opening into an empty, Limbo-like area called The Zone.
Point to Point: Gavin has the unique ability to open trans-spatial portals, a form of external teleportation. He really has no idea how he does it; the science of it can be explained by a psychic pull on the Material Plane and ripping a grey, featureless gateway from Point A to Point B. He is able to generate only one pair of portals, but hopes that training and learning how to control his mutant powers would allow him to generate more over time. The portals are able to stretch from 2 to 10 feet in circumference. Gavin utilizes them for both transportation AND combat; the normal use of the portals allows people to walk  through them from point A to point B, or into the Zone (see next entry). He can also open the portals to do things such as block attacks, mostly things such as energy blasts, and redirect them to a new target.

Versus, say...

Super Strength [10]: Superman is one of the strongest beings on the planet, able to lift sixteen quintillion tons at the high end of his super strength.

@Sunny
I hopped on last night and only saw a jobs bboard. I'll pop on again tonight (I just used Bobotron as my name again).

@Glitch
I still don't find that narrative to be... appealing.

Of course, I am frothing over the X-Men: Apocalypse leak (OMG 80's STORM LOOKS SO AWESOME) and I am now sold on the Suicide Squad movie (Leto seems to be channeling Jack Nicholson, though I wish their Harley was channeling Arlene Sorkin a bit more).

@Rook
Yeah. As much as it's a cool pipedream, it's really just that. Part of why I was backing away from that and more relying on staff-run and PRP stuff combined with the VChar/VNPC system, and a lot of templates for NPCs and a way that someone could submit their own int othe database.

@Tempest
Most games with 'coded' combat (especially in the M3/SRT/TFMU* circuit) really only cover the basics overall (and hell, stuff nowadays has come a LONG way from what we had on TF MUSHes in the early 90s). But most of the RPG-styled stuff like cover, reach, etc. tends to not matter mechanically in those games, as the combat system is supposed to be a cinematic representation and used as a tiebreaker/method to determine the outcome of a battle if people can't agree to an RPed outcome.

@Tempest
I worked for a while on the concept for it, and ultimately, it can be done. Hell, you can make basic AI 'NPC monsters' via objects and creative use of @listen and listen patterns if you wanted stuff that was persistent (I've done this and seen it done in a lesser capability, for troop objects or training drones on TF MU*s). There's not a lot of fine granularity to it in that manner, however, because it was something that was reactive; it reacted to the combat code's messages and attacked back the person who hit it (tied heavily into a coded combat system). I am sure that, with some further creative finagling, you could have it pick someone at random.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the way I would have done it on the not-SAO MUSH would be on initiative. I'd coded an auto-tracking turn-advancing initiative for a MUSH before, which advanced rounds based on +-commands advancing the tracker (so +attack would advance the turn to the next person). It'd be code-intensive for every automated monster (though you could have a base template, @parent it to the template type and then add conditionals based on the more powerful monster or flatly rebuild one-offs like bosses), but you could give them conditions and a percentage roll on their turn, pick a non-monster target at random and have it do the +-command based on the 'likelihood to do <X> thing'.

The two things that kept tripping me up, in the end, were 1) advancement and 2) the inventory/money/equipment system.

I couldn't find a fair way to do advancement in the MMO environment, that was fair to the people who played here and there due to RL constraints but liked the setting, and the people who had hours in a day to, y'know go out and grind as if it was WoW. That's a factor of it, sure, but it just FELT weird to me (probably because I don't play MMOs myself).

For the money/inventory/equipment, it ended up feeling too gamey to me; I wanted the game to more be the 'here's the setting, this stuff is important but I'm not going to recode WoW in MUSHform for rare item drops, etc.'. Which ultimately led to the thing petering out. It can be done, but you have to have someone really interested in doing all the calculations, percentages of drops/rare drops/etc. and the interconnections between systems. Doing it isn't HARD, it's just determining exactly how gamey you want the gamey aspects of it to be, and if you have the layout for everything you'd potentially need. Inventory works well as a database storing all the potential items as individual attributes with the stats, stored on the character as a delimited list of some sort. Money is easy enough to store as an attribute and tie into the buy/sell/find code.

There are various RPG Maker programs out there that, their monster AI is a collection of 'if-then statements', based on a percentage condition. You might have a Goblin with two things it does: Attack or Goblin Grenade. Each would have a 50% likelihood of happening. A higher level monster might have eight abilities, with preconditions sch as 'If HP is less than 50%, do Giga Fire Blast 30% of the time'. It could be finagled into some (complex) MUSHcode on parents, and go from there.

If I can find my notes on it, I'd be glad to pastebin them somewhere if you want to review some of the prelim stuff I'd poked about with.

@Misadventure
I'd think so. That's the typical method for one of the heavy combat coded MU*s like Transformers (+-commands tied to code do the heavy lifting, the commands set damage, deduct fuel, calculate hit/miss, inflict status effects, etc.). You can also make it advance a turn order with an initiative system.

@Rook
I think you're onto the right angle there; this type of thing is part of why I've built an extensive, softcoded NPC system (I built it for a TF game to represent Micromaster Teams originally) that I was going to use on the not-SAO game. It essentially ties into all the code, from room parents to +finger to +-commands for combat, using attributes to create virtual NPCs that don't require a login or an @created object. Not able to be made automated ,but easy for a GM to go +NPC/get goblin|goblin|goblin captain|Tiamat|TEMPEST GOD OF STORMS and get those NPCs to use during a scene. In using it for Micromaster Teams and even just as a test for NPCs tied into the combat system, it worked quite nicely.

It's called NodeBB.