Posts made by bored

Oh, setting wise, L5R has about a million options. It's about as rich as Game of Thrones in terms of the thousands of years of history and cast of characters, some of which are defined in minute detail (any of the CCG eras, or the Heroes of Rokugan campaigns, both which had month-by-month histories playing out in real time), some of which are lightly sketched (the stuff from Imperial Histories, for example), and some just barely alluded to. My game used an alternate timeline where all the Thunders died (except maybe Kachiko, cuz lol Scorpion?), leaving a lot of the clans with leadership conflicts, a search for a viable Emperor without Toturi, etc (basically to get at it being a little more warring states).

Coming up with stuff I'd want to make a game about is the least of the problems. Mostly it's the system plus the things that plague all historic games (ie, sake house RP isn't quite the same thing as Coffee Shop RP), made worse by some of the non-western assumptions.

Didn't mean it was bad to necro it, just that I was surprised to see a couple notifications from the thread, and decided to check in since it was originally directed at me.

Anyway, system learning I don't mean that it's impossible but it's a barrier and it was something I encountered on my prior game, since plenty of people were interested in 'fantasy samurai' but a relatively small proportion had actually played L5R in any form. And particularly because ronin are not good starter characters, it's a little difficult to get people into the game without them learning not just the dice mechanics but also the clan techs and so on.

I think FFG will do a good job ( like them as a company) and my preference would always be to use the newest incarnation of a game simply because it's easier for people to get into it. But EotE was not very MU-friendly, so it would have to be a little different to be practical.

Saw it tonight.

Without spoiling so much, the Vader scene is worth the price of admission

Oh, this got necro'd.

I'm still interested in L5R and would gladly help in whatever way I could with a newer game, but I definitely found that there were challenges in it MU-wise the last time around. Aside from the difficulty of a teaching a less well-known game system to new players, there's a lot to absorb in terms of the setting and etiquette and definitely a lot of challenge in getting players to embrace some of the non-western assumptions of the culture.

Re: the FFG stuff, this is a big thing I'm waiting on as a long time fan of both the RPG and CCG. But if the new RPG indeed used the system that EotE does, that might be pretty tricky for MU-dom as while not quite going full hipster, it's pretty narrative.

I've been wanting to do a pirate-age thing for quite a bit, and had been considering 7th Sea when the new edition was still on the horizon, although what we got turned out to be fairly unsuited to MUing.

So I'm a little torn on the whole thing. It gets the setting perfect but the old rules seemed too obscure/complicated. I suppose I could use a generic system but using a different system for a game that has a system always also seems weird to me.

I've had a few different L&L ideas as well, where it wouldn't feel quite as odd using say FS3 (or the new version, tweaked for fairer chargen vs. XP), but the various historical roadblocks are always looming large in my mind.

You're really missing the point, pulling out nuanced, detailed RL history to try and make a case. Players won't get nuance or detail, or they will disagree on the nuance and detail (see RA, and frankly, see actual historians) and ultimately people will RP what they want to RP (again see RA). To any degree that you have Christians and Muslims, you're going to get friction and if the overall point of the game is (re)conquest, that religious line is going to be a thing. Again, see RA with Pagans vs Christians there, and that was a theme that was encouraging 0 conflict between them. Your theme will be encouraging conflict >0.

So whether or not this was the core essence of conflict in the period, it's going to be hard to tell people they can't incorporate intolerance into their RP without it becoming very RP police-y, and where the line of 'OK' will be drawn seems like it will be hopelessly subjective.

So... real history with all the real world links and the potential pitfalls that come with it, but pretending said real history is all daisies and roses with vague, highly subjective and yet harshly-enforced rules about players not taking their religious war too far and being mean to each other? It sounds like you've basically taken the worst possible sides of both of this in your compromise.

As ever, I'll still probably check it out, just because there's not much L&L these days.

@lordbelh I think it rises above 'possibly being discomforted' to nearly baiting people to get into fights on pub about religion/politics and I really don't think that's something any game really needs. And I say this being far from the sort to worry about offending/triggering/etc as a general matter of policy. I don't think these topics should be off limits (and I presume an alt-earth version would still have religious violence, all the horrors implied by war, etc), but from a pure 'I want my game to succeed' level I think it's probably a landmine @Lotherio would be better off not setting for himself to step on.

@Lotherio Right, I don't really mean that I imagine you'll make the game about the Evil Muslims, but I think it can be really awkward to RP a topic where PC bigotry might well be highly encouraged by the setting. People will inevitably take it too far, causing some cringy OOC-ness for the people around them as they wonder how much of it is IC. For others it might be uncomfortable for any number of RL reasons (Iraq/Afghanistan vets, people impacted by 9/11 - I qualify for this one just as a demonstration of how common the demographics are, even if it isn't really going to bother me- or any number of other incidents, etc).

So yeah, I actually say you'd be better off doing an alt-earth and playing around with it a little more. Establish a specific cultural/tech level (not just 'movies') and give examples. They don't need to be hyper realistic but if you let people go with 'whatever fits cinematically' you'll still get people picking vastly different periods and friction over it (this happened on RA).

Regardless I'm sure I'll show up to play and I'd probably help out if you wanted it, but I think the alt-earth thing is almost certainly the best way to go.

My instinct is... good intentions but really iffy result given a couple reasons:

• Despite being willing to wave a bit historical accuracy (this was the case on Realms too, partly as a staff call and partly even by Pendragon design), it's way off what most people are familiar with when they think of knights and whatnot, and that's almost certainly going to cause friction among people who want to do it right and people who don't give a fuuuuuuck.

• Real life settings are also probably a little subtle to make plain sense of the politics so the PCs can follow along. I'm not sure what you intend as 'houses/factions' but usually the benefit of fantasy settings is they're a lot more cleanly delineated on this stuff. You'd need to take some really clear steps here.

• Even with our resident race baiting specialist banned and ignoring his dumb rants about RA, there's some iffiness making a game about defeating the Muslims given obvious RL context that is obvious. I dunno. Maybe people can handle it, but I even remember some iffy stuff with how people handled Kurgans on Star Crusade, and at least there's a thin layer of pretend there.

Hopefully it's obvious I'm using normal language under the assumption of a reasonable-person reading. I'm not one of the lawyers here. So I mean I don't mind some wiggle room on either side, rather than some hard line stance on smaller details of staff may never do X or must always do Y. I'm also not trying to make a sweeping declaration about all MU*dom nor all staffing or ethical issues (some of which I'm a bit more grimly pragmatic about than my optimism here would indicate).

Merely, circling back to my original post, I do not think it is a big stretch for staffers to consider and then avoid the simple pattern described there as a first step, best practices kind of thing. People will still alt cheat and staff power abuse and clique and gossip and harass and every bit of shitty behavior we've observed through approaching two decades of the hobby. But I think if people paused to think about this (or several other issues) when starting a game, it would go a long way, especially because as I note several times, I doubt much of this is intentional malice so much as careless lack of self-awareness.

@GirlCalledBlu

I honestly don't remember the Fifth World stuff too well in terms of which characters were what, only that I had a hard time getting a piece of the plot despite having a character who for all intents and purposes made a lot of sense to be highly involved (one of the oldest PCs, head of minor house responsible for a lot of shipbuilding, denied having any kind of position in the fleet administration and told to 'work toward it' in a vague way despite the guy being in his late 40s or 50s, IE presumably mid career at least). My perception was less of specific staffer malfeasance (although I did remember a lot of eye-rolly very public relationship spectacle stuff) as it being a lot of RP among friends and outsiders just being kind of clueless on what to do at all.

@mietze and others:

I don't think its impossible to do, I really don't, and acting like its naive to expect otherwise just seems like an excuse. Staffers don't need to be excluded from the fun, staffers can run fun from their characters or NPCs for all I care, all they really need to do is make the slightest effort to make sure there are good ways for outsiders to be involved. Frankly, it's as simple as acknowledging that a MU open to the public is not a private sandbox (and that if you have private sandbox fantasies, you should handle those in the appropriate venue). Some people will not be able to grasp this, but I feel like in the era of the gentler, more mature Wora MSB this stuff isn't rocket science nor above our abilities as a community.

@GirlCalledBlu

Honestly I don't think the solution is far out of sight, it just requires a little less laziness on the part of staff, familiarity with the usual pitfalls, and some degree of self-awareness.

IE, if you're a staffer responsible for running Royal NPCs X, Y and Z... maybe don't pick a top tier noble as your PC alt. There's quite a lot of gap between the hysterical 'omg you don't want staffers to enjoy their own game' and them dominating the upper tiers so thoroughly. And realistically, running the NPCs well probably precludes having enough time to be a good leader in a PC slot, so there's multiple reasons it shouldn't happen.

Alternatively, maybe change the setup. It seems like most staffers googled noble titles (or played CK2) and understand that there's a King and then Dukes and then Counts and then Barons and recreate that as an absolute hierarchy... completely ignoring that history was basically never like that, ever, and/or that this is a bad way to set up a game (as basically everyone below some cutoff tier is going to be a worthless pleb). You can really just go for a flatter structure without breaking anything, and while there's still probably going to be power tiers, it's best not to set it up with such degrees of striation that you have people 2, 3, and 4 steps removed from any kind of real power.

I was on TFW and played with the staffers elsewhere. They're nice, enjoyable people to RP with outside of a staff context, but probably a bit self-centric in it. In this light, them sandboxing is actually probably the correct choice (although I think it also implies a certain admission of guilt regarding TFW's original incarnation). At least they're being honest with the fact that they don't really want to share except with a few close friends.

That said, I really want to focus on this:

@Ghost said in The 100: The Mush:

@Kanye-Qwest Don't be like that. I have said repeatedly that staff should definitely RP on their own games and enjoy the work they've put in. I'm just saying that staff shouldn't pigeonhole the entire game to being about their PCs and need to understand that by opening a place of RP to the public, there is an unspoken expectation that the roleplayers that they have opened a play space for are joining the game to matter.

By matter I mean: beyond assisting staff PCs in being the big heroes, and not being unwittingly delegated into being supporting cast characters.

People join these games to get camera time, have arcs, and feel like they're causing an impact on roleplay, not to be listed in IMDB as "Guy in Coffee House #3"

(Last bit about homebound people removed, as not terribly relevant)

I do think there's a trend in a lot of these games (quick setup FS3 L&L games especially, though not wholly limited to them) to end up in this trap, probably not wholly because the staffers are evil and abusive, but because there's kind of a blind spot to how easily you end up there. It usually goes something like:

1. Well, the King and whoever else will be NPCs (run by us) because we need them for plot
2. then we create a bunch of tiered houses, the topmost leaders of which will be NPCs (see #1) or maybe top-tier feature PCs
3. their kids (and maybe some of the lesser house leaders) will be PCs
4. most of 2 & 3 will nonetheless still be played by staff (because they need real PCs too not just NPCs), and friends (take your pick of between first-come first-serve when their friends know first and casual nepotism)
5. Thus, the majority of actual, Joe off-the-street players will get third or fourth tier characters at best

I've seen this pattern on every game in the genre I've interacted with in the last several years, and have heard about it on other places besides. It's a real issue, and I think staff really does need to consider it when they're designing a game: you need to make space for off-the-street players to be important and impactful. If you're not doing this, whether by intention or accident, you may as well at least admit to what you're doing and retreat to the pillowfort.

I actually have all 3 installed and use them all semi-regularly. As is inevitable with this sort of software, each one does at least one specific thing that the others don't (or do poorly) that can sometimes make me want to swap clients for a particular task.

I've also on some rare occasions found situations where a game server didn't seem to like one in particular, although I can't imagine why that would be.

I started with Pern, long long ago, and was on both the 'main'/original north and southern continent sister games (Pernmush and SoCon? I sort of forget the actual names). Had a bluerider on the former, bronzerider (... E'vrin? or something like that, I want to say) and eventually the masterharper (something with a J?) on the other.

But yeah, these games really set the standard for all future games to emulate in terms of shitty have & have-not-isms, favoritism, cliquishness, and so on. While I got some fun out of the relationship RP, they seemed to have very little substance beyond the thinly-veiled high school popularity contest aspect. In retrospect its really hard to see much appeal in them. The setting is very thin on meaningful stuff to do, where the book-level megaplots aren't really feasible and the smaller scale stuff is too settled and regular. So you just end up sipping... whatever that word was for coffee and waiting on the occasional flight for a bunch of non-interactive show-off posing followed by the thin possibly of hawt TS.

@Arkandel said in World of Warcraft: Legion:

@bored said in World of Warcraft: Legion:

This is actually kind of why I gave it up! There was making everyone useful, and making everyone more or less identical (about when Mastery came in), and as someone who had always maintained a variety of tank/mdps alts, it became much less interesting when the nuance and difference between them vanished.

Yes, that's a valid concern. I share it partially, as for example balance concerns were the reason so many builds had to vanish so that what talents you pick barely matter any more - as opposed to always seeking that sweet combo that catered to your playstyle - and worse, made leveling less exciting since the vast majority of dings mean almost nothing other than getting one number closer to your max.

But.

It still beats what we had before. I remember playing a dwarf Priest in vanilla and talking to other non-dwarves who were so annoyed - they picked the 'wrong' race so they didn't have Fear Ward which at the time was extremely useful in PvE, or when Chain Heal was by far the best AoE heal so if your guild was progressing in Sunwell all you needed was Shamans and maybe Paladins for the tanks. That, frankly, sucked.

Sure, it beats vanilla (my first char was a Druid, I'm familiar with 'l2 innervate' and people complaining when I spent DKP on MBB). But that's going quite a ways to make your argument. From BC through most of Wrath, basically everything was playable. And while balance might have shifted in favor of class/spec/build X for a given patch or tier of content, in general it was close enough that few guilds short of actual pro/sponsored level would bench a good player based on that sort of thing. It was much more a theorycrafting/forum bitching level of issue.

(Also I'd love to hear how a guild could do Sunwell without priests, I think you're forgetting the hardest boss :))

@Arkandel said in World of Warcraft: Legion:

For starters these days all classes' usefulness is normalized... given equal skill they won't fall too far from each other in effectiveness, and no one spec has anything no one else does. Blizzard's philosophy has been 'bring the player, not the class' for a few years now.

This is actually kind of why I gave it up! There was making everyone useful, and making everyone more or less identical (about when Mastery came in), and as someone who had always maintained a variety of tank/mdps alts, it became much less interesting when the nuance and difference between them vanished.

But uh, you get to play the franchise's other star emo NPC now (thought I killed that bitch, grumble), so there's that?

@faraday I guess I'm still not getting it. Part of it is exactly what you point out in that thread, that the game doesn't require you to make most efficient combinations, so a greedy algorithm is OK?

Then again, the thread also hits on the other problem with 2E, that ultimately for all the complicated dice system, the results are very predictable and not very interesting. You could completely ignore the dice rolls and just assign people dice/2 +/- 1 raises with the proper probability distribution.

So a dice roller that was 90% true to the dice would still get you results so close to identical that no one would know the difference.