Posts made by bored

I think the way MUers tend to assume and then empower faction leaders is tied into the whole obsession with feature characters (that I talk about everywhere) and I find it equally problematic (as I note everywhere). I find it far more desirable to just put everyone into play, let people possibly have rank (if they buy it or make some other equivalent trade off), and define what various ranks have in terms of IC actions/powers/resources, but otherwise keep OOC management staff side. I don't see any advantage to giving IC people OOC authority (other than possibly quality of life ooc +commands they might need, ie if they have the authority to promote/demote other people or give people access to a base/safehouse, you might have a code to support that).

@Apollonius said:

Not all Lord and Ladies MU*s are doomed to become marriage simulators. People tilt towards whatever is en vogue. I'm not proposing to block out the fucking aspect in its entirety but this tendency towards pretty princesses and princes playing out their pregnancy fantasies was fairly uncommon in the past. Fading Suns Vargo only had one couple who were dead set on playing through marriage/relationship/pregnancy drama during my five odd years I was there (and that in itself is a much more convoluted web of alts fucking alts and a RL couple TSing in the game).

It was uncommon in the present, too, which is why I'm confused as to why you're so hung up on it. Who actually got married on SC? I mean, there was one plot where someone already had a kid from a dead NPC husband, but I can't think of anyone else? People fucked around but they will everywhere, and so what?

I am truly getting more and more baffled by this fixation. In fact, increasingly, you are saying things that seem totally divorced from reality.

The proliferation of the modern L&L trope really started rearing its ugly head when Firan was no longer a viable platform for multigenerational fucking and the increasing popularity of Kushiel-themed MU*s during the absence of a viable Fading Suns or any other Lords and Ladies alternative while the hard adventuring/political players started to get crowded out of the space or adapt to changing conditions. Game of Thrones and its own sexualized version of nobility exacerbated this trend. I mean, noble etiquette used to be a nightmare to deal with because there were certain protocols demanded in the Fading Suns universe and if they were not met, you could be unwittingly committing major social faux pas that would translate to poor political play. What I am seeing today with a lot of noble-oriented games is an increased relaxation of those protocols, sometimes for the better, but often to break the often steep learning curve of playing a lords and ladies and making it easier for everyone to sleep with one another because this is easy and it is how to make a game popular.

I ... what? See above about leaving reality behind.

None of this is true. 'Couple drama' has been a thing as long as these games have existed, and always will be. There's no great shift. The fact that you have maybe noticed it on a few games (some of which are wholly unconnected in terms of the people running them, or even the playerbases) is only reflective of your own narrow perspective, not actual historical fact.

I don't even know what you're talking about with 'protocols.' The thing you're describing as ideal (a game with some arcane etiquette that if I guess you don't get perfect your character explodes) sounds like a horrible fucking nightmare. Who would want to play this shit? And what does it have to do with Fading Suns?

The issue is in the players that a game attracts and which of the play styles dominate the lay of the land. Fucking, TS, and domestic drama are all a natural part of any MU* but it's really up to the theme makers in terms of the control of the variables of attracting certain players. Packrat can opt to pick a highly adventure-styled game and attract those players to swamp out the occasional ones that want to get married and have pretty children. Packrat can also opt to pick a highly political game that swamps out adventuring concepts and pretty princess and princes concepts. I stand by my point that there are variables that staff is in control of to alter the trajectory of their games by focusing on thematic elements that appeal to certain players and discouraging other players to never play at all or conform to what Rome does. The natural trajectory of any Lords and Ladies game in modern times is to rush towards a mess of marriage simulations and all sorts of domestic drama.

This is all such abstract, meaningless word-fill that you're not saying anything useful. We know that staff can set a tone. I'm fairly sure @Packrat wants to set an interesting tone, and pointing out that it's a good thing is fairly unecessary. I don't know what in this thread has convinced you the game will be OMG BABEHS to a degree that sounds hyperbolic even compared to the worst actual examples.

Seriously, what are you on?

@Apollonius said:

The point I am trying to make is that there are very few controls possible to prevent a game from collapsing into a mire of marriage simulators between pretty princesses and princes. One of those happens to be IC thematic incentivization of why devolving into marriage/relationship simulators is bad.

No, a thousand times no.

Trying to build your game so it will punish people for the things you don't want them to do but they're definitely going to do anyway is head-to-wall level moronic. Seriously, what possible constraints are there that you can offer thematically that will discourage people from doing the main thing that humans fucking do: namely doing the fucking!

One of the major negative factors in a game that has devolved to marriage/relationships and TS over actual plot is that these activities result in weird and negative behaviors OOC amongst different players. Add to the mix a staffer running with his or her pants down and you have a textbook recipe of a game about to teeter into collapse.

You are not going to stop this, however much you try. And the fact that it happened on SC doesn't mean @Packrat should obsess about it. I mean, he probably shouldn't give his main GMPC a fancy sexdungeon, but other than that, its not a big deal.

There are those that want to explore options to limit this behavior. There are those that think that limiting this behavior is totally for naught. One option is to maintain activity levels to such an extent that the playerbase cannot invest too much time in marriage simulation because they are too busy killing each other or killing a foreign foe. Even then, staff activity can only be maintained for so long. Or once foes start fucking each other.

I think anyone who wants to explore ways to limit the behavior is going down a truly bottomless rabbit hole, and they should reconsider their life decisions (ok, just that one). It really is sufficient just to give people other interesting shit to do, and not worry too much about the fucking. The fact that there's some emphasis on the legal/societal side of fucking in L&L is really no reason to obsess about it.

How is any of this shit L&L related?

Who is fucking who drama happens on literally every MU ever and will happen on every MU ever.

@Apollonius said:

I'm hijacking Packrat's thread because I know he wants a more stable political game but at the end of the day, I feel like any and all Lord and Ladies game will fight the trend of becoming a marriage simulator. It is staff's vision and drive to keep those forces away. Or blow up said weddings.

Maybe you should stop? I mean, your first post was framed as advice for MUs, but you've answered replies to it with 'this is just what I want to do in my own TT-like thing an fuck MUs.' Which is fine, but if you're just here to derail that's kind of being a dick?

@Apollonius said:

Elective monarchy

Yeah, I definitely agree. Deals with MU problems of people who stop playing nicely as well.

Also has the advantage of more or less being how things worked for most of history. We romanticize a shit out of primogeniture (I assume because it goes along with our masturbatory princess fantasies), but even places that had it often ended up forcing one brother out in favor of another often enough (legally or otherwise) that it was effectively this.

Flatten decision making

I actually had this discussion with someone just the other night, referencing both the Firan CC and the SC Curia. While both had other problems, I think its important to make your politics clear and obvious in this way so that people can actually grasp them. Games where people are just supposed to 'uh plot and stuff' basically fizzle into people doing nothing and GM fiat.

Encourage assassinations. x 4?

This is where you lose me. I'm not shocked that this is coming from you (and I don't mean that in a bad way, either, just... you know!), but I've always seen this kind of thing as being very hard to do in a MU.

Sure, if a PC can actually go out (or get someone to go out) and kill another PC via whatever rules, that's great. But once you're into 'oh roll X dice and then he drinks the poison wine and dies' you're going to have problems. The system will either make it way too hard (and no one will risk it) or too easy (and it will be the far and away dominant strategy/stat build, ie telenukes in WoD) and regardless you'll have several players quit every time it happens.

I mean I don't disagree in a vague principle but this is something MUs have basically never pulled off in decades of being a thing.

I think saying it has to specifically be about succession, marriage, war, or anything else isn't really accurate. Its a category as broad as any (like 'Superhero game'). Really, I imagine all you need are nobles doing noble stuff. Firan, Crossroads, all of the GoT games, Star Crusade, 5th World, Eternal Crusade/Creation's Edge, Realms Adventurous, etc (probably to the annoyance of the guy running it), etc. Probably many more.

How much it turns into 100% marriage simulator/who is rogering the duchess is usually a measure of how successful the game staff is at promoting anything else. If staff is lazy and has little to no vision and relies entirely on vague definitions of setting and PrP, it's what you'll get. If they do stuff, you'll get that stuff. But this is the same as WoD games, which reduce to relationship drama in the absence of other shit, too.

@Packrat

You're obviously TSing yellow, look at all that shit they get.

@Lotherio

Three-six alts x fingers on one hand = still a shitton of characters!

I don't think it was particularly a big problem (I'm not the one who brought it up!), but it was odd and it wouldn't be my preference on a game.

I play a lot of L&L and shy away pretty heavily from alts, usually with only one character I play seriously and maybe a second as a comic relief/jerk off/whatever sort (Llewellyn the exceedingly foulmouthed commoner huntsman, in this case). I'd guess its less the genre as some specific players? Some who just feel like they need a different alt to pair off with everyone they want to play with, or some who can't settle on a concept and just want to play one of everything, etc.

But I do agree alt limits should be lower and that you need to establish a very clear culture of no crossover. RA did the opposite, and actually let people play multiple characters in the same scene. I don't know if it ever caused any big problems,

@deadculture is probably a better reference since he's more up on some of the staff-side discussions, or @Lotherio, obviously.

My understanding is that after the initial setup (where Gwyanelle apped the heiress with no living relatives) Glaw was assuming he'd marry her and become a baronet after joining their manors, which is possible but not guaranteed given the very bottom level knighthood in Pendragon (ie enfoeffed manors being expected to outfit a knight each for the Earl).

I guess Kay told them no after a lot of arguing/bitching, which is when you saw staff put up the post about the new, young, not-very-experienced heir being app-able for Idmiston. I heard they also didn't want to have to deal with the dice for pregnancy and had already decided Gwyanelle was, and weren't happy with the lack of control over their characters in Pendragon in general.

Again, this is mostly hearsay, so take it as that.

I think this is a pretty good sign of why a lot of us aren't staying.

The whole Glaw/Gwyanelle thing was always a bit eye-rolly, and from what I heard they clashed with Kay and gave him some grief over not getting what amounted to special treatment above the rest of the playerbase. How he came to the decision of handing things over to them, I can't imagine, but I'm not surprised to see them being a little bit less than honest once they're holding the keys. I have few doubts you'll quickly see the things Kay told them 'no' over quickly come into being now.

This is me agreeing more.

The beats and aspirations are very clearly designed to work inside the kind of environment you have in TT. Stuff is going on, rather than players just creating scenes out of thin air, so any aspirations you're fulfilling are likely to be in the context of the rest of the game and carry narrative costs and consequences (ie, pursuing a personal goal over a plot clue). I just feel like it doesn't work when players are both creating the aspirations and then creating the circumstances that resolve them.

Yeah, I think that's the best approach.

People will argue that staff can just not allow 'trite' aspirations in the first place (ie rely on the same limitation you'd have in TT, social contract) but that quickly goes down the judgmental-staff / favoritism / etc rabbit hole.

@Arkandel said:

That's the weakness (or one of them) of the Beats system, which I otherwise do like... it can be milked for easy XP by bullshitting players and accommodating staff. On its own it's not the end of the world or anything but it can set a very quick power gap between those who're willing to go the extra mile that way and those who don't.

Yeah, this is one of the problems I have with 2.0 in the MU environment, and it's made me hesitant to play. The aspiration/breaking point/condition beat feedback stuff is great for helping mold players into a more narrative style and is one of the best 'you have a reason to lose' implementations I've ever seen in an RPG... for tabletop. But on a MU, it's just another farming system. If you want to have a competitive XP rate, you have to be obsessively active and constantly engineer scenes, log, and +request them (so it even adds extra OOC work). I have a hard time seeing how 'go and have trite RP to tick off a trite short term aspiration' is any better than 'go and have trite coffee shop RP to farm +votes.'

Without some kind of sane cap on it, its a real turnoff to me.

I spammed @Cirno (and uh... that one weird actual internet predator guy?) and it was worth it.

@Tat Were your players ambushed by gentrifying hipsters on the way to their drop?

What skills would I need for burying hookers in the New Mexico desert?

Sure. Although I think that's probably part of a bigger argument about modern PrP-focused MUing in general, as it applies to any genre (outside of L+L, just replace 'marriage and petty rumors' with 'sitcom style petty rumors about who is sleeping with who this week'). If staff doesn't provide some motivational energy, any game will settle into lower-stakes RP of this kind.

@ThatGuyThere said:

I have seen multiple games that attempted to be both Lords and Ladies as well has having other options available , every time the L+L part has been dominant the other side withered one the vine usually fairly quickly. Star Crusade for all it's faults had more adventuring actually taking place then most , so my question for those that are championing having the perspective game be both is how do you succeed where the other s have failed?

I think a big part of this is that the L+L games are usually so fetishistic about how awesome the Ls are that they make the other types so neutered as to be pointless. IE, you can look at http://eternalcrusade.wikidot.com/economy and see it in action, even the best merchants don't really come close in money to the top nobles, and the top nobles get all sorts of other snazzy titles and lands and armies on top of that. People just want to masturbate to how awesome their noble is.

One of the reasons it comes close to working in Fading Suns is that the books, at least, do treat the Guilds as roughly equivalent entities to the noble houses. They have fleets, they have massive assets, and even hold some planets, if not as many as the nobles, but then they also outright control various spaceports on most worlds.

People have already made suggestions along this line, but it can't really be said enough. You need an interlocking web of power players, not a hierarchy, or people will just gravitate to the top.