Best posts made by Chet

I don't mean beating up players, man. I mean the equivalent of a fox hunt run by a staffer, with a somewhat moderated outcome, decided by the event staffer. In a simulated environment, would you rather chase down a rabbit on a rail, or would you rather play paintball?

I just get the image of the Riddler and some outmanned goons being beaten up by Batman whenever I think about the idea of a comic book PvE MUSH enters my mind.

Besides, it's hell on event staff. The real problem is that comic books don't have defined factions in the source canon, and that's the entire carbuncle that a MUSH formula works on. So you'd have to make a few, not even the 'groups' standard, but actual organized units that stick true to the MUSH's canon inspiration. Two heroic, one villain, one support hero, is what I'd advise. Design the alternate character policy around the number and your prospective playerbase draw goal.

You can also apply for characters that aren't on the game yet (in some instances). I'm particularly fond of applying for Final Fight characters as FCs with this process, and custom tailoring them.

I don't even know what it means in a literal term, it's just a term I hear bandied about, and in this context, it seemed properly British.

The world is a dangerous place. Luckily, you're a spy.

Some of the harshest truths are learned on the field of battle, and some of the greatest lessons are learned from a lover. One man can change the world, with a little bit of luck. But there's no such thing as luck. Something is always going wrong, somewhere, and that's where you come in.

License to Kill MUSH is set in the Bond universe, in modern times, as an analog of the real life world. Plots are based on real life events, suggested by players and run with the assistance of staff. Each and every 007 franchise organization, heroic, neutral, and villainous, is represented here, plus any you may suggest, with room for your own feature characters you add, or special thoughts of your own, original characters and expansions to the world.

Our MUSH is based on world building, with a flexible combat system based on experience points, a non-combat skill and gadget system, an intelligence management system reliant on OOC performance in scenes as determined by players to allow additions to the world, plus game master code that also allows anyone participating to post bounties on the heads of other players.

License to Kill MUSH is in beta, with the rudimentary grid (prior to player addition) and the system complete, ready for bug testing and your early contributions to the world of 2020.

portent.genesismuds.com:7077

@Coin At the expense of looking like a goth kid being cornered by another goth kid in a cultural discourse, it was a joke.

@Gilette I'm only at the conceptual framework stages of the design theory right now with a number of episodic concepts I've laid out, I'm just getting into the actual literary narrative classes to retrain myself from economics and history. That was my previous course of study. I'm probably going to go with comic books as my genre, since I'm only symmetric in my abstract depth when presenting a neutral analysis. Everything else is just sales. Obama doesn't have to sell John McCain during the Presidential debate.

These are times that try men's souls.

Beneath the waves of the oceans of Earth, beasts from beyond the stars have found a secret, so dark, so insidious, that the Emperor of Darkness, the man that will bring the end, cannot resist it.

It is time, Darkseid has decided.

The crime syndicates of Earth have united, with amazing technology and horrifying techniques, from the planet Apokalips, scourging the night with the rigid control of human villainy. By day, Terrans go about their business, terrified. The Justice League battles in the stars, the police have gone underground, and the mercenaries in the world sit in the interdimensional city of Madripoor, summoned by fallen angels to contemplate their last moments. Cutting deals with criminals has become the norm, and the world's greatest tyrants have seized their chance for glory.

Where are the heroes? Is anyone left?

In a little office, in Washington, District of Columbia, a single message goes out, to the federal band.

Reactivate Taskforce X.

Suicide Squad: Nation Under Fire MUSH.

portent.genesismuds.com:2077

Now with full combat code and technical support. Volunteer for staff today, and serve your country. It's the only one you have left.

The theme of the MUSH is Antifa activism, so if you're into the modern political scene given Antifa, the election, and law enforcement issues, feel free to stop by. This is a MUSH for election season (the Suicide Squad faction is Antifa, the Intergang faction is the Republicans)

I bit (to the point of bleeding) a bully in kindergarten for stealing my comb in front of the class. I'm pretty sure I've qualified for it ever since. And I hate whistling, melody, and sing-songs that people make.

Sorry if I don't know my psychiatric terms, it's something I figured I should avoid after being a DC Comics fan. (I went into a tailspin trying to pick psychology up after college, my doctor - a neurologist as well as a psychiatrist - suggested I knock it off with the psychology, this apparently a common issue, I didn't even tell him I was studying it)

I've made a bunch of bungled projects in my time, and I've decided that my error has always been in choosing a project theme that doesn't fit my style. I'm experimenting with an entirely original MUSH based on a number of topics, a pastiche if you will. It's a science fiction crime game, in the vein of a cyberpunk theme, but with a much more open RP world in terms of player choice. I've taken my studies of organized crime, my lifelong love of science fiction, and my admiration for politics RP, and placed them in a base for a MUSH set in the year 2070 AD, drawing on an old subtheme that Shaun Sans Pants developed for his initial incarnation of Megaman MUSH where the Yakuza had taken over global organized crime (this is indeed a possible outcome RL, thanks to a few factors - Japan has no RICO or money laundering laws, Japan is a corporate transconduit for clandestine and international finance in the Pacific, and there was a housing bubble in the 1980s that the Yakuza exploited to great financial benefit).

I've got a coded system, my theme is already in place, and my grid is finished (roughly half-desced), I just need help filling in the details before I go into beta to playtest my dynamics and game theory. I need help describing the MUSH, and it's a unique task. I've got a system in place that demands use of grid resources and planting little background tidbits on the grid, so the grid descriptions are especially important, and the grid is extensive. I've got the Middle East, Oceania, and Asia done, and I'm in Europe right now. If you'd like to assist with world building (just putting any little silly idea you have into a near future), I'd love to have you. I'm also open to other changes as well!

The working address right now is portent.genesismuds.com:2070 . Log in a Guest and @mail me if I'm not active, I have a weird sleep schedule right now, but give me an e-mail and requested character name if you want to get involved. If I'm online, of course, I'll give you a bit.

I don't know of many other OC MUSHes, so it's an experiment, but I plan on making it as aesthetically pleased as possible! (Unlike my other projects, which were created poorly.)

@Gilette The history program I attended was actually more of a foreign and domestic policy course about conspiracy theory in American and world culture. It taught you all of the weird little ins and outs of incidents in world history and American history (we had a class, History of the Grateful Dead, by R. Weir, about the relation between the US hippie scene, the drug scene, and government corporate agents, one semester). For example, a class textbook was Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which is a tell-all about the CIA, whose veracity is officially denied by our government. Neo-colonialism was the major topic back then, in the final years of George W. Bush.

To illustrate: I took a great class on pre-colonial and colonial Latin-American culture, covering their rituals, religion, and interactions with the Spanish (the Mayan prince's renewal ritual - I won't go into the details - as well as the Mexica/Azteca afterlife and its relationship to their military dominance, or the tragically maligned Malinke, Dona Maria). You can draw lessons from each of those three to apply to the cultural concepts even in the present, or shift the strategies they used to other areas, eras, even fictional timescapes.

The program wasn't a comprehensive world history, it was actually a landscape thing, if you dig me.

The most useful thing I learned was to non-bias my view of the past with my present tense geo-politics. I had a really flawed history program in my home town.

The Jedi have always brought an interesting philosophical dilemma for me: is balance to the Force a null state, Jedi and Sith, or is balance to the Force someone that lives in both worlds, someone that can use darkness to redeem an evil man. I think Lucas never answers the question as a test that shouldn't be definitively answered; you're supposed to pick Sith at some times in your life, and your answer determines your friends.

Have you ever considered a Star Wars MUSH with a Jedi/Sith heavy world? You'd have to research the novels on the canon's antiquity, and discount the movie backgrounds, which would displease your more issue concerned, externally aware audience, but please the mystics among us that see art as an internal question.

I'm sure you could dig up the proper quotation from Obi-Wan Kenobi when he introduces the lightsaber to Luke to properly inspire it.

To stay on topic, to apply the spirituality of stages and internal questions to a comic book roleplaying game, you'd have to avoid the cheap route, the obviously magical characters, and go with more of an arcane setting, something like a World War 2 comic book setting with a Hellboy backdrop. That doesn't mean you need Hellboy as the draw. Something like a Marvel 1963 thing, with the mystical elements of each Allied, Axis, and Neutral power drawing on the various setting elements.

To play a Mutant OC, you really have to follow the X-Men formula and make the character's power a secondary consideration. Remy Lebeau, for example, is a Cajun professional thief that knows staff fighting, and is an expert gambler. Without the power, you'd still having a compelling character.

I find the best way to handle an abstract stat that regards something like con artistry, or manipulating NPCs, would be to make the roll concern the skill at the rolling player's attempt.

If you make a poor manipulation roll, you are not poor at manipulating the target; you have left openings in your own personal strategy (which is what 'skill' implies), that can be then counter-rolled, to indicate the other player's defensive attempt at spotting the holes.

Listen to the collected works of Ronnie James Dio when you design it.

The bigger your population, the more plot devices you'll need to churn out, to keep them fresh. The more diverse your range of theme draw, the more rotating castmembers you'll see. The narrower your population, the more personal plot involvement staff will need. The narrower your range of vision, the more direct supervision of plot.

@darinelle I like it when someone comes up with a concept that can be applied into a larger scheme on a game for that piece of lore. I'll admit to grifting these once and a while, but I try to only borrow the stuff that didn't work.

I spent like 12 years as Friedrich Nietzsche on M3, with all my applications as the shaming of Zarathustra in Thus Sprach Zarathustra.

The ED article of Dr. Leo as a German confused me.

Read a sample from the writing of a famous theorist you enjoy, and put the writing 'tic' in your work. I was a fan of Karl Marx in college, and I used is double - clause a lot.

I.E: The Penguin looked askance from the young hooligan - he was used to such men coming up with such trifles - and moved his arm around the man's shoulder, preparing to bring him in on the real secret of Gotham City.

It gives your writing a bit of flavor, that commonly repeated eccentricity, especially if you're unconsciously using the author's ideas in your work.

I have a number of large and small MUSH concepts, including:

A Marvel NYC game centered around Spider-Man, with a combat system centered around environmental victories instead of straight hit/dodge damage/endurance.

A fighter jet combat system, for Star Fox or UN Squadron or another dogfight game, with free form IC pose range and high stakes for actually getting hit.

An extensive news file set for a spy MUSH with a Romance of the Three Kingdoms faction structure based on the Cold War and set in outer space, with a basic combat sketch of interlocking concepts.

A modern thief code sketch with five different mini-systems that connect with each other, forming a pentagonal game based on five math forms.

A combined Ghosts of Mars/Doom/Cowboy Bebop/Total Recall game set on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos, with news files written out, but no combat system dynamic elected on.

A nuclear summer theme set in Polynesia, with a unique theme encouraging an open ended futuristic piracy republic. No combat system written.

If anyone wants any of these write-ups, get in touch.

I'm a chronic idler, I spend a lot of my time online pacing and ruminating.

MUSH @mail is how I prefer to be reached.

Start talking in the enjoyable voice of your choosing (with an image you associate to be the scene you wanted to have when you made the MUSH, if it applies).

The voice you enjoy should somehow match the game's essence, the one the original project creator planned for it.