Posts made by Chet

To go off on a tangent, I actually have an interesting theory about these Christopher Nolan movies. I read some of a book by Marc Dipaolo on comic book literature, and I compared it to the Nolan movies, and I realized that the Gotham City the three movies sells us isn't American symbolically unless you compare it to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but invert the goals of all the major villains. Ra's al-Ghul is a businessman, capitalist, or labor organizer that wants to fight socialism, Scarecrow is an intellectual or professional that knows psychology or ethics or logic that wants to fight corruption, Zsasz is a scapegoat, Joker is a survivor of a political pogrom, Harvey Dent is a victim of his own regime, once a hero, and Bane is a soldier returning from Afghanistan that realizes what life is like, both in terms of how the rest of the world views the Soviet Union, and how much they desire for freedom. If you look at that, with the characters inverted, you have a Bohemian Grove theory present, called the Effigy. Being that, (and the Bohemian Grove is involved in Hollywood and music, since at least as far back as the Grateful Dead), if you take a fictional villain and put someone in their place, you'll empower people that are easily swayed by popular culture (normative individuals, not Byronic individuals, the 'specialists' as Stalin called them) by making them feel socially adapted and adjusted by targeting regime enemies.

It's a controversial theory, and I'm not sure if it's really what's on screen, but it would make for a good sub-strata theme (the 'feel') for this art deco Manhattan MUSH, if you want to brush up on your late Cold War history.

@WildBaboons

Penguin's been elected mayor of Gotham? Looks like Bullock's off the force!

I'm using a system I've devised for my little global criminal fiefdom project to drive the plot forward with a minimum of staff help, aside from arbitration and the staff working as an 'off switch' to potentially world destroying player schemes.

You allow them to pool some sort of IC token made from AP of a various sort, not necessarily number of scenes but perhaps victories, contributions to the game, recruitment of players, and put it towards building their own niche on the game to run the elements that would traditionally require staff involvement.

I've taken a stat that increases once per scene for each player, in one of six categories, and allowed players to build IC landmarks with it for their own personal holdings, which they can then put into public works for increasing amounts of NPC control. My game requires shifting alliances that are all beholden to a leadership council of active or possibly inactive factional leaderships, with non-PC forces (government forces not beholden to the PCs via corruption), so I've used this particular system. For your idea, you may wish to form something akin to mineral staking outfits for artifact hunting, and factional territory reclamation for your ruin exploration.

The other two IC challenges, city politics (faction) and gangs vs. vigilantes (low level player politics), would fit into this well, particularly if you don't rigidly wire them into the same thing. You could be in the same faction on a larger scale, but conflict at a lower scale. That would make the kinds of conflict more fluid.

For an experimental quick character gen, consider a dual-class system, with different categories for each class, although the classes would be the same in a congruous faction. (A medium would be the same as a mage, for example, but medium would perhaps be a 'genome' category, perhaps for a Nightfolk, versus mage, that would be a 'pathway' category, for a pre-creation origin). So you could mix and match for a unique result each time, if you get my meaning. A mage medium would be a mentalist, or a thief (Kender?) gunner would be a bandit.

You're going to want to include, in each theme file, a broad 'hook' to fit a decent group of players and concepts, and have it so the various hooks can interact with another hook, preferably in a open-ended way, with some specifications as suggestions. My suggestion is to take all four of those IC challenges, and chain together individual segments from one of each together into a four point hook as a theme point. I say this because an open city environment without an express action motor (a war, a factional battle, etc.) needs a cog-like machine to function (some sort of economy system, but one that comes in the form of game theory IC interests).

Best case scenario (I used to do this in highschool), he's got an extremely busy lifestyle and drops in and out of social commitments. I had a 20 hour workweek and classes. I'm not saying that's what it is, that's just a nod to hoping.

Birthright would approach a Civilization/Nation-States MUSH, wouldn't it?

The problem with that would be deciding who gets their own land grab, and who works for the people with the land grab.

@ThatOneDude I'd say, "It doesn't matter how many times you re-analyze the same thing, you're just reinventing the wheels for different types of wheels."

I've always thought another way to write the Matrix would be to set it post apocalyptic, where the humans were willingly in stasis pods beneath the Earth, in a virtual reality society. Humans not in the stasis chambers would be the police, and would insert into the virtual reality world to hunt rogue programs (ala the Agents, the Voyager episode with 'Fear', the other weird things), renegade hackers into the virtual reality world (something like pirates), or people inside the virtual reality subverting it from within (Cypher). It would be sort of a meta-MUSH.

My first RPG/MU system was designed based on Quentin Tarantino movies, and the general 'feel' he presents. Specifically, it was inspired by Kill Bill 1 and 2, but others could apply. I find that if you can find one particular work of art that you keep coming back to in your mind, you can craft that into a system for an unrelated theme, or perhaps just a generalized system applicable to multiple themes.

I've always bandied about the idea of a spy MUSH, such a James Bond theme, a mixed spy theme game with several themes in the vein of a comic MUSH, or an original theme with a Syphon Filter feel devoted to intelligence/counter intelligence in a historical era.

Video games are a bubble market, albeit one with a very low overhead (paying for employees). Once you make the game, you can sell it infinitely at a favorable market rate, but much like 'apps', the market is slowly flooding. There's going to be some weird redistribution of careers, so try to pick up a second skill you can apply elsewhere, like the storyboard portion (that's a communication degree with a creative writing nod) or the journalism portion (also communications) or marketing (that's an associates).

I like the mechanic to this system that Combat Skill determines dodge, and it's at a hard statistic. The author is right, this is very 'cinematic'. What could be interesting is reducing the Combat Skill by some increment when a certain 'fatigue' factor sets in, perhaps from repeatedly spreading out multiple attacks. Or, alternately, from taking damage - unless you want to use damage for another concept I dreamed up some time ago, a 'Danger' statistic, that increases a skill/etc. for the amount of health you've lost. If you use the Danger factor to counteract fatigue (with a non-positive, only counter-negative effect) you could actually weight the system properly.

@HelloProject I actually had a project like that I never got to finish. But I'll describe the concept if you want a slice of any of the material.

You have Hell, with Seven Patrons, based on the Seven Deadly Sins (Reference a guy named Peter Binsfeld, he's a Catholic witch hunter and theologian, Wikipedia has the basic list of the demons, you can do deeper research from there). The Seven Patrons are NPCs controlled by staff, and the politics of the MUSH is about the Seven Patrons vying over Hell, with each PC falling via a Mortal Sin that makes them beholden to one of each Patron. The Mortal Sin is listed on the +finger, as important as Quote and Profile.

You have them start as Sinners, and if they advance (through however you want to do it), they can become Demons. Alternately, you can have them attempt to Atone for their Mortal Sin (by however mechanism you deem fit), and escape Hell.

The key would be the goal of politics. You could possibly have them influence the Mortal World, master various forms of magick, court the older demons for extra power (an artifice system, perhaps, where Pledging yourself to a Demon with a higher rank granted both of you power), or maybe even the old fashion armies of Hell battling back and forth.

Wasn't there a game once based on the X-Files?

Take the X-Files feel, and apply it to the game. I've toyed with the idea of having a single villainous faction (which sets the tone of the game, and you can cycle these at a long running enterprise of a MUSH), and having two heroic factions with cultural differences. This would not only unify villains, so you'd have a single backbone for conflict, and form them into a unified clique that would be forced to roleplay (tis the nature of the villainous beast), but also split your heroes to prevent the size of the traditionally popular opposition from overwhelming the villains.

Add in something in the cultural difference between the heroes that creates an opposition that evokes interest in both social and intrigue roleplay, and you've got yourself a winner.

Following the government conspiracy theme: A paranormal syndicate as the villain, a clandestine investigation agency with tight government control as one hero faction, and an underground resistance made up of individuals burned by said villains as the other faction. The paranormal syndicate would create the backdrop, the investigation agency would be attempting to check the resistance, and the resistance would want more alarmist measures that the government agents would have to control.

You'd have the level of the syndicate trying to influence both the government, and hunt the resistance, while the agents would be fighting the syndicate and trying to protect/reign in the resistance (for their own good), with the resistance trying to evoke moral empathy for their cause from the government agents and be participating in dramatic actions against the syndicate.

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.)

@Bobotron MUD always seemed to be closer to the traditional tabletop gaming crowd, whereas MUSHing has slowly been eking towards being a commune for artists. A lot of people that have MUSHed, or still MUSH, have interesting careers, and there's a diverse crowd present. Sometimes it almost reminds me of the collectives of 19th century Europe, where the literati of the day would vacation for relief from stress from their careers or authorship.

I suppose it's the same rule as with academics. Academics are there to make being human better, not for the sake of the academic theory itself.

I still remember being in the 9th grade and being on SW1, doing Corporate Sector Authority runs for credits, spending hours at my computer without RP, waiting for the hyperspace code to shunt me around the map of the galaxy at the MUSH. The horror.

I have a semi-competitive code for a game I'm working on right now, that's essentially the Dishonored basic mathematical structure, with skills for competitive rolls for conflict resolution. I've eschewed a traditional combat system, in exchange for a happy medium between a comic book MU and a sci-fi MU.