Posts made by Creepy

@Loki said in Loki @ HM:

@mails are not voluntary forms of torture! Our storytellers were just sadistic bastards.

Why thank you.

Supported! I expect to see a character named Creepy at some point in one of your books though (kidding)!

That's all very deep and enlightening, but really I just want players to not feel restricted overly much in playing the game in a way they enjoy. I'm not trying to make a statement about modern prejudice/sexism or its historical roots. I simply want to explore a time period which, in my humble opinion, gave birth to fictional horror.

So I think the best way forward is to have Women's Suffrage be a recent event (say, within the last 5 years from the start date of the game). There will still be those who oppose it, including some human political leaders and business owners. The average "Joe on the street" would likely be divided personally but would keep his mouth shut else risk a smacking from the wife.

This would allow female characters an option to play the role of trying to solidify equality and work towards snuffing out the vestiges of any remaining sexism. But there would be no laws or societal-based reason why they wouldn't have equal rights to their male counterparts.

I'm still debating how the vampire community would feel about all this since Kindred tend to react slowly to change. On the one hand, you have elders who were mortal when slaves served the Romans. On the other hand, female assassins and warriors were present before "civilized" society forced them into corsets and billowy dresses.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would also make for an amusing setting for a vampire game. Just sayin.

This looks great and you've obviously put a ton of research/effort into it thus far. Well done. I'm definitely interested.

In regards to "powers/abilities", I think you can also draw some inspiration from various Superhero/Villain sources. Intangibility/phasing would be one example that's in keeping with the general vampire vibe.

@Songtress This is a re-paste of an earlier post I made regarding just that very issue:

Yeah I'm going to address that (and the rampant racism) via the Alternative History aspect. Women's Suffrage became a national movement in 1872 with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Things got put on hold for WW-I, so I'll advance the timeline and have it occur earlier. I can then use it as a rational for players to relocate to the London setting rather than a hindrance. I.E., relocate from France or Germany because women had equal right in England.

To expand a bit, for THIS setting, I intend to begin the game with things in rather dire straights for London due to disease and a societal breakdown. Its on the tip of all falling apart. In that sort of environment, and given the paragraph above, I don't think female characters and minorities would suffer the same level of restrictions as their real life (historically speaking) counterparts.

In other words, the population will have other things to worry about besides an Asian woman wearing pants and a katana.

Especially when the REAL apocalypse starts.

Having said all that, I don't want to create a game in which we play like characters born in this century but plopped into the 1880s. So there needs to be a balance without restricting character concepts from working. Particularly female and minority characters. My solution is to advance the timeline for Women's Suffrage but I'd welcome alternatives.

Yeah you need a large population base to support any number of vamps. A single vamp might be able to support themselves in a smaller village, but there's a higher risk of discovery. Plus they'd be extremely territorial. That's not to say small villages/hamlets are out of the question for plots though.

Well, I made things happen-ish. The mux is up but I dunno how to change the first bit's default password. Used @Volund's basic github stuff.

I also have a wiki, but I can't seem to log into it with any of the user names I made when setting things up. BUT! I have stuff going on at least.

Beggars Rise will be the sever/site name: http://beggars-rise.com/index.php/Main_Page

Ugh. I may need some help with this server-side stuff. Anyone knowledgeable that can assist? I bought the domain name, set it up on the server hosting, and tried to do a TinyMUX install using the help in this thread: http://musoapbox.net/topic/138/zero-to-mux-with-wiki

Can't seem to get ./Startmux going and I can't find where to set up wiki user names.

@Lithium Yeah I'm going to address that (and the rampant racism) via the Alternative History aspect. Women's Suffrage became a national movement in 1872 with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Things got put on hold for WW-I, so I'll advance the timeline and have it occur earlier. I can then use it as a rational for players to relocate to the London setting rather than a hindrance. I.E., relocate from France or Germany because women had equal right in England.

I've never been comfortable running Mage and haven't gotten the 2.0 books yet. In answer to a few of the questions posted:

• I'd run with 2.0 rules and try to avoid a hybrid mix.
• Due to the point above, I'm leaning now towards Vampire and Mortal(+). I wouldn't need to do Shadow desc's by avoiding Werewolf (initially).
• I will work with the community regarding bloodlines and scavenge from other MUs with their owners (hopeful) permission.
• Alternative London will be the setting and I have a general overview as to limiting the grid size and why (spoiler: the results of an arch-nemesis out of literature).
• I will be building the grid with expand-ability via player actions in mind, with the potential to add additional spheres later.
• This will be an apocalyptic game, meaning the events will unfold on the grid rather than as a post-apocalyptic setting. They will drive storyline and the player's actions will be able to mitigate or expand on the ruin that follows.
• I've never been great at politics/court intrigue, so I'd like to have a dedicated staffer that will play a primary Harpy NPC.
• I envision the game's general mood via staff-run plots to be 30% political, 30% combat and 30% investigation/survival with the rest open for players. So a spread of the core Skill groups (mental, social and physical) would be a good balance (or a group with specialized members for each, see below).
• I want to heavily influence the formation of coteries and will do so via incentives.
• I'll pre-stat some NPCs for player and staff run plot usage with some basic objectives.

Questions, comments or suggestions? I'm open to all.

Will be looking into servers this week and trying to figure out code stuff. Been reading several threads here as to how to do this.

Thanks for all the feedback thus far!
~Creep

Who are the bad guys? The antagonists/enemies in this setting?

@ mietze and @Arkandel I like multiple sphere selections so players can have greater freedom in telling their personal stories. That might be a direct result of having only staffed at HM and TR. I'm not afraid of it being a niche server but I'd like to build with the hope that it wouldn't be a small player base.

I can make vampire and werewolf work together. Vampire would build the foundation of material/political/non-spirit stuff whereas Werewolf would build the foundation of Shadow-based/Spirit stuff. So a mortal or Immortal will be supported with a foot in either (or both) of those worlds. And Vamp/Were would be able to cross-step wherever the plot carries them. So really the framework would be set to allow all the versions of Mortal+ (Inferno, Things That Should Not Be, Slasher, Immortal) to integrate fairly easily (if not rule-wise then at least theme-wise).

@Arkandel Yeah alternative Victorian London or whatever city would be the plan. I'd avoid steampunk and focus a bit more on grit with some tweaked historical backgrounds. The problem is I want the history/flavor of London without the massive sprawl/size. I also build grids with character concepts in mind, so I feel the need to have wilderness zones for HiD/Gangrel types and urban zones for those that want to focus their stories there. With an ease of movement between the two.

I've never really cared for detailed background requirements. I've heard them justified as possible plot-hooks staff can use with your character but I don't think I've ever done that as staff, or had that done with one of my characters. Realistically, the only time I've ever felt the need to have a background at all was to justify beginning my character with something that was unusual (like belonging to a rare bloodline/lodge or owning a relic) or to establish a pre-grid connection to another PC or an NPC. A one line bullet point of "Killmommy was my estranged aunt, we hated each other, now we're into incest vampire bloodplay" or "I ate my brother's face and stole his Katana of Soul Theft".

In 2.0, I get the concept of Breaking Points, Conditions and Aspirations. But a background is only a snapshot of the past. Unless you have a system that rewards a starting character with bonus XP for taking some sort of beginning penalty (like blindness or no fangs, possibly loss of Humanity), I'm still not sold that a background, even in short form, is necessary to anyone except possibly a player who likes to have their char's story all mapped out before they hit the grid. All it feels like is a stamp of approval by staff that the little numbers and letters on your character sheet are "justified". That's what CGen rules are there to limit.

I'm considering it.

I absolutely adore the horror set in the late 1800's to early 1900's (or loosely thereabouts): Jeckyll/Hyde. Dracula. Frankenstein. Jack the Ripper. Spiritualism and mediums. Dorian Grey. Ghosts ala In A Glass Darkly. Lovecraft and Poe.

Now that season three of Penny Dreadful is underway, its awakened an urge I had midway through the first season that's been slumbering ever since. Obviously, as was discussed elsewhere within these boards, the game wouldn't be based on any actual model of the show but rather the mood and atmosphere.

My initial thoughts were to include Vampire, Werewolf, Mortal, Mortal +, a selection of Immortals, Slasher, and as much as possible from Inferno/Things That Should Not Be (mortals only). I'm curious regarding Hunter and Promethean, though I doubt the latter is doable without gutting the disquiet and wasteland mechanics unless I turn the setting into something post-apocalyptic-esh.

Setting the story (because I'd love for it to be a collection of stories as each character creates their own little Penny Dreadfuls) in London seems a bit daunting. I prefer grids with greater detail and building one recognizable as Victorian London would be a challenge so I'm open to alternative locations or suggestions in how to do London well.

There also needs to be a balance between relate-ability to modern humans and a setting/time frame for which our primary references would be books/movies. So not a strictly historically accurate version of steam/coal powered Victorian times. Women should be able to wear pants and be skilled with a sword, for example, if they so choose. The language used then, in my opinion, felt poetic even when uttered by a common day laborer, so we modern barbarians would need to be cut some slack.

The core theme is the expression of horror though setting and personal stories. The fear of disease. The very real sensation that something creeps in foggy streets waiting to kill anyone foolish enough to travel alone. I don't like the God-Machine stuff but I know how to do spirits right. So Strix would be just one vampire adversary. The beginning of Industry and the struggle between Nature and Man-Made spirits would make for a challenging Shadow. I'd like to make the occult have teeth as well.

Anyway. I'm leaning heavily towards beginning the game-creation process with 2.0 rules and peer reviewed conversations for the stuff that hasn't been ported over yet by Onyx.

Any interest? Thoughts on location? I'm open to feedback.

Thanks,
~Creep

@Miss-Demeanor said:

@Creepy Are you talking just a grown-into cultural distaste or a weird switch-flip where you become Purified and just suddenly you REALLY don't like that guy over there with the strange glyph 'tattoos' peeking out from under his shirt?

It can be part of the process of becoming a Purified. An imbedded distrust that makes your hackles rise. Couple that with being able to see spirits, and how they react to that guy with the strange glyph tattoo, and the sense is reinforced. Werewolves enslave spirits (fetishes, bindings, etc), don't let them do what they want (even if they're only trying to obey their own nature), and can literally devour spirits for essence. Their whole existence is based on "meddling" with spirits and the shadow.

Now you're one of those spirity-types. What if they think you'd make a great fetish? Or a nice snack when low on essence?

Flip it around too. Werewolves could view the Purified as a type of spirit-ridden or something. Crossing over between the worlds like any other spirit. Messing things up in the material world with ramifications in the shadow. And they do look tasty, don't they?

I always thought it might be interesting if Purified held the same dislike of werewolves that spirits have in general.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

What I would like to see is tighter theme control. No, your werewolf is not a fucking viking. No, your vampire is not a fucking viking, ignorant of the modern world, unless they're a thousand years old and have been in a dungeon for 800 years of that.

Unfortunately, I can't complain that people shouldn't play irritating, dirt-humping Acolyte pseudo-primitives. I can say that I had my fill of them on HM, but the covenant's geared that way, so.

Meh. If someone wants to play a viking-themed character, why not? Its what they want to do and it doesn't really hurt anything. Someone sees a cable tv show and gets inspired to play a character based on what they saw. At least they sorta have a direction.

No different than biker/gang concepts and the ever present Sons of Anarchy PBs. If you don't want to deal with that sort of character, don't RP with them. Their idea of fun doesn't have to follow someone else's. Its a game with werewolves, vampires and faeries. Is a viking really that far afield, all things considered?

@Coin said:

@Creepy, the Neighborhoods system I've written up for Eldritch is in part geared towards fixing this sort of problem. Besides that, I know how frustrating not being able to change a grid space is even through effort, and @Eerie and I managed to convince @Thenomain to code for us by pitching the game as a place where the players can and should make every effort to change the area.

At the same time, if you're trying to make some gross changes to the area, staff will take notice and use IC resources to try to stop you. Because that's challenging. Because that provides conflict. Because if all you have is a bunch of people running smooth-and-easy PRPs for each other in which they Change [their slice of] the World, what's the point?

Hopefully, people will push forward to help us achieve this sort of gameplay, instead of sitting around and not interacting with what we've built and want to do.

It's a pet peeve of mine when players sit around and have no goals. Plot is important, I absolutely agree; but the best plot often has personal stakes, and for that, the character has to actually, you know, want something.

I know. I'm excited to see how it goes. Looking forward to playing my favorite wolf again.