@Arkandel
Honestly, what you have described sounds less like a Consent-based game (which I find boring) and more like an ICA=ICC game, which I approve of.
All games should be ICA=ICC. Purely consent-based games always end up as very dull, sandboxed affairs.
Not to mention, the more agency you take away players to affect things ICly, the more they turn to OOC methods. Which is probably why every purely Consent game I've ever seen, was a hotbed of drama.
Every XP system requires a certain amount of police work.
I do know (from personal experience) that it's slightly easier to keep track of where +votes are headed, than to handle +reccs, conditions or beats.
Hell, in my tabletop games, we don't even use XP really. People basically raise things when it makes sense within the story, based on their actions and focuses. This works because in tabletop games, there is lots of IC downtime. I can ask someone...well, what have you been doing over the last three months? I'll make suggestions so that people basically accumulate 'XP' at the same rate, and it goes from there. They've gone half a RL year without making any spends at all. Then the game faded forward ten years, and they made a ton of em at once.
Obviously, that can't work on a MUSH.
So it comes down to...Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity. Reccs/Conditions are taken advantage of by a small minority (about 5-10% of the playerbase gets 90% of the benefit). Votes are far from perfect, for all of the reasons M-D outlined, but I find them the least imperfect and the easiest to administrate. Generally speaking (of course not always), the best and most active RPers get the best benefit from a +vote system, and I'm generally fine with that.
@ThatGuyThere said:
Somewhat on topic with the original post, as Bobotron mentioned your "fixes' would take everything I do find fun about werewolf.
If that is what you and your group find fun that is cool, but I can't help but think if you are going to jettison the WoD ness of the game you could likely find a better system to do a non-WoD werewolf game in.
Setting aside the Shadow aspect (which I probably shouldn't have lead off with, in retrospect) What else would I remove, that you find to be very fun? I get the objections to the Shadow removal, but I don't get what's so onerous about the others.
Keeping track of Harmony? Loci management? Which might work on a tabletop but is hell to do any justice on a MUSH. Everyone spending entire sessions in Dalu or Urshul? Merit-based Renown? Tribes? White Wolf itself constantly backpedals about the importance or universality of the tribes.
Is that really everything you find fun?
Lots of what I take issue with can be handled just fine on a tabletop, if the ST and players are on the same page. But I've never seen Renown or Morality, for example, handled to even a majority of player's satisfaction on a game.
@Miss-Demeanor said:
To me, it does seem like you want a more American Werewolf in London game than a WoD Werewolf game. Everything you've taken out or changed is specific to the WoD Werewolf. Everything that's left can be found in any other Werewolf trope anywhere. I do like the part about the Gifts, I've had concepts fall apart because I couldn't take Gifts from specific trees... but in the overall that seems relatively minor compared to the sweeping changes you're suggesting.
Mind, I'm not saying that you're doing anything wrong. Play to suit the game your players want. But with all those changes, you're no longer playing WoD Werewolf, be it Classic, New, or 2.0. You're playing a general Werewolf themed game that could be plucked from nearly any horror movie.
I guess it depends on one's interpretation. There were a series of PDFs released by the Werewolf: Forsaken writers a year or two ago, called 'Chronicles', which dealt with various lore and mechanic hacks. Some of them were much more radical than I have suggested, and some anticipated the changes made in Werewolf 2.0 (such as werewolf sex no longer being a 'bad thing' which was also a holdover from owod metis stuff). They thought they were still playing nwod werewolf. Nwod as a setting doesn't even mention the Shadow until the Forsaken supplement. And ghosts/spirits/demons have never interacted very logically.
In my nine points, I've got one radical point - the removal of the Shadow - which very few people display an adequate grasp of, and the rest is basically streamlining what is currently poorly managed or handwaved in current games.
But answer me this...In what ways is nwod Vampire markedly different from any other vampire horror movie? It basically toes the line of our popular culture interpretation of such creatures.
@Glitch I get what Bobotron is saying (I don't think Theno was saying much of anything). I agree, and it's a very valid point. If you have a group of people who are very invested in the Shadow side/First Tongue aspect of things, with performing chiminiage and learning gifts from spirits...Then more power to you. MUSH-wise, I've almost never seen it handled in an interesting or exciting manner. More of a chore than anything else. If something is hand-waved 95% of the time, how important is it?
All that stuff works great, when everyone is equally knowledgeable and on board with it. I rarely if ever, find in werewolf spheres, more than 1 in 4 who are conversational in the Shadow stuff. Vampire doesn't have that issue.
But I think people are reading too much into the Shadow's removal. Is that all Werewolf: The Forsaken is to you? The Spirit/Shadow aspects? I've always seen it as more of a ''sub component' within the main game, whose inclusion or not doesn't fundamentally change the core themes. There was even some pdf released online by one of the White Wolf writers about houserules for removing it.
I'd be curious to know what in the other eight points is a significant departure from the core themes.
@Thenomain said:
And here I stopped reading. I am so, so very glad that Werewolf is no longer about being a "pack-oriented primal death machine", which is a throwback itself to 90s Werewolf.
Then you have a remarkably shallow understanding of what constituted 90s Werewolf, and what point I was trying to make.
Which is that the poorly fleshed out cosmology of the spirit world, and its pseudo Native American philosophy detracted from actually playing a werewolf. Vampire has no equivalent distraction...its themes are closely aligned with what people expect from a thematic modern vampire story.
Werewolf tends to throw in a curve ball and leaps into a uniquely White Wolf fantasy aspect. It detracts from the primal horror, and makes the game less appealing to those who would have been sold at 'werewolves'.
The cosmology worked in 90s werewolf, because the whole game was sort've meant to be corny. But it did not adapt well to nwod's attempts to focus more seriously on the human condition.
I would have hoped that the admin of this board, would have had something even 'mildly more constructive' than the typical this is where I stopped reading trope of a response.
@Bobotron said:
So you want to write a new Werewolf game that's not WtF2e, but uses WtF2e mechanics and some terminology and NWoD2e's mechanics/system.
Gotcha. It could be an interesting premise, but at that point, you're not bringing a lot of what people like about WtF into the equation.
It depends on what people like most about werewolf. Do they like the werewolf aspect, or if they like the Shadow/Spirit aspect, which has no definable place in most werewolf fiction, and is an invention of White Wolf.
Vampire was able to ditch a lot of its 90-esque lore and streamline the vampire experience, but Forsaken mostly took the cartoonish 90s lore and just made it more confusing.
When I get new players in a tabletop game, they're psyched up about playing werewolves. The Native American cosmology aspects/spirits/totems/chiminiage, always bogged them down and never left them particularly excited.
It's about telling werewolf stories.
@Miss-Demeanor That is a problem on games where +votes are limitless, and you have things like +room/vote. I rememer how silly it was on Metro. More restricted votes, contrary to popular expectations, do encourage the majority of players to reward the best RPers.
There will always be cliquish/circle jerk behavior, but most people on mushes don't even have 5 real friends in their inner circle, and they really do try to give their votes to the most deserving, while presenting themselves as the most deserving.
Nothing on a mush is true or false with anything more than scattershot precision. But some policies do hit more of the intended target than others.
@Arkandel Of course there is a best solution. There's always a best solution. It simply depends on your priorities. If you have one set of priorities, then the XP solution which is 'best for you', is the one that hits the most high notes and the fewest low notes that you're trying to prioritize or de-prioritize.
To my own priorities, which is maximizing activity on the grid, I find a limited vote system to have worked best. I've drawn this conclusion from nearly twenty years of observing various systems in action, and what they encouraged or discouraged. Someone that has different priorities is free to disagree with me.
But I would have reservations about anyone who approached the XP system as anything other than an incentive to encourage activity on the grid.
Intro
I've been reading Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition lately, with an eye towards an upcoming tabletop campaign that I'll be storytelling. Even though I don't mush much anymore, I spent quite a few years playing and staffing at various places, so I can't help but think sometimes, how I'd handle house rules on a mush.
It's super long. So skip or skim at your convenience. I'm interested to know where you agree or disagree.
tl:dr version: The crux of my disagreement with Werewolf 2.0 is that it carries over too much baggage from the 90s owod cosmology and detracts from the theme of actually playing a werewolf. They have imported vampire concepts (who are thematically sympathetic to conspiracies, intrigues and factions) into a setting that should be more feral, and whose coherence is harmed by White Wolf's needs to do things in a White Wolfy fashion, whether it adds or subtracts to the experience.
Nine Design Hacks
Issue: Spirit stuff is so prevalent that it detracts from the experience of playing a pack-oriented primal death machine. Very few of my regular players can be bothered to keep all of the lore aspects and terms in their head at all times (or even pronounce half of them), while also trying to stay in character as a supernatural werewolf! As both a player and a storyteller, I have rarely seen the Shadow done right, or spirit interaction (such as chiminiage) handled in a consistently interesting or exciting fashion. It also began to get obnoxious when their solution to every mystery was to ask local spirits.
Thematically, while lunar spirits, helions and possessed murder trains worked well enough in the old werewolf cosmology, they're an awkward fit in nwod.
Solution: I would excise this portion of the game and consider it no great loss. Inasmuch as references to the Shadow persists, it would be more mythological than anything else. All of the First Tongue terms which the writers are so enamored of, are instead treated as rare knowledge, known only to those steeped in mysterious and ancient traditions. Players are free to focus on wrapping their heads around just being a werewolf without having to do the equivalent of researching the hierarchy, beliefs, history and liturgy of the Armenian Orthodox Church..
This also removes totem spirits from the equation, and affects how loci/gifts/renown/auspice are handled. I wouldn't mind a 'totem like' teamwork merit that allowed packs to specialize. Loci, auspices, gifts and renown are treated below.
Issue: The concept of territory is everything to werewolves, and I find it uninteresting that it is basically boiled down to a spirit battery. It lessens everything else they might have claimed. Coded loci have never been done well on a mush (trust me, I would know) and they have never been clever or interesting. While the essence battery aspect can work on a tabletop where every dot of expenditure is micro-regulated, on a mush, it never seems to line up. On The Reach, loci accumulated hundreds of essence without ever being spent, which wasn't realistic. Furthermore, most staff never bother to make players defend their loci, so it gets taken for granted. There's also the various accusations of favoritism and the bullshit of handling when a loci gets stronger or weaker.
Solution: I would have werewolf packs generate a 'communal' store of essence at a rate determined by the size of the pack multiplied by the size of the territory they were able to effectively claim. They could acquire additional essence from forcing other packs to be their tributaries.
This simple hack loosens up the log jam of the loci issue exponentially. Every new shit-heel pack on the grid doesn't need their own loci anymore, which is never realistically managed anyways. It gives werewolves a built-in, automatic reason to congregate, and a vehicle for interesting conflict.
Gaining new members in a pack, guarding and expanding a pack's territory, and gaining a dominant position over other packs - that's what drives werewolf 'politics'.
Issue: Having people pigeonhole themselves into an auspice detracts far more than it adds to gameplay. I've often encountered situations where multiple people in a group wanted to be the same role, but felt weird or guilty about it, if someone else had claimed it. Often, I'll see the best players take the auspices they don't want, simply because they think they're doing the 'right thing' by the group.
Honestly, I find that humans as social animals are so compelled already to seek their niche within a group, that the whole auspice mechanic is completely unneeded. It's another holdover from owod.
Solution: No auspices. The terms still exist, but they have no game mechanic meaning. No one is 'born' a rahu or an irraka. You will be defined by how your character acts and grows as they gain experience. You could still introduce yourself as the group's rahu or irraka, but that would be more akin to claiming to be the pack's best fighter or its best sneaker. Which someone else in the pack might very well disagree with.
Mechanically, anyone can buy from any auspice gift list, provided they meet the renown requirements. They can't choose auspice renown as a free gift for acquiring renown, but can spend XP for it. I'll discuss XP more below.
There are no auspice skills. You can decide that for yourself by the specialties you choose. I would probably add each of the auspice abilities (such as the Irraka's 'closer than you think') to the auspice gift list and make them once a scene, since per-chapter restrictions are hard to enforce on a mush.
The unique auspice-inflicted conditions would be applicable to anyone, depending on the method of hunting chosen. I'd probably associate each condition with a specific roll, like the Irraka's 'unaware' being a Finesse Attribute + Stealth, etc.
Issue: Many times, I've seen a player have a great concept sketched out in their head, but they weren't able to make it work because they felt like they were gimping themselves by taking an out-of-tribe gift, that cost more XP to acquire. Or they were trespassing in the niche of another. Instead of creating more diverse characters, or by making a simpler system, the gift restrictions actually hurt casual players.
Solution: I would give everyone access to every gift list. However, excepting the Wolf and Pack gift lists (quite a few of which I would add to/remove/change anyways), the other gift lists like Weather, Dominance, Strength, Shaping, etc, would be purchased at Out-of-Tribe costs. This is because while I want everyone to build the character that feels right for them, I don't want accumulating reams of supernatural gifts to supersede other aspects of character development. Werewolves are already immensely powerful.
Issue: Renown is silly. I've staffed (even head-staffed) both owod and nwod. Owod renown accumulation was retarded. Nwod renown accumulation is even more retarded. It works all right on a tabletop, but it fails on a mush. It's either unfair or it's gamed, and no one can ever agree on who deserves what. Show me someone with the audacity to walk around with 5 Honor, and I'll show you a half dozen other people claiming that guy's a twink prick.
Solution: Renown is by nwod 2.0 standards fairly expensive. Raising Renown costs the same as raising an attribute, like Strength or Composure. Furthermore, there are five Renown categories. I would completely divorce Renown from the spirit aspects (theoretically spirit 'rank' wouldn't mean much). I would reduce the cost of Renown to 3 XP, but I would remove the free gift that comes with it. For a werewolf to raise Purity, Cunning, Wisdom, Honor or Glory would be less a testament to their greatness and more a lifestyle choice of the virtues they want to embody, the effort of which is contained in the XP spend. Just like spending XP to raise your strength, composure or whatever.
Will there be assholes who don't especially RP a very 'honorable' creature despite say, investing in Honor? Sure. But I would treat it as no more exceptional a problem than the people who don't RP the various attributes on their sheet very well. The important thing, the whole judgment component of Renown gets thrown out of the window, when it essentially becomes a personal lifestyle choice.
You want really powerful Purity gifts? Fine. Invest in Purity. Although Renown would cost less (at 3 xp instead of 4 xp) it would actually rein back werewolf power. Paying 4 XP is a bargain, when it comes with not only a free gift but increases the potency of all your other gifts.
Issue: I find tribes to be entirely uninspiring. They're another relic of owod's slightly corny approach to things. I also find them unrealistic, and even White Wolf does too, given the way they twist themselves up to show how the tribes are universal, or how they've changed with the times (Glass Walkers in owod being a good example).
Tribes only exist because of the White Wolf paradigm of doing certain things a certain way no matter how silly. Otherwise, I don't know why in Nwod, we're still stuck in pseudo 90s-era Native American cosmology, with Brother Wolf or such and tribal ancestors. However, what's most damning about tribes is that humanity itself subscribes to thousands of major creeds, religions, cultures and societies. How is it even remotely possible that werewolves are restricted to five, eight or thirteen tribes? How do these world-wide tribes sustain any meaningful coordination? How have they maintained such cohesion over the centuries?
Forsaken 2.0 did its best to work around this issue by associating tribes more with the prey they hunt as some universal constant...But I am unconvinced by the effort, which was half-completed at best.There's still a ton of baggage associated with the tribes, and they don't meaningfully enhance RP. Lodges are slightly more realistic, but they have never existed easily with tribes...the tribe and lodge dynamic has always felt like an arbitrary mirroring of vampire bloodlines.
I would contend that Forsaken tribes are so uninteresting, that if Ghost Wolf characters were allowed to pick their own Gifts and weren't penalized a renown point, there would be far more Ghost Wolf characters than any other tribe.
Solution: There are thousands of werewolf tribes, as richly diverse and geographically spread out as humanity. In fact, I would think of them as more akin to Lodges. I don't need to describe every tribe in the world. I would set the game in a sensible geographic area and identify them as made sense according to location and ethnic/economic strata.
The irony of Forsaken is that it thematically goes out of its way to claim that werewolves are MORE human than the owod incarnation, where you had metis and lupus characters (and we're well rid of them). But mechanically, and lore-wise, it shoves the human element of these stories under the rug of its fairly boring, convoluted, Native American inspired cosmology. Think of all the werewolf movies you have seen...what themes did they explore, and would info-dumps about Storm Lord Cahaliths have improved that movie? Or would it come across as corny and stupid?
There's no reason why werewolves shouldn't be identified with the ethnic/geographic/cultural strata of humanity they emerged from. There's a lot more that can be said on the subject, but not in this post. (There are plenty of creative ways to handle werewolf politics, depending on the kind of game you want. Protectorates, Storm Lords and Tribes don't make much sense in a 'American Werewolf in London' or 'Dog Soldiers' type story.)
Issue: I don't like the baggage that comes with players bitching about someone raising their Blood Potency or Primal Urge, how they justify being a Blood Potency 5 neonate, or Primal Urge 5 teenager. People seem to get distracted or fixated with it, like it's something they MUST raise.
Solution: I've already enacted this rule in my tabletop games. Primal Urge is simply a lifestyle choice. The XP spent represents the effort you've put towards expressing yourself in such a capacity. It was the same with Blood Potency...where for our vampire game, Blood Potency was treated not as a mark of age or strength, but as an indicator of your diet. A 'neonate' could be Blood Potency 6 if they only fed on other vampires, and an elder could be Blood Potency 1-2 if they only allowed themselves to feed on animals, owing to some moral conviction.
To make this clearer, a higher Primal Urge essentially shows how committed you are to the supernatural/feral aspects of your existence, with all its attendant bonuses and complications for your human side.
This rule had more of an impact on vampires, but it works philosophically for werewolves as well. Also, when players view it in such a fashion, it becomes more of a 'choice' than something they're compelled to do. It also leads into my next point:
Issue: Anyone that has played or staffed on a mush, should know that Harmony/Integrity/Humanity etc, is always a huge pain in the ass. It's either ignored, or it's abused, and it always pisses people off. It's also not very cinematic. It's basically a bad system, that works best when mostly ignored. If you're extremely conscientious about it, it tends to stifle and leave RP stilted and lawyerly. If you have ever seen a +job or a tabletop debate that devolved into some Kantian circle jerk about the ethical dubiousness of an action taken, then you know how soul killing this horrible system is.
Specifically in Werewolf 2.0, Harmony is so badly handled as to make nightly sessions an exercise in accounting. There are so many things that can raise or lower you, that dozens of Harmony rolls a session are called for. I've always seen this atrocious game mechanic left by the wayside in tabletop. I've never understood why it persists on mushes, where logical enforcement is even more lacking. And again, if you've never had an infuriating +job related to a Morality argument, then you are truly fortunate.
Solution: I don't use Harmony, Integrity or Humanity in my games. Inasmuch as the game mechanics call for it, I either houserule those, or in the case of Harmony, I assume it's a base level of 6. If it would be higher or lower for any significant reason (perhaps related to NPCs), I will adjust it accordingly. In a werewolf 2.0 game, all wolves would be considered in the 4-6 range.
In our tabletop game, I associated Humanity with Blood Potency. Blood Potency 1 vampires had the game effects of Humanity 10, and so forth, going down the list. Blood Potency 2 = 9, 3 = 8, etc.
Issue: Dalu and urshul forms detract from the visceral impact of shapeshifting and the contrast in a werewolf's existence between 'normal' and 'ultra violence', by giving vaguely understood intermediates that are mostly used for either twinking or confusing new players. I've run tabletop werewolf games for many people, and while human, wolf-man and wolf comes naturally to them...They always have trouble with dalu and urshul. Especially older players who tended to exclusively build those forms into combat monsters, and new players who would often stay in hishu or urhan to their detriment.
Furthermore, by making Dalu or Urshul so superior, it detracts from the experience of being in Hishu or Urhan. I've seen many, many games that basically revolved around those two forms with the occasional jaunt in gauru. This was more prevalent in Forsaken 1.0. Forsaken 2.0 balanced the forms a bit better, but MMO-style 'class' balance does not make for an engaging roleplaying experience.
Solution: In my games, there are only Human, Wolf-Man and Wolf forms. I buffed Hishu and Urhan to compensate. Hishu regenerates as Dalu, and has Defense vs Firearms and a permanent +1 Stamina. Urhan gets improved as well. The Badass Motherfucker and Weaken the Prey abilities are unused, but may show up in some houserule format.
There are Wolf Gifts that can simulate Dalu or Urshul, such as by inflicting Lunacy with one's eyes, or by growing claws.
Thematically, werewolf is all about the potential to unleash terrifying violence on a hair trigger. When players had access to dalu and urshul, they could muscle their way through situations. When they had to choose between staying human or turning into a rampaging death machine, I saw them approach situations with* much* more finesse and creativity, and made violence, when it did happen, that much more cinematic and meaningful.
@Arkandel said:
@crusader That depends on your definition of improvement. What do you want out of your XP system - what are you rewarding, what do you want the XP curve to look like? And just as importantly, what are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve that?
For example it seems you value activity and want to reward it in a simple manner. Yes, votes do that. They also alienate newbies compared to established players (if I have 5 votes a month you better believe I'm saving them for my coterie/pack) and exchange easy XP for dinosaurs (it's what a year of trading votes with said coterie/pack does, after all).
Different games have been known to experiment with their approach on this. Some of the new generation nWoD MU* for example employ Beats and Conditions to reward adversity and being challenged at the cost of simplicity.
Either way what I'm getting at here is that there's always a trade-off, and players value different goals differently.
I find Beats and Conditions to be a clunky system that is extremely over-ripe for abuse by the 5% of the game population that is of a mind to such things. On any game that had +reccs as a form of supplemental vote giving, you would always find about 10% of the playerbase giving and receiving 90% of the +reccs. Beats and conditions are like that to an even greater degree.
What I value in a game's XP system is rewarding activity. I've seen both the Reach and Reno's XP systems up close, and other games that had more or less fixed weekly XP, and they tended to encourage idling, and staying within your own clique. What's the point of meeting new people when you can tinysex your friends and never leave your gated estate while amassing a mountain of XP?
The vote system encouraged people to get out onto the grid and interact. Some people hate it vehemently (hence the imminent downvote, I'm sure) and much prefer a flood of easy XP. Such people defending a weekly quota (which on the Reach can be 20-30+ xp a week, even a year+ ago) will say things like 'What does XP matter? Who cares? Have 10 more!' ala Troy, but they're the ones that seem most defensive and attached to the XP.
At the end of the day, conditions and beats are exploitable by a tiny minority, +reccs are masturbatory and only slightly less so, and prp quality is extremely variable. A fixed weekly XP system encourages idling and staying in your comfort clique.
Votes are the best, albeit imperfect solution. And again, in my experience, it is the fixed weekly XP that encourages the most cliquish behavior, and votes that encourage the most activity.
At the end of the day, no XP system has yet improved on a simple format along the lines of '5-10votes a week, only vote for one person'.
All of these games that give free XP weekly, really only encourage people to never log in and amass huge sums of it on alts.
Past games, like Haunted Memories or Dark Metal had their monsters, of course, but they were cyclical. It encouraged twinks to go out and RP at the very least.
On The Reach, everyone is a monster to a ridiculous degree. It's not even worth playing when after a few months, you can basically be a master at everything. No one can have a niche.
@Wizz Because four pages is such a lengthy and comprehensive discussion. It must not have been, if the creator still thinks that apps page is a good idea, or else it's a deliberate move to lessen interest in his game.
I miss owod werewolf and I like Detroit as a setting, so was semi-tempted to make a character here. But the werewolf applications page is such pretentious bullshit that I couldn't bring myself to.
The Bone Gnawers section was especially stupid. Gee, being poor is hard? And it's harder for people of color? AND it's usually not a choice? Holy shit.
This tribe draws on stories about the poor and working-class. Regardless of race, being poor is hard, though it's harder for people of color, and stories about Bone Gnawers should reflect that. Most poor people aren't that way by choice, and stories about Bone Gnawers should reflect that too. Bone Gnawers are looked down upon by the other tribes for all the same reasons that poor people are looked down upon by the more affluent. Most of us have some amount of privilege--we all have computers, after all--and so it is of utmost importance that we all show some respect when telling these stories.
I'd think it'd be harder for whites, since people of color are used to being poor, amirite?
In all seriousness, I honestly don't know how anyone can take you (Supremes) seriously, after writing that. You don't care for my opinion, fine. But the ambition of any game should be to lure people in before making them close a browser tab at its sheer stupidity in the first five minutes.
I struggle to think of anything more boring mush-wise than playing on a pure Consent-based game, without ICA=ICC. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, when it comes to RP staff.
@tragedyjones said:
For those wondering what each 'Dark Era' will be:
- VTR: Elizabethan
- WTF: 1970s New York
- MTAw: "To the Strongest": Alexander's invasion of India
- PTC: Great Depression/Dustbowl - 1930s
- CTL: Three Musketeers
- HTV: Salem
- GTS: **New Zealand in the 1950s **[1]
- MTC: Rot and collapse of Ottoman/British Empires- 1890s-1920s
One of these is not like the other.
@RDC said:
In my opinion, what's been keeping people from climbing the ladder to leadership positions isn't the Senate - it's the requirement we have that IC leaders also be OOC leaders, with a dialogue with staff about what they're doing to move their group forward, create RP, et cetera. That's the kind of job not everyone is cut out to do. I may be wrong, though!
Also, in my opinion: The benefit of NPC leadership at the top of the city over PC Princes far outweighs the downsides. It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than a revolving door of PC Princes who rule for 1-3 months, like most games.
Much like in the modern army, finding the player equivalent of 'noncoms' is the hardest thing to do, but also the best indicator of success. It's difficult to do though, and sometimes involves creating incentives that not everyone is comfortable with. Hence why so many games have fallen back on a 'tier' system. Which is unfortunately, just as open to abuse. For every good player you snag with such incentives, you get a waste of space.
All the same, when I staffed, I found tiers the only way to attract high quality players, and even though half were great, the other half I usually had to get rid of after a month. This is just a long winded way of saying you're not wrong.
@Coin said:
@crusader
This basically just tells me that people like that want to app in with power, not play the game to gain it. So no, those people aren't really going to have the BEST time at a game with NPC powers they need to overcome.
Well. It's a tricky situation. Those same PCs often end up driving most of the RP in a sphere, while at the same time, even the best staff inevitably succumb to fatigue when trying to portray multiple NPC powerbrokers.
It's not a knock on anyone. But in nearly twenty years of MUSHing, I've noticed that no staffer can handle serious NPC involvement in an ongoing story without going insane. AQ might have come the closest on HM to making it work, and if AQ were with us today, I'm sure he could tell everyone how fun that was.
The best, long term solution, is to shove as much of that power and influence onto the playerbase, while keeping perhaps, one or two 'pivot' NPCs in reserve, and basically let them be responsible for the dynamic. The counterpoint to that, is designing resources, territory and influence in such a way that makes players want to meaningfully compete for such things. This doesn't lead inevitably to PK and conflict.
A good solution I saw once was to use an NPC archon type character, who would come down harsh on anyone who was threatening the masquerade or breaking the rules by drawing attention. (So firebombings and rampant stakings were discouraged). This forced players into a more subtle, long-term conflict with each other.
But yes, sadly, you really only get the kinds of people who want to play mastermind/political type concepts who come in as them, and not gradually work their way there. It's less selfishness (since those roles are typically an ass ton of work) and more about the nature of writing and envisioning a character.
@RDC said:
Status was never restricted, beyond the "no more than 3 at CG", as far as I know, and I've been playing since the beta opened. Anyone can take Status and rise through the ranks. There is an NPC leadership for the city at large, but they're very hands-off and let the Covenants run themselves, ICly. (For the most part, and as a matter of status quo, which is always up for change especially when it comes to Season plottage now).
As far as I know, no player has bought/expressed interest in buying City Status higher than 2.
Well. I don't want to derail this thread, because a lot of what your post made me think about, isn't Reno specific. So I'll keep this concise. I'll use The Reach/HM/Metro as an example. Barring the fact that all those places had other flaws, there was still the fact that the kind of player who is inclined to a leadership-style position (and you know the kind of people I'm talking about)...are the kind that tend to organize like 4-5 people to app in with them, and load up on status and influence.
People did it in HM all the time...all it would take was 2-3 people apping in, and it was like, "Oh hey, there's an Albanian/Russian/Italian/Turkish mafia now.' Or some new covenant. And then there's be drama and conflict. Happened on Metro, still happens on the Reach. They come in as a fully realized entity, not as a cog in the machine.
The character creation process is essential for people like this to fully articulate and realize the vision they have for their character as a mover and shaker. If you restrict people from reaching towards those kind of leadership/mastermind roles, it becomes much easier for them to simply not bother at all.
Climbing up the status ladder with a bunch've powerful NPCs at the top is more or less unattractive. Its basically restricting players to coming in as middle management, and for whatever reason, that tends to not excite the really hardcore political, Machiavellian types. Which is why I'm not surprised there's been no push for city status.
A healthy game is one in which players are creating and driving the main dynamic for conflict, from the top down. Presumably, you want as few NPCs as possible, because realistically, you'll never be able to give them all justice as a storyteller.
@RDC said:
Status has never been restricted. You can buy it at 3 at CG, and raise it to 4 after one month, and to 5 a month after that.
Well, as I said, I'm not hip to the game's current standing beyond it being fairly quiet. But back in June-July, and what little I've heard since, it seemed power/influence/plottage was far more NPC-centric than PC-centric. If I'm wrong, or it's much changed, this is certainly the place to correct such apprehensions for anyone reading the thread.
I personally have seen so many burnouts and aborted plots, that I can't get seriously invested in any environment which depends on one or two people's creativity and drive at the top.
You have to, of course. Pandulph, Mozart, Roanoke. I know you've seen the same situations.
@Thenomain said:
@Kireek said:
Listen man, if it hurts your feelings, that's fine
Keep it civil, please.
Really, Theno? You've got nothing else to do but cherry pick one sentence out of a guy's post and admonish him? When he's not even being terribly uncivil? He's giving his opinion, and the truth as he sees it, but isn't insulting or degrading anyone. If you're going to be over-moderating this forum, let me know in advance.
RE: Reno
It's a fine place in theory, but has all but died owing to Blackjack's strange combination of both:
and
No MUSH is ever going to thrive which relies on heavily NPC-driven plots. For the record, I think RDC is doing good work (from what I've heard, I didn't know he = RDC until I read this thread), but Blackjack doesn't seem to have a realistic grasp of what makes a game successful in the long term. Setting aside the complete FUBAR which was their attempt at a werewolf sphere. I forget the person's name who they had 'running' it back when Reno first came out of Beta, but that person had no idea what they were doing.