Posts made by Eerie

@Thenomain said:

Except you, Dart. Or D...something.

Dash.

The cool Mysterium mage from The Reach.

Silver Ladder.

You were awesome

And memorable apparently!

@Coin

Okay fair, you're just Eeyore and I'm Tigger. At least we can both agree that you are, without question, a complete and utter jerkface.

@Coin said:

I am, as far as I know, the only MUer in my country. Not my city, my country. So while I cherish the friendships and connections I make with people who RP online with me, I'll never really get to experience connecting with the people who share my hobby in a face-to-face way that's anything more than temporary and transitory.

It’s funny how I feel kind of just the opposite about MU* friendships. I think if anything this is a medium that can make for particularly meaningful interactions. Like others have said, it requires a lot of time, so you’re likely to spend a good chunk of it with the same people in your group. And beyond time, I think there’s something about the nature of the internet that tends to make people say things that they probably wouldn’t if they were in the same room with people, as anyone who has been in an OOC room anywhere ever and cringed going ‘how is this person saying all this to utter strangers’ can attest to. And beyond all that, I think working on something creative with other people breeds intimacy. This may not be high art, but it is highly creative and invariably you end up putting a lot of yourself into your characters and plots. So constant exposure + open communication + creative engagement I think can really make for some fairly significant friendships. I have lots of RL friends in my immediate area and I’m pretty social, but I see my online friends more and I would even wager that ‘deep and meaningful’ conversation is more common with my online friends than my RL friends. I dunno! I’ve known @Thenomain and @Wretched for years and years at this point and I love them dearly and that was true even for the big chunks of that I wasn’t MU*ing, even though we’ve never met in person.

@Arkandel said:

And with some effort you can create entire worlds, taking anything from the pages of a book, the small/big screen or just your imagination and giving it a chance to become an immersive interactive environment shared with other people. That's pretty special.

Yes this. I think MUing is unique in a lot of ways. I am surrounded IRL by people that work in video games and have pretty much unlimited access to whatever I would want in that arena and nothing else is at all like MUing. I can enjoy a video game sometimes, but its really not the least little bit comparable to MU*ing for me.

That being said, I don’t talk about MUing to my RL friends because it’s very hard to explain. Very very. I suspect it’s really not for everyone and that you have to do it to understand it.

I'm all twitterpated to have everyone approved for reals and see all the plans we came up with start to unfold. Especially since I've already had several players add wonderful twists.

@Bobotron said:

Also, all this talk of Eldritch reminds me I need to finish up Hikaru's stuff for the impending supernatural opening (or if they've already opened, I have been super busy with convention stuff the past 2 weeks)

We have not opened for supernaturals yet, just minor templates. @Thenomain has been coding his little behind off, but I think we're still a couple weeks out from being fully done. I just hold the pom-poms and cheer him on though, so what do I know.

Aww!

Well, this is me! I still peek in to check mail on TR occasionally but I admit I am infrequent and not super motivated by that setting anymore. You can always PM me here.

PS Obligatory 'come play on Eldritch' thingie.

@TNP

The opportunity to respec the smaller details within the first month if needed would be great.

Happily, we have a respec policy (which I am 90% sure we stole directly from Reno) which allows for this and says 'A character may opt to have their sheet wiped and all experience and starting points redistributed only ONCE in the character's lifetime during the first three months.' It allows for a few other small tweaks to account for mistakes too, and has a few caveats about not allowing you to change fundamental, character defining things... but on the whole I think it addresses what you're talking about.

http://eldritch.mechanipus.com/w/index.php/News:Respec

As an aside, we talked about roster-type mortal and mortal+ characters the other day and I'm going to work on two versions of them this weekend: One would be a 'template' style where you get a brief concept sketch and stats are pre-done, but you can pick your name and make it your own essentially, but is a low-effort entry into things. These don't endure past the player playing them. We're also going to try, as an experiment, a small stable of rostered characters that are a bit more fleshed out, but can be played by one player and then frozen, and then later, possibly picked up and played by a second player. This may include members of the channel 8 news team.

So!

We still have a few little kinks and fiddly bits on the structural code wish list, but... we’re now in soft-open! As of yesterday we approved our first batch of mortals, ghouls, wolfbloods and stigmatics and real actual RP happened on our real actual grid. Its kind of ridiculously exciting. I’m hoping to run my first plot scene sometime this week.

We are hoping to open fully in about 3-4 weeks for major template supernaturals, but this last push was kind of rough on our poor @Thenomain, so honestly, it will happen when he’s ready for it to happen. In the meantime we are also taking concepts for Vampires, Demons and Werewolves, and each are welcome to play characters that can later become ghouls or covers or what have you later on if you have no interest whatsoever in a minor template long term.

Chargen is pretty self-serve and approvals have been astonishingly quick thanks to Theno’s code. You can browse http://eldritch.mechanipus.com/w/index.php/Character_Creation and then +help chargen and +help asp for aspirations in game and you should be mostly, aside from a few bbposts about how we’re handling stuff like Professional Training for the time being.

Come play!

eldritch.mechanipus.com 6666

Just as a minor, probably irrelevant aside that I offer since this conversation is taking place in our game thread and not in the code forum... I don’t think @dark staffers are any sort of a problem on Eldritch and am pretty sure this is a theoretical problem based on Thenomain’s Else-MU past experiences. We have pretty small contingent of staff and I can’t actually think of an instance in our short history when any of us have actually BEEN dark.

Just context. Or maybe Theno is attempting to train me via code. Time will tell!

@tragedyjones said:

However, I can confirm @Coin's face is.

We're going to be sphere-capping @Coin's face apps at 1, because many highly obvious reasons.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

After watching Kingsman, I really want to play up the OD as a sort of "elegant if sinister" secret society. And see what insane gadgets and tricks Coin will let me get away with.

Reading this made me super excited to see that happen.

ETA: I'll be playing a Guardian/Tempter Demon with what has turned into a highly complex backstory who's covers are a religious Russian lounge singer from the Bohm family and an alcoholic, slightly bipolar Sheriff's deputy. I can think of at least 3 other people who intend to play vamp, so with any luck we'll at least start out with a core group in each sphere, so I wouldn't worry yet.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I gave my opinion because its something that's bugged me about Werewolf for ages. I don't expect my viewpoint to be popular, or enacted as rule on a game. If @Eerie and @Coin feel that Renown should be justified in some way, whether through written justifications or logged scenes, that's up to them. Its their game, they get to make the rules.

And not having really thought this out yet, I'm glad to hear what people think. Irrespective of popularity or what we ultimately decide to do with renown after reading the final product and talking it over both internally and here, I'm still of the opinion that its better to wring all the good ideas out of as many people as possible before making a decision. Let me suck the smartness out of your sweet, sweet brains, @Miss-Demeanor and @Arkandel. Worst case, we can always fall back on our stated policy of reviewing stuff down the line and tweaking whatever it is needs to be tweaked, which is intended to involve lots of player-staff participation.

We legitimately haven’t talked about how we might modify werewolf yet because I think we all want to see the finished product first, but I understand what everyone is saying about renown, and I’ll just reiterate the bit @Coin said about how if it remains a problem we’ll try our utmost to strike a balance between Renown being meaningful and it not being a giant pain in the ass to deal with. Nobody wants to constantly have to beg people to run PRPs, for sure, and we get that.

All that being said... I know that @Coin and I have fairly ambitious goals for plot in general on Eldritch. Part of the reason for sphere caps is that we’re hoping for more ST involvement in most character’s lives, more involvement in plot for more people who are interested in that kind of thing, and as a more intimate experience rather than all staff-run plot stuff being unwieldy 20 person free-for-alls that happen once in a blue moon.

(Along these same lines, eventually I’ll probably be pleading for additional ST help to help execute this vision, but honestly, I think smaller scenes will make Sting a lot more fun for STAFF too, not just players, so I think it will be good for everyone. And we’ll be happy to lend tons of support to people who are uncertain but willing to give it a shot, and stay out of the way of people who know what they want to do.)

So really, don’t abandon hope just yet. Again, this is meant to be a cooperative process so it’s not like we’re not interested in listening and working out kinks if people are like ‘this is ruining it for me’. But I think that more non-PRP plot will actually help solve a chunk of this too.

@Arkandel said:

The other thing I actually meant to ask is, how are you planning to handle Renown? One of the main things that drew me to Reno in the first place was that raising it didn't involve jumping through hoops, hoping for oh-so convenient PrPs to fill the exact thing you needed a lot for and trusting that the powers that be granted you that next spend - all while your Mage could get Life Mastery for the price of an one-line +job.

Well, so far we are desperately trying to avoid making decisions about Werewolf until... you know... we've read the book. Honestly, I want to murder people at this point for being this far beyond schedule, but I am told any day now so cross your fingers. After it comes out and we've read it, I will do my best to remember to come back to this question.

@Arkandel Well, despite STILL not having seen a the new Werewolf.... pause for obligatory grrr... I don't know if I would assume they'll be the least popular sphere. My expectation is that werewolves will end up being more the death machines they were conceptualized as but were not in nWoD, and closing that gap between theme and fact may make them more interesting to people. I know of some people already planning wolves for Eldritch too, so I know you'll at least have some company.

That being said, yes, plots that directly involve a mishmash of everyone all at once is the goal for a big chunk of the metaplot. I'm sure the vampires or wolves or demons will also choose to do bits amongst their own, if only to have interesting reasons to act mysterious around the other groups, but there's going to be more crossover than not. I have my first bit of the metaplot arc planned already and I promise it will suit you in this respect.

@Thenomain Hey! First rule of Evil Owls is don't nobody talk about evil owls...

@silentsophia said:

(That said, I prefer to wait for something I truly want. I'd feel bad turning around and dropping something. But that's just me.)

This is a nice sentiment, but honestly, I hope that if you have an idea that appeals to you, you'll go for it. My experience is that you never know if its going to be long term fun until you're doing it anyway, and ultimately its a game. Don't worry too much about the starving children in distant lands sphere caps, just do what you think will be fun. Maybe you will find that once you're playing a stigmatic garden gnome that you apped instead of a werewolf that its actually fantastic and you're having a blast, but even if you decide you'd rather play a werewolf when it reopens, at least you had fun in the interim. And this is also why we're going with two alts but not limiting it beyond that. You can also do both.

@HelloRaptor said:

Not having a TL also means there's no one person who has final say over a particular sphere, which means anything that requires escalation to that one person instead tends to end up in committee.

And everybody knows, committee is the most efficient and timely way to get time-sensitive shit done.

I suppose we’ll see how cooperative staffing goes! The idea was that we wanted to promote a more cohesive, integrated game than we’d seen other places, which sometimes felt more like six or so separate games running concurrently that occasionally scraped shoulders rather than one. We all do have things we’re more comfortable with or interested in, and nobody has to staff what they're not comfortable with, but there’s a lot of overlap and I’m hoping that a side benefit will be that it will cut down on ‘no, we have to wait for Bob, because he’s the staffer in charge of +noting widgets and that’s his little territory and so nobody else can assign widgets, even though actually any one of us /could/ +note your widget and then you’d be all set in about 30 seconds but instead you need to wait till next week till Bob gets back because he’s in charge of widgets’.

I also don’t think that there’s much to be afraid of as far as ‘rule by committee’ goes. My experience has been that most ‘big’ decisions about policy or interpretation of powers always got decided by committee anyway, and most other decisions get handled by whoever is there in the moment. I can’t actually think of too many examples that don’t fall into one or the other of those categories. We’re just going into this saying ‘if you think you can handle it, then handle it’ instead of everyone carving out their little turf that nobody else dare trespass upon. Mind, we’re also a small staff core at the moment who all talk already. We will probably need to add a few more admin and storytellers soonish, and we’ll see how it goes and adjust/evolve as need be, which was also the intention going in.

@Creepy said:

in an ideal world, you've got 30 players in one sphere, an admin staffer and lets say 2 STs (staff ST). There's 2 really solid players that are dependable which you can ask to run smaller scenes. Give us an example of how you'd operate and link it back to why you'd need to set a sphere cap utilizing that normal operation method. That analysis may better inform your policy (or at least entertain me).

From my perspective, I think it’s really so simple that the specifics of your example don’t even really need to come into it. Essentially it’s just ‘can staff handle the needs of the current playerbase with the time that they have available to devote to the game in a way that is satisfying for most everyone involved?’ If we can’t then we probably have more people than we can support, and if we can we’re either at a nice equilibrium point or might consider opening a few more slots. I mean, neither @Coin nor myself have any vested interest in keeping people from having fun, but over time I have been convinced that it’s really not fun for anyone when a sphere has more people than its staff can support. YMMV!

I may be reading too much into things, but based on your earlier comments I feel like part of what you’re asking is ‘is there a point at which, with the right combination of staff and player support, you wouldn’t need sphere caps at all?’ And to that I would say no, I don’t think so. We’d adjust up and down depending on the situation, but I think there will always be a maximum amount.

@SilentSophia said:

I do like the idea of giving priority to someone who doesn't have their 1 supernatural alt. Alt-madness tends to cause problems. Like, I dig the idea that one wants to play a variety of things but it rarely ends well.

We talked about this too! I think everyone is still of different minds and still on the fence over all, but my argument against doing this (which @Thenomain kinda already brought up) is this: Bob and Suzie show up and both want to play Werewolves. Werewolf, however, is at cap and closed. Suzie is flexible and decides that, while she would rather play a werewolf, Vampire is open and she can still have fun playing a vampire. Bob decides that no, he will ONLY play a werewolf and so he doesn’t app anything. Over the next month, Suzie plays her vampire and is great and contributes to the game by being entertaining and a delight to RP with, while Bob sits in the OOC room while RPing on another MU* and waits for a post about werewolf to go up. So, while I don’t think Suzie should necessarily get a benefit for being flexible and contributing to the MU* by being an active and delightful player in the interim, I kind of feel like she shouldn’t be punished for that either, especially as Bob is not enriching anyone’s experience here but his own. As someone running the game, I appreciate that she is playing here and being fun and being flexible about how that happens. Theoretical Suzie is awesome.

As far as what @Wizz said about people taking up other super slots... I think honestly this depends and is hard to answer in the abstract. What if there is no waiting list for the super sphere they’re in, for example? What if they’re contributing to a pack or a coterie while not denying anyone else a chance to have fun, and their having to suddenly dump their character is not going to benefit anyone else and will, in fact, just detract from the fun of the people they’re currently playing with? I think this is only really a huge issue if we end up with a waitlist for every kind of supernatural, which I think is probably a big if/unlikely.

@Glitch said:

The impression I'm getting is that these big requests for discussion go up, but they've already hunkered down. They certainly don't need anyone's approval, but it's the impression I'm left with and I think there's too much cart before the horse decision-making in the name of "preparation".

I guess I can only profess that, no, I really wanted to hear what everyone thought about this. It’s true that we’re coming into this discussion having been talking about the issue privately for weeks, so we have already formed opinions... but at the same time, the /reason/ I poked at @coin to post about it was because I never felt like we got to a place where I was like ‘That’s it! Problem solved!’. Also I’ve abandoned the way I originally thought we’d probably do it as a result of this discussion, so... it’s been helpful and has made a difference.

@Ganymede said:

Rules set the expectations of staff. Sure, it's nice to know for sure what staff will and won't do, but it's patently unreasonable to expect staff to not consider every case individually, and measure "justice" against an ephemeral, shifting concept of "fairness."

I agree, but at the same time I’ve been on staff channels with staffers who were convinced they ‘couldn’t’ do anything about this or that thing because technically it wasn’t against the rules. Most of us are pretty conditioned to follow ‘rules’ as normative concepts.

@Arkandel said:

@the folks running Eldritch (for example!) were jerkfaces then no sphere cap implementation would help a player they decide to screw with.

Happily, @Coin is mainly a jerkface to small children, adorable puppies and old people trying to enjoy a park bench on a sunny day. Usually he's so tired from abusing all these people IRL that he doesn't have much energy left to abuse people online, so that's a relief for all of us. Also he can be bribed with licorice.

@Creepy said:

ETA: Are you going to allow Becoming to circumvent this?

Since I haven't seen GMC werewolf yet, and this wouldn't apply to Demons, its a vampire specific thing. And no, not to circumvent this, though IC becomings with staff approval should be fine. Also we'd talked about a 'if you are murdered gruesomely, you can re-app into your old sphere' clause if, and only if, you didn't plan your own death just because you wanted to re-app.