@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:
Because my experience tells me that too few people are happy being just the cook to risk the headache of folks who also want to be Steven Seagal.
Fair enough. Personally I don't mind the cook-turned-navy-seal types as long as they're willing to put in the work to get involved in the action 
But I can understand just not wanting to deal with the complaints at all.
@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:
You attract great players. We in the World of Darkness are not always so lucky.
I mean, I've also had the biker gang who overran my coast-guard-in-space game, so... it definitely doesn't always work out, even outside Wod
@ghost There have always been multiple facets to the Battletech playerbase. Many (most, probably?) are in it for tactical Mech combat. Those folks will probably be happier playing the other venues, whether that's MWO, the Battletech RTS sim, or whatnot.
But there have also always been players into the lore and rich nature of the universe. There's a RPG, lots of novels, etc. I think that a BT MU could be successful if it focused on the L&L style lore stuff (with Mechwarriors being the "knights") maybe with some light combat elements mixed in.
@seraphim73 said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:
There are a fair number of "modern MUers" who enjoy combat and risky actions, but who have no interest in PvP. It's perfectly possible to have a playerbase intensely interested in PvE combat, but not interested at all in PvP combat (beyond sparring).
See pretty much any of the BSG games, TGG, etc.
My experience with Battletech was effectively PVE. First there was us as tweens/teens playing against my dad (effectively acting as GM even though yes, technically, it was PVP). Then were the Crescent Hawk tactical RPG video games. Even in my foray into MWO, the other players may as well be AI bots for all I interact with them.
@seraphim73 said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:
I would include significant combat elements
I wasn't referring to the quantity of combat so much as the depth of it. I don't think it's worth trying to recreate TT style BTech rules in a MU setting.
@devrex Honestly there may be some other issues since the page chat doesn't paginate or archive or anything. So if you have somebody you've been chatting with for 2 years it might just choke. I can look into that at some point, but it really wasn't designed to be stored indefinitely since most players initially freaked about the idea of it being stored at all
@derp said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Babylon 5.
B5 MUSH back in the 90's was great fun, though it did have an overfocus on FCs that was all the rage at the time. Would love to see another take on it.
@farfalla said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Jericho: the game. The tv show. Post-apocalypse in a small town, gotta rebuild and survive.
That'd be cool, though without a central antagonist I think you'd have players run into the doldrums pretty quick. The show itself had a similar problem, which accounted for the hard left it took in s2. Still, I'd like to see it.
@derp said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
This has been done by plenty of games. Fate's Harvest has a whole Arcade for what you can spend them on.
I'd be curious to see how that worked out. The games I've seen that have tried things like that in the past failed pretty spectacularly. Either the rewards proved to be game-breaking in their imbalance (XP dino / power effect) or nobody actually cared enough about the rewards to do the thing to get them.
@ganymede said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@derp said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
... in the idea that not everyone can GM, I find it incredibly unlikely that those who can't are somehow a substantial majority of players.
No, really, a substantial majority of players suck at running scenes, for a plethora of reasons.
That's been my experience as well. Being able to play a single character well is a very different skillset from being able to run a scene - juggling multiple NPCs, questions from PCs, knowing the theme/rules/etc., managing pacing, keeping people engaged.
It's a lot like being an actor vs. being a director. Sure there are people who can do both, but there are lots of people who can't. Expecting them to do so is not only unrealistic but a recipe for nonsense.
@paradox said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Even if you have a setting and theme in place, asking someone to come in and run stories leaves a lot of menu options that can get overwhelming. Some people may just want to enjoy the meal rather than cook it themselves.
I think that's a great analogy on expectations. People go to restaurants expecting other people to cook for them.
What do people expect from MUs? It varies obviously but I think a substantial chunk of the players go expecting to be entertained. That's how other games work, right? Most people don't log onto a MMO expecting to make their own quests.
That's a model that MUs have largely catered to for the past few decades. Sandbox games that expect players to create everything themselves exist, but they are not the norm.
@Ghost said:
@Arkandel Respectfully, I disagree. What we are doing on these mushes is more akin to tabletop gaming than MMORPG.
I must respectfully disagree with your disagreement
Actually what you're saying may be 100% true on some games, but the ones I play on are almost nothing like a tabletop RPG. If anything, I would liken them to a serialized TV soap opera. I mean, yeah, TV shows kill people off sometimes, but as @Arkandel said - unless you're watching Game of Thrones or Walking Dead, those deaths are the exception not the rule.
I play MUSHes not to play a game, but to tell a story. While I don't expect to have 100% control over the story (MUSHes are a collaborative environment), I do get miffed if my story gets cut off arbitrarily halfway through the 1st act by some random die roll.
@SG said:
If a story is 90% set in stone regardless of the dice, then why have them at all?
For the last 10%?
But seriously - I coded FS3Combat, which will never kill a player. The worst you get is incapacitated. I believe that you can have fun quirky outcomes and randomness and consequences without having death.
Also, between folks idling out and being killed off, and NPCs being killed off, and the handful of PCs who surprise everyone by choosing to be killed off in dramatic fashion... I don't see a lack of death as a big problem on the games I've played on, honestly.
But I'm not saying anyone else is wrong if they like risk and chance. Just saying that's not fun for me - and I know I'm not alone.
@Miss-Demeanor said:
Okay, so.. really nitpicky but... please, PLEASE for the love of God... stop forcing people to have a desc before approval. Its a pointless barrier to RP.
LOL. +1 there. I stopped reading descs ages ago.
@Lithium said:
My current idea re-chargen is to allow pretty much instant approval for 'side kick' level characters... It'll be interesting to see how it works out.
All I can say is I hope it works out better for you than it did for me
It wasn't skill points/powers that were the problem, it was people whose backgrounds were flat-out CRAZY, or who had a seriously deficient understanding of the theme. I don't see how those sorts of problems would be any better for sidekicks vs main chars.
Yes, you can let them hit the grid and expect players to sort the mess out, but my experience is that it seriously irritates the existing players. They didn't sign on for that nonsense and it can be really disruptive to RP. I see it as my job to insulate them from craziness as much as practical, and apps are an important step.
@Ghost said:
Genre references never hurt and might even help spread our favorite nerdsauce to the uninitiated.
Definitely references can help establish the theme, but sometimes a single book/show is tonally inconsistent. Both of the BSG examples were from the same Battlestar show, just different episodes/ships I was shooting for a middle ground between those two extremes, which made it hard to pin down in a way people could relate to.
@Ganymede said:
I realize I sound very hypocritical since I generally play on WoD games which usually end up just being a monitored setting with no particular direction or theme.
I don't think it's hypocritical, but as you point out - there are lots of games that aren't following any particular direction. When I built my Wild West game, for instance, I had a central plotline involving a range war but I didn't care whether players participated in it or not. If you wanted to do your own thing on your farm with your buddies, that was fine. When I ran BSP, there was a central plotline about the Cylon war, but if you really wanted to play a cook, I didn't mind.
There's no right or wrong way to run a game, so it all comes down to your goals and expectations. (And making those clear to the other players.)
Everyone has different tastes. It also comes down to what kind of theme you're going for.
I've heard several suggestions about having multiple grids/communities/etc. but that's kind of going against the theme of isolation. If you're doing Battlestar, and the central theme is "this fleet represents the last survivors of mankind", then it gets a little jarring (for me) if you're constantly running into other survivors. Occasionally it's fine (like in the new BSG when they came across Pegasus). But do it too often, and you're disrupting your central theme.
Now it would be totally valid to structure a different theme where your goal is "round up other survivors" or "become a bastion of civilization where other survivors can congregate" or whatnot, but those are fundamentally different, not-so-isolated themes.
Asking what kind of playerbase the setting can support is a totally good question. A Battlestar fleet with thousands of people is totally different than a single plane crashing on a deserted island.
@Arkandel said:
Speaking as a Storyteller, not as a player.
I always wanted PCs who are overwhelmed or afraid for their lives.
Seriously. There have been two times where I've been running plots and nearly had a total player kill just because nobody would listen to IC and OOC advice to just RUN AWAY when they were ambushed and badly outnumbered!
But it's not all bad. One of my favorite logs was from The Greatest Generation, where the characters' ship was attacked by a U-Boat on the way to Gallipoli and all they could do was cower in the cargo hold and hope the ship didn't sink.
@Groth said:
What kind of barbarian uses say or pose? Nothing of value would be lost if those commands were removed <.< >.>
LOL. Say, I agree. But pose? I use that constantly in scenes where there's more than one other person. It helps me keep track of who's doing what to see the names first.
@bored said:
Making your chargens work this way punishes the people who min-max the least, and make the most well-rounded characters. You may be able to deal with extreme cases as staff, but it's still bad design.
Have you looked at the actual system, though? If you have, fair enough, otherwise I think you're comparing apples and oranges.
Min/maxing usually happens when you don't have enough points to make the kind of character you want.
Through generous point allocations, a minimal skill list, and giving a bunch of hobby/interest skills absolutely free of charge, there's ample opportunity for people to make skilled and well-rounded characters in chargen. It doesn't have to be a trade-off.