Posts made by faraday

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

See...I'm not so convinced that "consent" is across the board a 100% good thing.

I agree. I played on a few pure-consent games early on in my MUSH days and I hated it. It was like playing cops and robbers with small children "I shot you!" "No you didn't!"

I'm a fan of cooperative games, but cooperation != consent. I think it's fine to encourage players to work out a mutually agreeable solution, but there has to be some kind of fallback for the cases where they don't agree.

Total consent just doesn't cut it, even on just a logical level. "I don't consent to you shooting me!" "Well I don't consent to missing. So there."

@ghost said in Difficulty with Friend/Gamer:

I want to approach them as a brother and recommend counseling and seeing a doctor about it, but I'm afraid they'll go super edgelord about it or storm off out of the friendship out of "chase me" rage.

The whole situation sucks. Sympathies.

Your concerns about them storming off could be on point, though at least you would have tried to help from a place of care and concern. Ignoring it and hoping it goes away probably isn't going to turn out great for the group as a whole. There might be a different kind of blow-up or other people just getting sick of it and quititng.

@lotherio said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

On the backend or under the hood, FS3 has a easy yet complex combat system.

FS3 combat is a good example of why I don't think the question of game and story has to be either/or. It exists not because of a "game first" mentality, but just because it's nigh-impossible to do a wholly cooperative combat scene with a dozen players in a tolerable timeframe. It's a tool of convenience, nothing more. Rolls can be similar - two players could just RP a sparring match, or they could throw in a few rolls to add some chance and/or guidance for how things go. You can do both.

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

"Is it a GAME or a Cooperative Writing Hobby?"

I love most of what you wrote, but I would challenge one part of your thesis: the use of the word "or" there.

If you look at how MUSHers behave across the board, I think you'll find that what makes MUSHes unique from other hobbies is that they exist at an intersection between gaming, cooperative writing, and (to @Ganymede's point) improv acting. MUSHes contain elements from all of these to varying degrees.

That is what causes challenges, for sure, but it's also what makes MUSHes cool IMHO.

For instance, even in a 100% consent-driven game, I still find value in codified chargen in order to create a common frame of reference for what your character is capable of. Even in a "cooperate first" mindset game, I still find value in having some set of conflict resolution other than old-school GM judging.

The BSG games (mine and others) I think show a sort of environment where players with different preferences can peacefully co-exist most of the time. In a more adversarial environment, I can certainly see where clashing expectations would be a bigger problem.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Which in-game rewards (positions, XP, etc) will the game offer? How are they going to be distributed and why?
How do we engage players in structured plot (PrPs, staff-ran scenes)?
How do we match reward to risk?
How do we handle character death?

So for an example of what I mean about apples vs oranges, here's how it is in the games I run:

Story is the only reward. There are no limited/special positions; XP is automatic and flat; there is no "cool kids" faction that gets all the story; etc. Staff-run plots are frequent and open to all. PRPs are encouraged, just don't break the game. Since there are no OOC rewards and no unconsented death, the risk/reward balance is not a thing.

You could do all of this in a WoD game too. Or a Star Wars one. Or literally any setting. Put all the PCs on the same "team" (all Gangrels, all Rouge Squadron, etc.) against some antagonist and structure your PC positions and central plotline to maximize opportunity to participate. Leave the special top tier positions to NPCs and keep PCs on a more or less level field.

I'm not saying this is the only way to run a game, or even the best way. I'm just trying to point out that many of these problems that seem insurmountable are actually facets of the game's design. Change the design, and they will be minimized or even eliminated.

I don't think you can make a game where all/most of the players want to fail. But you can build a game that embraces that tendency instead of trying to fight it.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

The way I see it the problem we are really trying to solve here is that, unlike table-top or video games, on a MU* there is limited access to desired venues, achievements or outcomes.

There can be, sure, but there doesn't need to be. Even if your game has that setup, I would argue that the way you'd solve a problem like "when you die your OOC name changes and you lose social connections" is very different to how you might solve "access to structured plots varied".

@devrex said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Well I think the idea is that nobody would go to a movie where the main character wins every interaction.

Sure, but I don't consider that "failure" in the way that much of the thread seemed to be emphasizing. There may be setbacks along the way, but the protagonist (generally) prevails in the end.

Anyway, it seems I'm just approaching all of this from a very different perspective than the rest of y'all due to the type of games I run/play and we're just talking about apples and oranges.

@ganymede said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

For example, in the Chronicles of Darkness, a player can surrender to a beatdown in exchange for a small XP reward; aside from the benefit to the player's character, it is also a benefit to the GM whose NPC initiates the beatdown because it saves a lot of dice-throwing.

I can see that. All I'm suggesting is that there may be value in flipping the question on its head and challenging some of the basic assumptions. Why is the beatdown happening in the first place? Why does it necessitate a ton of dice-throwing to resolve? What is gained for the story if the players lose versus win?

You could try to incentivize it with XP, sure, but you could also just communicate with the players and say: "So for the story I have in mind, the NPC would give you a beatdown and then... (as vague or specific as you wish to convince them)..." and it becomes more of a negotiation than a systemic reward. There's no right or wrong here, just different ways of looking at it.

@ganymede said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

But the overarching issue is how to convince players that failure is not only possible, but possibly rewarding in its own right.

I think an even more arching issue is whether failure is really a goal to strive for in the first place. What is the problem that we're trying to solve here?

Imagine trying to apply that logic to any other kind of game: "OK, baseball/Fortnite/chess/Skyrim players, we need you to try to figure out how to lose more."

You'd get odd looks, right?

I'll throw out a tangential proposition that we don't actually want people to "lose more"; we just want them to not pout if things don't go their way. To not hog the spotlight out of some constant need to be the center of attention. To not throw a tantrum if somebody else gets something they wanted.

In short, we want players who show good sportsmanship. I don't think bribing them for tanking +rolls is the way to accomplish that goal.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Well it is a problem if the game runners assume their players are +rolling on a regular basis, and distribute XP based on that assumption.

Sure, but that's one (of many) reasons to not do it that way. The others being the fact that it's easily exploited, that it incentivizes roll-play, and that it runs counter to how most people fundamentally interact with the game.

Similarly when it comes to incentivizing failure, a lot of the scenarios leading to it cannot be summed down to a single roll of the dice. If the Council votes against your IC interests (which they do based on individual scenes leading up to it, the voters' private IC motivations, political maneuvering etc) what is the roll going to be?

I think "what is the roll going to be" is the wrong question. It's coming at it from the assumption that there will/should be a roll involved. It's better IMHO to ask what would be gained by rolling? Does it serve the story? Does it even make sense to roll, or has the PC not even put in the baseline amount of RP/work to make such a thing feasible.

It comes down to what you believe the purpose of rolling is. There are certainly some who just flat-out like the element of randomness it brings. Personally I don't subscribe to that. A world where Han Solo could meet his end tripping on a flight of stairs because he failed a Dex check is not a world I want to RP in.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

They are not being used. Most players don't roll in social encounters unless there's some kind of pivotal moment, usually around conflict. That's pretty rare. They do get used in PrPs when prompted by a GM but of course that, too, is biased toward those with access to such scenes.

Totally agree, but I don't see that as a problem. My games always contain this guidance:

Players are always free to skip rolls and negotiate a resolution as befits the story, as long as everyone agrees. You should consider using an ability roll if the character is under significant stress, facing challenging circumstances or in conflict with another character.

You can use your character sheet as a guide for what your PC can accomplish without ever picking up dice. I rarely call for rolls in GMed scenes, and when I do it's mostly for "who notices this thing first" not "roll to see if you fall and die".

It all comes down to your philosophy.

@horrorhound said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Using the difficulty system provided by WoD.

Right, so me and my buddy just sit around typing roll Melee vs Hard for an hour.

@horrorhound said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

but rather, through CodeMagic, make it so skills are raised by the number AND quality of rolls made

How do you measure quality though? On MUDs or RPIs you have coded difficulty levels that have actual meaning - a level 20 mob, or crafting an item with difficulty 7.

These structures simply do not exist on MUSHes.

Even the concept of "only GM rolls" is inherently flawed - many valuable scenes occur between players, not involving GMs at all. Even in GM scenes, rolls can be few and far between. (I defer to narration more than rolls in the vast majority of my GMed scenes.)

Any such system would necessitate shifting to either judged RP logs (which has certainly been done, but is problematic for all the reasons @Lotherio mentioned) or a more RPI-like framework (which runs counter to the reason most of us MUSH vs. MUD in the first place).

So in short, I don't think this that mechanically rewarding rolls with XP will ever be a viable solution in a MUSH environment.

@il-volpe said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

I can see a deal where you get a fifth of an extra die, or a tenth of a reroll for every fail/botch, so you can save 'em up and do spectacular stuff if you screw up enough. That could be fun.

So I remember TTRPG and early MUSH systems that incentivized XP through skill use. The only thing it incentivized was rolling for the stupidest stuff as often as humanly possible so you'd bank up the XP.

Then of course there are the merit/flaw systems, which basically just incentivize players to take silly or toothless flaws in order to "balance" their merits.

Or the systems where someone takes a -2 in some little-used attribute in order to get a bonus to one that's going to come up all the time.

These ideas almost never work out the way the designers intended.

There are a lot of good ideas here, but I think maybe folks are missing the core of the issue:

This is a game, and for many, failure just isn't fun.

On BSGU for example, there were no special IC positions, no death without consent, multiple open public combat scenes each week, a flat XP system - in short, no meaningful IC or OOC consequences from failing.

And yet, the overwhelming majority of players still didn't want to fail because that's not the experience they're here for.

Of course you could probably bribe them hard enough or force them - but why? Who cares? If I'm there to play the Big Damn Hero, maybe just... let me?

Now personally I think failing sometimes can be fun. It creates drama. It gives you more interesting things to RP about. But not everybody sees it that way and that's OK by me.

Tangentially - I don't think folks have talked a lot about the OOC stigma of failure. My char on BSP was always screwing up. It's been over a decade so I don't remember specific comments, but I definitely recall getting a disapproving vibe off players sometimes. Like I was somehow stupid just because my character was doing stupid things. That can make it hard to embrace failure even when you have a positive mindset about it.

@kk said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

I prefer for every character to have a chance to be central as well. I just mean that such is not generally the case, not that it shouldn't be. I don't know how to make it the case and am content often with not being central personally.

It requires you to design the game to support that. Admittedly, not every game does, but it can and has been done. Perhaps a topic for another thread.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

But overall an issue we may want to debate separately here is that not all players are 'equal' when it comes to their ability to impact the plot. It's not necessarily a limitation imposed by their character's nature or stats either; there is a multitude of factors that allow some to take central stage more than others.

Yeah, I guess I see a fundamental difference between:

• I can't take center stage because my PC isn't in the Cool Faction/Job/etc.
• I can't take center stage because of my own lack of RP time / personality / etc.

The former is staff-directed; the latter is more a player problem. That's not to say staff can't help, it's just not staff's responsibility to deal with unsolicited IMHO.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

What I'd ask though is whether we can - or should - systematize so that even when I don't get to play the Sheriff the impact from 'losing' is mitigated.

I think that's solving the wrong problem. Why is "not being the sheriff" seen as losing in the first place? It shouldn't be that way. Instead of having a contest for who can be the one and only sheriff, make the sheriff a NPC and let the PCs be multiple deputies.

Competing for top dog "I am super special" positions is just never going to end well, no matter what kind of structures/incentives you put into place.

@kk said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

But not every character is the center of the over arching storyline.

See that’s where we differ. I think all PCs SHOULD have equal opportunity to be impactful to the central story. Whether they take advantage of that or are content to be in the background is up to them, but the choice should be there.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

One of the differences TT has over MU* is that as much as we want to consider PCs the protagonists, it's not necessarily the case. In a 5-man party the GM can ensure everyone gets their time in the spotlight but the model doesn't scale up well.

It is a rare MUSH player that doesn't consider their character a protagonist. Trying to fight that is IMHO inherently futile.

MUs are most like ensemble TV series. Not every character is featured with equal prominence in every episode, but they all have their own story threads. They are all protagonists in their own right.

Trying to have a model where some PCs are inherently cooler than others (the "Important People group") is just making an economy of haves and have-nots that I think just leads to toxic behavior.

Put more broadly though, I think this philosophy means that failure doesn't lead to lost opportunities. A weak outcome and strong outcome are just different doors leading down different (not necessarily better or worse) paths in the story.

@zombiegenesis said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Don't let failure stop forward momentum. It might redirect it but momentum should always be moving forward.

I agree with this.

While certainly there are some computer RPGs with permadeath, permaloss, or entire storylines/areas cut off by failure, that's generally not the case because most players don't find it particularly fun.

Even if you view MUs more like stories then games, temporary setbacks are a key part of fiction, but abject failure is something you don't generally see happening to the protagonists.

Failing forward is a good model in both cases.

Storium has an interesting system. There are no dice; instead characters have cards that represent strengths, weaknesses, and subplots (goals). They play them explicitly on obstacles to steer the outcome within the boundaries established by the GM. For example:

I like that there are consequences for a weak outcome, but it's not "you all die; story over". It's failing forward.

Where it gets messy is that each card can only be played a limited number of times. Sounds good in principle right? Forcing you to use your weaknesses? Incentivizing failure?

In practice it's just frustrating. I don't mind playing weakness cards where it makes sense for the story, but sometimes it just doesn't. Sometimes there's a challenge where one of your character's strengths makes perfect sense, but you're out of strength cards. Sometimes there's a challenge where you really want a weak outcome to make the story more interesting, but you can't.

Bottom line - I don't think you can systemize good storytelling. You can only encourage it by making failures not be the end of the world.

@zombiegenesis said in Comic Games And Scope:

And I'm also not saying there aren't any or have never been successful games with a focused theme. They are, however, vastly outnumbered by games that allow either everything from a given comic universe or anything from any comic universe. I'm just wondering why the scales are so unbalanced.

Are they though? I don't play on comic games, but I do hear about them. Quite a lot of the ones I have heard people talking highly of seem to be focused themes. Various X-Men and Marvel games spring to mind.

Maybe they don't have the sheer volume of logins as some other games, but that's a very narrow and IMHO flawed measure of "success". Logins can be inflated by alt policies, how much people hang out OOC and idle, and various other factors that have nothing to do with whether people are RPing and having fun. With web players and async RP, logins become even less meaningful. Heck, Shang and MUD-lites like Firan were often on the top of the "most login" lists I'd see back in the day - does that mean you should shoot for that to be "successful"?

The most active and engaged playerbase I ever saw was on TGG. There were probably never more than a dozen people online, but man did they RP. I wouldn't discount the merits of a small, passionate playerbase.

@zombiegenesis I don't know too much about Transformers, (having seen only a couple of the movies and the Rescue Bots kids show) but I can speak generally about combat in FS3.

The weapon/armor behavior is complicated (described in detail here), and is probably the hardest part of the system to balance.

Skew it too much one way, and bullets bounce off bulletproof vests like Superman. Skew it too much the other way, and bullets tear through them like paper. With a wide variety of weapon types all having different penetrative capabilities (pistols, shotguns, knives, rifles, etc.) it is incredibly tedious to tune everything to generate a "fun" balance.

The built-in BSG configuration does have two "classes" of weapons and armor built in - personal and vehicle. This works because:

• The weapons and armors of each class are balanced against each other.
• Cross-class combat (i.e., a rifleman versus a space fighter) is pretty uncommon thematically in BSG, so the quirks of the system can be hand-managed by the GMs.

I think you could make the transformer robots work similar to the vehicles in the BSG setting, but having it also tuned for titans would probably be a bridge too far.