Posts made by faraday

@derp said in Races in fantasy settings:

I'm not really sure that we're talking about the same things though.

Yeah that's where I'm at. Races in a fantasy or sci-fi setting are generally different species, which makes it very different than RL prejudiced ideas about other homo sapiens.

Wookiees and Cave Trolls are seven feet tall and can rip your arms off. Giving them an inherent bonus and higher maximum to their "strength" stat does not strike me as racist; it strikes me as common sense.

But when you also give trolls a negative to charisma and elves a bonus, I think it's wading into more problematic territory. Are they really less charming due to inherent characteristics of their species in your canon, or is that just a reflection of human prejudice?

@masterreeve said in Shadowrun: Anarchy MU seeking staff:

@sixregrets I totally misunderstood the question. My bad! We're using Rhost.

I'm just over here amused because it isn't often that the Shadowrun influence on AresMUSH/FS3 comes up, lol.

More on topic - I'm no help, but Shadowrun is fun. Good luck.

@arkandel said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

In other words a min/maxed warrior type can get very decent mileage out of social situations even if they play their low stats very appropriately - no faking involved. A min/maxed scholar can get their ass handed to them in very short order.

I think it runs deeper than that. Even on my FS3 games, where there is expressly no coded combat death, the games are PVE, there are free background skills to let you be well-rounded, and really no social combat stats to speak of - you still have people min/maxing combat skills.

Why? Because they want to be a badass. More specifically, they want to be the baddest of the badasses.

I don't think this phenomenon is exclusive to combat chars either, because I've seen it on other games. Con artists and politicians will min/max their manipulation skills; investigators will min/max their investigation skills. It is a rare player indeed who wants to suck at their character's "thing", whatever that may be.

@arkandel said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

So you might not even be giving anything up to play that master of the blade.

Yeah, but... so what?

Combat scenes have been a staple of RPGs since their invention. Virtually every character class/archetype/etc. in every TTRPG/MMO I've ever seen has abilities to make them effective in combat, either directly (guns and fireballs) or indirectly (buffs and healing).

MU players are the only ones who seem determined believe things are different.

If you're honest with yourselves and your players, this isn't a problem. Unless you've got some grand scheme to sustain non-combat RP plots across your playerbase, just tell them up front that combat/adventure is going to be the main focus and make sure your chargen/approval process is structured accordingly. If someone REALLY wants to play a chef despite all that, make sure they understand that they'll be sandboxing their own fun.

It's all about expectations.

@arkandel said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

You won't see much of anything rolled other than the specific archetypes the game - quite possibly inadvertently - promotes.

People often miss that this is a core facet of FS3 system design. The whole reason that "Action Skills" are separate from background skills is because it's an intrinsic social contract between the players and staff saying these are the skills that the game is going to focus on. The ones relevant to the central "action" of the game.

That's why FS3 works well in themes where, say, everyone's either a marine or viper pilot, and not so well in themes where you've got a huge variety of characters all expecting RP in equal measure.

@jennkryst said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

two characters start, one with 1/1/1/1, and the other with 4/0/0/0. Player one needs to spend 27 XP (6 + 9 + 12) to get to 4/1/1/1; player two needs to spend 9 XP (3 + 3 + 3).

For FS3 there's an article explaining this effect. In D&D terms, the 4/0/0/0 character essentially started at a higher level. As long as the two PCs are earning XP at the same rate, the 4/0/0/0 char will always be ahead. YMMV obviously. Many would say that you shouldn't let characters start at different levels, but as long as you understand the way a system is designed, it's not inherently a bad thing.

I think it depends on what you mean by "min/max" because people sometimes have different definitions.

My definition is a player who spends their CG points/XP in the most expedient way possible to achieve their character goals. Maximum benefit for minimum drawback.

This isn't inherently a bad thing. It just depends on what their goals are.

If the player is trying to make some kind of unstoppable badass that essentially ruins the game for others? That's a crappy goal. Or if they're trying to make a one-dimensional caricature that's lacking in abilities their background dictates they should have? That's also a crappy goal.

But just learning the rules well enough to spend your points more effectively than someone else might? That doesn't bug me.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

Do folks mind it so much if their profession is not represented accurately or even respectfully in TV or movies?

Most of the medics and firefighters I know don't seem to mind that the professions aren't portrayed accurately. There's some good natured eye-rolling at how implausible everything is, but it's still fun.

But of course not everyone agrees. Fire Dept Chronicles has a hilarious YouTube series roasting fire/rescue shows.

@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

It's not coming up with the concept that's the blocker. Most people can cook up a "my dog was kidnapped by a goblin, get her back!" questline, WoW-style.

Indeed, I've tried this on several games where there were plot banks of ready-to-go plot ideas. I can count on one hand the number of people who took one and ran with it. (And I'm very grateful to those people, they're just in the minority.)

There are also umpteen random plot generators you can find in 60 seconds of googling. Ideas are not the limiting factor.

@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.

@derp said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

People are bitchy and pedantic in MUSH and have been for 30+ years.

Maybe that's why it's a high mountain to climb to get people to run scenes for more than just their close personal friends.

The overwhelming majority of players will not run plots for others, ever, just as most TTRPG players are not GMs. The fact is that running plots means opening yourself up to a fair bit of stress and drama, and requires a lot of preparation and effort. No matter how grateful you are, or what OOC badges or kudos you offer, that's a high mountain to climb for your pretendy-fun-times.

@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.

@il-volpe Exactly. I'm not saying that would apply to every setting, but the "modern-day procedural" (all the medical, cop, lawyer, fire shows) was specifically the context of the discussion you quoted. Adapted to a MU environment, those kinds of shows would all have a central feature of being very GM-intensive in terms of storylines (inventing crimes, medical cases, and what have you) and NPCs.

@il-volpe said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

A GM generates a plot-pitch and then ad-libs the thing with the 'actors.'

No, what was being described (in the "Doctor Viktor has an addiction problem" example) was a far more in-depth plot--spanning multiple days or weeks, involving several people running multiple PCs and NPCs, all centered around a single PC. It really is more akin to a TV show's writing staff generating a multi-episode plotline.

Most MU staffs simply cannot sustain that level of effort for multiple people on a continual basis.

@pyrephox said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

you'd have to have staff who are willing to be realistic about the number of people they can handle

I mean... given that it takes an entire writer's room to generate that level of plotting for 6-10 characters on a weekly basis, I'm thinking the number of players a small staff can support is going to be pretty darn tiny. Well below the minimum threshold required to sustain a MUSH.

I think what you'd need is just a MU community willing to support each other - letting others take turns with the spotlight, running NPCs, all with the expectation that when it's your turn, they'll do the same for you.

Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but it'd be nice.

@derp said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

You will miss that carpet soon. Carpet keeps the hair all trapped in easy to vacuum spots.

YMMV. We went from a house with carpet to a house with hardwood and the dog hair is way easier to manage on hardwood. Yeah it kinda whooshes around everywhere because it's loose, but that also makes it easier to see and vacuum up. Getting it out of the carpet with a regular sweeper was nigh impossible.

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I could have fun doing like hotshots (the really good wild fire firefighters) but only doing occasionally fire fighting and the rest slice of life drama, whereas others would expect new bigger fires or something

I don't necessarily need it to be bigger better fires/catastrophes/etc. but I do need there to be a constant stream of something. Otherwise it just gets boring.

I haven't exactly done a scientific analysis, but just off the cuff I'd say that Chicago Fire has about a 30/30/30 split between "action" (fires, rescues, high drama), romance, and "fluff" (silly hijinks, slice of life, and randomness). That's always seemed like a pretty decent ratio to strike on a MUSH. The trouble is sustaining that 30% "action" for a much wider cast on a much more frequent basis.

@il-volpe There was one - I forget its name. Ares game a year or two ago. But yeah it's a little strange there aren't more. I guess people want something a little further from RL.

@il-volpe said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

If that's not enough, everybody starts having auditory hallucinations of Bob Dylan, for pity's sake.

Yeah on BSGU we had a policy that was like: OK try not to reference glaring things like Star Wars please but don't stress.
We understand that it's utterly impossible to eradicate all cultural and historical references from the entire freaking English language.

@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.