I go the other direction. I say LEGACY ERA.
I don't wanna step aside from this game's advertisement, though. Seems to be a lot of great people at Fires and you should check it out. Seems one of the better SW offerings I've seen in a while, and I think the early days of the Rebellion is a good, lesser-touched setting.
@Alamias I think there is a lot of killing in it, but still, wandering Kung Fu society meets post apocalyptic non-zombie does fit a certain range of lethality
I think the rules lethality needs to meet the lethality of elements in play. Using the Battletech, as referenced above, that game was mechanized war machines weighing hundreds of tons firing missiles, PPCs, and other deadly elements at each other. While, yes, one of the drawbacks of failure includes territory being lost, there's also the fact that many damage-related deaths in that setting were due to having enough missiles pummeling your mech that internal magazines exploded, or worse...A reactor explosion that detonated a miniature nuclear explosion that vaporized both your character and the mech.
IMO, if your game uses lethal action, then you cannot rule out character death as a result.
While it's not entirely lethal, a good IP for a MU might be "Into the Badlands", which is a mix of post apocalyptic setting and wandering Kung Fu badasses. Plenty of non-lethal is utilized in that setting, and your character getting their ass kicked in isn't so lethal.
I say that the concept of playing a criminal is entirely off-mark without the law to keep them in check. Good cannot exist without evil in concept, and thus, crime/criminals cannot exist without law/lawpersons (I collect my PC points)
I, if I were GMing, would not shy from checking a criminal player with anything ranging from IT information security, to patrol cops, to ATF task force investigations. There is no such thing as a criminal who does not need to be careful, and there is no such thing as a criminal with no need to cover their tracks.
As a GM, I would require rolls when conducting criminal business. Diplomacy for schmoozing the drug/gun buyers, law to know what the laws are, larceny rolls to determine success/failure. Their collective failures, successes, and gray-area decisions would be kept an eye on. A string of successes means the fine life. A string of fuckups might mean safe houses and fake passports.
If the player chose to continue to roleplay the character as brazen and careless despite warnings of an incoming ATF task force, then he/she may very well drive right into a choke point and plenty of kevlar-covered officers yelling at the character to get their hands up.
At that point, the player would have a decision to make:
However the pelican chooses to fly is up to the player, but as a fair GM, I would never let a criminal character just assume a stance of "so good that it's all about the funtime to of being a criminal without any pesky law enforcement trying to squick my fun"
@Misadventure A question I have not answered because I think my input is moot. I gave an example in relation to AllFleshMustBeEaten further back, and would rather hear from other people since I have no issues with risk.
Am very interested in hearing others chime in on it.
I have mentioned death, danger, running into the law, etc as well. Like the both of you, I'm speaking about far more than just character death in terms of risk.
@Seraphim73 MY answer is that, in theme, the Sith Trooper is not a free-willed smuggler. Troopers have rules to follow, and there are rules about insubordination. Part of playing a soldier in a standing army means having been trained to not mouth off.
I'd have my Sith Lord inform the Trooper of the rules, ICly, as a menacing warning. If he backs off, I'd send a message to his IC superior to deal with it. If the Trooper keeps mouthing off, it'd result in some touching.
I didn't mean to humblebrag.
It's just that I didn't want you guys to think that I pinched my neck eating tacos.
@surreality Because at the time in the thread there was a discussion about what makes characters unplayable, and it seemed like a valid point?
Not trying to do anything nefarious here.
@surreality said in Where's your RP at?:
@Ghost, you're sliding down the slope here on the unplayable thing, too, using the worst examples as an excuse to discount all of them. Knock it the fuck off, please. You're smarter than that shit.
I said sometimes. Not all cases. I said it should be kept an eye out for. I don't see where I suggested that the worst case is some kind of constant?
I pinched a nerve in my neck having sex...
...and then my sinus medication ran out.
Now I'm sneezing a lot and my neck hurts.
FML.
@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:
But really, I do the same. I pick a game because something about it sparks an idea for a character. If the character dies, sometimes I get a new idea, sometimes I find a new game. But I never let the possibility of the character dying stop me from playing on the game.
That's a very mature approach, IMO. Given the shelf life of games sometimes and how sometimes RP waxes and wanes, really characters are rented more often than they are kept for years anyway.
Enjoy the game? Play. Feel like moving on? Move on.
@mietze said in Where's your RP at?:
And again, I say this as a player who has had plenty of PCs PKed in different situations. As well as someone who has participated in PK as well.
Were you PKed for repeatedly double and triple posting?
Because it's easier to agree to the cookie and fight it afterwards than it is to argue the terms of the cookie before accepting it.
I've seen the term unplayable tied to a highly subjective state of my story, and this is something I think that people should keep an eye out for and be wary of.
I can completely understand when a character is unplayable because they're dead, rendered into the state of a comatose quadriplegic, incarcerated for life with no possibility of parole in a prison on the dark side of the moon, or literally turned into sentient strawberry jam.
I have heard (and seen first hand) some cases of the argument being made that a character has been rendered unplayable because an element the player demands be made available to them is not available. More or less, I've seen this leveraged as an argument for the people that do this to ultimately get their way. That, in some cases, the focus of my story is so subjective that things like not being allowed to have access to specific FBI files, a conflict resolved in a manner that benefits the character, or not being allowed to do something that no other character is allowed to do either is considered that which makes a character unplayable.
The reason I bring this up isn't to stoke any sort of argument, but is to bring into focus that there is a reasonable definition of unplayable and there is (in some cases) a definition of unplayable that is used as a leverage point to exhaust other people into giving others their way.
So, IMO, when dealing with the concept of a player being rendered unplayable, it should only apply to cases where the character itself is physically/mentally incapable of functioning. Wants do not equate to needs.
Eh. That's a tough one and really requires some suggested guidelines about the theme. Vampire could be played multiple ways, and technically, per the book, a Vampire could murder their ghoul, legally, because they're having a bad day. This isn't very popular to do with ghoul players, but is the culture of the game playing that level of high risk vampire? Really depends on the game, the staff, and how the Playerbase wants to play.
There are plenty of WoD characters/players that love having that 75 agg per hit means you must fear my UNDEFEATABLE DICE PENIS factor. Some flaunt it. Some don't. I would never condone that kind of bullying other players to keep them humbled, but the real question is...Is it in theme?
Again, this is where being clear about the risk expectation of the game, going in, is necessary. You have to accept that some players might see this level of risk and say "this game isn't for me", but it doesn't mean something wrong is happening if that is the style of game the players wish to play
Or incarceration.
Plenty of people enjoy playing criminal characters, but in any given setting, the realistic risk of playing a criminal character is arrest, capture, and incarceration that may render the character unplayable. Criminal characters are typically constantly on the watch for the law, investigation, and other criminals. The risks in a life of crime are many. The risks include incarceration, death, having to go on the run, rival gangs/cartels, etc.
If the player can mandate that they do not accept the risks of any of these for their criminal character, especially when there's a law sphere on the game whose sole IC purpose is to investigate criminals, then you're basically allowing the criminal player to mandate that THEIR STORY requires that the law players don't get to decide what to do with THEIR stories.
Molly the waffle house employee mandating that she would prefer to not roleplay a sudden ISIS attack AK-47, pipe bomb jamboree in her waffle house is fairly reasonable. She wants to serve waffles and meet people. That's awesome.
A PC drug cartel leader mandating that police officer characters do not harass them ICly with investigations that could lead to the character rendered unplayable due to Folsom Prison Blues is far less reasonable.
@Catsmeow Agreed on sending this to another thread.
Constructive answer: No. MUDs are highly automated and focused near entirely on dice rolls. They were the text based predecessor to MMORPGs where the main point to MUDs is running onto a grid, killing automated mobs of monsters, rushing back to your dead body after being resurrected, and roleplaying MUDs incorporate some RP space to roleplay alongside the grinding environment.
MUSH/MUX are more flexible and have incorporated more tabletop RPG systems into their environments. These can be used by the book (-10 hitpoints equals dead because book says so) or more fluidly (let's focus more on the story, less on the system), and the culmination of what I've been discussing is on the philosophy between those two play styles on MUX/MUSH, how to keep it fair for everyone, and how to make sure the rules used for the setting match the setting.
