Best posts made by Lithium

So I am moving ahead with my plans to create a ShadowRun MUX, set in the year 2050, but using rules from 5th edition. Obviously some things are going to be right out (Technomancers), and others vastly limited (Bioware/Cyberware/Gear/Agents) to try and create the wild west of running, back before power creep and weapon bloat.

My question for everyone who might be interested in such a thing (Since there seems to be some interest in a new functional SR MUX) is where would you like it to be set?

From the outset I am avoiding Seattle, Denver, Detroit, London, and Berlin because those games have been made, they've got their stories, and I want to take things back to the beginning, story wise, create our own future that doesn't end up with stuff like nanites attacking and reprogramming our brains so that AI's can live in the meat (Good for a written book, not so good for a game setting in my honest opinion).

Right now I have Four main cities in mind:

Atlanta, Capital of the CAS
Boston, New Home of the Stock Exchange and a lot of corporate power with it's own nasty slums and whatnot (Probably the easiest due to there actually being more source material, but that comes with it's own pitfalls)
Austin, On the border between the CAS and Aztlan, a volatile place, exciting in it's own right.
San Francisco, East meets West, literally, another great city for intrigue, culture clashes, national pride, etc.

So out of those four I'm just fishing for opinions as to what you guys would like to see. Feel free to pick one, or number them in order of most liked to least, or whatever, rant, rave, tell me I'm crazy, etc.

I love it when a scene or random RP goes in unexpected ways where I get to actually explore what a character would do without having a default fallback for them. Where things go sideways to the point I am like thinking to myself: 'Oh shit, what are they going to do?'

This is especially profound when it's a character I've been playing for a long time and they are well established in my head to the point that writing them just flows.

It's those moments that I find especially intriguing and fun to play out.

I also like it when a scene gets my adrenaline pumping because I may end up in real trouble, might lose the character, or a characters friend might be in serious trouble.

I guess that's why I hate consent based systems, I love the element of random chance, where bad luck can really ruin someone's day.

Honestly... I think survival/apocalypse genre games need either a highly involved and active staff that is making plotfu happen at regular intervals /or/ coded threats/bots that attack and screw things up at various intervals.

If you don't have those, then you lose the 'survival' aspect of the game because there's nothing threatening your survival during those lulls.

If you are randomly RP'ing and all the sudden you are attacked though, then shit just got real.

Same if you are having to go out and coded look for supplies to 'survive' with and then bam, attacked, or maybe it's just another type of survival event. That ground? Yeah that wasn't ground, that was actually a leaf covered rotted remains of a floor over a basement full of murky stagnant water and who the fuck knows what else. Deal or die.

Survival and apocalyptic games /need/ to have existential threats, and often, or it's not really a survival or apocalyptic theme imho.

@Sunny said in RL Anger:

I just don't have the energy for the topic. I'm so freaking angry and frustrated at the way people are behaving that it makes me question even continuing to participate in this corner of the community.

I feel dismissed.

I feel marginalized.

Up until now, I would have maintained that while the hobby certainly has its issues, it's managed to avoid the worst of it and be something of a safe space, in general, to just be female. Presently, given the behavior of people that I otherwise respected, that I thought were understanding...yeah, no.

Way to turn a conversation about people being abused into something about why men feel bad when women talk about harassment/discrimination.So sorry that the fact that I was assaulted hurts somebody's feelings, or something.

I feel the same. I've seriously considered stopping work on my game, and removing the soapbox from my bookmarks over all of this.

@Bobotron said in Eliminating social stats:

@Thenomain
I don't disagree. I'm the same way; flaws are there to be played out and being a 100% perfect character all the time is no fun.

As far as agency. Acting out your own agency is fine, but there's got to be a balance/point between acting out your own agency and adhering to the mechanical rules of social conflict. If I'm persuaded to give up a secret password to the Computer System of Doom and I've been appropriately placated and rolled no successes on the conflict, it's not fair of me to 'play my own agency' as being 'well I won't give it to you' because I, the player, don't want to.

That's the problem. People don't want to abide by mechanical enforcement of that.

When there is a game system that /has/ social rules, not using them, or just refusing to abide them is tantamount to cheating in my book.

I'm not saying every system needs social stats, one of my favorite game systems of all time doesn't have anything remotely resembling a social stat, but if it's there, and there are rules, the rules should be followed imho.

That's part and parcel to deciding to play on the game that is using the system.

Or it should be. You see it a lot though, especially in CoD/WoD because people buy things where they get social power from it, but everyone just ignores it, even going so far as to flagrantly not abide the rules of the merit/power/skills being used.

To many people just want to be super heroes.

@Cupcake Clearly he has his own issues, but, I'm of the opinion there is nothing /special/ about 'family' they are just people like any other person on the planet. So I'd just cut him out of my life completely. I had to do that with my sister once when she was being a selfish bitch.

I'm with Ganymede on this one.

I used to run plots all the time, on several games, when I was just a player on those game. I can explain the two things that have /dramatically/ cut down on my desire to do such.

1. The lack of staff doing something too.

I will happily run stories for people, but I want to /play/ also. If the staff are not active or doing things except for their besties, I will stop because I want to fucking /play/. Not just run, /play/. I am not a staffer. It is not my duty to run stories for people if I am a player. I will burn out, and stop.

2. The inability to tell stories that actively influence /anything/ in the game world.

If I have to jump through hoops to get a plot approved then it should be able to have some impact on the game, and the story, other than for those it was involved in. If it does not, you end up with what is essentially the monster of the week, that is oh so terrible, but not really, cuz even if the PC's all /died/... nothing else happened. The PC's disappeared, got deaded, there may be some follow up, there may not, but let's get real here. If something wipes out a group of PC's then it /probably/ has other goals than to just wipe out said PC's. It should /probably/ have an impact on the world beyond that group.

There are other things, but those are the two big ones for me. I run stories on a super hero game that uses a very crunchy system. I was getting a lot of love from the player base for telling my stories, the players were engaged, I was having legwork mails sent to me, etc.

When I get the rug pulled out under me it really kills any desire to do anything further. If I can't actually do anything to create a /lasting/ story, then it kills desire too.

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

@sunny - For the record, I don't think anybody is stupid for liking a grid, I just honestly don't understand it. I accept it as a preference, I just don't get why it matters how you get to a scene. It's like somebody speaking a foreign language to me - it just doesn't compute. If that failure to grok has ever unintentionally come across as intolerant, my apologies.

I can explain this one! Yay!

The how is important because it helps make the world feel /real/, at least for some. A character moving through streets makes it feel like the character is actually /there/ on that street, in that environment. It builds a shared environmental continuity.

If all you do is port into scene rooms, then there is no sense of continuity, there is no sense of that place actually /existing/ which is big for some people to get into the characters and the setting more.

It's not really a right way wrong way thing, just one of those things that people are going to have to make up their minds for themselves on.

I personally hate RP rooms. I feel they close off that RP to outside influence. They feel private and not welcoming to people.

If I am RP'ing on the grid in a public room, I should by default be willing to have others involve themselves in the RP.

@three-eyed-crow hits the nail on the head here, there are a /ton/ of games, that are not WoD that are quite happily spinning along.

It's just most people get all their 'numbers' from Mudstats. Which is not all inclusive.

All I care about is furthering and engaging with the story.

Give me something to respond to and keep the story going or it's time to end the RP as it's not going anywhere at that point.

Every other factor is of much less importance.

I am not a grammar nazi, if I can understand it then it's all good.

I am not a spelling nazi. We all make mistakes.

The only other factor that 'matters' to me is length of time between poses. If I am falling asleep because you're taking more than 15 minutes to pose, then I am probably not going to stick around for much longer. I have limited time. Don't abuse it.

I liked the colors of potato but for me it was shift F1 and Shift F2, being able to convert line breaks and spaces into %r and %b's that keeps me using SimpleMU.

EDIT: And Control-P to cycle through what I'd written before.

@Pyrephox I know the appeal for the game I am building right now will be limited, but you know what? I'm still gonna build it and just hope that others enjoy it as much as I hope to.

@Apos Welcome to the 'Entitled'. A class of 'Player' who believes the 'Player' is superior to every other aspect of the game, and thus should be worshiped. They feel the game should revolve around /their/ ideas, and to hell with staff or theme or anyone else who doesn't share their opinion.

They tend to travel in packs, so as to throw their weight around, and try to 'ruin' games as soon as things don't go their way.

@Monogram You don't get to decide what brings the RP 'down' for everyone who plays though. Different people have different likes, dislikes, wants, and desires.

My character wanted nothing more than to find some smart people, and get the hell away from all the violent sociopaths to create a farming agrarian society of their own.

Still think it would have been awesome RP building our own society and such, trying to keep it alive..

I am going to put together a Dresden Files game set in San Francisco, using Big Trouble in Little China for a huge source of inspiration. It'll be set after the fall of the Red Court, but I need more than just myself to put this thing together. I can handle the code (Fate is stupid easy to code for), but I cannot build and run this thing all on my lonesome.

To that end, I know there are people who hate Fate, but I also know there are people who like it, and I need at least a few other intrepid souls to help me make this thing whole and functioning. Story tellers, staff, etc.

There's also the very trite rule of: My game, my rules.

If you make a game, run it the way you want to.

People will play or not play as they see fit.

It is absolutely impossible to please everyone so don't try. Make a game you have fun with, and go with it. That's all anyone can do.

@quinn Life 4, Matter 3, Prime 2.

Lawnchair.

@ganymede So change it so downvotes don't touch popularity? The whole 'popularity' metric needs to get tossed on it's ear to begin with, it's complete bullshit.

@WTFE said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lithium said in Eliminating social stats:

Without bad things, there is no conflict, without conflict there is no drama, there is only bar RP and TS.

I think this may be the very first time I've heard a call for MORE drama on a MU*...

Can't have an engaging story without drama. IC drama is a good thing, OOC drama is crap.

@Tempest No, in some ways, not just on a MU. Look at the power creep problem. Vampire was plenty good. Then werewolf came along and had some crazy things that were kind of unfightable (I'm looking at you Spirit Conditions). Then Mage came along and simply broke everything (What, no, I got 3 successes and it's Praxis, so no, you don't get a resistance trait to reduce the power of this spell that will totally destroy you. Sorry.). Then there was Demon the I have to make 4 character sheets to play one character, and Promethean the I wanna be human! Now I'm human and I wanna be anything but! Then Beast, which I haven't really read much, but I hear is seriously OP. (Not even going to get into the WTFuckery of Skinchangers)

So, no, 2e is annoying in more ways than just trying to put it onto a MU* At least in my opinion.

Though to be fair, most of the problems come with trying to put more than one splat in play at the same time. Yay for single sphere games!