All interesting takes on the problem at hand, and good conversation.
Thanks everyone, a lot to think about as I try to figure out how to make the slums on my game be dark, horrible, and a foul place that nobody should want to be without focusing purely on exploitation of those weaker than yourself.
@Usekh I've only cursory glanced over them to be honest, I mean I understand how it'd be possible in TT I mean on a mush wide setting.
For example:
In ShadowRun the PC's are usually a single runner team. On a MU* you've got runners, mafia, gang bangers, cops, fixers, faces, so on and so forth. It makes the game get diluted because there's not a single team focus anymore. You hope you can find a single team to run with but it never seems to work out that way. So nearly every run you go on you end up going with different people, which makes it hard to build a collective story and history between the PC's which makes it MUCH easier to just kill someone who pisses you off...
Which is the same issue I see with a Warhammer 40K MU* and it's a dilemma I am working on trying to solve myself for my own game so thoughts appreciated 
That's just one aspect, I'm just trying to figure out how to be true to the source material. When I run a game at home, TT, it's not hard to get that horror out there, psychological, visceral, emotional, whatever. It seems like the larger the cast of PC's the harder it is to make the 'horror' aspect stick. Which is what we see happen with MUSH's.
I am aware it would take staff being active, and that stuff, I am more curious as to the /methods/ to the madness that people would try to do to make the game darker, grittier, and more horrifying.
@Usekh said:
Any one of the Warhamer 40K RPGs
The problem with Warhammer 40K is everyone is meat for the grinder. Even space marines. They're all meat meat meat. The setting is also so frikken huge, how do you make it work? Do you set it on one planet? If so, what kind of planet? Is it a hive planet, a death planet, a planet with Necrons just waking up underneath the major city? How do you handle the human/xenos interaction? Or do you make it human only? If it's human only how do you handle psykers, mutants, genestealer cults, chaos, and everything else?
I'd love to see a good Warhammer 40K game myself also, I just don't know how to make it functional.
I just like how apparently I have become the face of all that is wrong with MSB even after @WTFE's posts. It's just thrilling.
That's not /quite/ as funny as @Jaunt thinking I care about how he views my person at all. It's just cute.
@il-volpe I am not sure if @Thenomain was being serious or not, maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Anyways I am just hoping we get an ignore thread out of this somehow. Or at least an ignore user. That'd go a long way to making things more palatable for me at least.
Regardless I've said my piece, most of it wasn't even trolling no matter what language was used. I like colorful adjectives. They are awesome.
Maybe in a little bit I'll get a hankering to continue but for now, peace.
See there's the thing, robbing an art gallery, not very horrific. WoD is supposed to be personal horror, not personal inconveniences.
I mean dark as in grim, as in pc's are not in control of their own destinies, as in the big bads should BE big bads and not monster of the week fodder.
I'm not talking about randomly pk'illing people either (If that's what was meant by the 'anvils' comment) I am talking about just dropping random events, happenings, that aren't planned, aren't scheduled, that help bring the world to life, so that there is more going on than regularly scheduled rp.
I think it's great that people run prp's and staff schedule things, but what about just dropping events and letting it proceed organically? What if someone in the course of travelling the grid suddenly came across someone trying to kidnap someone else, or ran across the victim of a serial killer, or saw someone getting fed on by unaligned vampires, or one of almost innumerable events that /could/ happen in the game world.
I wasn't talking about OOC masquerades either, I was talking about just a lack of... blandness.
People today aren't at risk unless they sign up for a plot with a staffer. People don't like to kill others in PrP's even when they should. Everything has kiddy gloves, it turns from World of Darkness to Supernatural Home Economics and Furry Superheroes 101.
So I am wondering how to inject the grim, the grit, the dark, back into the current WoD landscape of MU*'s.
I mean I personally am not a good enough coder to code an actual grid that remembers where people's mech's are, is easily customizable for terrain, and the like. Heck it might not even really be feasible, I just don't know.
So I'd need a coded vehicle system, that could move only so many hexes, handled torso twists, and turning, etc. That's what I meant, so that range was hard coded, difficulties, hard coded, otherwise you get into the guessing game of:
How far am I from the bad guys?
We see that a lot in WoD for example, but it's especially important to mech combat with different weapons having different ranges, with different modifiers.
@Derp said:
@Lithium said:
I also thought they were for npc's, sort of like the instagib of Gauru being only for NPC's I could and probably am wrong though.
The gauru mechanics are not optional, no, nor are they only for NPCs. Eldritch has HR'd them to be so. Down and Dirty doesn't apply to PC's via House Rule, not because of any actual mechanics. Even against other werewolves, you negate any athletics or other skill-based bonus to their defense. Beaten down, while considered optional, are optional in such a way as the ST can choose to ignore them, as they are 'on' by default. Most places, that I'm aware of, currently use them. They don't apply to most Supernaturals, though, so I can see where it might create confusion.
Not applying to supernatural's is what I meant (For beaten down). And by instagib, I mean that really unless it's a bad ass spirit, most npc's are plain jane mortal and are instantly erased by Gauru.
My current build is abusing the hell out of smite. Playing Expert Difficulty, one death = game over, seasonal crusader.
I am one handing a two hander (Because even with a damage loss, it's still WAY better than any one hander's I've found). I haven't reached any part where you throw horses at people, sounds... weird, but Consecrate, blast away with smite, 300+ recovery... it's deliciously fun.
I also thought they were for npc's, sort of like the instagib of Gauru being only for NPC's I could and probably am wrong though.
I've been tossing around some thoughts since reading the obfuscate code question and it made me realize that part of the problem with any 'dark' theme/setting is that it doesn't really translate well to MUSH. Maybe we've lost that 'edge' that made games more immersive in that fashion, maybe we're trivializing things that should be focused on, I don't know, but I thought about ways to ramp things up and was curious as to how many other ideas might be out there.
One of the things I was thinking about was adjusting the jobs system so that it would announce to participants that there was activity in their jobs via @pemit, maybe even in a different color so it stands out.
Then you could make up a job that was directed towards someone and just ask them to roll something, like, perception for example, to the job. Then you just leave it alone, never touch it, they will wonder why you asked them to roll perception and you can answer: No reason 
Their own imagination will do the work for you, and then they might actually start investigating something just out of paranoia, which would generate RP.
You could randomly drop stuff down on people. Just bam, something happens to random people who are anywhere IC out of the blue.
You could still have meta things going on of course, but even these few little things (I feel) would help make the game world feel /alive/ rather than a world based on the +events calendar.
@Thenomain said:
@Lithium said:
Partnership criteria is not the same thing as your charter.
So let me double-post for this, because it's important. I think, @Jaunt, that this is where your own misunderstanding is strongest. What we've been calling your charter (sometimes against @Jeshin's objections) is that bit on the front page that explains to every viewer what Optional Realities is about.
I have already given my input on this, and am waiting to see what happens. I've also said it was a good thing that the Partnership Criteria was spelled out and I think it's clear enough.
But I'll agree with Lithium here: It's not clear that gaining partners /is/ your charter. If it is, it's so buried that I'd not be surprised if few people (save those interested in becoming partners) know about it.
Incidentally, this is the thrust of @WTFE's racism analogies (I mean, besides to be offensive, but hey), and the core of my assertion that none of you three have a shared understanding of what Optional Realities is for.
I hope you're figuring that out.
MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF HEROES:
@Lithium said in Optional Realities & Project Redshift:
Ok you are interested, but if you were actually interested in their articles, you'd lurk on their site, and read their articles. You wouldn't need them to be linked to here, because you're already reading them there.
See where I'm going with this?
Nope. It saves me a trip to know that Optional Realities is having a bowling night and I can completely ignore them for another week. If I see something that interests me, I can read it. It's better than an RSS feed.
LOL Ok. Then I'll just put in we REALLY need an ignore thread option. At least. If not an ignore thread and an ignore person.
@bows out.
@Thenomain said:
I am interested.
I am not there because I am afraid of my nerd-rage. I don't want to subject innocent people to this. This is not something new/manipulative; I have said this to @Jeshin in the past.
Here, any perceived harm done to the Optional Realities crew is self-inflicted and I feel a little less culpable. Home team advantage, that is. Conversation might not be what they want it to be, but it is happening.
Part of what's triggering my desire to bang my head against the wall has been repeatedly addressed in conversation here and just needs to be addressed on the site itself. This is something you've said. This is something @Jaunt's said. This is something everyone knows. Promises are there, we just now need action.
Ok you are interested, but if you were actually interested in their articles, you'd lurk on their site, and read their articles. You wouldn't need them to be linked to here, because you're already reading them there.
See where I'm going with this?
EDIT: Thankfully typing fast enough to make @Thenomain not double post!
Partnership criteria is not the same thing as your charter.
Seriously, it's just not.
I've never brought up your 'partnership criteria' at all, I don't care how inclusive, exclusive, or whateverclusive you and your site are. People pointed out your fails, and you (OR people) responded poorly, and it snowballed.
Then you came here and throw more gasoline on the fire, on purpose, and expect things to get /better/.
That's just beyond stupid. I almost don't have the words.
Your failing to see that different people have different issues with what you, and your 'friends' or 'co-workers' are doing. We're not all just one nebulous entity. We have different things that have torqued us off.
You have chosen to not address them time and time again, and in fact to insult them, so bluntly... you're worthless to actual discussion.
That's actually pretty elegant. One of the systems I was tossing around was very simple:
Add your attribute + skill + equipment + 1d# (I was uncertain on using 6's, 8's, or 10's) in opposing rolls. Highest wins, with differential applied to damage/success.
Oh? The only LARP systems I've ever heard of were those based around D&D and WoD, didn't know Cthulhu LARP was a thing.
Learn something new every day.
@Bobotron said:
@Lithium
I didn't code it to be automatically opposed. It's meant to be appropriately manually rolled off between players and the expectation is for people not to metagame when someone is tagged <Hidden> in the room when they enter or when someone appropriately disappears around them.It's part of the reason I don't use the DARK version myself (I use that to determine if Virtual Characters, which are used for primarily NPCs, are in the room, but I know lots of people love the DARK thing). The DARK one is more there as an example of how you can use attributes to show people in rooms based on an attribute, and thus simulate reality levels with softcode.
If you needed, you could futz with Auspex to have some type of global @aenter for rooms that autoscans for Obf'ed people to go from there.
Ahh.
For whatever reason I was thinking they just didn't show up.
For someone with little faith in humanity (like me) the <Hidden> tag doesn't work for me, because people will (un)consciously change their RP knowing they are being observed. They won't talk about something that can be used against them, because people don't want to hurt themselves (Unless you /do/ there's a whole victim type of character personality after all).
For example:
Obfuscated vampire is following a person around trying to learn information. Person knows they are being followed, so simply changes what they were going to do, or doesn't talk about anything damning, because they know they are being followed and their character watched.
It is something really hard to prove to, but I'm sure it happens. Just like I am sure there are people who use the Umbra and Obfuscate to spy on TS.
It happens.
There's no perfect system for it, but I personally, especially on 'dark' themed games like WoD, will always take the path of greater IC paranoia
@Groth said:
@Jaunt said:
We post an update, what, once a week? Once every two weeks? It's pretty non-intrusive, too. It just says, "Hey, here's what is going on at OR if you're interested."
On this particular point, I'm actually with @Jaunt. It's very easy to avoid this thread if you don't want to be in it, until today I had actually never opened this thread before because I couldn't care less and it was only until I saw the thread that @Thenomain split off to discuss MUSH philosophy that I got interested in investigating the source.
Yes this thread will show up among your unread threads however you don't have to read all your unread threads, you really don't.
My point before I got into the 'heat' of this, is that if we were actually 'interested' in what they were posting...
We'd already be there. We'd check their site. We'd be /aware/ of what was posted.
It makes every single content post here absolutely unnecessary.
It makes the thread pop up again, and for those of us with OCD, we have to see what's being said. Because we're curious at the very least. There might be something interesting we want to talk about or discuss.
Then it's just more spam about articles we would know about, if we actually cared about the site.