Best posts made by lordbelh

@Ganymede Oh, don't get me wrong. I was advocating an AP style system since day 1. I didn't get traction from staff then, but I was pretty confident it was going to come sooner or later if the game in any way achieved the kind of popularity and metaplot activity of RfK. By and large the AP might need some fine tuning, but its a solid premise. I've always been a delegate/cooperate type anyway (or so I like to think), but now its even more important.

The clue part I feel is one of those classic instances where staff has echo chambered themselves into a decision that runs counter to the playerbase and frankly their own stated intentions for the game. Massive clue dumping in scenes were determined to be a problem (I can accept that), but the response to that was absolutely out of proportion.

I love me some Dresdenverse.

@mietze said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I try to match my length to what's around me, as well as being respectful of intent of the scene.

This.

And the courtesy thing. I can forgive a lot of writing flaws from people who are easy going and treat me and my time with respect.

Temprooms are great, especially temprooms that live on grid so they feel connected to the rest of the universe rather than floating off the OOC room in the ether of things.

I have tried to RP from my phone twice, both necessitated by the internet service dying, and being in the middle of something I felt obliged to finish for other people's takes.

But man, its a solution of last resort.

@Nein I'd say its the only kind of comic game I've be interested in playing. In the past, its the only kind I have roleplayed, as seeing someone play Batman, (Or Han Solo in a SW game, or Harry Potter in a Harry Potter game) just makes me roll my eyes.

@Gingerlily The most fun I've had was playing as the underdogs in RfK. Steele, a Ventrue Invictus who dabbled with the Sanctified, had replaced council power with ye ol' Princely autocracy. It really invigorated the Carthians during his rule. He greatly favored his Invictus fellows (naturally) so they got perks, and that gave us something to rail and plot against. Then Steele burned out and let his character die, and in the political vacuum that followed where territory, positions, power, etc, was up for grabs was delightful chaos.

A lot of posturing, and scheming, and betraying, and in the end nobody even ended up dead. Boons nobody'd thought about before became suddenly used to secure the reluctant support of character who hated you. One of the greatest joys I had was calling in a Major Boon (itself a bit of effort of collecting smaller boons to build up his debt) on the Big Nasty Nosferatu former Seneschal, and force him to support the Carthians even if he really didn't like my character or the Carthian Experiment at all. (And he was delightfully cool about it.)

@Gingerlily The important thing is that you have avenues to explore the rivalry in low key ways, that the competition becomes about IC things, rather than OOC pride. And again, that you have ways to deescalate.

Thanks for the shoutout, @Ganymede. I still think our Starwars crew had some real potential for fun times.

I've generally found that in this hobby most people are pretty okay. There's the occasional shitty player/staffer, but by and large most aren't. In fact they'll stretch themselves pretty far to make shit fun for you if they feel you're trying to do the same for them.

And what I really love is that feeling you get when you've come across a random new person and the roleplay is amazing. I don't have to play with them all the time, and sometimes the follow up will only be from afar as circumstance IC/OOC dictates it, but just learning that there's yet another gem out there never fails to give me a thrill.

It feeds my belief that there'll always be another story to explore.

@Bobotron RfK had a lot of staff time sinks, though; a sprawling metaplot: the (admittedly great, but seriously time consuming) way they handled beats. The influence system itself might theoretically have been limited by Down Time hours, but it didn't take very long for a character to have so much Down Time that it no longer really mattered. It was all scaled for a small game with relatively low powered characters, not 100+ characters, some of whom had thousand + beats. If I were to make a game, or advise someone who was making a game, with a political angle, it would be to take inspiration from RfK, but not copy the mechanics.

@Shlappy said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Still - if there is a hate mob in the MUSH community, you will find it here. And that's...disconcerting.

Perhaps I just don't see it (I don't), but if you could be specific then that'd be useful. I'm not saying that there isn't petty and bitter shit thrown around on MSB (there certainly is), but generally people who just spew hate tend to be called on it. They're checked and challenged more than supported.

There in lies much of its strength. Because these things are said anyway, they are thought, are whispered and bandied around. They're screamed and spewed out across skype and other private arenas.

There are some loud voices here, and there are some very unkind voices here, but I don't think there is a whole lot of communal hate.