Posts made by Lotherio

@Derp said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

@Lotherio said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

nversely longevity again ... After a year or two of dinosaur bloat, new players don't want to join. Or join then complain because it's the same dinos with all the power that affect the game.

See, I ... kind of don't think that this is necessarily a valid counterpoint.

Maybe John the New Guy, Perennial Loner can't do things around the oldbies.

But John the New Guy, Tina the Couple Monther, and their friends Tim, Jerry, and Fred could all get together and figure out a way to make changes to their environment by consolidating their specific stuff. A coalition of people can accomplish between them more than what any one oldbie can do. And if they have such a problem with the Way Things Are that they think it needs to change, then they can surely find Like-Minded Folk out there to help them achieve it. (Or if they can't, it might be best that they aren't able to enforce their specific vision of changes).

Gee. What a shame that would be. Players having to work together to get stuff done, instead of Going it Alone Forever. Those dinobots are a problem, man.

Newbie retention not valid? I'll forget that comment.

At what point does newbie get to be cool experiences person, dino is always that much ahead of them?

+sheet is less an interest to me than character development. If +sheet is the focus just feels like a game to me and everyone is making meta decisions for advancement.

@Derp said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

@Arkandel said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

Make damn sure to let your newbies be able to catch up. It doesn't need to (and shouldn't) happen too fast; let them work for it since otherwise it invalidates your oldbies' efforts, but make it possible.

See, this is the part that I'm getting hung up on in most of our systems that currently exist. You either start off as Pretty Damn Powerful, or you know you'll get Pretty Damn Powerful within X amount of time just because of the way the system is coded, and I see two problems with it:

Inversely longevity again ... After a year or two of dinosaur bloat, new players don't want to join. Or join then complain because it's the same dinos with all the power that affect the game.

Follow up side note, i think heavy rules mechanics in the wake of 3e and other games sucked some energy out of fight scenes by bogging it all down.

@Arkandel said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@Ghost said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

as well as that 'wandering Kung Fu badass' energy is captured in a bottle.

That's kind of what concerns me about it, in that it's not easy to capture the high energy visuals of a kung fu fight in poses, let alone mechanics.

It's however the same issue I have with many similar hard to portray things I really enjoy. For example although in theory I'd love a Lord of the Rings MUSH, the cruel reality of meeting idiots who play horny Elves prevents me from even trying one.

Dragon Fist; TSR released it for free as they sold D&D to WotC back around 1999. I ran a campaign for a few weeks don't recall the exact mechanics off hand, but totally captured wuxia/Hong Kong action film. It came down to planning an outrageous maneuver getting a bonus the more out there it was, then one roll to see if it works.

Two memories from that campaign ... We did the fighting in poles thing pretty early on and it worked even at low level. Then one fight scene in a paper wall house, a villain was knocked over but the fought on his back, slipping under his counterparts legs for a four arm attack. It ran smoothly, never bogged down and captured kung fu fighting without extra rules ( it was all 2e).

@Arkandel said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@Three-Eyed-Crow
long policies

Long policies got us here in the first place, policy envy.

@Arkandel said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@Tempest said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

Into the Badlands could be pretty dope. I'm pretty sure there's a crowd around who are always talking about wanting a post-apoc game. The problem is they probably want more Fallout-y?

One of the many, many, many issues that fragment our community (but also make it great in a way, take your pick) is we're so hard to please and won't compromise easily.

Sure, I want a post-apocalyptic game, but not Fallout, and no no, The Walking Dead isn't it either, I want Badlands - exactly that, nothing else will do. Or... sure, I want a DC Comics game but set in the post-Rebirth Universe not the New 52. What do you mean the Flash is Barry Allen? No no, I'm out.

This is why my pref is actually not cannon setting but original theme. Us that love cannon can't argue with Flash is best, or which splat book should be used. But everyone seems to want cannon for familiarity which circles back into which parts of cannon are best.

@Jennkryst said in What MU*s do right:

@Lotherio said in What MU*s do right:

... Battletech

I've always kind of wanted a Mechwarrior RPG game with +sheets and +rolling and typical mush things... but with BT MUX type combat.

This would be great, one or two tried in mid to late 90s, but low player base from what I recall. But I'd play this.

@tragedyjones said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):

• Grid Design - Part of me feels that a pre-made, pre-described grid is... a waste. Many players eschew the room descriptions, and many prefer to use +temprooms, RP rooms or private builds. How much is a minimum necessary grid design for a city? The sprawling layouts of DM or even HM are, imo, dead.

I disagree, for longevity, more grid means less of the same bar rp day after day. The other half of this problem is a) staff burns out and mu ends in 3 to 6 months, or b) players only stay for a few months and leave cause ' nothing to do', which relates to some players not wanting to ST or run PrPs. I don't think grid size is any issue, a few rooms to start and temp rooms as needed is good. But large grid for longevity, means players have more ideas for potential scenes the longer they stay ( what's this, we have back alley jewellery shop, gives me an idea for a one shot that could develop into a tp of some sort).

• An End to Bar-P - I have long ranted against random social banter RP, slice of life stuff, when that is all I can find. It is something I personally feel should be used as a downtime thing between active story

If you don't like social rp or slice of life, don't play it. In 20 years of this, loving all the action adventure, I can set the most fun character development for me is from slice of life, reacting to the last adventure, reacting to the big meta bbpost, developing more relationships. If I want adventure after adventure I'll do tt or just regular adventure day once a week. But slice of life helps perpetrate stories, ponder new points of view and affects adventure time.

• Homework - Some games thrive on this, some entirely balk at the idea. But in general, how much effort is fair to ask of your players? Is background too much? Scene tracking? How can we streamline this process as well. Clearly automatic logging is not something most people, or anyone, wants.

Character wise, minimal bg, but homework to know the game a little. My pref is after approval they contribute to the theme by adding to the game. Thru a wiki is the best, developing a house, an org, a hangout not on the grid, npcs, a new business, an idea. Anything. I'm off the mindset it's collaborative story telling more than a game where staff do all this work and players wait for staff to make things happen. This detracts from longevity through staff burn out.

• Making things matter - How do you make what happens logical, consistent, and important without dedicating a small team to it? How do you ensure that the firefight that happens in one neighborhood actually impact the lives of the characters who live there but were not logged in at the time? How can we establish continuity of Non-Player characters between stories, characters, players, and scenes?

I've tended to create tracking for player plots and npcs on the wiki for places I help with. The issue is usually player by in to contribute to these things. I started villain tracking on comic mu*s a few years back just to help with continuity; like reading a log with villain x when yesterday your group put him into space and planned to use him tomorrow. The homework is needed and lots of players just want adventure and hope someone else is stinging continuity together at some point.

It's a collaboration between all players (staff included) and without commitment and buy in, the rest inevitably doesn't work either way so well .

Sorry belated reply.

I don't know, I'm a dork ... But Battletech 3065 was impressive. It only simulated mech battles. But you got into one object, a pod, loaded up a mech, then it put that on a grid. Basically it stored your mech stats and map in another object. Then coordinated a lot of players, 30+ in each battle in the big ones, to utilize basically 10-15 potential technical screens from map to your current hex to ammunition and you char sheet, while running a tic every second or two that updated your info and position fast enough for everyone to call on updated stats and positions every second.

Literally, one would call 5 screens every 10 second, many used the old multi Windows and stacking of clients to see them all at once instead of fast scrolling. All players doing this at once through the vast amount of data being updated and utilized at that speed was always impressive for a text based environment like a Mu*.

Whoever did those early Battletech maths did it right.

@ZombieGenesis said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

I'd love to see something utilizing Dragonlance or Masters of the Universe personally. I kinda get why there are not MotU games but I'm shocked at the lack of Dragonlance games.

Dragonlance Mux ran for a decade or so until early 2ks, played out. Only so much good vs bad dragon one can do, anything beyond chronicles of the lance is to specialized for average players, or too specialized for general theme mu/play.

It was followed with a Tales of Krynn sort of game that started around 98 or so, featured story arc style play. A few weeks to a few months was one time period of great crisis around war of souls to start, when an arc was played out, the grid paused for two week. They would advance a generation or tolwo to the next war/crisis. Fills reapped, used prior timeline for new chars. The current arc was influenced by previous arc, recognizing stories and legends and taking influence from prior arc. That went 3 or 4 years.

A few handles here seem to be players and staff from the original mux, late period staff/long time players; or just coincidence. The handle thread ... Lotherio was my original bit in the original Dragonlance Mux.

Flash Gordon, sci fantasy L&L for politics and conflict post Ming, impressive beastiary for easy prp nemesis, atomic age sci fiction weapons and vehicles for awesomeness.

@cirim13 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

but how cool would it be to have a character who needs to eat insane amounts of algae for 3-4 weeks of the year but then basically lives on sunshine and has to stay in shallow waters for a year because sunlight...

It's dead but thumbs up ... The Red Fete ... Part religious, part hook up and make offspring ( lay eggs and fertilize?), part party, then of to wallow in the shallows.

Edit: typing on phone, spelling bad, fixing

@Admiral said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

There was a book series about creatures evolved from insects instead of humans or something. With magic.

Reavers in the Runelords books were pretty cool. Overpowered as a foe because of all the Larry/Mary Sue main characters in the books, but liked that concept for insectoid race.

A fleshed out Flash Gordon Mu would be good. Room for lots of whacky nobles and politics for L&L folks, play between rebellious groups, neutral sorts (Thule and the Lion Men), and Ming and his allies like the king of the ice giants. Tons of play in wars between the factions. Lots of atomic age sci-fi'ery with ray guns, tractor sleds, air sleds and other tech weapons and gadgetry. Hoards of natural monsters for action on the fly, dragons, ice worms, you name it. Not that it helps OP, but would be ripe for space L&L with loads of room for action adventure without upsetting the overall meta.

@surreality said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@Seraphim73 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

Hardskins. Shellheads. The Undersea. Carapace People. Crabmen. (Nope, those all suck, sorry.)

^ That is totally where I am on those, too. For real.

Rusalka (Slavic underwater demon)

Beisht koine (irish water monster .... Translates as beast with black head)

Or the Snorks

@ThatGuyThere said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

I definitely feel that he system and setting should match up with the same feel but since setting wasn't mentioned really in the initial question I went with the system I most want to play more of.

I'm the opposite of this. On a Mu*, I want simple mechanics that makes for quick resolution and doesn't distract from role-playing. As long as one can do stuff in general easily, doesn't have to be tailored to a setting for me. Too many rules or additions or splats and it's inevitable that every fight scene/action sequences/multitude of dice rolls gets bogged down at one point by rules discussion ... And usually both sides are valid with certain interpretation but neither wants to buckle. Some might arguing the room for interpretation is a sign of bad system design; I firmly believe no system can account for every plausibility and that is left in the hands of the story teller/plot runner/gm/whatever.

@faraday said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

@Sparks said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

I am rarely super-excited about the dice mechanics of a game, though I admit I love my time/advancement system I used elsewhere. There are systems I think 'oh, well, I already have that in my brain so I can use it easily', but I'm not going to go, "Oh, this game with this random setting is using GURPS, so I'm super stoked!"

I'm the same. There are systems that are a turn-off for me (D20 or Dahan's system for instance) but rarely are they a total deal-breaker, and never are they a big reason for excitement.

My pref is FS3 or WEG d6 for simplicity. Dahans initial was d6 conversion before the percentile one. Found this funny cause his d6 and FS3 are my preferences.

Otherwise the sentiment echoed most is what I think ... Rpg Systems are meant for tt and small number of players that are focus of play and break with more players.

Belated, I have limited time to watch and didn't want spoilers.

I'll weigh in on the enjoyed the series spectrum. For me Jessica Jones had this, the first half was pointless until the story of her, here friend, Steve and Kilgrave got going.

This first half was similar ...meh ninjas, the hand monks. The drunken master fight scene it got better and better starting there.

Totally classic wuxia. Three challenges (Goa, Bakuto, Harold), each defeat giving him meaning and advice for next challenge. They all become his teacher. They played on the standard three with the early tourney but that was too fast. Better he needed wits, not just iron fist smash things. That made it classic for me. Then in the end it's not looking out for answers but finding it within, when he didn't kill Harold. Any other way and it wouldn't of been kung fu americana, much as Luke Cage had to play off blacksploitation flicks of the 70s.

You get a glimpse of how bad ass he'll be when he finds himself be the double iron fist WW. II footage, homage to crazy costume like Luke Cages headband being in one episode.

Completely integral to Defenders. The mystic arts and they're reason to defend, more Hand, and financial backing to operate ... Matts firm isn't going to foot the bill. It has me hyped for Defenders when I wasn't initially cause I want the c next season's of DD Cage and Jones.

I'd argue some of the boosts in the past decade were related to female and diverse characters.

But as @Arkandel said, lack of story interest and probably new concepts. Everything just feels old character new skin. It's not a new street level character, it's Spider-Man but a lady, or another ethnicity, or both. It's not a different rogue healing clawed wolverine, it's a female wolverine oh and the twist it's his clone.

Come on, most economic and marketing basic classes agree a sacred cow keeps a company going (wolvetinr and iron man) .. But is still finite, new sacred cows will be needed for ultimate sustainability.

@Bobotron said in PC antagonism done right:

All this is beautiful discussion, but one thing to bring up: how? Or rather, how without it turning into the massive staff overhead that RfK handled?

I think it still comes down to it, its improbable to have open acceptance and adherence to long term pc antagonists.

I think part of the culture is everyone wants beginning, middle and end. Even MU*s, more and more there is some planned end, or season that have a conclusion before going to the next.

Old allegory, we played Dragonlance Mux until 2002~? It was the same dragon war, for a ~decade. Everyone wanted it to develop, but it stayed constant, same bad guys, same background conflict. If that opened today and played out that way, everyone would give up after a few months because it is too stagnant in today's environment.

And on the other hand, I know a few long term players out there that stick to their stories and play them through. I'm pretty sure if I went to Chicago Mush, the same 2-3 people would be there playing out their stories. Some people can play out character development longterm, some do not prefer it. I don't think any system will address this or culture change will make it more wide spread.

Play out antagonists with those you know and trust. If you try it with someone new, you're open to everything pointed out in this thread as potential pitfall, from bad PC antagonism to the white hat burn and murder stuff, burn and murder stuff.

Edit: grammar.