Topics created by Lotherio

@faraday said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

That's what I think @Ganymede was alluding to with "you barely even noticed it" on BSGU. There were enforced travel times, but I took care to set up most of the missions so the travel time didn't inconvenience anybody.

Exactly.

Like, if you were in a starship on a Star Trek game, and you were traveling from Omicron Persei VIII to Betelgeuse XIII, it might take 7 days to travel there. So, you couldn't really do any land missions during that time. What you could do, though, is schedule social gatherings and events during the travel time, which can always be suddenly interrupted by a mischievous Q or some random deep-ass philosophical event that shuts down the warp core because your ship's counselor is having some weird Betazoid psychic freak-out or something, I don't know.

One of the last things we're working out is Valor. Valor replaces glory for Valorous Dominion; simply because Glory has a large tie to chivalry. Valor is very similar, fame and reputation, status and standing, gossip in the shadows and glory on the lute of musicians. But, it's not really chivalrous. Vendetta is a large part of daily life for the nobility, and thus courage to act and defend honor is a sign of valor. Likewise, it is reputation. Doesn't have to come from good deeds; best example I can think of is Cersei Lannister's walk of shame. It may have been humiliating, but her courage to do it or her gumption to do it in spite of everything might have bolstered her reputation from the event.

House management and Vindicti are systems in place. One of the uses of house commodities is to hold social events, sporting events, tournaments and the like. Not only is this a way to impress/turn the ear of NPCs of influence, it is a way to increase house reputation. We are focusing less on combat (it's there) as a means to gain Valor, this concept is similar to hosting tournaments in Pendragon. The net 'glory' is instead awarded to the house as reputation. Individuals that attend the party gain 1/10th that reputation as personal valor. It will mirror the levels of glory for tournaments, with a progression for importance of the event; one can raise the level by attracting influential/famous NPCs to the event. The easiest way to get an NPC to show up is spending of house or personal reputation to draw them to the gathering, increasing the reputation for the house to host such notable individuals and, thereby, increasing personal valor for being in attendance at prestigious events. We're hoping a lot of the drive to gain and earn valor is player driven.

Another implementation post-opening we are planning is a quirk/hook/goal system. We're not requiring any of these for characters, but those wishing to add them and play them out will be rewarded. Our focus in the system is on houses, anything we don't see is something we won't know about. Using this system will prevent reliance on +requests to earn Valor, but like all systems it will take effort and this will require logging on some level to supply to the system as proof of goals. Rather than define levels of goal/quirk/hook involvement, it will be by the month and the amount of scenes/etc in which the goal is worked on or the hooks played out. No matter how many listed, there will be a limit of Valor awarded per month.

All that said, we are settling on an opening of Monday (23rd). It's a full opening and we're sure there are plenty of things missed or overlooked. It will come with changes, code fixes, theme clarifications and anything in between. Once we open it will be a persistent setting for the characters developing. We could call it alpha, but even if anything needs fixed changed, the characters, there will be little cosmetic difference as the story persists.

@wildbaboons
OGL has to post the rules, but noting else I believe. No idea how Starfinder, as a Pathfinder + SciFi functions there.

@Lithium
Didn't say it was working. Just said that it's what I had heard as to why it's not on DTRPG.

@wildbaboons All good, half the time I respond on the phone too. My normal horrid spelling and grammar is enough to cover the times I do the same on the phone because large fingers.

My apology for missing the point of adults 'awakening'. Grizzled vet was only avoided for magic and I got hung up on that term and poor reading skill.

I can honestly say that adults discovering their own magic is just as interesting in such a setting. I would question myself why I'm going D6 system rather than just not going Mage or something else. But it would be interesting, entirely different consideration for the adult discovering the potential with deeper political mindedness on the point of training and all that, as well as purpose and self awareness.

I didn't want focus on 'why the awakening' completely as that feels more campaign (beginning/ending) and personal pref for me is open ended anywhere I go. I have difficulty playing on a place where I can see there is an end point to the Mu*. End of world/save humanity plots are not too fun for me; and not saying adults feel that way if incorporated into such a setting. But instead of middle story arc for what's going on, we just chose the beginning.

The decision for the age wasn't arbitrary just the same either. It is the beginning of something, and I don't want to go into details as it relates to some meta planned for the students and I'd rather they discover more in play about certain elements.

I guess that sounds fickle, just the reason for teens again (only 2nd theme for me, the 3rd was someone else's place) isn't that I'm some kooky pedo, it just felt right for the theme as it was developing.

@Sunny Totally in favor of this. If PrPs have a base writeup (to assure Staff that they aren't just a social tea party (again, using hyperbole on purpose)), points gained in them go into the "big pool of important points."

@Lotherio I do like the automatic gossip idea. You could totally do weighted points instead of two different pools, but then you're just lessening the issue (which honestly might be enough of a counterbalance).

I will say, I prefer public grid to be open. If a scene needs to be private or limited, take it to TP or RP or private rooms. Sure, a flag on +who or whatever would be nice, indicating a hangout or location is 'closed' scene, but really there are places to take locked/closed/private RP.

I do like the idea, if you ask for RP (hey wanna rp, or on chan, or whatever), you set the scene. I'm just not so sure about asking if someone wants to RP, and following up with, 'what do you want to do?' If you initiate in any way, have some ideas at the ready. Wiki's are a good tool to get an idea of a character you're asking for RP. Or be forward ... I'm looking for RP, don't know what do to, and am open to suggestions. Just avoid the 'what do you want to do?' ... and you won't get the 'I don't know, what do you want to do?" reply.

Edit: I do miss those days, wandering a grid to find someone then posing whatever came to mind, or seeing what was going on and jumping in.

@Thenomain Right, and it works well for a currency system if you're not using it to fuel code. If you take that approach, a global balance would still be nice to have. You'll also need to code an object to handle paychecks, because the paycheck configuration parameter is global and a daily allowance based on signing in. I'd suggest leaving that at 0 and then looking at paycheck as a monthly job, just like it would have to be for rent.

@Kanye-Qwest
Again, that's part of my 'COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER' hope/mandate/hammer to the forehead. I don't want to ban topics (I've already been round the bend twice with the MES and their recent 'you can't have <X> topics as a backstory/thing to play out' policy that came about because, well, the MES is a joke and won't eject people who are PROVEN to be crazy), especially if people are comfortable with them. And I don't want it to be a way to get out of consequences for things like, say, attempting to assassinate the leader of the city's supernaturals or the mayor or being a moron and getting the police on a manhunt for a murderer.

But if Player A says 'I'm a monster, I want to <X> to your character for <Y> reason' and player B says 'I'm game' then that's consenting after communication, and you have communicated per my personal 'cooperative non-consent' game policy/ideals. Conversely, if player B says 'I'm not comfortable with that, <Z> is a better out come for me' then that's fine too. And in both cases, if Player B says 'I don't really want to RP it out, it's fine to DO but let's FTB because... well, I can deal with the aftermath but I squick writing it' or whatever, then that's fine too.

But if Player A is told no and player A continues with that shit, that's where staff should come in. As far as your experience with the rape plotlines, I haven't had any experience with that personally. I've done the whole capturing, torturing, murdering stuff but I don't enjoy sexual RP. I have heard about things, so we'll see how things go on my game. I'm talking about policies from my own personal standpoint, so YMMV.

@Thenomain and @Sunny
Hence why I brought it up. I feel that it's something that HAS to be adhered to, simply because someone may be cool with the OUTCOME, but... it doesn't have to be 'on screen' for lack of a better term.

I'm well versed with Dahan's D6 in both Penn and Rhost.

I guess I can understand people not wanting to deal with it; I on the other hand often love to constantly tweak my wiki.

I also note that learning to deal with wikis has helped me with my HTML and wiki formatting skills, as well as learning different types of formatting for different wikis. These can be framed as marketable skills to pad a resume, even if only at lower administrative levels to make one look impressive.

I was impressed by the whole experience thus far. When, in chargen, I hit the "backgrounds" section, my precise thoughts were: "Ah, backgrounds. My old nemesis. We meet again." Largely because in the past this is the step where nitpicking, anal retentive assholes tend to turn what should be a simple approval process into demanding instead a Ph.D.-grade thesis on the ins and outs of the setting (including huge amounts of non-documented bits).

Imagine my surprise when, upon seeing a staff member log in, I suddenly had a mail notification not ten minutes later with an approval. Not even a hint of a nit to be picked.

I like this place. Friendly players. Friendly staff. Fun setting.

@Surasanji said in Historical Mu* - Looking for interested Staff:

I'd be interested in playing any such themed game. I'd be glad to offer a sounding board, as well- but would prefer not to be any kind of staffer.

Sounding boards certainly welcome, anyone interested in contributing even as a sounding board is just as welcome. I'll send the addie and wiki stuff to those interesting in contributing constructively.

@Misadventure That is a great idea. Folks can see others availability much easier than having to check census, check finger, see times if listed.

I'm adding that

@Songtress said in Realms - Sir Kay - Lotherio:

He'll become posessive over female players ( that sounds like a terrifying ordeal) (I've experienced that' kind of poessiveness from a male player.. and it was CREEPY (Creeptastic, creepity creepy creep. Kind of bad.)

to give him some credit, it does seem to be more over the PC than the player. As I'm FAIRLY sure he knew one PC (who was married to my PC, which is why I'd get kinda miffed at the 'on channel' attempts to 'claim' her) had a male player.

For what it's worth, I'm tinkering with something similar to the 'player login + other' idea. It involves multiple logins rather than puppets -- mostly since puppets can get hairy in MUX and people tend to be somewhat distrustful of them due to a history of spying with them -- but I like this idea. (A friend of mine and I had considered a multi-setting game, though it's stalled out for the moment while I hash out system and policy and code and such crap on my own for the next, uh, year or so.)

We're looking at some fairly different stuff regarding the player login concept if it's any help; I can pass along the notes if you like, though it's rough enough that it's not 'ready for prime time' here.

Sometimes things don't get run because they aren't allowed to staff in the sphere they enjoy most so they never want to be staff, which can lead to nothing happening because you might have someone who is in a staff position as a stop gap. So that can be staff limiting players in that way.

And I say again, if you can't trust a person to not cheat as staff, you can't trust them to be staff in the first place.

Tacking on to feedback @Ghost and @Lotherio both provided, I would say that the setting of game isn't necessarily as important (to me) as the type of game. I think the genre of this game works best when:

There are real risks and you might actually die. The environment is trying to kill you while the surviving groups are also trying to kill you because of resource competition and you're adding to these chances by having to get from A to B by deciding if taking the dubious rotting bridge over a raging river is safer than going all the way around, which sets you back by hours but means you're stuck out in the wilderness when the sun disappears.

I can't really speak to games I'm not familiar with but I tried No Return and in addition to what @ghost said: there was literally no risk to this game. Sure, people died but they were dying because the players were shelving them because they were bored or they had a flaw that required them to die by x time. And even the unlucky players who were the victims of bad rolls and gotten bitten by zombies, still had to do a check to see if they turned and even then could take a serum that would cure them of permadeath. There was little risk inherent to this game and it mostly resulted in a lot of playing house and having babies and ignoring a lot of basic cooperative survival needs like making sure the PCs had a secure fence.

Staff on the game kept trying to course correct these issues through very hamfisted plot devices but they often ended up over correcting where it became railroady staff fiat in the form of IC punishments or the plot devices were so drastic and theme breaking that, most players literally didn't want to deal with it, ignored it and just kept scavenging for canned pears in light syrup.

Which feeds into...

Active plot staff or active plot runners. If the staff are the kind of staff that don't want to run plot that doesn't basically react to players ignoring previous staff fiat and want players to do it for them largely, then empower your plot runners to keep running plot that moves the game's story arc forward. Otherwise, again, you literally have nothing to do but scavenge for lawn chairs and ignore theme. This can be avoided by just pushing the main story line along on a proactive basis.

Set a date for the game to end. Most of the survival genre is counter intuitive to this (the author of the TWD has stated that he planned to keep telling the story for as long as he could which is turning out to be a very long time and not necessarily for the better). A game with a beginning, middle, and end in this genre sends the message that you don't have time to sunbathe on top of the abandoned mall when you should be stock piling ammo because the Reavers are coming. It gives players a chance to make more meaningful and strategic choices and if they blow it, well then they blow it. Losing is fun, I think.

Just out of boredom and for slightly more definition .... http://mortalsouls.wikidot.com/

I may throw something in every now and again, but full development, I'd probably wear myself out. If anyone is interested in contributing their two cents ... I"d be willing to do it similar to the way we did old Redemption.

I tend to just juggle multiple things at once when I ST.

Inits.
Player 1 declares and rolls.
Player 2 declares while 1 poses.
Player 2 rolls, 3 declares, by now Player 1 has posed.
Player 3 rolls, 2 poses, then 3 poses and I have time to work on my npc pose.
Top of the round starts it all over again.

I can usually bust out a 3-4 player scene, with set up, combat, and some clean up in about 2-2.5 hours.

It seems like a mess, the charsheet, but its pretty simple. If you played Cthulu, you'll get the way the dice work at least.

There is a 1 page how-to-play (http://knightlytales.wdfiles.com/local--files/game-system/gk-pendragon-howto.pdf), and its really that simply. A chunk of the sheet does into the concept of traits and passions, the real heart of the game.

But yes, I recommend it regardless, its a great system, lots of good info in the book both on historical period and the literature its inspired from.