Unless your players are arachnophobes. Then you whip out the spiders on them, and there is terror at the table. Many laughs were had, by me at least, but I like spiders, and there were also air pirates, conquistadors, the Anasazi, and a tent on fire with a box of TNT inside. Good times, good times.
So, uh, design your system?
Decide how far you want to require players to be controlled by dice results.
Decide how fast you want that to be able to happen.
Decide if others, or strong beliefs can fight this, and how hard.
Figure out how much pre-made detail you want (lists of traits, convictions, personality traits) you want to include.
Decide how much you want the players to detail their characters prior to social encounters, sp they can be held to playing consistently.
Figure out how to reward playing this in the way you intend.
We have been lucky enough to have many engineer types who have a drive to code, and to share it.
I suspect that many players who enjoy horror on the screen don't realize the amount of slow burn and setup of attitudes etc it needs. Body horror is (excuse the pun) visceral exactly because it pulls on things that many directly understand. Anything more complicated requires that you be in the mindset of your character and soak in why something is so horrible.
Vampire originally included the horror of preying on your own kind, being isolated from your previous life, and living with the Beast which could take over. It's still in the book, but I don't think its in the image of vampires very much anymore.
Most of the supernatural is treated as superpowers now.
."Automated games" are where interacting with the code IS the game play.
On a MU* if you played cards with a cards object, that might be the verge of automated play. If it could do solitaire it would be automated play.
Roleplay and storytelling, despite the genre of computer and consol games called RPGs, is related to players interacting with each other. Making choices to fit your own ideas of your character in a computer game with no other players is an emergent play style, though it exercises the same skills. However, you can do that with any activity eg "Here is the cunning yet powerful barbarian warrior, defeating the dishes."
I'd like games that focus on "the interesting bits. I like social RP, and just expressing my characters, but it leads to a lot of fairly generic RP. I'd like a way of playing, or a game system, that focusses on things happening and changing.
I'd like a lot of choice and options, like a flow chart of where things can go.
I'd like it to be clear what the focal point of play is meant to be on the particular game.
I'd like there to be mechanical change and benefits to these focussed changes, so the changes have oomph.
I'd like players to think of their creativity and interaction as the one big there they are all there for. Winning, being qualified to solve a problem, having enough Xp etc are all distractions from the sort of play I'd like to encourage.
I'd like players to be good citizens in regards to one another. Players are THE resource for fun in an online game, staff cannot be there for every moment for everyone. This is why you don't want zero OOC communication, or pure simulation, or all or nothing conflicts. So make it memorable, make it intense, make it good for everyone. If your goals can't be expressed in a way that doesn't control other players, eliminate characters, or depend on a lot of enforcement, rethink them, and how you play.
You could make success mean being told what would it take to get your character to willingly (if not happily) do this thing?
Then its up to you to provide that circumstance.
Don't Rest Your Head offers a model for how to handle player characters being affected in a big way: the player selected the ways the character could react, (flee or fight) and the player chooses which reaction to use when called for. When they are out of one reaction they have to use the others.
For modern MU play, I would say that the player could be offered several common scenarios of being influenced socially, be called upon to note what approaches might worst best and worst, and what sort of swayed responses they might give. As a reward, choosing the possibility of more severe responses can be rewarded at creation/commitment, or when they are actually used.
The successful manipulator would be able to recognize the given reaction and intensity depending on their own skills and played through events.
Common attraction based seduction responses might include: treating the person better, granting exceptions to the person, being twitterpated in their presence or when they are flirting, having a man/woman-crush (hero worship), deference, seeking attention, getting stalkery, be unaware of or in denial of attraction while still acting on it, full on aggressive lust, full on submissive lust, gain insight into the objects better nature both delusional and real, self sacrifice, gifting, patronage, trigger a vice, become friends etc
That way it's an expression of the target character, found in particular by the influencers specific actions, and exploitable based on the influencers awareness and skills. And it's been thought about, and uses of telepathy, virtue and vice reading, observation etc could get info that could be defined on a +sheet.
Complexity isn't the issue for me. I like complexity.
GURPS has had long standing issues with it's point balancing. For instance you can buy up your stats. Your skill levels are in relation to that stat rating (eg you buy a skill at Dex-3 as a roll on 3d6). There are various points where you are far better off buying up the stat instead of the skills. BUT XPs in the skill is supposed to be the measure of actual experience. In my 1930s game, a player proved they could be as good as an expert, by spending it all in stats. Likewise there are questions about the meaningfulness of advantages and disadvantages. I do like how detailed they get in terms of describing organizations as patrons, allies, minions.
(My fix for that skill situation for Champions was to limit how many levels of success you could generate based on your xp spent on the skill. So someone who was innately deeply talented, but not well trained, would make their roll often, but only get 1-2 levels of success. Suddenly players felt how they spent their skill points really reflected their character.)
MMOs are extremely complex usually, but only in regards to combat and perhaps crafting. They rarely have any sort of other gameplay, and if they do it's usually a few more responses to interaction decision points.
Internal assumptions are best tested by outside testers, precisely because they don't share those assumptions. IEEE 829
GURPS often provides excellent starter reference to various genres, eras, and topics.
Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.
Mainly I agree with you on GURPS, though I will say that it appeals to some folks need for a sense of realism being baked into the game rules. Much like Spectrum Smallarms/Phoenix Command, it may not BE realistic, but it pulls it off as a feeling for a decent chunk of folks. It certainly doesn't do well pulling off the genres, eras, or topics.
The world trade towers collapsed almost straight down. Excellent balance.
Also who mentioned balance? It wasn't me, unless you are inferring the balance of hours left in a special forces life if they used the non-exception required training hours to reach their game ratings?
Useless trivia: GURPS has means of equating training time to XP. The amount of XP needed to be at the level of skill of Special Forces as assessed by the Steve Jackson Games required a special exception to make them possible.
Most things are dead in the water unless there are stakes to be won or lost. Prestige, mercantile power, the ability to pressure groups with trade or warfare.
No silly, the main RP hub is the land locked city, which while based on not really landlocked Paris, is landlocked. The pirates are off one of the coasts. Personally I think the players should be the pirates, led by a wronged noble heir. Or maybe Frederick. Dammit now I am back to 7Th Sea, and have moved on to Victoriana. A rollicking band of pirates we.