Best posts made by Ominous

I don't ask permission to join public scenes generally. I never understood the thinking of that with public rooms.

@Apos I can't see not setting, really. It's been ingrained since the first day I started playing MUSHes. Generally, I keep it to the basics - time of day, weather conditions (usually restating whatever the server weather code has), how crowded the area is, and the current states of the characters involved in the scene.

A good set should give a recent arrival enough of a summary to quickly visualize what everyone else is hopefully visualizing, and a couple of poses after it should give enough material for the new arrivals to respond to.

Kill the conversation! Kill it with fire!

Also, @Shayd , they typically warn you before showing you the door. At least they used to.

You have an easy IC excuse for a slight change in personality. The weight of leadership has changed him.

I try to look towards board games for ideas of how to handle mechanics in MU*s. Pen & paper RPGs is where our hobby was mainly birthed and draws the RP culture from, why not utilize the other side of the tabletop game hobby to inform our mechanics rather than trying to borrow from Crusader Kings, Civilization, etc. Our format seems much more suited for the simpler mechanics that board games have than the spreadsheets of computer strategy games.

I mentioned Republic of Rome in another thread as one game that has an interesting political premise. There is Twilight Struggle and it's mechanics for spreading and combating the spread of influence. Medici is a pretty simple and fun economic trading game. Pit is too. Pandemics, Dead of Winter, Forbidden Island, Shadows Over Camelot, etc. all demonstrate how to handle group management of limited actions and how to present a crisis needing organization with simple mechanics. A few of them also show how to keep a traitor element from detailing the game and instead snaking it more fun.

Now obviously just importing a game with no changes wouldn't work, but using these games as inspirations and references rather than trying to make Europa Universalis but with more roleplaying might be the better route to take.

Runequest 6 would work, but it's a little crunchy. It's known as Mithras now. It has five magic systems with their own unique flavors and mechanics, and the combat is lethal without reaching un-fun levels. I think the base rules are available for free too.

Mouse Guard is a great setting. I kind of want to steal it and use humans instead for it in order to file off the serial number of the IP.

Still the system itself is kind of specialized and board gaming, like many Burning Wheel derivatives, in that it ties the hands of the GMs in what they can do. At least that's how I remember it. It has been like six years or so since I last gave it a spin.

All of the above?

@TimmyZ said in FS3:

I think the young prodigy argument is overrated though.

I use age-based expertise arguments all the time as my go-to reason for why I dislike almost all XP systems and prefer it to be age based. My issue isn't young prodigies. If you want to play an 18 year old Olympic world champion, go ahead. I have issue with the 18 year old world champion, who is also a renowned surgeon, has been admitted to the US Supreme Court bar, is a Colonel in the US Army, and has a starring role in two summer blockbusters, which is also when their fourth album will be released.

An 18 yo can be amazingly good at something. A 40 yo can be good at about a dozen things.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

(Last shotgun post, I swear.)

@Ominous said in FS3:

I have issue with the 18 year old world champion, who is also a renowned surgeon, has been admitted to the US Supreme Court bar, is a Colonel in the US Army, and has a starring role in two summer blockbusters, which is also when their fourth album will be released.

I will channel the long lost @HelloRaptor for this:

"Yeah, because you never see anything like that on TV, or in movies or in books."

Back in my own voice: Yeah, I get it and agree with it, but a lot of people like it. That's the thing about the wish fulfillment that is the entertainment industry.

And that's fine. You can have servers with that. There is no reason why every server has to be that way, though. Some of us want a grittier theme.

Blowtorch stopped functioning on my Android. I miss the days of phones with keyboards. Those were so convenient.

@Packrat The first question is easy to answer. Commoners are free tenants/sharecroppers. Nobles own the land and the commoners rent it, essentially.

@Pandora How do you deal with people ignoring social skills, since they no longer do anything, and putting all of their XP into physical skills?

Coming soon to Arx!

http://archives.erfworld.com/Book_1/140

What game design leads to the best political play amongst PCs?

I remember on the old WORA forum three or four really excellent threads discussing how best to design politics in a game. As those ancient texts of knowledge are lost to the ages, I wondered if we could discuss it again and pull up some kernels of insight into it.

A few of the things I remember was advice on deciding exactly what the scope of possibility is. If PCs are jockeying with each other for political favor with the king but there is no hope of revelling and taking over, the designer needs to make that clear upfront and the design will look different than a game focused on war between factions. (The author I recall suggested PCs fighting over who gets to sit closer to the royalty at the dinner table and that ways to gain prestige are trying to dress as similarly to the crown Prince and princess as possible.). Another tidbit I remember was designing the game to be lead at most be 6 to 8 PCs and allowing other PCs to serve as functionaries but able to challenge for a spot at the big boys/girls table.

@Kanye-Qwest Completely true. Just adding my voice to the minority, so they don't feel lonely.

@Roz The prevalence of ASCII art indicates that most people like it. I am adding my voice to Jaded's showing that their opinion isn't some odd outlier that no one shares. I apologize that a lack of conformity offends you.

@Kanye-Qwest In your example, it's a group of people talking about how great Star Wars is, then someone else says 'I don't get Star Wars.' I chip in to them with a 'Hey, I don't get it either. The prequel trilogy completely ruined it for me.' The group conversation has forked, and I am engaging with that other person, not the rest of the group.

I remember Redemption MUSH. I tried playing there when Crossroads was winding down. The theme seemed like a mish-mash of disparate ideas and some factions didn't appear as balanced or well thought out as other factions. However, nothing in what I remember had any sort of mechanical measurements of resources or anything. It was just a bunch of cops & robbers style stuff - "I shot you." "Nuh uh!" Which is the first 'no no' of any sort of PvP political play. It would be like trying to play Coup without any cards.

However, I will agree that it does become a bit of a strategy game, but that's the point. The RP develops out of the strategy game aspect, much like RP comes out of D&D, even though it is derived from a wargame.

@Thenomain No, my definition, as I outlined above is that Science Fiction is Enlightenment oriented. Setting doesn't define science fiction or fantasy for me. It's the themes and tropes used. However my definition doesn't matter. What matters is the OP's definition, so we know what it is they are really looking for. If they want space stuff, a lot of Cyberpunk, Borderlands, Trigun, Gears of War, etc. are all ruled out, because they all take place on one planet.

@Misadventure A setting based on space-travel, which Firefly does have so would be included, tends to put the focus on adventure. It's the D&D or Traveller of narratives, focusing on resource management, exploration, more interactions with NPCs as antagonists, a faster pace in changes to setting. A setting based on just one planet is more the Ars Magica or Vampire of narratives, focusing on intrigue and politics, more interactions with other PCs as antagonists, with a much tighter focus. Additionally space-travel adds some mechanics to the MU*, such as ship building and ownership, travel times, and multiple grids for the different planets, which has the OOC issue of potentially fragmenting the playerbase and spreading them too thin.

@Salty-Secrets I was agreeing to disagree from the beginning. As I said, what makes something sci-fi or fantasy is very subjective. I am not going to convince everyone that my method for determining whether a work is one or the other is the one, true way, and it is highly unlikely anyone is going to convince me that they have a one, true way for it either.