Posts made by Packrat

Rise thread, from the grave!

So I am still recovering from conference flu. But I actually have a (still basically empty) server up, I have the code from Star Crusade and I have a massively sprawling google documents mess of theme documentation and draft system numbers for a Fading Suns game. This does include the broad outlines of a numerically defined character generation system where people pay points for stats/skills. Also for rank and wealth.

It is going to need more people to actually staff it though and things like the economy system and also mass combat really require more minds to brainstorm, playtest and contribute. If anyone is interested in taking part then send me a message and I can shoot you the Discord channel information.

One thing that I see a lot of on games but have never really seen working too well is conflating IC positions of leadership and authority with expectations of OOC administration or quasi staffing. Things like the High Priest also being some kind of 'helper' or designated OOC authority on stuff related to their religion, etc.

I can see why this happens given that the player of the High Priest presumably knows a bunch about the organisation they ICly lead and is likely to be somebody many enjoy or at least can stand interacting with. Inevitably though you end up with people writing the fluff for their faction in hagiographic terms along with people feeling out of character pressured not to disagree with the 'faction head'. Even if it is relatively subtle and not abusive very few people define the IC reality of their organisation to have deep issues or flaws especially related to the leadership of their character. This has obvious effects even without players often relying upon faction heads for plot and similar goodness.

Additionally the level of pressure expectation leads to faction head types burning out rather quickly unless they are surrounded and supported by a clique. Not comic book specific, but pretty relevant where feature characters and activity levels are a concern.

A lot really does depend on:

1. What the characters are trying to do, are they conducting swashbuckling type activities?

Also

2. Are staff on board with players doing cool dramatic stuff or will they decide it is dumb and punish them for it?

Assuming both of those are in place then swashbuckling takes place. To use the example of @deadculture above I have certainly had characters swashbuckle on Fading Suns games even though the system is not really set up to support it. At least, rappelling off cliffs onto a sloop full of Space Moors then fighting them with a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other sounds pretty swashbuckling to me.

Thanks for the very quick reply!

About what I feared then, I will need to start on the serious debugging once I get home.

So I am working on a project and have a TinyMUSH server, I would also prefer to use a TinyMUSH server in future.

The code I am importing is for a MUX though and whilst some of it works when directly copied over this is certainly not the case for all of it.

Am I lucky enough that there are a few differences in how the two systems work that I can identify and try to fix? Or should I swap my server over to use MUX? Please note that I am extremely crap at coding, would need to modify some of the code anyway (which is going to be 'fun') and any experience I do have is with Penn or Tiny.

To explain exactly what I am doing:

Working with somebody on a new Fading Suns game.

I have the database (and blessing to copy stuff from it) for Star Crusade and whilst the game is planned to be rather different overall we are going to be using the +sheet, dice rolls, equipment, etc code from it.

Honestly one of the big problems I had with Arx when I played there was that a lot of the things which could lead to complexity and to player fed plot felt deliberately smoothed out and whitewashed for lack of a better term.

Noble houses as immutable and eternal entities with no transfer other merging of lands through marriage and centuries old existences, weirdly hierarchical and 'clean' chains of feudal obligation, a safely ignored church that proceeded to politically shoot itself in the head under NPC direction.

Then hordes of evil approach and everyone gets an irrefutable divine vision just to make sure. It made IC focusing on anything else rediculous and also made RP relating to it pretty dull. Especially with everything happening off screen.

The one that gets me every time is blood and lightning, you are all ready to lightning some fools then find you did noticed they (and you) are now standing in a huge pool of blood. Suddenly everyone is stunned and twitching.

@Lithium said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

@Packrat The oath forbids them from using channeling against anyone except to save their own life or some nonsense like that.

Not quite, it forbids them from using it as a weapon except against Darkfriends or Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme defense of her life. Numerous Aes Sedai in the books reason to themselves that wrapping somebody in air and restraining them does not count as 'a weapon'.

There is basically nothing stopping an Aes Sedai from just, well, grabbing somebody with air though.

It works every time against somebody who is not a channeler then they are completely helpless, being able to do it to multiple people at once requires a particularly capable channeler sure but it is still an automatic win against anyone who does not ambush you.

To be fair and as mentioned above, in the books, there were multiple characters able to overpower one of the Forsaken in a direct head on fight, even early on.

But the Forsaken have absolutely no interest in risking things in head on personal confrontation, they have long term plans and know a ton of really scary magical shit that you do not. They can mind control people, they can wear magical disguises, they can basically teleport. You cannot do that stuff (probably) or even know that anyone is around who can. That is where they are actually powerful.

If one of the Forsaken just barreled in going 'Rarr, fear me!' without planning then a random circle of random Aes Sedai could pretty easily overpower and defeat one.

@deadculture said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

You should get the Star Crusade codebase and make your Fading Suns game

I looked at doing so, I know Paulus has a copy of the database, I even have a server, but I also have chronic depression thanks to some RL stuff (yes I am getting it treated).

I would burn out within weeks. Also Star Crusade's codebase was basically just a die roller and +sheet. No character generation, no equipment, no way to track money, etc

Well keep in mind that I am bitter and cynical and burnt on games in general along with not really having played anywhere since I quit Arx almost six months ago, whilst having barely played anywhere for a few years before that, so I am probably not the best perspective.

The one benefit of people being awful at playing secret evil is that it is super easy to act in such a manner that they recruit you, then you can betray and slaughter them in mass because they never think to actually operate in a cell structure or similar.

The thing that always amused me about the Whitecloaks is that people's reaction is that they are obviously crazed lunatics, but... they had a pretty good point?

I mean there basically was a Darkfriend hiding under every single rock in the books.

Personally I only ever played on one WoT game that I cannot remember the name of, I foolishly let staff talk me into playing a roster type character who was secretly the crown prince of I think it was Arad Doman or Tarabon, disguised as a mere noble so that he could seek a wife abroad who would not solrely be after his princeness, or something.

I should probably not have been surprised that it was impossible to get involved in RP that did not involve noblewoman in corsets seeking partners but it did cause me to leave after all of two weeks.

Personally I found a decent 'where I read' thread on a forum somewhere that summarized the books with commentary, skimmed through that up until I got to where I had burnt out the first time (book 9 I think?), then started reading again from where.

Because fuck re-reading the middle books where nothing happened apart from people derping around.

It really depends on if there is enough residual staff life for one or more of said players to get on staff themselves, once that happens? It coukd work.

It actually did happen on Fading Suns MUSH and the place was pretty active for over a year before burning out and dying again.

I think that Wes Platt of Otherspace infamy basically did this, though it was mostly a case of him self publishing 'books' of uneditted logs and selling very few of them.

@WTFE said in High Fantasy:

@Jennkryst said in High Fantasy:

@WTFE It requires LESS maths, but it is still there.

And the maths aren't the real issue (but contribute to it). The real issue is that action grinds to a halt to slog through game mechanics -- at just the point that the action needs to be ramped up to keep an edge-of-the-seat feel.

I actually found that after the first session and a half of the Exalted 3e campaign I played, combat started to run really fluidly along with being infinitely more interesting that most systems. I have trouble now with game where people just alternate hitting each other before missing or chipping away health. The initiative system is in itself rather nice but gambits are really interesting and make things like grappling, disarming, etc an actual part of combat instead of really unreliable situational auto wins like in so many games.

Also it genuinely lets people function differently in combat and be good at very different, equally valid things hat are all still valid, no just have a linear scale of how badass individuals are. Though it does have issues like 'make sure you have dexterity 5' and similar Storyteller System staples.

Road to Amber seems to still be populated according to mudstats and I remember it being pretty high fantasy. You could absolutely play a hard ass sword slinging mercenary, or a fireball throwing mage, or an angel, or a (small) dragon.

Very abstract system though and they also combined the 'currency' needed for advancement with the ability to influence plots, which sucked. Getting involved in Big Plot stuff would actually slow down character advancement.