Best posts made by Paradox

DATE: 22 JUN 2019
TIME: 20:00 ZULU
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED

General James Morris did not like her.

It was a statement of fact and not to be disputed in his mind. Any time a civilian wore the position of Secretary of Defense it had made him squeamish in the past. However, this time it was more noticeable. Morris had kept his mouth shut previously of course. First, in her position she was technically his boss. Second, far too many people had fawned and swooned over this woman in particular. His issue was not a perceived lack of capability, if anything Morris believed her to be extremely capable; perhaps too much so. No, the concern he had was one that sat in his core. She smiled too easily, was too friendly, always seemed to want to please everyone and everyone wanted to please her.

He did not like her.

“General?” the Secretary’s voice called out to him across the conference table.

“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am. I was processing the last question. I have indeed completed the reading of the files and previous information,” Morris’ own voice sounded distant in his head. The manilla folders had been pulled out of their satchels earlier that month and were poured over by himself and the team he’d been assigned. It was the stuff that science fiction was made out of: hell, it was science fiction to the highest degree. “While I understand the structure of what you’re looking at ma’am, I am not entirely certain of a few facets. The first of which is perhaps the most self centered. Why me?”

The Secretary of Defense smiled at him, the curve of her lips walking the line between polite and vicious. “Because General, you are who the President asked be placed in charge. For myself, and on our side of things, there are several people we would have … preferred. However, the President was insistent, so here we are.”

The President. The only person Morris had come across in the past three years that had been willing to put his foot down with this woman despite the respect he’d shown in meetings. Rising from his spot, Morris moved around the conference room some to where he was standing, looking through the glass to the facility below. The lighting behind him gave the glass the ability to cast his reflection which he took in. When the hell did he get so old? His hair was always gone but now it was from an inability to grow rather than the usual shave that kept it close. Twenty-seven years in the Air Force and now this. A jacket, some stripes on it, and an assignment that had two outcomes really. Disaster or certain disaster.

“A lot of the file was redacted. Perhaps you’d be willing to fill me in on the details?” Morris heard his own voice but it sounded like someone else’s and his eyes could not peel away from what he was staring at. Soon he saw the reflection of the woman next to him as she spoke.

“Twenty-five years ago a reconnaissance team was sent of eight members. Seven military and one civilian. Contact was lost completely with the team. The President has decided that it is worth reinvestigating the situation to see if there are any suitable gains to be made.” The woman pauses, almost as if reading Morris’ mind; not the first time she had done so to the chagrin of the man. “Previous Administrations lacked the fortitude to take the risk, but as I’m sure you have seen the current President has no concerns about public perception or Congressional rebuttal.”

Her tone dropped, Morris did not like that, nor her proximity. “This is going forward James, with or without you. The President wants it to be with. He wanted me to remind you that you owe him. However, I am more than happy to …”

Morris cut her off, “I’ll take the assignment. What is the time table?”

“We’ll attempt contact in two hours.”

Two Hours later…

Morris stared out over the facility, still wondering just how things had gotten here. Twenty-five years of lost information, of something that no one knew outside of the handful of scientists and special operations that had previously staffed the location.

The sound of heavy machinery moving punched through the thick plexiglass which separated him from the room beyond, but he still could hear it. Hell, he could feel it in his bones. The last sound of loud metal scraping against itself echoed and it happened.

James Morris had never seen anything like it. The brilliant flash of light, the rush of sound and awed energy that occured before it settled back and rippled like a calm lake in front of him. Like others around, it took a few moments for reality to settle back onto him but when it did he found himself asking, “What did you say, Airman?”

“Sir. I said chevron seven locked in place.”

Morris remained quiet for a few moments before stepping forward and speaking into the intercom microphone.

“Stargate Team One. You’re clear for departure. God speed.”

Website and Details to come in nearing weeks...

I've always been intrigued by a Black Company styled game (which would be that Dark Fantasy Merc company set up). I think it'd be a great setting to have players localized 'together' and fighting against a common enemy but still provides windows for competition and struggle.

Not to mention political dealings, military actions, magic, all those fantasy things.

Update: 7/12/2019

We're so pleased to be able to bring a game update with a few more of those details people have been asking for either on the forums or through messages. The offers of assistance have been greatly appreciated and as we see windows for people to be able to help we'll definitely be reaching out.

Game Base and System
Stargate MUSH will be using ARES as the codebase and FS3 as the root system. This was a decision made due to several important factors including ease of start up, wonderful web portal features and a streamlined system that many players are familiar with. By and large the system is not terribly customized although we are certainly working on adding a few pieces of our own flair to things. But this ties into our game philosophy which is we are wanting to make things about the story and experience

Plots
What really drew us to the concept of Stargate was the ease of incorporating storytelling into the universe. It really is a doorway that opens up into an unknown reality that for all feasibility can be immediately shut off again allowing for multiple one-off episodes as well as the underlying meta-arcs that present a driving force to the game. With this in mind, we are aiming to incorporate the mentality to what we're doing. There will be episodic plots that are one-offs, there will be plots that are longer running and there will definitely be an over-arching model taking place.

Character Roles
So what can characters do? We are approaching the game from the mindset of if you have a reason to be part of the SG then you can be. We are aiming to avoid masters of all trades however, so if that is something you are thinking about (Samantha Carters) you might want to readjust expectations just a little. Jacks of all trades are masters of none and Masters of something probably can't do it all. Stargate is about a team and in plot design and structure we're really wanting to emphasize this team design. To do this we'll be implementing a few new concepts that hopefully will help with this.

As to specifics of Character Roles, this is a military operation with civilian specialists assisting. Again, one of the appeals of this universe is how out in the galaxy everyone might be needed.

Expectations
We are firm believers in expectations for everyone being out in the forefront. This is a work of love, we are really excited about this universe but even more about the extremely wide open storytelling opportunities it will give everyone, players and staff alike. Currently we are looking at some options to help streamline PrP submissions and a design element to allow for ease of access to Plot-Starters for people who would like to run missions.

Stargate had elements of camp to it, seriousness and real ethical questions at times (I've rewatched the series in preparation for release) and we'd love to touch on a lot of these things. But the most important thing I'd like to express to people:

We are not intending to be everything to everyone.

Things may be light hearted. Things may get (ok, they will get) dark. But at our core we're really looking at story and answering this question:

How would we as a society handle some of the things that may be out there?

Development Schedule
Our development is on time with plans. In a few weeks the final testing of adjustments to the FS3 game system will be undertaken along with trial testing of a few design choices for plot structure in order to garner feedback. After that is completed and compiled we'll be eagerly opening the doors with the current plan of August 5th.

Star Trek games in an RPG format hold a distinct challenge. What is more important, the Journey between the stars, or what is found at the end of that journey?

Those who value the Journey itself clamor for space systems and the like because those support the act of the journey.

Those who prefer the end of the Journey edge towards 'Station' based RP because that is what they value. (Note: The concept of +report RP becomes the 'journey' between events on the Station rather than actual travel)

This is on top of the issues of exploratory/military RP and the aforementioned advancement cycle conflicts. How does a character 'level' in Star Trek? They attain rank & additional duties. However with a set number of spots available for individuals to fill, road blocks to advancement naturally occur.

So if you were to develop a Star Trek game, you'd first have to answer which is more important; the Journey or the Destination. Then you would need to identify how you would fulfill the 'journey' sequence between destinations. Finally you'd need to address advancement of a character with systematic road blocks in place against advancement. Good luck with all that mess.

Note: The reason games like ATS still 'exist' is because people come and go opening up spots within the 'hierarchy' but Trek Games are by and large on a limited time slot. Once the player base grows frustrated/annoyed at the inability to advance they'll filter off. We can lie to ourselves and say it's about RP, but it really isn't. WE all want /something/ for our time.

As stated,

The response has been beyond our expectations. It certainly has fanned the spark to continue working on the project diligently to meet our targets.

Thank you for your support and updates will come soon. (Not Blizzard Soon, but actual soon)

I went to a restaurant a couple of months ago while on vacation. I don't remember the name, but the front desk told us it was an incredibly popular place. So we went, it was an Italian styled place.

So then they handed me a menu. On the menu it said Pizza, Pasta, or anything else you could want. That was it. I was like, 'What kind of place is this?'. Because I had no idea what was going on. The Server explained that this restaurant was one where you chose what you want to eat, the chefs would prepare a recipe instruction and you could go in the back and cook it yourself. I was so excited. I absolutely love to cook. My partner? They hate to cook so it was immediately a point of tension. Do we stay? Do we go?

We decided to stay. But the menu was so vague, I knew I could do Italian food, but what did I want to make? I opted for making a pizza. (It felt a lot like that make your own pie Seinfeld episode). I went and kneaded the dough, and then came the toppings. It was whatever I wanted that they had. Just so many choices. I quickly got overwhelmed.

So I made my pizza, the partner made some pasta. It was good, I enjoyed the experience, but they did not. They wanted to just sit and enjoy a meal together rather than having to come up with what to do.

I thought this story might be kind of relevant to this conversation as I was reading it. Even if you have a setting and theme in place, asking someone to come in and run stories leaves a lot of menu options that can get overwhelming. Some people may just want to enjoy the meal rather than cook it themselves. Some people are excited to cook but wouldn't know what to make because things are too vague. The experience could be really interesting, but it could just get so overwhelming you would never go back. Anyway, literal food for thought.

For my sake, Star Wars MU*s suffer from a few blights (Same as Star Trek for that matter).

1. People want to impact the Universe, but people get upset when the Universe doesn't match a canon version. So... which one is it? Do you want to play out the movies or do you want to deviate and create a new world... and in doing such lose some of that familiar canon?

2. It is a Setting, not a Theme. Star Wars is a Universe to be within and within that Universe there is a lot that can be done theme wise. The underdog Rebels, the police state Empire, the trader trying to make his way, the bounty Hunter looking to become famous... so many different themes in there and often they are at odds -- this is what leads to playerbase separation as well in a lot of cases. Some people love to play Rebels, some love to play Empire, and those two themes are not conducive together.

3. Acquisition. People may say that gear/ships etc. don't matter and they don't to them. But to some people these 'items' are synonymous with the movies. The Lightsaber, the Millenium Falcon, the Custom DL-44 Blaster. Sure, not everyone is attracted by those, but some are attracted by those. This sense of acquisition leads to the next part of accompanying challenge is the 'how' of acquiring which leads to all sorts of issues (space, trade, econ, envy of what others have, etc etc.)

4. System Issues arise as well since there is a bad trade off in a lot of cases between Force Users and the normal person. It becomes either a punitive on Force Users for being special or so advantageous that's all people want to be (assuming people are entering a winmore mentality). Along with that, Star Wars has a glut of special about characters by design. Jedi are 'specials' and thus people may hold them up as who they want to be or who they don't want in the game to keep the field even. Regardless the position taken, it creates a tension.

In the end, Star Wars just has a lot of design tensions built into it that, I believe, make it difficult for the setting to sustain a long running game of interest. There are certainly games that have existed for a long time but as someone mentioned they are BarRP. The world cannot change because if it does, it creates tension. If FU are limited or free for all, it creates tension. If there's gear (or not) it creates tension. And this isn't the good type of plot tension, but the design tension.

For myself, I think trust is built by doing the following:

Stating Expectations
Following through on Expectations
Owning Mistakes when Expectations aren't Met
Owning Responsibilities when Expectations aren't Set

I think when we do the above, it is very difficult for people to not at least understand the perspective. On SGM I've handled a fair share of app rejections and I always am very honest with the individual. I'll state the things I like about the app and things I don't like along with the reason's why. The player may disagree (and they might be right to disagree) but I also make the expectation clear. For example, we aren't looking for swiss army knives, we want people who are good at a job. I'll tell people we need them to be focused on a job and in the end, if that's not something they're ok with then it probably isn't a good fit.

Staff and Players are in a relationship, and we know relationships need trust. Why start off a relationship with misconceptions? Why tell players you accept their concept when in reality you don't? You tolerate their behavior when you don't? At the same token, if the players don't know what you expect, you can't hold them accountable for that (within reason obviously) and should take ownership of that gap of knowledge when applicable. That helps build trust. I've been on far to many games where Staff act like all knowing deities and won't own their mistakes, that certainly doesn't build trust.

When you build trust, you can be honest and it stops being a rejection and turns into a collaboration.

FFG is a great system, if you have a strong GM that can quickly address complications and boons as they arise OR you have a wide set of viable options for people to choose from. However, this pushes conflict resolution into a heavy GM dependent method, otherwise you end up as mentioned players sitting around attempting to resolve the situation which can get messy.

A game system needs (imo) to be easy for people to implement and utilize, or you need to provide training/resources to run it to those that want to. My suspicion is the latter may have been the shortcoming with the FFG game

I'm not even sure if the question is about 'splitting' the grid or if it's about trying to be intentional about providing specific spheres for characters to shine in. For myself, it's that concept. No one wants to see Superman in a street fight and the Punisher has no business fighting Thanos.

You could have everything in one city, as long as there was that established expectation for people to stay in their lanes and not crowd out others.

@solstice

To go further, I've found that people who are rude to sprouts generally are the ones that are find themselves on the end of being disliked by other players. There was a huge influx of WoW community a few months back and the FC I was in purged a decent chunk of them when they found out they were rude to new players. FF14 is really a good community (by and large) for this.

@faraday

That's exactly where I'm sitting too. I personally prefer narrative based story telling, but even in that mindset the incentive for story telling has to be present. I think that is the area I'm working through mentally with @auspice, developing the structures that promote narrative adventuring for the playerbase and keeps them engaged with it while not relying so heavily on Admin structured instigation that it burns us out.

I'm not sure such a thing can happen, but it doesn't mean there's a cessation of attempts.

@devrex

I like what you're hitting with the restrictions on the Aes Sedai. I would take it a step further. How many places were they flat out hated? How many were they mistrusted? Really outside of the halls of power (where their influence was feared) they were not liked. There wasn't some upswell of Oh Good the Aes Sedai are here! It was always fear and apprehension, even when they helped you it came at a price.

I had a long debate with a friend and I took the position that the Aes Sedai in many ways are the villains of the story. Yes, there is the outside threat of the Shadow, but within the internal structure of the main world in the Third Age they were the veiled threat that everyone disliked.

So (in my opinion) that is your balance of power in regards. Because I think the base question is neglecting the third sphere which is social interactions.

Warriors have strength of arms.
Wizards have strength of magic.
Thieves (Think Mat) have strength of social.

Instead of trying to balance on a two pronged stool, add that third leg and suddenly you can get closer to balance. Or in the classic team, you have the Looks, the Muscle, the Brains, and the Wildcard Bitches!

I would throw out to you Mr-Johnson that I don't think the problems lie in the 'niche' factor. In fact I'd submit that it may not be a bad thing. If you look at the huge supers games it's easy for people to get lost in them (happens to me constantly and so I drift away from them).

A small directed game isn't bad but that's the problem, the direction. Are you creating an environment for people to just be in? Are you looking to have a storyline that plays out and evolves?

I know something I learned with @auspice on SGM was that we tried to do both, we wanted to have a story that played out (and things fell apart when RL swallowed us up) but also wanted an environment for players to be in. Turns out I think that doing both just didn't work for us. Having visited your games before, the environments were interesting, the niche not being the problem. But after awhile just RPing in those environments (for me) wasn't enough, I needed something happening to get involved with. Iunno, just some early morning thoughts.

Pro tip. Mix four loko with a Tylenol with codeine (t3) and you'll have a 12 loko

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

I've often encountered a presence of perfectionism, or the mindset of staff must always be right, often times to the point where it becomes confrontational. Iunno, for myself I'm actually walking into this situation embracing the mindset of screwing up. Because of this I'm not afraid to try new things or out of the box approaches in plots. If they don't work, that's ok. No one is going to lose a limb over it ... unless they rage punch their computer I suppose. But really, the fear of screwing up can sometimes push people into this box of refusing to admit when they are in fact wrong. I don't want to be that person.

Highlight the Good
I'm a professional educator, and one of the things we talk about is classroom management. Really, a MU isn't terribly different than a classroom. Lots of people with different backgrounds, different individualized goals but trying to coexist and cooperate. It's really an appropriate analogy. So I brought some of the pedagogy we use into the design of how we interact. Every week we highlight the positives we see from players. I think it's a good way to let people know we appreciate them and to show other players the sorts of things we're looking for. These range from behaviors on game to working with staff through issues or handling plots. If you see a behavior you like and want repeated, bring it to the forefront.

Expectations
I don't think any of us like that unknown expectation. This ties in a bit to the first one, I try my best to make sure my expectations are clear; but I'm also going to make mistakes. If there's confusion on them, it may well be my fault. I'll own the mistake, clarify the expectation and roll on. But when everyone knows what we're trying to accomplish it makes things a lot smoother.

Purposeful RP
I'm still experimenting with this. One of the things I've been working towards mentally and now in execution is how to make plots meaningful and rolling. I kind of place my expected plot time to be around 2 hours. That's not a lot of time to get something in. So one of the things I'm doing is asking players to be very specific about their goals. A player who asks to 'look around' isn't being specific, they're fishing. If the player is having to fish then I'm not doing my job as a Storyteller. I want players to be focused in on something. If I haven't given them bait, I'm wanting them to guide me into something they're interested in doing...and I haven't done a great job of expressing that expectation yet; one of the things I've been drawing feedback from players on. But regardless, this is with #1; I'm screwing stuff up but having fun doing it and I think (based on talks) the players are having fun helping me work through things.

Feedback Loop
I run a plot, I ask for feedback, I use said feedback to adjust what I'm doing to run the next plot a little bit better, then get feedback... this is the cycle. The biggest challenge I'm finding is getting players to give feedback that isn't always positives. Believe me, I get a huge smile when they tell me how much they enjoyed something (and I like that a ton) but I can't improve on positives; sure I can do more of them and certainly plan that in, but I'd also like to address areas of deficiency. The feedback loop also works the other way, I try to give players direct ideas on things to pose about. What would be useful for me as a Storyteller to know regarding their character at that time. The challenge lies in that this is a bit different than we're all used to in some regards so breaking those habits may take some time, or restructuring.

Ask for what you want
If you don't ask for it, you won't get it. I tell players I'd like X Y and Z in their pose, I tell them I want a specific goal from them in their pose, I tell them to be specific about what they are investigating so I can give them a specific roll. All these took was simply asking for them. And the more I've asked, the more they've done it and it's entered a pretty good interaction relationship. I want poses every 15 minutes, I stick to that. One of my big goals right now is 6-8 GM poses per scene every 15 minutes (so 1.5-2 hour scenes). That doesn't provide for a lot of 'fluff' time, but rather we need to get to the meat of the plot; which requires us to be focused. All of it is circular I guess, and again, far from perfect but like I said in point #1, I'm ok with screwing up and making mistakes.

D&D is a system, not a setting or a theme. What would an 'ideal' D&D 5E game entail and encompass?

Rush Limbaugh, Age 70

Something that I've been working towards doing, and want to continue fine tuning, is identifying a player who for that scene (or part of a scene) is the spotlight player. This does a couple of things, it ensures I'm sharing the spotlight around and it also addresses the issue of who is posing first. The way I go about this (or am planning to at least) is to ask a player directly what their goal is in the scene (or again the segment of the scene) and make that the focal point for that round of poses. Everyone is doing their own things, but it should be around that spotlight moment. So if the spotlight player is wanting to investigate abandoned warehouse, then the other players in the scene are working around that as well. The goal is to create a team based mentality and one of using RP to support others goals while still exploring your own. Then as things move off one spotlight it picks up with another player and their spotlight.