Posts made by Patty

@rizbunz Hard for me to answer, to be honest, given that I grew up there in the 90s and I'm an Anglophone. Things Franco culture like old school music are a bit outside my realm.

Perhaps, like I said, you can have tensions between the minority of Anglophone and the majority of Francophones as an example. Divided loyalties, maybe - those who wanted to keep Canada independent (as part of the Commonwealth, or whatever followed it in game chronology), those who were pro-American and threw their lots in with the occupiers, and those who were isolationalist. The French would probably fall into the latter camp often, but that might be another division.

Of course, this is long ago now. Groups remain the same. You can also have the Church, which was monolithic and very important in French society until the 60s, be a big player in this world, perhaps. There's also a sizeable Mohawk reserve south of the city (Kahnawake) that could EASILY make a comeback as a potent force, and would actually be very cool to see in this.

Belatedly, for music... you might want to look at Stompin' Tom Connors for the Anglo-Canadian side of things (though it might be out of time period, started making music in the 60s) or Paul Anka. For the Francos... well, there's a million different small folk music artists in French Canadian culture. I'm not an expert on it at all, particularly in that time period, but for a "name soup" check out https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pop-music-in-quebec-and-french-canada-emc/

The cool thing about Montreal is that prior to the separatist thing in the 70s and 80s, the city was very heavily loyalist Anglophone and made an interesting mix of people. Many Anglos (regardless of actual ethnic origin) were very British-Canadian in orientation, (I remember my grandmother using all manner of British terms in her day to day conversation, loyalty to the Queen and Commonwealth etc...). Quebec's population in the 50s was 15% Anglophone, but it was much higher in Montreal itself, and Anglos controlled a lot of the business and politics of the city. Given the divergence in timeline between real life and Fallout, you guys might want to stick with it, go with what happened historically or diverge into a what if.

I might poke my head in here, being a native Montrealer and a big Fallout fan. This looks super interesting!

@selu Nice try.

@packrat That's absolutely phenomenal. I was wondering if I could take this chart and use it as a basis for a similar thing on the game I staff on?

@packrat I'm very sorry for your loss. I've lost a few loved ones over the last year, and it's never an easy time. MUSHing should play second or third fiddle, in that case.

Any updates on this?

One of my favourite book series ever. If I have time, I'd be interested should anyone do this.

If I had more time, I would one hundred percent be on this. As it is, I barely have time for any of my hobbies, and Eternal Crusade has sucked up my time. I will be watching though.

As a side note, I played Decumius on DBTS and FS MUSH, and Edward on Star Crusade.

The Eternal Crusade is a low fantasy roleplaying world, whose focus is political intrigue and late medieval era warfare. The Civilised West, which is how the game world is known, is bordered by the Ergonian mountain range in the east, the ocean in the west, the Great Salt River to the south and the tribal lands of the north.

Contained within the area are two kingdoms - Aequor in the north, inspired mostly by France and Italy and Galenthia in the south, a mix of medieval England, Scotland, Germany and Spain in the coastal areas. The city state of Four Corners, a vast, merchant controlled polity on the ocean's coast dominates trade and swears allegiance only to coin, while the Church controlled State of Rikton concerns itself with the spiritual welfare of the West. Meanwhile, the mysterious Principality of Kentaire keeps a tight reign on all entry and exit but does a brisk trade in a new technology - firearms. On the peripheries we've got Viking inspired raiders on the island of White Hall, a Persian state across the Great Salt River, the Partharian Empire and the remnants of a once great, all dominating Vir Sidus Empire on the other side of the eastern mountains, inspired by an alternative, reformed Roman rump state.

The game itself offers a variety of roles to play. From the combat orientated knight who rides out to fight for their liege lord, kingdom, or the Church of the One Faith to the noble trying to rise the political ladder through intrigue, backstabbing or guile. From the shadows, the everpresent Syndicate controls the Civilised West's black market and less savoury elements, exerting a wide reach over many. More or less anything you can think of is possible to play, with the focus generally being on the affairs of Galenthia, Aequor and Four Corners.

Check out our Wiki if you're interested: http://eternalcrusade.wikidot.com/
Or log on in at: tacitus.genesismuds.com Port: 1220

Hope to see you there!

@Ide said:

So I hear FS, Dark Sun...let me add Thieves World and Black Company. Though I'm getting far afield of high fantasy.

Gritty fantasy is like a black hole

The Black Company books remain some of my favourite. I often wondered (and actually remember posting on WORA requesting) what a MUSH where the PCs are members of a similar company trapesing around the world on contracts would look like. You have your stable PCs, and your GMs handle the rest.

@Rainbow-Unicorn said:

@Patty It's made to cover them, as well as an interactions between large systems and small ones. You have a city (size 5), a thieves guild in that city (size 2), in conflict. Both of them have different resources. The ratings you have in economics, size, and so on are meant to go up and down. The thieves guild burns down a district in the city (it becomes size 4) and then robs the treasury (decreasing the economic strength of the city from 5 to 4, and temporarily increasing it's from 2 to 3) and so on. It uses the One Roll Engine, so it's all abstracted but the idea is that players will do things to temporarily raise their status in conflict with other groups, and it all comes down to a set of rolls between both sides that determine how things go. If you're familiar at all with the One Roll Engine, the height and width of each sides rolls determine exactly how the conflict breaks down, and each side targets the others particular resources/size/influence trying to wear each other down.

It's fantastically simple and I think works /great/ in my experience.

It's written by Greg Stolze.

http://gregstolze.com/reign1/

Grab the Enchridion PDF. It's only $7.50 and focuses purely on the Company rules. Companies can reflect anything from the tiniest mercenary companies to empires that span star systems.

That's absolutely fascinating. Thanks, bookmarked and will check it out when it's not 2 AM.

@Ide said:

@Patty there is a decent summary here, http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15286.phtml, search for "organizations in a fantasy medieval setting"

(edit: ninja'd by @Rainbow-Unicorn -- it does sound cool btw).

There was a long thread on WORA when SC tanked, I don't remember details more specific than 'drama'. But there should be plenty of folks here who can tell it.

Much appreciated too! If this fits with the structure of the game, then we might have something to operate some things we've either abstracted until now or just mishmashed. That being said, I'm happy with the mass combat system as it develops.

@Rainbow-Unicorn said:

Can I make a suggestion?

To avoid getting bogged down too much in details, and to encourage plots, use the Reign company system to track people's individual power bases. It scales really well and can be added to any system.

This is fascinating. We've just re-written our mass combat system to be a lot better. Next on the list is campaigning, and economic bases. How does that system you're talking about work, exactly?

@Ide said in Fantasy MU*s?:

I think it depends on what the players want to do.

I'd like to see an economic/war game for one.

I didn't get to play on Star Crusade for as long as I wanted to (work got involved), but damned was it a cool setting. I remember coming back a few months after I'd had to step away and finding it completely abandoned. What happened?

@Ide said:

@Patty, in general it gives me the impression that someone studied all night for their certification in Business Process, fell asleep, woke up and opened a fantasy mu*. The 'rule of fun'. Idlenuking vanilla characters away for a month. The pages (and pages (and pages)) of generic fantasy mish-mash culture and history when the game has never had more than 35 average online (characters -- not uniques!).

Thanks, Ide. You're not the only one who feels that way. From what I understand, there's actually a review of Wiki stuff (as well as other remnants of the old guard) going on or coming in soon.

That being said, a small game it may be but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have theme written out, IMO. On the other hand, some very minor details (prostitution for instance) has been expounded on... at length, when it really was not necessary to do so. I think we could point the finger at some rather overzealous folks who got in their mind that, "Since women in this game don't have nearly the same restrictions as RL medieval times, then we have to write about the sexuaaal liberraaaation man!"

Anyways. Like I said, I'm told that they're looking into a lot of the dead weight.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Fantasy MU*s?:

@Ide said:

@Patty, in general it gives me the impression that someone studied all night for their certification in Business Process, fell asleep, woke up and opened a fantasy mu*. The 'rule of fun'. Idlenuking vanilla characters away for a month. The pages (and pages (and pages)) of generic fantasy mish-mash culture and history when the game has never had more than 35 average online (characters -- not uniques!).

I can't level a general criticism, apart from the 'We will take your character away after two months if they haven't had a scene we consider substantive and posted it on the wiki' as a posted policy. But the whole thing reads as very high-handed to me. "Business Process" is a better way to put it.

Yup, agreed. It was overly harsh and ridiculous and I'm not sure what their intent even was with it. How do you grow a MUSH when you sound as if everyone is their at YOUR (the admins') pleasure and not for their pleasure? Some people micromanage way too much.

@Ide said:

That wiki really is a turn-off. I'll +1 giving that a good edit if EC wants more players.

What in particular turns you off? I've got some ideas, myself, but I'm curious to hear yours.

@BetterJudgment said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've got a couple friends who play on Eternal Crusade and have told me it's better now that several staffers who were (by their accounts) terrible have left.

Is this the original group of staffers that was banned four months ago--

@Crysta said in Current Games:

The head admin of Eternal Crusade has banned about half the staff, so if you left because of them, you can give it another go. We're in a bit of a flux right now because they played most of the plot-driving characters.

--or is it a new group of staffers? Mind you, the problem I had was with the owner (Mycol?), who was the only one doing apps at the time, so I'm not going to be interested unless he has passed the game on to someone else entirely. More generally, though, if two groups of staffers have been shed within six months, then people likely should know that before trying to app in.

Mycol is still in charge. If you've got a particular issue, let me know in a PM and I can look into things. The last thing I want going on at this game is people walking away with their hands thrown in the air because they felt like they weren't treated fairly.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've got a couple friends who play on Eternal Crusade and have told me it's better now that several staffers who were (by their accounts) terrible have left. That said, I've never really been able to get past the way some of the Policies are worded on the wiki. Particularly the Activity stuff.

http://eternalcrusade.wikidot.com/activity

It's not even that I don't think I'd be able to meet this, I just find it very off-putting.

A lot of those policies were written by the old admins. Not to speak ill of the dead (as the saying goes), but they tended to micromanage a lot of things that, frankly, did not need to be so handled. Things haven't been updated all over the wiki but from what I understand, a comprehensive review of "all that was old" is underway.

@Bargle said:

The summer lull isn't in question. It's the combination of shrinking playerbase plus summer lull. In the two decades I've been part of this hobby, I've generally found that on low-population games, and especially those that seem to be losing rather than gaining players, the summer lull becomes the time when people move on from the game for greener pastures. Some will come back, but others won't, and the population of the game grows smaller still. The death spiral, if you will. Not every time, but a lot of the time.

Even so, better a tiny but active and engaged playerbase that's enjoying themselves than a massive but bored one, in my opinion.

Agreed; that being said, growing is usually better than shrinking. And as noted above, you were on the money with the policies so quoted.

@BetterJudgment said:

@Patty said:

Eternal Crusade MUSH is active, though significantly smaller than it was several months ago. It's in a little bit of a summer lull at the moment as several admins are on vacation, but there are people and events still around and happening.

It's a great place if you want to have the one borderline rude person who handles apps ignore yours utterly for weeks.

I can't speak as to what happened in the past, Better. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience, and I think if you give it another shot, things will work out. Your call, man.

@Bargle said:

It also looks about on the same spot on the "High vs. Low Fantasy" scale as Game of Thrones, if not lower.

Also I read "significantly smaller" and "summer lull" and that doesn't give me the impression a game is long for the world.

Fair enough. I figured there was no use in mincing words. That being said, everyone who's RPed for a while knows that summer is a difficult time because people like to go outside and stuff. I know I do. Usually, I've seen, once autumn comes around and peoples' schedules regularise, things fall back into normal.

That being said, I know of several large events in the works. It's just a matter of perspective, I guess.

Eternal Crusade MUSH is active, though significantly smaller than it was several months ago. It's in a little bit of a summer lull at the moment as several admins are on vacation, but there are people and events still around and happening.