Best posts made by Pyrephox

I've always wanted to adapt the Ten Houses from Michelle West's House War series. As the series names indicates, it's not a happy fun lords and ladies setting, at all, but it's also not hereditary. The way it works is:

There are ten major Houses, who are more like empowered Guilds than traditional 'noble families'. They are the Empires nobility, but run entirely on a type of meritocracy - you can work for the House, or you can earn the 'House Name' - the right to call yourself Johnny <House>. House name doesn't necessarily get you noble privileges or wealth; there are servants who have earned their House Name, but it does indicate that you are valuable and protected by the House. Generally you get housing, protection, salary, etc. People can work their whole lives to earn a House Name, and just being married or born to someone doesn't get it for you. You can be disgraced or give up your House Name, but no other House would ever take you in that case, even as an unnamed servant.

The most powerful/prestigious people in the House typically form the House Council, who advise the House leader. The House leader is theoretically chosen by the last House leader and accepted by the Council. In practical terms, the House leader can name whoever they want, but the Council almost always goes to war after the leader's death and the winner succeeds to become the head of house.

And, of course, the Ten are constantly politicking against each other, with various degrees of murder. You get all the good stuff (for me) about Lords and Ladies - the politics, the intrigue, the dealmaking, the power, without any nonsense about marriage or babies.

@packrat said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

One thing that I do feel is valuable in a Lords and Ladies set up is a large population of NPC nobles and society. Then you can have people with social stats or plots influence things, or social pressures be applied, etc, without having to rely on player characters entirely.

Another consideration, for me at least? Player characters almost always have 'above average' stats and skills for good reason but if player characters then make up the entire structure of an inherited noble caste? That starts to create a world in which those of noble birth are inherently superior even if that was not the intention.

I am to be honest a big fan of making that kind of thing based on 'level' of nobility also, if you are a knight/dame? Be really good at stuff! There might well be thousands of NPC gentry and you are one of the people who stand out. Somebody is playing a duke or duchess? Have them given points to be statted like a vaguely kind of competent person because they are going to get plenty of spotlight and agency from their position and power. They do not also need to be a master duellist or peerless tactician or unmatched courtier, actually if they are merely decent at stuff then they have much more reason to want to recruit, retain the loyalty of and have to delegate power to other player characters.

I agree with this. Rank, honestly, should be a purchasable ability, not something you get just by saying 'I want to play a Duke'. In most L&L settings, it comes with too many inherent bonuses for people to ALSO get full stats/skills/other abilities. Particularly when you add in personal wealth from being nobility, it's very easy to have Nobles Who Do Everything - they're warriors with the best equipment, they're researchers with the greatest libraries and assistants, they're diplomats with the ability to pay massive bribes, AND they receive an ongoing source of income and their own armies.

However, if you do that, I'd also recommend standardizing and being specific about the privileges of nobility: at X level, you have access to Y personal troops, X ongoing wealth, Z bonuses to social interactions with people beneath you on the chain, etc. And instead of letting people change rank (unless you have a setting that allows that), let people gain and lose temporary titles. Many royal/imperial courts had loads of minor titles JUST so that they could award good service (or punish someone who fell out of favor) in ways that were under their control. It's one of those things that a lot of games don't bother with, and it's a shame. 'The Keeper of the Royal Bedchamber' doesn't sound like an exciting title until you realize that in some places, the monarch took personal audiences in their bedchamber and it was the Keeper who decided who got in.

That said, looking at other alternatives: I'd love to see a game that played around with something along the Imperial Exam system. Blue Rose does this in part: you have to past tests of nobility, the last of which is the scepter test. But you could go more into an Imperial Exam kind of thing where your scholar class ARE your nobility, and the 'noble families' are the ones who push their children to study, take the exams, and get bureaucratic postings, including things like governorships. It also gives you characters who may be raised to wealth and privilege, but failed the exams or didn't take them, and now fill different positions for their family.

Also, @Songtress - it's a nice thought, but people do not pretend bang animals because they just don't have a humanoid form for that character they're in love with to bang. They pretend bang animals because the idea of getting ridden by a wolf, or cat, or whatever REALLY turns them on.

I don't know much about the WoT setting, so I can't speak to it in specific, but when I think about balancing 'wizards' and 'warriors' in a more overarching sense, it comes down to making sure that every character type can contribute in a fun, flavorful, and effective way in a combat situation, and to do so roughly to the same extent as any other character type.

One part of this is that while wizards/magic users might have spells that do Really Cool Things, they probably shouldn't have spells that can end a typical combat/conflict flat out with a single action or roll (unless other character types also get that). You have to think about how you're defining the bounds of magic in your setting, and what you want your spells to be able to do, or not do.

A second part to this is making sure that fighter/warrior characters also get Really Cool Things to do that aren't just "I roll to attack". Consider the purpose that you want warriors to serve in a combat scenario - are they bodyguards for physically weaker characters? Then give them 'tanky' abilities that allow them to grab and hold the attention of enemies. Are they single-target destroyers? Then make sure their damage scales with it, and consider giving them abilities that let them demonstrate their might - destroying weapons and armor, intimidation effects, powerful grapples and throws. Are they meant to be weaponsmasters who excel in one style of combat but are flexible enough to deal death with anything that comes to hand? Then make weapons flavorful and distinctive, with powerful special effects in the hands of skilled fighters that become even more awesome when the fighter invests their training in a particular weapon or style.

Likewise, really think about who your "wizards" are, or are supposed to be. There's something to be said for distinguishing between, say, a ritual magician who won't be casting spells in battle, but rather casts rituals at the beginning of the day to create favorable bonuses and special effects for the whole party, vs. an elementalist who flings fire and ice in the heat of the battle. Any wizard-type should be able to do some contribution in combat situations, because it's no fun for a player to sit twiddling their thumbs while everyone else smashes things, but you have to be careful not to let magic dominate the field. As such, I'd avoid spells that do a lot of damage to a large number of foes, spells that get categorized as 'save or die' (or be turned into a chicken, or whatever), and any sort of spell-casting resource that can run completely out so that wizards are reduced to hitting someone with a stick if you have multiple combats before rest/recharge.

Outside of combat, I'd recommend eschewing the 'dumb fighter/warrior' stereotype in mechanical benefits. Magic users get a lot of utility abilities in almost every system - they can read minds, or speak with extra planar entities, or fly, or teleport, or find lost objects, or WHATEVER. Make sure to give your warriors cool shit outside of fighting to do, as well - don't stiff them on skill points/backgrounds/whatever just because they swing a sword, and if your other character types have Cool Utility Powers, consider writing some in explicitly for your warrior types. A knight should be able to handle themselves in a court setting, a duelist might have the ability to size up other people's competence or abilities, a mercenary might have a an excellent understanding of tactics and geopolitics.

In my experience, most players aren't so much interested in total mechanical parity as they are in feeling as if their character meaningfully contributes to whatever scenario they're in, in a way that feels true to what the character should be able to do.

A large number of people almost always want to play the coolest character archetype. In settings with magic users and non magic users, that designation almost always goes to the magic users.

Especially in a set up like that - it doesn't sound like the Warders have any sort of purpose other than 'follow around the Aes Sedai and keep them from being ganked' if it comes up. And if you're letting magic user players apply magic freeform and creatively? Any magic system WILL be broken in a large group setting. It's a little different in a tabletop where you have a GM who can just say, "Jeez, Sam, no. That's not the intent and you know it."

Large settings where players may be dealing with multiple GMs or running their own scenes, really need to have magic with more structure and firm boundaries. Otherwise, it's forever at the mercy of player creativity and people can be VERY creative.

It doesn't really sound like a WoT setting is the best for a MU*? That doesn't make it unique, of course. But if you're wanting to expand it and you're not chained to a tabletop system, then you might want to spend some time really thinking of Cool Things that Warders and non-Aes Sedai characters can do that don't require Aes Sedai. And knowing that a lot of people are still going to want to play Aes Sedai, a major focus of GM time/effort probably needs to be devoted to making those mobs with pitchforks matter.

This could be by making sure that a large number of your important, active named NPCs are magic-hostile, if that's in theme for the setting. This could also be by establishing firm boundaries - even if they weren't in the books - for what magic can and can't do to keep it from being the Swiss Army Knife of abilities. If you don't want the artificial barrier of just saying, "The intent of the setting is that the Aes Sedai don't use their magic to cause harm to non-X targets - thus, any spells of hostile intent will fail on those targets, whether it's throwing boulders or just holding them down for stabbins'" then you probably need a system that can measure power and resistance to magic, and make sure that the 'average angry human' has a resistance against magic that is high enough that it's comparable (or even more) than their resistance to being stabbed by your warrior.

It's a lot easier to do these things, of course, when you're building a custom setting. Novel settings usually aren't meant to be balanced - they have protagonists who exist to stretch the 'rules' of the setting to their limits, either through natural talent or cleverness. And it works, because a fantasy protagonist often exists to be an agent of change or herald of revolution.

It works less well with 50 protagonists.

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Agency in the sense of "doing stuff that matters in the world" isn't everything, either. Take TGG for instance. In most of the campaigns, the PCs were grunts. They couldn't impact the war. They couldn't choose their missions. The battle code could kill them at any moment. BSGU was in a similar vein, though not as hard-core.

People want different things. There's no one perfect recipe for a game to be successful.

I think rather than "the world", agency should look at "my world". In TGG, PCs couldn't change the course of a war, no, but they could do things that affected their own trajectory or those of others around them (I assume - caveat that I did not play the game). A nurse could save a life. A soldier could pick a target and have a chance of bringing them down.

The whole world/setting doesn't have to be up for grabs for players to feel they have agency - and, honestly, these days I think you NEED to firmly define some setting elements as 'these will not change' or else players tend to get anxious and overinvested in reworking the world to be more fair/just/equitable and then get overwhelmed by the enormity of that task (or frustrated when staff point out that even an amazing success on a single action or skill check can only bring about incremental and limited change, because culture has inertia, or that goal is just Too Big).

Give people some parameters around the kind of agency they can expect, I think, upfront and in clear language. Don't dick around with, "Well, maybe, if you work hard enough..." because that tends to kick Gamer OCD into high gear, and suddenly someone's spending eighty hours a week on the game trying to grind to their fantasy utopia or whatever, and /miserable/ but unable to make themselves stop because that brass ring feels very shiny.

@faraday said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

I could have fun doing like hotshots (the really good wild fire firefighters) but only doing occasionally fire fighting and the rest slice of life drama, whereas others would expect new bigger fires or something

I don't necessarily need it to be bigger better fires/catastrophes/etc. but I do need there to be a constant stream of something. Otherwise it just gets boring.

I haven't exactly done a scientific analysis, but just off the cuff I'd say that Chicago Fire has about a 30/30/30 split between "action" (fires, rescues, high drama), romance, and "fluff" (silly hijinks, slice of life, and randomness). That's always seemed like a pretty decent ratio to strike on a MUSH. The trouble is sustaining that 30% "action" for a much wider cast on a much more frequent basis.

I think something like this could really use a spotlight-focused metacurrency. Something that builds up (maybe by being a supporting character to other PCs' plots) and then lets you pitch a spotlight plot for your PC . If the inspiration is an ensemble drama, then the trading off of 'focus character' on a regular basis is an important part of maintaining that sense of forward progression while also not having to escalate to SAVING THE WORLD.

So, if you were doing a setting that encompassed, say, cops + hospital, and your PCs each had a personal plot that they wanted to progress, they could spend a certain amount of metacurrency and send in their pitch (Something like, "Victor is a talented surgeon, but I've been playing him as increasingly reliant on a combo of uppers and downers to stay focused and able to keep up with with his caseload and manage stress. I'd like to turn this into a full-blown addiction, and have him do something under the influence that he has to cover up.") and then staff could trigger that with their next big plot (let's say a Criminal Informant NPC is shot while trying to deliver some vital information to a couple of cops, goes under the knife and Victor screws up and the guy dies before he can pass on his message - now Victor scrambles to cover that up; his player can tap several other PCs to act as supporting cast if they're interested, whether it's the cops who have to figure out what happened, or nurses/other doctors who see Victor going off the rails and have grim suspicions about what happened to the patient).

If you set it very firmly in the TV World where these sorts of plots can happen without necessarily taking a PC out of play (where even if Victor's malpractice is uncovered, it just gives him a chance to angst and repent and be suspended from surgeries for a month while he does rehab, and then he can regain his status, etc.) and make those assumptions very explicit to players, then it could work! And be a whole lot of fun.

I think the biggest thing is that you'd have to have staff who are willing to be realistic about the number of people they can handle and close down apps when they reach that number, and who are firm about removing players who can't work with the theme - whether that's because they can't OOC handle unexpected IC drama or IC loss, or because they can't play a supporting character to someone else's even for a limited time, or because the lack of 'realistic' consequences drives them crazy. You'd really have to be willing to have those talks with players, and gently remove those who just can't jive with the theme.

I want more fictional cities, to be honest. With neighborhoods and cultures that tie strongly into the theme of the game they're hosting. If it's a horror game, then I want at least one Detroit-like abandoned district filled with dark, crumbling commercial buildings and a murder-house or five. If it's an urban fantasy game, I want weird geography and architecture that's designed to take advantage of ley lines, summon ancient gods, or imprison demons. If it's a political game, I want strong divisions of neighborhoods by class/heritage/political affiliation, as well as a few leisure districts where all types mingle, scheme, and get in trouble with each other. If it's high fantasy, there had better be some dungeons and ancient ruins involved.

I tend to feel like creating a setting that highlights and supports the type of play that the game is about is better, although not easier, than trying to shoehorn a real place into games that - often - are not ABOUT real places. Exceptions exist, of course. I mean, if you want to play a game about gang wars in the 30s (even if the gangsters are also wizards) then setting the game in a real city that had a lot of gang activity in the 30s makes absolute sense, and there are a lot of resources available to allow you to highlight the gangliness of the setting. But even there, you wouldn't spend much grid space on the places of the city where the 'action' isn't likely to happen.

@Coin said:

@Ghost said:

I think it's also easier if you and the other player go into it knowing who will win, lose, or if the point is for it to be a bitter stalemate. You don't have to decide on how the win/lose will eventually happen (save this for RP!), but you'll likely avoid any feelings of butthurt if the two players walk into it knowing that eventually playerB will take the bad guy role and eventually lose to playerA

Or just put clear, OOC limitations regarding what's acceptable, and make sure neither player will be a sore loser.

OOC communication is key, yeah, I think. And a game culture that accepts and encourages non-fatal conflicts. So, having ways to throw roadblocks and obstacles at people that aren't all about combat, or taking things away permanently from people.

@Lithium Most MU* play, like Fifty Shades of Grey, is a fantasy. One of the appeals of fantasy is that it doesn't have to be realistic - a story about a healthy, ordinary BDSM relationship never would have sold as many copies as Fifty Shades, because it was all about the convergence of several different common fantasy scenarios with a bit of spanking and leather sprinkled on top. Calling it abuse, as if actual people were harmed or adult female readers are incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality, has always bugged me.

Same with the various sexy parings or groupings running around MU*s. Very few of them are "healthy", but they're not meant to be, any more than D&D is meant to be a thoughtful and respectful portrayal of exploration and colonization.

@Lithium Murder also happens in real life. And theft. And assault. Does it offend you that people play characters who kill people and steal stuff? Is "Ocean's Eleven" creating a new generation of roguishly handsome thieves who would have been upstanding citizens if not for that dirty, dirty fictional depiction of glamorous criminality?

@Apos said:

Uh, the difference is that @Sovereign's victims were really, really, really not fucking okay with what he was doing. What you are talking about is consensual, and both people are very much okay with it.

Doesn't matter. @Lithium is just trying to get people to feel bad that they're being associated with someone who is awful, and hopefully create that association in the minds of the "audience" as well. Best thing to do is just ignore the attempt. Local community equivalent of Godwinning.

@The_Supremes That makes you Good People in my book! I always love more character-focused plots...not in the sense of internal navalgazing, but in the sense of actually furthering character goals, or giving them exciting things to do that are tailored to them.

@surreality Yes, I know. I'm not actually arguing with you; it's more that your posts reminded me of very common arguments that always come up in these situations and never fail to make my teeth grind. I even agree with it - I wish that more MU*s would tailor tabletop systems for the game play they actually expect to support. And make those tailored rules specific and posted where everyone can see them. And if that involves restricting or taking out social skills, that's fine. Just don't leave them in there, but make them ineffective.

And, as always, make your expectations for the game clear so that people can opt in (or out) of the experience up front. If you want a game where the social dice fall where they may? Make sure that's clear from the beginning, and then enforce it. People who can't deal with that can find another game. Likewise, a game where all social stuff is based on player consent. So much of the problems we run into with MU* culture have one root in people's reluctance to just...set explicit boundaries and expectations, and let players make an informed decision as to whether this game is for them or not.

@Arkandel said in Fallen World MUX!:

Ah, but now we're getting into the 'a good player won't have a problem with that' argument. You know better than to create a character you're not excited about but others would, and have; I've had people come to me in the past a few short weeks into a PC going 'well, I was told/promised by that pack/coterie they needed this but I never see them and now there's no point in it, I just wanted to play it for them'. This is a thing that happens!

Oh, sure. But I was talking about asking STAFF that question. Never ask PLAYERS that question. Rule One of MU*s is that players are flaky as hell, and you should never, ever make a PC that depends on another PC being around or interacting with you in order to remain viable. But directing that question towards staff should get a useful response. Even something like, "Right now, it's pretty open for a lot of concepts and characters. This game is oriented towards investigating Mysteries in an urban setting, so it's going to be easiest to get involved with characters who are high on the Mental skills, and now that I think about it, we could really use a dedicated technowizard or three for stuff that's in the works." That's a response that tells me that staff is open to diverse concepts, knows what their game is about and what sort of play they're angling for, AND has plots and events in the works that are fun to get involved with.

To get back to the matter of alts though, my one issue with them (past the ever-existent one where people in my scene are taking forever to pose because they're playing three of them at once and argh) is that more or less the same group, rather than just one player, can monopolise +events. By showing up for them (which isn't difficult, especially if they are being ran by the same ST) they take up 'spots' that could have gone to legitimately disconnected, idle players looking for something to do, which is a tricky thing to fix without extensive hardcoding or strict policies. That's because it's far easier to +event/signup and be online at 20:30ET than to show up on the grid with your third alt consistently enough to have a strong presence.

On this, though, we agree entirely. And I wish more STs were willing to say, "Hey, I'd like to give other people a chance to get involved with plots. Please don't sign up for this one unless you haven't been in an ST'd scene in a week or two - if we get up to time, and all the slots aren't filled, then I'll put out an open call."

I'd add: Make it very, very easy for any potential player (especially at the start) to answer the question: What am I going to do on this game? You can do that through having some events with some big hooks, or organizations/factions with immediate impact and interest, or through other means, but whatever way you go, you want to make potential players immediately have an idea of how this character that excites them is going to play on the grid and Do Something. (What that Something is, is going to vary by theme, and it might not appeal to all people. That's okay! It's better to exert a strong, enthusiastic buy-in from 10 players than a lukewarm, least-common-denominator response from 30.)

@Insomnia said in Fanbase entitlement:

And seriously, why do these people think this is in any way okay?

The thing that really freaks me out is the responses to the article, far too many of which have some variation on, "What did he expect when he chose to be famous?"

Dude plays video games. I'm PRETTY DAMNED SURE he did not foresee this leading to people bringing tour groups to his house. Because that's a crazy thing.

@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Karmageddon Sure, but that's not the point. For starters I just didn't want to reuse any whether it was allowed or not.

But the real issue is any number of custom pages can be quite handy (maybe you want to add a quote to your character page for example, or create an primer for a PrP series you're running or... anything, really) and we're all used to them given how popular wiki use has gotten over the last decade.

Just as another perspective, I'm very much enjoying the standardized content and format. It's really very nice to be able to go to any given character page and see only the useful information, without fifty half-dressed photos, sparkly gifs, or every "funny" thing the character has ever said in any scene. coughs I also love not having to make a wiki page, or keep it updated. All of that just...happens. It's great.

Cinematic reality matters to me - I neither want nor expect players to have a working knowledge of how a profession works in the real world, or (for that matter) know things like how computer security actually works to be a hacker. But my smell test is usually "could I see this happening in a good, fun movie or other media product in the genre of this game without breaking my sense of disbelief". Which is, obviously, horribly vague. But I've learned that "realism" can be absolute murder on fun (could you imagine having to roll for infection after every point of lethal that broke skin, or having to roll for concussion for knocks on the head and then having to keep rolling for concussion effects for six months to a year after the fact? - I've recently worked with someone who had a Real Concussion from a relatively minor bonk on the head, and it's no joke.), and it's better to just roll with what's going to be fun. Sure, sometime you end up with Die Hard With a Vengeance, but I would much rather that than Cop: The Traffic Management.

I am, as is probably painfully obvious to anyone who has read more than a couple of my posts here, entirely on the side of stat-based social conflict resolution. I don't think that people who want to play a smooth operator in their pretendy-fun-time games should have to BE a smooth operator any more than people who want to play ninja should have to be ninja. I don't see RPGs as "collaborative storytelling", but as a game. Characters are pieces in that game, whose interactions are governed by rules. If you aren't prepared to play by the rules, don't play the game.

...now, with that said - I recognize and acknowledge the fact that people who play RPGs can attempt to use the social rules (or magic/superpowers that affect other characters' thoughts and feelings) to do things that are simply UNFUN for other players. So, the rules of any social conflict system should be written (or altered, if using a pre-written system) to take that into account, particularly where issues of sexuality and in-character love are concerned. No, a player should not be able to force a character to have sex with their character using the dice without that player's consent - but that's true whether it's using combat dice to rape the character, or social dice to "seduce" the character. But I DO think that one character should be able to use seduction skill (if that skill is allowed), to befuddle another character so much that they let slip the key, or look away from guarding the door for a moment, even if that's not in the best interest of the seduced character, and the player doesn't want them to, provided that action is within the confines of the rules.

IDEALLY, people would cooperate to find a solution that makes both players happen (whether the characters are happy or not), but when you play a game, you have to acknowledge that sometimes, a move is not going to make another player happy, because it interferes with their plans, goals, or desire to win. That's why rules exist.

That said (x2), I really do like systems that reward players for cooperating, whether they win or lose, in a social contest. I'm a big fan of the Doors system, although it's not perfect, for trying to develop a method that allows people to use a wide variety of skills to exert influence, that encourages players and GMs to negotiate the outcome while still providing firm guidelines, and that rewards players for accepting negative consequences for their characters.

I think there's two main 'phases' of social interaction that any social resolution mechanic has to cover, too: the short-term and the long-term.

Short-term interactions are those off-the-cuff attempts to talk your way past a guard, or get someone to follow you into that dark alley, or get someone to rethink drawing that knife on you. Your long, drawn-out mechanics are going to make these things /nightmares/, which means that people are going to be even more resistant to them.

Long-term interactions are things that involve lasting or major shifts for a person - coaxing someone into giving up their society's secrets, or blackmailing someone into supporting your next proposal at council, seducing someone into betraying an ally, or talking your way into an important position you're probably not qualified for. Having an easy, abbreviated mechanism for these tasks makes them feel pushy and too easy, which means people are going to resent being subjected to them.

So, I feel like a good social resolution system really should have variant mechanics for on-the-spot influence (which would explicitly be short-term and relatively minor, not impugning on anyone's deeply held beliefs or values), and for lasting manipulation. Call of Cthulhu broke out Fast Talk from Persuade for just that purpose, but only the skill differed, not really the /mechanics/.