Posts made by Pyrephox

I'm struggling a bit with the game's system as someone who ran a small plot, and how to build social challenges that allow me to work off of the characters' skills involved, rather than the players, who may still be trying to understand the theme and setting (as am I) well enough to develop effective reactions.

Anyone more familiar with the system have more insight on how to create social/intellectual challenges and opportunities that rely on characters' competencies rather than players' competencies (and my competence to accurately and usefully convey all the information in the scene that the players might need to make effective choices)?

I'm sorry to hear the game is going down - it was great to see it up again! I didn't stay just because the system no longer really does it for me, but I was so happy you brought it back. You did a good thing - and it sounds like people really had fun while it was up. That's all any game can ever ask to provide.

For me, it's a lot more about setting building than mechanics. The more a world or setting 'holds together' and operates by consistent rules (even if they're complex or hidden from the players), the more that I get excited about it, and the more 'immersed' I feel in it. Mechanics rarely enhance or detract from that, for me, unless they're really egregious or contradict the 'fluff'.

Pendragon doesn't really do /heroic/ Arthurian characters. It does 'low fantasy, hardscrabble knights' Arthurian characters. And 14s are really, really high, as I understand it. You're checking a single d20 for just about everything. 10 is 50/50, and anything above that is better than.

@lithium I don't think this is that kind of system, honestly. You can't be all things, or you can, but you can be mediocre at all things. Just not great. Or you can be a bit above average at a couple of things, and a bit below average at a couple of others. I wanted my character to have a surprisingly robust constitution, so I dropped her size and her strength a couple of points below average, so she's scrawny, but surprisingly tough for her size.

@lithium I gather that most actual checks are off of skills, not stats, and skills are a /little/ more generous. Only a little, though. It is definitely not a high power system, and characters will have one thing they are pretty decent at, and a /whole/ lotta things that they are only average at.

I think it goes to show that there's really a lot of space in MU*dom for diverse cultures and visions. It's a different way of conceiving of the game space, but if you groove with it, it works really well, and has remained in play for...decades? at this point.

@lithium It's definitely a different culture, but at least when I was playing there, there were /always/ adventures being run. Often multiple plots a night all week. There wasn't a lot of grid play, but it was hard to say there wasn't things to do.

Admittedly, the lack of grid RP and...ways to naturally connect the many adventures to an ongoing personal-oriented plot meant that I tended to drift away. But I enjoyed all the time I was there, and when I reached out to people for grid RP, I could usually get a scene or two.

@arkandel I tend to think of thematic mismatch as an OOC problem, and therefore one that needs an OOC discussion as a solution. Using IC means to try and "correct" what is ultimately an OOC misunderstanding of the purpose of the game usually just breeds frustration and resentment on behalf of both GMs and players, and can particularly feel very disrespectful from a player's POV, where it can feel like the GM is just shitting over all your cool ideas for no reason you can see.

It definitely happens, and it can be a real problem, if your theme is important to the game you want to run/play. Or even if it isn't - I think a lot of tension on WoD games can come from the fact that the theme of each game is pretty much "pick from this wide variety of possibilities" in the books, with the expectation that the GM will narrow down what KIND of WoD game it's going to be - and then MU* staff don't do that, which means everyone wants to play the WoD game that's in their head, and some of those games are largely incompatible with each other.

As to why? Mostly just that. Everyone has something that really revs their engine, and barring strong guidance from a GM, a lot of players will want to bring that into every game they play. And people want to play the popular games, so they have an incentive to not self-select out of an incompatible thematic desire, but rather to twist the theme around to their preferred play style.

Option A. I find the premise really interesting, and think it'd be fun to game in. I also think it's probably a bit more flexible for the variety of outcomes you're considering than the historical setting. Any kind of historical setting requires a higher buy in up front from potential players to at least pretend to acquaint themselves with the mores/culture/context of the time.

@kay said in What Is Missing For You?:

@lemon-fox My favorite superhero trope was always the 'group that fights crime while also being on a tv show' thing. Especially if you give it some kind of cat fight twist that's clearly obvious OOC but might still trip characters up ICly. Did the Blazing Wonder really hook up with Fantastic Horse's sidekick/girlfriend Megafox while they were trapped in the X Dimension? Find out next week!

ETA: Granted, that might be more suitable for a tabletop set, or for inter-group tension. I'm not sure how you'd set that up to be MU* wide. Unless there are several competing shows.

What would be really interesting there is if you could have logs of the action scenes, the "on screen" stuff, and then some sort of mechanics for analysing the logs for ratings. Like, was there a Surprise Revelation? +100 ratings points! Did a fan-favorite villain show up? +50 --Did he get punked and it was clearly too easy for the heroes? -100. So on and so forth.

And then have the various super teams conspiring and competing for the highest ratings, maybe with perks to their teams for being in the top slot (suit upgrades! Fancy lair! etc.)

And the villains, if you have PC villains, could gain fan followings so that shows with them became highly boosted for popularity, so that super teams were sneakily trying to convince them to agree to drop a hint about their next attack so that a specific team could be the one to head it off, etc.

I feel like one thing we, as designers of persistent environments, could do a better job at, and that would help to make people more amenable to setbacks and challenges, is to stop thinking so much in binaries of 'success/failure' and more in a series of meaningful choices that each open up different avenues of play. We set up games to have one "success state" - it's not an immutable condition of the universe, it's a design choice.

For example, if we're going to use literary/story conventions (which, if I'm honest, I don't think are a very good match for RPGs, because the story isn't entirely in the hands of any one author, and may be in the hands of a random statistical element, so expecting things to turn out as smoothly as they do in media is setting oneself up for frustration, I feel) then failures in a story are rarely ever just FAILURES. A good author doesn't slam a barrier down in front of the protagonist without creating a path to get around, under, or over the wall - usually a more interesting and dramatic path than just going straight through the obstacle would have been.

I've been playing around with the idea of, essentially, there being continuums of play which are interesting but mutually exclusive - you can dabble in each, but to commit to one, you have to damage your reputation with the other - although that reputation can later be repaired if you decide it's more fun to play the other side. Like, instead of "Here's the dominant power structure - if you screw up with them, you're SOL when it comes to play," instead thinking of it more like, "Here's the overt group of power-brokers, here's their shadowy counter-points. Pissing off the overt group is going to shut you out of some of their opportunities, but it's also going to make you attractive to the shadowy counterparts, who will open up opportunities for you that you can only get by "failing" to impress the overt group."

Basically, the designer needs to think: If I'm putting out this challenge which can be failed, what are the consequences of that? If the consequences aren't inherently fatal, then how do those consequences allow players to continue to advance their character's desires by other, but still fun, means?

That said - some people can't accept consequences of any sort, so some people are always going to cry "my story" or "my agency" whenever things don't work out exactly as they have planned. You can't design around these people, you can only gently shoo them to other games that work better for their needs, before they cause too much trouble.

@lotherio A link would be fine!

This is looking really, really cool. I love the complexity of the international politics and the atmosphere.

I found a really cool page on the wiki that talked about laws and history and all of that, but then I lost it and couldn't find it again. A front page list of all the important world intro pages might be helpful!

I think most people are pretty close in behavior between their online selves and offline selves, although the different venues allow different expressions of that behavior, and online behavior has a tendency to become more exaggerated and hyperbolic. Some people have entirely different online and offline personas, but my suspicion is that it takes work and intentionality to really do that, and so most people don't.

Honestly, this sounds like catnip to me. I love hearing these updates!

@three-eyed-crow If you wanted to try to cater to both bases, I think you'll struggle, BUT, you could essentially make slow travel and fast travel different actions with different risks and rewards. Fast travel might cost resources, but gets you to Place X for plots or what have you without incident. Dramatic travel might involve traversing a grid, does not cost time resources (because it takes actual time), and might also include optional opportunities to gain or lose resources along the way - so, for people who like the journey and exploring, and aren't under a deadline to get somewhere Right Now for a plot, etc. And in exchange for the extra time they invest, they get the opportunity to have Adventures along the way.

That's not perfect, of course, and there are players that would be deeply offended that the other option than their preference even exists, but it might work.

I want some sort of acknowledgement of travel times involved that cuts down on the teleportation issue (unless you actually have teleporters), but I don't know that it needs to be isolation in a grid room. These days, I'm more leaning towards some sort of off-screen time resource that can be spent to do off-screen actions, /including/ travel time. So you still have to commit to a journey, but rather than being cut off from RP at your origin or destination, you can transfer when you want, and just pay the 'travel cost' out of resources. Keeps people from trivializing travel, but also keeps them from being stuck in a room, possibly by themselves, for significant amounts of our precious, precious gaming time.

I would really, REALLY dig domain management mini-games, or farming minigames, or animal taming/training minigames. And I think MU*s have a lot of potential to reduce the feeling of 'repetition' by stretching out over time and targeting interesting decisions. Like, a farming minigame doesn't, or shouldn't, need me to log in every day to type +water for each plot of land - It could focus more on the planning of different difficulties of crops, of hardiness and soil, and of events that happen when you do log in - "Rabbits are infesting your crops! What do you do?" and can even tie into a mini-PrP system where you can enlist other people's help to chase rabbits around the field in a scene, and they can roll against a hidden difficulty to the crisis object, and you can see the outcome. And at the end, you get stuff that you can sell to a market for cash, or use in recipes, or whatever.