Posts made by Pyrephox

@The_Supremes said in Finding roleplay:

@Pyrephox said in Finding roleplay:

@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.

The real challenge I have is in getting people to create jobs for that sort of thing. Impromptu stuff is harder for me than things I can think about and Plan(tm). A lot of people seem allergic to giving me "this is what my character is up to" jobs that I can be like... "Oh really... well then... -PLOT-"

Oh, well, yeah. +Jobs are where fun goes to die, lost in a hell of nitpicking, boring rolls, and being forgotten.

@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.

I have no objections to random plot dropped out of the sky, but if you REALLY wanted to rev the engines and storytellers had time, it'd be even better to page the people involved and say, "Hey, I've got a few hours to run something for you guys - what would you like to have your characters do that could happen where you are?"

I've always liked, and wanted to see coded, a variation on the Chaosium CoC system. When you successfully use a skill during play, it gets flagged. And at the end of the session or adventure, you roll your flagged skills, and if you /fail/ that roll, you gain a couple of points in that skill. It creates a curve where skills you're good at are easy to flag, but progressively difficult to improve (because the better you are, the harder it is to fail). In a MU* setting, I suspect it'd be something like 'successfully checked skills get flagged (automatically or manually), and at the end of the week, you may choose to execute a command like +improve, that automatically rolls every flagged skill, tells you which ones improved, and by how much. Now, this works better with percentile systems - I note that the new version of UA seems to be leaning towards this, as well.

I hate automatic XP, though. I like XP from dramatic failure, aspirations, breaking points, and negative Conditions - those are fun, and incentivize play in interesting ways. I like vote for selfish reasons - mostly that I like to vote for people, but I do /not/ want votes that they automatically know they receive, because that leads to that bullshit of <OOC> Player says, "Voting for you all, now." and then obviously waiting to receive notices of return +votes. I also liked Darkwater's little message where you could show your appreciation with puppies and all sorts of silly things - no XP, but it still incentivized showing people hey, you were awesome.

More the latter, provided that the options available interest me. I tend to make a character based on what I think will fit best into the setting, theme, and proposed plot. I rarely, if ever, have anything "pre-plotted" about the character's development, and I don't really like tying myself to other players and their characters in advance.

I would love a urban fantasy game that moved away a bit from the baggage of the WoD. I'd really like something that took the fun stuff from Anita Blake (namely, no masquerade, and supernaturals having to try and integrate with the "real world" with all the messiness that entails), without getting bogged down in the soft porn. I mean, we're MU* players, we can (and will) bring our own porn.

@Arkandel Just the phrase "Babylonian nazi gold" hints at epic. Were these time-traveling Nazis who had taken over Babylon?

I don't ever recall staff coming down on me for running a PrP...admittedly, some times, it's probably because I just didn't say I was running a PrP, but rather it was just Stuff That Happened. But I think another big part of it is that I usually only ask anything for/about it if pushed to by other players. I rarely seek XP or other rewards for running Random Things - I'm running them because I'm bored and I want to. And I try to make sure that they're not 'and now you PCs get THESE resources', as well. Although sometimes that's rather stifling - I'm a big believer in PCs picking up random bits of trophies and artifacts that later turn out to be plot hooks in and of themselves, but staff tends to be so very twitchy about such things that I don't even bother, typically.

@Roz said:

@Misadventure said:

There are a lot of discussions about how to be a ST, and many of them tell you to avoid the patterns that STs and players tend to fall into anyhow.

A common example is the ST who has a single story path laid out in their mind, and keeps the players from getting off it. This is a terrible thing if your players want unpredictability, and to be able to make choices that change where the plot goes (this is called Agency).

HOWEVER, if your players aren't proactive, if they want to have the story fed to them, or just have a chance to show off their awesome strengths and quirky weaknesses, or other interests, then this may be a good fit for them.

This is a good point, which brings up another thought for me: sometimes players aren't particularly proactive, but sometimes players are actually lost and just don't know what to do. In which case, give them more to go on. It's awful as a player to sit there and you've read all the stuff and you just don't know what you're supposed to do next and the GM is kind of just waiting for you to figure out the magic action. Don't do that.

Yesss.

One of the things I've tried to implement (after too many years of being too damned clever for my own good), is to ensure that at the end of a GM'ed scene, I KNOW what the PC plans to do next, and their motivation for it. I also encourage players to let me know if they're stuck or lost or out of ideas, and I'm happily willing to rattle off a group of possible courses of action, without forcing the player to choose any one of them.

My purpose, after all, isn't to "beat" the player, or to give the player an exam on How Good They Play, but rather to make something that's enjoyable for everyone involved.

@Coin said:

@Pyrephox said:

@Coin said:

@Tez said:

if players do something and you think it's stupid, think about how to make it awesome),

This can backfire if the same person always does really stupid shit and you always swing it around to being awesome, because other players will resent actually making good decisions when the ST is willing to make stupid shit awesome.

As an ST, I'd much rather have someone who's willing to do SOMETHING, even if it's non-optimal, than the players who are so busy trying to find the best action that they paralyze themselves, and then complain when other players go ahead and move forward with the plot. Incentivize action!

Sure, but there are people in between the two extremes of STUPID ACTION and SMART INACTION.

Yes. But I admit that I see way more of the latter than the former in modern MU*s - and a lot of STs who shut down player actions when they step slightly out of what the ST thinks is a "good" action. I would rather see players empowered more to do those fun, cinematic actions, even if some of them might be slightly crazy.

Also, if a player is having their character take actions that are deliberately disruptive on an OOC level to the point that it's preventing other players from having fun (or, as is most likely, they're just playing with a different and incompatible tone than other players), then that's an OOC issue, and there's no storytelling skill that's going to solve that...except for the storytelling skill of sitting down with your players and talking, OOC, about assumptions, enjoyment, and how to find a compromise. It's not really a plot-running issue, it's an OOC communication issue.

@Coin said:

@Tez said:

if players do something and you think it's stupid, think about how to make it awesome),

This can backfire if the same person always does really stupid shit and you always swing it around to being awesome, because other players will resent actually making good decisions when the ST is willing to make stupid shit awesome.

As an ST, I'd much rather have someone who's willing to do SOMETHING, even if it's non-optimal, than the players who are so busy trying to find the best action that they paralyze themselves, and then complain when other players go ahead and move forward with the plot. Incentivize action!

Obviously not a definitive list, but these are the things I try to remember when I GM:

1. The players don't see what you do. This is ESPECIALLY the case in mystery plots. No matter how clear you think you've made that hint, or how obvious you think you've made the connection between two events, most players won't see it. This isn't because they're not smart people, but rather because there is a major, qualitative difference between seeing the whole plot and only seeing pieces of it. Solution: Be flexible. Don't rely on the characters putting the clues together in a certain order or to a certain conclusion in order to move forward - rather, pay attention to how they're processing the clues, and where possible, incorporate their thought processes into your plot.

2. Every scene should matter. If you're requiring players to give up hours of their time to be in your plot, then don't give them "filler". There should never be a scene where nothing happens, or the players just witness some event...especially if that event happens after two hours of more filler. If there is an event the PCs need to witness, then that happens in the first couple of poses, and the rest of the scene is the PCs /reacting to/ and /affecting/ that event. Double never: Never have the PCs reduced to witnesses of some NPC being awesome/terrible without being able to do something.

3. The PCs are the stars, not the plot. Basically, this just means that the focus should always be on the PCs, what they are doing, and what effects those actions have. It should not be on how cool you think your unbeatable NPC badguy is going to be when he wipes the floor with the PCs and stands cackling over their bodies, or on this obscure bit of worldbuilding that just fascinates you, or on how shadowing, sinister, and powerful this NPC organization is. Before an event happens, always ask yourself, "How is this going to affect the PCs," and "How do I see the PCs affecting this event?" (And be prepared for the PCs to come up with something that isn't on your list at all.)

4. Challenges should be experiential, not informational. Don't hide the plot from your PCs - the fun begins when the PCs have enough information to try and Do Something, and you want to get to the fun as fast as you can. Instead, if you need barriers or challenges, build them into the actions required - instead of giving out tiny bits of information that PCs may not connect (see point 1), go ahead and let them quickly find out that there are arcane bombs hidden beneath the schools in the area that can't be detected or disarmed by conventional authorities, and they're all going to go off in twelve hours. And there are twenty schools. Now the PCs have a REAL challenge: figuring out how they're going to reach and disarm twenty magic bombs in buildings filled with children and suspicious adults. Also, don't build challenges that can be reduced to a single die-roll - your PCs should have to do things, whether it's gather a vial of virgin's tears, or hornswaggle R&D to give them a prototype device to seal a dimensional breach, before they can even TRY banishing the demon to another plane, or whatever.

5. Work with the PCs for resolution, and let PCs use their skills and abilities. Nobody likes to have their toys taken away. If a PC has invested XP and time into being an expert in a field, give them the opportunity to shine. If you've got someone with badass social skills, let them use them. Let them intimidate that thug out of wanting to fight - there are always other thugs. If they're a combat maven, then give 'em at least one chance to beat someone down. If they're a research guru, make sure that you have juicy, useful, and /timely/ information to share with them that no one else can get. If they're a telepath or a hacker, then don't be surprised when they want to read minds/hack things, and be sure to give them that chance - don't panic and shut them down because "it'll solve the plot". Remember - build your challenges into the actions, not the information. It's okay for PCs to know things. Does this mean you never put the brawler in a situation where he has to go to a fancy dress party and be polite? No, of course not - but players enjoy fish-out-of-water challenges more when they also know that they will have a chance to show their area of expertise.

6. Let failure add complications, not dead-ends. This plays off of "every scene matters" above. Few people have fun spending three hours fruitlessly searching for something and finding nothing. If the PCs are failing because they're on the wrong track, then put a complication in their path that puts them back on the right track in an entertaining fashion. Have the bad guys come looking for /them/. Have someone steal the last page of the ritual they need, and now the scene is a rooftop chase trying to get the damned thing back. Blow out an jet on the spacesuit, and now the team is trying to stop one member from spiraling helplessly off into the cold black of space rather than catching the bad guy.

Ultimately, remember it's a game, not a novel. You're here to have fun. Your players are also here to have fun. The plot exists so that the GM and players have fun. If something about the plot is preventing someone having fun, then change it. If something isn't working the way you hoped it would, change it. Most of the time, no one will even notice.

@faraday said:

@Arkandel said:

The only real problem with this is that most players would need to know the ins and out of the bureaucratic system itself to do the concept justice. And most wouldn't.

It'd be kinda sorta like having an E.R. MUSH set at a hospital - if most characters need to know at least some basic things about medical practices but most players don't, it'll hit a wall really fast.

Military games manage okay despite most players not having the faintest idea about how the military really works. As long as your suspension of disbelief is set at an appropriate Hollywood type level, and you manage the purists who want to go around correcting everyone (guilty, your honor, but I've learned), it can be done.

Yeah. The easiest way to overcome this is staff-side, with staff telling people how they want people to do various iconic cinematic political things - it's not so important that it be REALISTIC, as that it's a) interesting to do, and b) consistent from the start. So an explanation of how the staff wants people to use the systems is vital - how do I blackmail a rival? How do I leverage lobbyists? How do I change public opinion? Etc.

If you use CoD, then I'd say replace the Aspirations with Skeletons (in the closet). Whenever someone finds out about a Skeleton and successfully uses it against you to get you to do something, gain a Beat. You can 'neutralize' a Skeleton by coming clean and declaring your sinful repentance through the media, but you don't gain a Beat for that, and you immediately have to choose another Skeleton.

I have a question! Regarding the drive: Do we/should we put up what kind of feedback we're looking for or are willing to give? Maybe collect that somewhere, so that people know if someone is just looking for grammatical work, or if they want to know if the characters are engaging, or if the plot holds together? Or, alternatively, what kind of feedback we're most comfortable giving?

@mietze said:

There will need to be things for the captains to do, though, rather than just fill out some other guy/gal's roster. This is where I've seen it fail.

This is one place where having different "spheres", with dedicated staffers, would actually be a good idea. Where the characters of all types are expected to interact socially/politically, but they all have a staffer that's in charge of Their Stuff. So, a planet-side staffer who handles the plantation things, including slave unrest, crop failures/disasters/etc and planet-side politics (this would be the most lords-and-ladies-like sphere, perhaps with shiny positions to compete for, like planetary governor and advisory council that set things like import/export tarriffs, laws about how slaves/workers are treated, etc.); a port staffer who handles the needs of the spaceport caste, including upkeep/maintenance on ports, dictates from the Distant Space Trade Emperor, and smuggler/pirate events that focus on the ports (in my head, the spaceport caste play would be very like Babylon 5, with hosting diplomats, dealing with contraband and sabateours, having to juggle the good of the locals with the dictates of far-flung superiors); and a voyage staffer who handles Space Adventure stuff and starship maintenance and upkeep things (leaning towards the Firefly end of 'play out the interesting bits').

@Lithium said:

@Pyrephox And then on top of that, you have the ship captains themselves, so there is a third class that also dominates shipping because of smugglers and then you have the government who is taxing everyone and controls the city itself.

This could be a lot of fun.

That's a really good addition. Ship captains could provide that ever-popular "rough and ready" PC type, while still giving them ample reason and opportunity to be allowed into the "noble" social circles.

@BigDaddyAmin said:

I'd be interested in offering input. Everyone is coming up with awesome ideas so far.

I kind of like the idea of maybe someonething...colonial. Human lords and ladies ruling over a colony of some galactic empire. Again, with like the "space conquistadors." Spain in Mexico AD 40,000. Make plantations where they grow or mine some precious raw material or luxury commodity.

And laserswords. Yeah. Laserswords.

If you want to set up an interesting class-based dynamic, have one class/caste own the farms, and one class/caste own the /space ports/, and a limited amount of goods that can be shipped (and thus give profit to the growers) in a time period. You don't have to get ultra detailed about it, but just to have SOMETHING to actually negotiate over that doesn't involve marriage would be awesome. (And opens the possibility for smuggling and intrigue, if the game staff feel capable of handling that.)

@Cobaltasaurus My preference would probably be Hangout+Docs, but I can roll with any of the above options. I'm not huge on writing towards prompts, but as long as non-prompt writing could be shared as well, I'm cool with it. It'd probably be good for me to expand my horizons.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Pyrephox said:

I am not on that list, but I would be interested.

You're of course welcome! The list was just the folks I knew off of the top of my head who do writing things. And you're a pretty great motivator, so it'd be awesome. :3

Yay! It would be nice to have writery people to work with again! Like @Lithium, though, I could not do Facebook, but google docs/hangouts or something would be fine. Or a forum, or e-mail, or whatever.