Posts made by Pyrephox

@ThatGuyThere said:

One thing I would like to see more of is something Penny Dreadful did:
Periodically, I think in this case it was weekly though I would thing monthly might be better, there would be an over arching theme plot, for example Zombies or whatever, and stats would be posted for the generic villains and storytellers where free to run things and use them however, then at the end of that staff would either run a wrap up or select someone to.
I liked this because while it kept plot scenes small there was still the feeling of being part of a bigger picture, which to me has always been the downside of PRPs they can be great fun but they are basically in their own little world and disconnected to the rest of the game.

I remember that, and it was pretty awesome. I think it would be a big help in any game - especially since it can give new storytellers a bit more support, as well, if they don't have to come up with character sheets, or they can see general power levels for antagonists.

@Rook said:

@Pyrephox I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. No, seriously.

I really like this approach and idea. We planned on doing this on a game-wide scale, as there will be mechanics that are directly affected by the outcomes of player actions and plots. We are building everything around the possibility/hope that the player-base will move mountains, as you will, and change the face of the setting and theme.

EDIT: I realize I keep chiming in with unrelated-but-sorta-related remarks. I like the conversations about the how and why of MUSHdom, so that is how I read through the topics. But I understand that many of these threads are game-specific things.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that players will likely have to be coaxed and supported into participating at first - I've noticed that a lot of players have been socialized into the whole 'passive receptor of plot' and 'trying to read the GM's mind for the 'right' solution' mindsets, and you have to be patient with them (and reinforce their attempts at agency) at first, until they realize that, yes, they really CAN go 'off-script' without horrible things happening or plot being snatched away.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Pyrephox said:

Too often, we want to build Big Plots like they would be built in conventional media, which doesn't work, because you've got 25-30 players involved instead of five or six.

While that's certainly part of the impulse to build big plots, there are also cultural pressures that are maybe a bigger driver of it. Part of it is also a feeling that a plot needs to be "fair." I put "fair" in quotes because, if you're constantly scraping to be give everyone a little bit of everything, you end up giving nobody anything meaningful. But that's often perceived as preferable to focusing a plot on a manageable group of PCs.

Which is why I might suggest a shift in how we look at big plots. Don't have the Big Climax that people are used to, but rather distribute the plot such that a lot of people can meaningfully contribute. Like, let's say you have the Army of Bodysnatchers big plot. You give the AoB a...let's steal from Mass Effect and call it a War Score - a number that reflects how much the city has done to beat back the bodysnatchers. The GMs have an idea of how much Score is needed - let's say 50. And they create a whole bunch of mini-plots, each with its own score rating - from a one-person plot for a doctor PC who has the opportunity to cure a friend who's in the first stage of bodysnatcher infection, up to something for five or six players that's infiltrating a bodysnatcher nest and poisoning the grub stashes. As PCs succeed at plots, the War Score goes up - when they fail, it goes down and some other Complication happens (spawning new mini-plots to clear up the mess created). As the War Score gets closer to meeting the limit, the plots reflect a dwindling but desperate enemy population (stakes rise in each plot, while resolutions more clearly eliminate leaders of the army or major resources they have). When the War Score limit is reached, the plot concludes.

@il-volpe said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

... avoiding, whenever possible, having Plot Progress depend on one PC being around and doing stuff, and becoming so vital that them dropping off kills the whole enterprise. By the same token, you also want to avoid being so diffuse about the impact any PC has that you nerf the feeling that PCs are impacting the plot at all. Division of labor and responsibility is something I try to keep an eye on, but I've yet to find an ideal way to manage it.

And there is the terrible, terrible rub. Because this is often utterly incompatible with "the focus should always be on the PCs and what they are DOING about the plot," which is also true, and in my opinion, more important.

This is, honestly, why I feel like more MUs should focus on higher quantities of smaller, more personal plots, rather than the sprawling metaplot end-of-the-city stuff that draws in, in my experience, /far more/ PCs than are ever going to have a chance to contribute meaningfully. Which inevitably ends up with people feeling pushed out because they couldn't attend X Plot Important Event, or (sometimes accurately and sometimes not) that some people are 'hoarding' plot or favored by the GMs. And personal doesn't have to mean that it doesn't affect the grid or have wider meaning - that's really an artifact of the cultural expectation that 'personal' means 'PrP' and 'PrP' means 'meaningless sandbox plot', as well as the general lack of communication and documentation of plot results in MUs.

Even the 'big plots' should be broken down into personal-sized chunks. Want to have an army of evil bodysnatchers invading the city? Look through the playerbase, and pick out players who have had previous contact with things that /could/ be evil bodysnatchers, or who want to have a visit from an 'old friend' only to discover someone's wearing her like a suit, and they can try and exorcise it, or kill it and find secret documents, or lock it up and interrogate it or whatever. At the same time, hit a couple of the antiquities dealers/occultists/thieves with a mysterious buyer who wants an artifact that's hidden in the well-protected archives of some ancient recluse, and give the cops on grid a series of mysterious murders. Each plot self-contained, but a part of the larger whole (the cops can catch the serial killer and get closure, but he's branded with the mark of the bodysnatchers. The artifact can be retrieved/sold/destroyed, but it provides a vision or history that's relevant. The old friend can be saved, and retains vague memories of the threat.)- and no one of them 'required' to resolve the overarching issue, but every one of them providing a real adventure for the PCs involved.

Too often, we want to build Big Plots like they would be built in conventional media, which doesn't work, because you've got 25-30 players involved instead of five or six. Instead, we may want to look at a more 'distributed leadership' kind of model, where a big threat is represented by a half-dozen or more 'hub' plots, which each draw in four or five players for a more meaningful experience.

Over the last few years, I've tried to turn a very critical eye to how I GM, in general, to try and bring it more in line with the things that, as a player, have been some of my best gaming experiences. I've also started watching and reading media with more of an eye to how stories are put together, and how that can be adapted to gaming without sacrificing player agency to define What Happens Next. A couple of general rules that I've embraced:

1. Information should not be the bottleneck. If there's a bottleneck, it should be as PCs try to decide what to do next. But they should always have enough information available to have an idea of at LEAST one option. And if players seem confused or lack understanding, it's on the GM to make sure that information is clear and informative.

2. Failure should bring complications, not dead ends. "You find nothing," does absolutely nothing for the fun of the game ESPECIALLY if a two or three hour scene comes down to a roll or two and the PCs manage to fail it. Instead, I've switched to having failure mean that finding the information either costs more than it would have with a success, or triggers a side diversion that is fun and stakes-ful in and of itself. I don't make people roll for the absolute basic information required to proceed in the plot, and if they're good at a particular skill, they may get more information for 'free' so to speak.

3. The purpose of plot is player fun. In other words, the focus should always be on the PCs and what they are DOING about the plot, not about 'hiding' the plot from the PCs or what NPCs are doing. Corollary: PC actions should be the focus of every scene. If an event absolutely must happen that the PCs cannot affect, then it should happen in the first or second pose, and the rest of the scene should be how the PCs deal with it. Likewise, NPCs have the skills and abilities appropriate to their place in the setting, not at an arbitrary level of 'challenge' for the PCs: random street mugger does not have Firearms 5 Dex 4, and he does not have Willpower to spend to resist the PCs. CEO of a multinational corporation, though, probably DOES have Resolve 4 Composure 3, because she's a hard-ass who has powered her way to the top of the corporate jungle. If PCs figure out a way to get around that? That's perfectly cool. Her stats won't change.

Have to agree. Conditions are fast, easy, and don't actually slow down scenes much, if at all, once you get over the initial learning curve - which isn't that steep. They're also great. I've used lingering negative Conditions to prompt me what kind of RP to seek out (feeling Guilty? Time to find someone your character feels they can trust, and confide to them about that guilt), and are a delicious source of beats.

I'd really like to see automatic XP become a very rare or nonexistent thing in GMC games, because Beats are so very, very easy to get. Even if you only have two scenes a week, you can be getting at least 1 XP, provided those scenes are meaningful and dynamic. Aspirations, dramatic failures, breaking points, Conditions, surrenders, going with the flow in social maneuvers...XP's pretty plentiful all around, and doesn't require you to spend your life online. And, if you feel there needs to be more, then add more things that beats can be earned by - whether it's running a scene for someone else, or achieving a goal of your faction (or, more in tune with the system, /failing/ to achieve a goal of your faction), or hitting various plot milestones. Kingsmouth allows you to claim a beat for every scene you're in up to a certain amount, and then another if that scene has anything directly to do with the theme of the character you're playing.

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.

@Coin Mostly I was being snarky about my phrasing. Ideally, yeah, the players or players and staff would work it out so that an event would be fun for everyone - personally, I suspect the average festival or social gathering scene could only be improved by adding gunfire and violence. Or at least some intrigue. (Seriously, every large social scene should have sub-goals for people attending - exchange packages or information, cause social strife between specific people, repair relationships, lure someone to an isolated corner and shiv them, SOMETHING.)

@Arkandel said:

@Pyrephox Do you think though that the "I" in this case would be justified in claiming the first player crossed a line first when he attempted to change theme through their plot?

Also does it matter (or how much does it matter) if that player is staff or a player with a staff-approved plot? I'm excluding the possibility it's just a ST who decided to run major things without asking first, since that's generally frowned upon.

Depends on the policies of the game, really. On a personal level, I'd say no: even if you believe the first player crossed a line, that doesn't make crossing that line in a bigger way somehow more acceptable. It MIGHT mean having justification to go to staff and say, "Hey, I know there's this sniper plot, but a I've had the Frankfort Frank Festival scheduled for two goddamned months. I don't really want to turn it into a head-popping extravaganza - can we work out something where I can run it without having to constantly pose terrified people in kevlar helmets?"

As to the other, I don't think it SHOULD matter, but in most games it probably does. I don't really agree with the idea that PrPs shouldn't affect the wider game or are "lesser" plots than Staff-run plots. My feeling is that if it's IC, then it's part of the game's continuity, whether it's staff-run or not.

@Arkandel Although my preference would be not to avoid any part of the plot that's currently happening, I'd say that the former reaction has more RL precedent than the latter. Whatever disaster happens, there are always people who just don't worry about it much because it hasn't (yet) directly affected them, and it's part of an OOC consideration of "games should be fun for the people playing them" that allows a player to gloss over - to some extent - things which are Not Fun for them. The idea of a big, public event in direct contradiction of things that are going on is less, to me, appropriate, since it creates confusion in the greater setting about what's going on, and that can make it a lot less fun for numerous other players.

Think about Rip Van Winkle, or Thomas the Rhymer. Rip had a /grand old time/ playing bowling with the ghosts, singing and drinking and living it up for a single night...that turns out to be a hundred years of his time. His horror, his trouble, comes not from the fact that his time on the other side was terrible, but that now almost everyone he knows are dead, and he's a man out of time. Thomas the Rhymer willingly goes away with the Queen of Elfland, and parts (mostly) happily with her, with the gift of prophesy - his difficulties come in dealing with the gifts of Faerie, which are always double-edged. The main character of Kappa quite enjoys his time among the kappa, and it is the real world which is a terrible, disappointing thing to him (and he is also already a psychiatric patient, since the whole thing is a parable more than anything). Tam Lin apparently quite likes being a captive of the Elf Queen, until he a) is going to be sacrificed as a tithe, and b) falls in love.

The books, in general, tend to play up the idea that there is beauty and wonder in what the Lost experienced, as well as terror and pain - and that doesn't mean that /everyone/ has to have spent a durance which was filled to the gills with sexual slavery, torture, and blood. Things can be complicated. Things SHOULD be complicated. There are a lot of reasons that the Lost don't fit in with the human world, and some of those reasons can be that there's a part of them that misses Faerie and always will...even if they wouldn't choose to go back.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Pyrephox

and really hope that Dual Kith dies a lonely, unloved death forever

You die in a fire.

Changeling is the best game

YOU DIE IN A FIRE.

Admittedly it's better than Vampire and Werewolf. And Geist. And Demon. And Hunter. Huh. Okay, so it's pretty far up there as far as nwod goes I guess.

And now I admit that I don't like Mage (old OR new) and I get to burn THREE TIMES.

But, basically, I think it's best game because it comes the closest to what I want out of horror/urban fantasy. Mortals aren't entirely deprotagonized into slaves or those Who Must Never Be Told - Changeling has some of the best opportunities for mortal/"super" collaborations, and some of the most horrific villains to fight against - evil fetches wearing your face, subtle and merciless Fae, lunatics and quislings, not to mention all the variety that exists in hobs and oneriophages that can be a threat to mortals and changelings both. It's one of the few WoD lines where you can /completely ignore/ the idea of freeholds and Onyx Path's ill-conceived political structures, and still have huge amounts of meat to delve into, just with the idea of Lost trying to keep their city safe from the Fae.

(Also, you don't HAVE to play Lost as perpetually traumatized victims of horrific rape and torture. A perfectly valid Lost concept is someone who knowingly traded away seven years of life to be a Fae companion in exchange for some sort of miracle and considers it a worthy bargain, or someone who had a great time with their Keeper...but has now been abandoned because their Keeper was bored of them, and is realizing that they can't go back to the world as they knew it, and aren't willing to make that bargain again, knowing that the Fae can never return their feelings. Even someone who cold-bloodedly made a bargain with the Fae for knowledge, /knowing/ it would change them. There are more stories than kidnap victim, and more horrors than the durance!)

@HelloRaptor said:

Yeah, me too.

But just for a moment, make a list of the things that are even just intended to be made up by players. 'Here are some examples, now make up your own!'

Now think of how often that is allowed in any appreciable way, or the frequency with which it is allowed but ends in tears and drama and the gnashing of teeth, no matter how simple and straightforward it might be.

Then try not to laugh at the bit I quoted before.

Where this is going to start getting really fun is that new Changeling apparently is going to rely on all custom Courts that are specialized for the city they exist in. While I LOVE everything I've heard about from GMC Changeling so far (and really hope that Dual Kith dies a lonely, unloved death forever), I can already see the wails and drama from Changeling players about custom Courts. Or, worse, I can see everyone just ploddingly recreating the Seasonal Courts or whatever old ideas exist.

Still looking forward to it, though. Changeling is the best game, especially when you embrace the nWoD and focus on urban fantasy and horror rather than the endless bitching about who IS the prettiest prince/ss in all the freehold.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

People want to be INSTANT BESTIES or INSTANT TWU WUV or INSTANT EVERYTHING on a MUSH. There's no story there, but they want it anyway. It annoys me, and it makes these encounters with PCs who want to tell me their life story feel somehow more shallow, because there's nowhere we can really go from there.

This is certainly one of my biggest issues in most games. I like the slow burn. I like my characters growing to trust, like, or love someone gradually from meaningful interactions in character! That's something that really, really does it for me. So when someone moves from 'we just met' to 'I LOVE YOU FOREVER' and there /isn't/ supernatural mind control involved, I'm a lot less interested (and actually kinda creeped out). Same, honestly, with friendship and trust. Here, I've just met you, so let me tell you everything about me (or give you a free room in my house, or offer to kill someone for you, or whatever), and it doesn't feel...real.

For whatever definition of "real" applies to silly online games.