@golgoth
Actually, my boss(es) have been awesome during this. Supportive and in agreement with me, thankfully. But pointing out what failed to a client who has a corporate culture of CYA and back-stabbing is a very delicate operation to undertake. Luckily, I've been in a company like that and somewhat know how to navigate the waters.
Several people on this board, including myself, have been working individually on game systems (RPGs) for their individual projects. I think that is awesome, and I have gained a lot of insight into situational things that I might not have otherwise considered, thanks to people's thoughts and examples.
I know that @Bobotron and I have started comparing notes, @Ganymede has pitched over ideas, and others have dropped hints here and there that they are doing system development.
Would people be interested in pooling efforts, if only to use each other for sanity checking system rules, writeups, ideas?
I am super excited for this, because this collaboration (granted, it's been just creative chats up to now) has really helped me get past the creative obstacles on system approach that I was facing, which has enabled me to see a light at the end of the tunnel that I'd been faced with! That's big and exciting news for me, and I want to thank everyone for the discussions that spurred this!
So I will start off.
"My" system is named MyriadRPG, named from the primary goal of the system to be customizable and adaptable to character creation. I have always intended to open it both in the Open Gaming System sort of non-trademark sort of way, and in the free MUSH code available to download and install on your game sort of way.
It is a simplified combination of ideas and mechanical styles from D&D systems and World of Darkness systems, and should be recognizable to players of both genres. I've tried very hard to design this system in the sense of use on a MUSH, so it is not designed specifically for table-top style play, but I don't see why it couldn't be. Thus, lots of my design desicions were made slanted toward:
I am in the process of building out parts of my game site's wiki to house this system documentation, and anyone that wants to peek, discuss, participate is more than welcome to hit me up. I am happy to provide text documents of what I have so far! I think that collaborative brains are best for development and catching things that could be Big Things in ways that a single person usually cannot.
If not interested, but have material that you are proud of, believes is the One True Way to go, then please also feel free to share if you like. Inspiration happens in many areas and ways.
@ThatGuyThere
The fact that you use the word "suboptimal" in that text bothers me. I get sick of "kits" and "builds" and min-maxing players. I get it if that's Your Thing when it comes to RPGs, maximizing effectiveness... but use of language like this smacks, to me, of looking down on other people's preferences and styles of playing.
It's like... build-shaming, or something.
@surreality
That does not grok, dear. The mentioned policy was about having a PB that could be Google-image-searched and if the staff found/located nudity in other pictures of that PB, you couldn't use them.
That image doesn't even have to be uploaded to the game's wiki. It is clearly visible on YouPorn.com, therefore you are banned from using that actor!!!11!1
That's Rabid Crazy, right there. Seriously.
@HelloProject said:
The reasons people don't usually do this is because often staff can't handle the emotional stress of removing players, or because there are friendships they don't want to damage. Weighing personal feelings against the emotional health of the game as a whole is difficult, and there's no easy answer for that, because staff aren't robots. However, I consider this to be a serious problem.
I want to say here that I think that a lot of games are friend-boxes, not run like a business like many of the playerbase would prefer. I think that most every game out there is run but a tight-knit group that have a core group of players that either fuel the game, built the game, or have been friends with the owners/staff for a long time.
Couple this with the tightness of the MU* community (come on, we aren't thousands and thousands of players), you swim in a small pond when you MUSH. Piss this person off here, they will retaliate there. You sometimes have no idea (unless you know them well from someplace like MUSoapbox) who you are burning the bridge with.