@ganymede PLEASE - you know half the population REFUSED to go into the vaults because the directions were in English.

@valkyrie I logged on a few times, and saw it was mostly based in RL organizations - which is problematic for me, both on a personal level (I don't think its appropriate) and on an OOC level (I couldn't rp there because of my job) - I've peered as a guest once or twice and there doesn't seem to be much activity.

Its a good idea, but I think they should have avoided RL geopolitics, and stuck with stuff like 'illuminati', 'Spectre', 'Majestic 12' and the like.

@tragedyjones

The basic problem with WOD places (to me at least, I'm sure everyone else will disagree) is that after Generic Angsty WOD Mush #652, they get kinda...repetitive. You could swap out any city in the country for them (they are almost always in modern USA) and they'd be exactly the same.

Here are a few ideas that I think are better:

Ancient Alexandria, Egypt. (During the heydey of the Roman Republic?)
Trinidad, 1680, Golden Age of Piracy
London England, 1939
New York, New York, 1920
Constantinople, 769 AD
Last Days of Rome, 460 AD

Some of these would require houserules on clans/etc. to adjust things, depending on which version of WOD was used. But any of them would be more interesting then ....yet....another...modern...goth...emo...city.

What are the two really big, notable and cool things about vampires (other then the drinking blood, and the traditional ennui often seen in them in media?)

1. They can live forever.
2. They've seen a lot of history.

Why are these the two things NEVER explored in any WOD mush? I'd love to see something set in ancient times, even with modified clans and a 1 for 1 timescale. But what I'd -really- love to see is something set in some absurdly ancient period and a vastly accelerated timescale. I doubt anyone would go for that latter bit, but it'd be really neat to be able to explore the fall of the roman Republic, and then the fall of the roman Empire, with the same group of pcs. Mostly what I see from WOD players is uh...not that. And I mean, I think it would add something of the 'Highlander: the Series' vibe to it, if the timescale is faster, and perhaps if you have a few cities (like around the ancient Mediterranian, Rome, Alexandria, Greece, etc.) - and a faster timescale, and people keep seeing each other as the centuries roll by.

But this is part of why Paradox Games bought out White Wolf - I expect to see something like this emerging on the videogame front, at least, though I doubt a mush of this sort would ever be popular with anyone but me.

Here's a nutty idea. You want new settlements? Don't just take inspiration from The Walking Dead. Take it from Z Nation and Mad Max. Have the setting be a -caravan moving across North America-. Let everyone have a vehicle of some sort. They won't be fixed people, they'll be explicitly nomads roaming and gathering supplies.

Then people have an excuse for meeting together (caravan), or going their separate ways (you have transportation, you can drive to x and meet with y person) and its not the same old, same old. If someone wants to settle down and start a settlement? Fine, @dig them a room. Your grid is all of north America. But they can't count on a horde not tearing it all down and forcing them to move on at some point.

Variants include: Reduced people. You could either have a world with lots of roving gangs, or one where there might not BE many living humans aside from the PCs. Either, if organized properly, can make the above seem more plausible.

To note, they have a grid up now (small but very functional and well written) and their theme seems a cool conceit: Basically, the ship they are setting it in was designed as an over-engineered prototype 'doomsday weapon' (my words, not theirs) - and now without an apocalyptic war against the Klingons looming, they have this absurdly powerful, very high-maintenance, buggy and impractical ship made from prototype technology with tons of engineering compromises - and no war to shove it in. Its a neat conceit; the idea that not all engineering is good engineering, and that compromises might be made for the sake of performance which turn out to not be the best. I mean, this is something you see IRL that never really shows up in Trek. And the Original Series era is always kickass, right?

I'm not saying it as eloquently as possible, but after taking a look around, I like it. And their staffer seems friendly and available. Just my two-cents.

What is with people always making fantasy mu* without magic? I don't understand it. Then again, I disliked Firan and I dislike the Game of Thrones (endless sex romps are not the same thing as backstabbing, character-driven rp). On the other hand, I -can- see how too much magic can take away from a character focus...but its like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't get it, I never will. Tolkien used to be the prototypical low magic world, and now he's high fantasy by comparison. Lack of imagination these days.

That being said, otherwise sounds like your really thinking. Best of luck!

@magee101 Several fallout sources mention oil, including the original voiceovers. "POSEIDON OIL" might also ring a bell. If that doesn't convince you:

As a scientist IRL, I can absolutely tell you that burning oil is a waste of money, and we use it for a crapload of things other then burning. We could all get magic self-moving star trek cars tomorrow, and we'd still need oil. And as someone whom has had 'any economics ever' I can tell you that, in the 50's and 60's, the U.S. was very, very much exporting goods. Actually, it MOSTLY exported goods during that time, particularly to Europe. There is no reason why they wouldn't.

Its part of the endless, overwrought culture wars. During the protestant reformation, they burned pretty much all the catholic art of Europe they could get their hands on in places; its a similar thing. Toss out anything that doesn't meet the standards of 2019, meanwhile we have a world where we have a 50x loss of life at the base of the foodchain, climate change, actual literal non-metaphorical concentration camps on the southern border, etc.

But...apparently ranting about a guy who died of starvation-induced cancer a hundred years ago is a greater priority????? Lovecraft is going nowhere.

I'd encourage you to wait until you feel passion for this again and give it another ago. It sounded amazing.

@faraday

Personally, I'd just make a "north America" grid, make it big but not detailed (focus on highways, a city could just be a single room or two), and then just specify what state the main convoy was in right now. If people rp different details in a specific scene....well, they ARE traveling.

This sounds like "Sid Mier's ALPHA CENTAURI: The Mush"

I'm down for that.

So which faction are Gaia's Stepdaughters?

TBH, I'm surprised noone ever did a SciFi version of Pendragon.

@chibichibi The link expired! I wasn't aware they could do that.

@Misadventure I still say the most elegant system for this is Godbound, it's simple to run, takes 5 minutes to learn and feels more complete, as a game, then Scion. But as I said before, I'd do Scion too.

But I like the world more then the system.

Sounds neat. Might want to consider Godbound. Simpler and more flexible/complete system. But Scion was always fun too.

I have long thought Shadowrun would be a great setting for supers, yes.

@EvilFerret I was waiting for this.

@KDraygo Yes, I agree. MUSHING has moved on. SW games are hard to do, and I don't think tabletop style games work best. The best rp is character driven - people have stories to tell, and characters, and those PCs can learn and grow. ARES is best for that right now. I think the old days of things like "vast epic space opera" games are past us for that reason. And its not a bad thing. RP has to be cooperative and growth-oriented to be fun and interesting.

@Jynxbox (Seraph, I presume?)

I'm not going to go into a lesson on how to survive a fight here. This isn't the time or place for it. And I think the sort of game where this advice is warranted is is dead and buried, for good reason. However, I can say what I advise is this:

1. OOC communication. Even in fights where most people loathe your character and/or are trying to kill you, they are usually not OOC jerks. Talk to them. See how much they are willing to bend. 9/10 people, even people who will freely admit to killing you if they get a chance, will let you get away if you trap them under a rock and ask nicely. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
2. Be prepared to eat crow and run away. Einara for the most part was a coward, because she ran away alot. Almost all the time, really. When PVP matters, most people get used to running if they want to 'be active'; either that or they do nothing.
3. PREPARE AND PLAN. Have traps set. Have NPCS ready. Know their weaknesses. Hit them with something and run. Toss them out a window and run. Throw a grenade and run. Make skill checks WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Lock a door behind you. Try a persuasion check on NPC guards if there are any. Make sure to always rp knowing the entrances and exits in a scene, if your someone whose liable to have tons of people icly after them. I took out Kenobi at one point by dropping a ton of sand on him. It buried him long enough for me to escape. I called it a win. I considered it a win.

Einara was not a cheese. She wasn't even a combat build. She had basically no to-hit roll. She was a force wizard, largely up against people who were combat monkeys. But the thing with people like them (you) - that they always miss, is there are always ways to win a fight via "roleplay" in these games. Look at the environment and how you can use it. Look for their personality and how you can use it. Keep in mind all the potential neutral parties who might be around and look the other way to help you escape.

Escaping from certain fights is enough to be a win. So is 'getting the mission done'. So like, if your mission is to "accomplish X" - and you then focus on the fight instead of "accomplish X"; you've failed. Whether it be to get a code disk away, or to save npcs, or whatever; if your first thought going into a fight is the conflict, you should ask yourself "is there a good character and story reason for this" and talk to the player. Really. You have no idea how often this kept me alive. That doesn't mean they won't spontaneously try and kill you again the next day, mind you. But if you are careful you can minimize the risks. It's not as hard or as impressive as it sounds.

Back on Dark Horizons Mush (this is ~15 years ago), I accomplished a lot, politically, with a level 1 political PC. I went around to other pcs and asked them to vote with me, whereas most people focused on 'their individual numbers' instead of what they would have icly done. At level 1 I had as much influence in the coded senate as Palpy, because mine came via rp. Combat on any coded game is like that. Think out of the box. If you think in the box, or think you'll loose, you'll probably get stomped. (This is part of why these games are no longer fun for anyone, as previously noted).

Often, character development done in advance will win a fight. You might not believe that, but its true. That's part of the problem here. You think numbers will win, stats will win, absent anything else - but then want it to be like freeform. Or so you say.

What you really mean (and I know this from personal experience) is you want to win, you don't want to have to do all that much for it, and you want to feel like a hero. But numbers don't win fights, not in a MUSH, and they don't make you a hero. Neither does saying your a hero.

Regarding the codebase, I did gloss over stuff. There was actually a lot more insanity then I portrayed. I mean, you didn't have to keep playing there either. But I wasn't staff, and that's other people's business.

Anyways, TL;DR: I agree, mushing has moved on. Alot. Everyone has moved on. Mushing is better (and smaller) then it was in many ways on the days of 'grand old mushes'. Character-driven RP means more.

So, normally (I've never, ever, ever done this before as I consider it 'unprofessional' and 'unsportsman-like') I don't go into the whole mu-story thing, but I'll do it, just this once. I'll give everyone an overview so everyone, once and for all, is on the same page. Forgive me for the length and seeming meandering of this, I do have a point but I'm not eloquent outside of poses, and I'm not a ranter by nature.

1. The original Generations of Darkness was started by Vaapad.
2. Vapaad was neurotic and insane and never around. The place was basically run by Ataru, who was an amazing GM until he took it over in a staff revolt when Vaapad kept getting more and more crazy. Not Tolssk Crazy. Not 'Hog Pit' Crazy. Bat!@#!#@ @!##!@!@# mad, crazy. Like, Trump Crazy, metaphorically speaking. It then became Dawn of Defiance. Eventually he got busy and left, and there was a third headwiz. I'd left by that point. That was years after the switchover.
3. As far as I know, both the two players above are as old as Tolssk's player and myself, or nearly so. One of them, by their own admittance, was banned. I cannot be 100% sure, but I remember Ataru banning ~3 people, two of them were for sexual harassment and one of them was for rampant cheating while attempting to PK people. Don't know for sure which the one was, no way to know. The other, who retains their bit, I looked through several years worth of logs and could not find a single scene with them, and I scened with pretty much everyone. I do recall them being around and vaugely nice, just not doing anything.
4. My previous bit was Einara. I basically ran the CIS for a number of years. I also ran a ton of plots. A lot. Eventually I stopped being a villain as I got tired of the Jedi (see above) relentlessly trying to PK me while constantly whining about having the moral high ground.

So, this was my experience on the game. I started Einara as a level 5. My first scene (my very first!) someone tried to PK me. And my second. My third was a GM'd scene. Not villains, mind you, whom I always had great rp with. The Jedi. I spent several years with the heroic Jedi, using overpowered stats, trying to PK me. Sometimes more then once a day. Once I had three random scenes (this only happened once mind you) and all three had Jedi trying to PK me. They would ONLY DO SO if they thought they could win.

This did not stop me from trying to do stuff. I beat most of them. It took me years to level up from 5 (I was not a stat hound and kept that level past having the XP for higher levels) - and I routinely, through clever rp, npcs, and running, managed to beat them. At one point, the ENTIRE PC JEDI ORDER + npcs + a high level Obi-Wan Kenobi NPC they'd summoned, showed up to try and kill me. 99.99999% chance of this including all of the above complaining players; I was so angry I didn't save the log. That was my experience. Over and over and over.

Meanwhile, I was feeding, icly, the Jedi intelligence on the Sith. You want to know why Order 66 happened? Because I'd fed the Jedi (through about 5-6 pcs) intel on the clones being programmed to kill them. I'd also, specifically, told the Jedi that Palpatine was a Sith, and they had several months, and did nothing.

Now, staff were going to explore the consequences of that slowly (if they could get the Jedi pcs to do anything) - but Vaapad logged on one day, had no knowledge of any of this, saw Dooku was dead (the CIS players got tired of Vaapad's shit early on and arranged for the Jedi to kill him in a big PRP), - decided he wanted to rp a lightsaber fight between Yoda (his alt) and Palpatine (also played by him RIGHT THEN, and gave Ataru ~20 minutes to do Order 66 or he'd @shutdown the place). This led to the staff revolt.

Following Order 66, which involved Tolssk herding the Jedi onto disguised ships I'd prepared or paid for on Coruscant (I couldn't go there myself as the Jedi would still have killed me) - and herding them off to a planet I personally had prepared for them - I was foolish enough to go visit the Jedi without him around, yes, SPECIFICALLY INCLUDING THE ABOVE HIGH AND MIGHTY PLAYERS, and specifically including the staffbit of this game, whereupon my bit was 'imprisoned for use of the dark side of the force' - for over a full real life year.

To note, on her entire time on that game, she never used a single darkside force power, and until very late in the game's life, never got more then a single DSP.

Oh, and the imprisonment bit? She got loose when I eventually came back and complained that she was still locked up, and then when I was assured the Jedi were better and different, they did the same again. Again to her. For several more months. In a cell.

Following that I decided (more out of OOC pity then anything else) to try and help the Jedi reassemble an order. They had some problems. You could fit them into a few camps.

1. Twinked out PK Jedi.
2. Jedi who were not twinked out, and would often not leave the Jedi Places for rp, no matter what RP hooks you dangled in front of them.
3. Jedi who were around for sex scenes.

Some of them were good players. They were drowned out by a chorus of people who would insist they be treated as heroes even while never generating plot, while doing bad things icly, and while (in general) acting nothing like contemplatives or a religious order.

Ataru, for the record, had hoped at one point to have a bunch of scenes with the Jedi being investigators, or police officers, so they could be loved and protected by the people. None of that could happen because they treated the whole thing like a videogame, constantly whined oocly that they were not treated as heroes, then relentlessly tried to PK villains.

Yes, we were absolutely afraid of you guys. And for most of the character-lifetimed of Tolssk and I, we were underleveled compared to them (we started off at level 5), and had to be more clever then you.

A fair amount of the really clever, amazing stuff I got credit for (repeatedly) was Tolssk behind the scenes. He's actually pretty smart. Do I like the lizard? Not always. Its a very simple, stupid character; unlike the player. I've seen him play other characters at other places (he does particularly compelling noblemen, for instance) - but he's not a bully.

In the scene above, to which I saw multiple versions of the log, he had actually gotten down to half health. Half. The freakout occured when the Jedi ran off into the woods rather then continue to fight him, and he tried to kill some NPC. The specific reason I was given, by multiple people including the headwiz, is that it wasn't fair for Tolssk, a villain, to chase after or 'win' without giving anything.

And the thing is, thats been a complaint about him even when he was level 5 or 6 and the people complaining were level 8+. If he's playing a bounty hunting Trandoshan, with a culture that literally worship "The Scorekeeper"; that's what he's going to do. Now, I think using tabletop ruleset to arbitrate fights between PCs is silly, personally. It makes winners and loosers. I prefer freeform. But that's not what the system is. Its a system where, by design, in a fight it gives specific results. I think I could have won that fight as a level 5 Einara, personally. I think that, probably, some OOC communication on both sides would have been better, and I think that's where the breakdown was. Not one-sided. Two sided.

Regardless, in the SAGA system, or any other (even freeform!) - a villain is not 'obligated' to loose. Is he as compelling a figure as Einara? Personally, I think she's a better villain. You can talk with her, she's sympathetic. But she's not scary.

But its wrong to say that, in a fight where he's outnumbered, where the staffer throws multiple clone troopers at him, and even threatens to shoot him with vehicle weapons - he can't chase NPCs because the Jedi need to be guaranteed a win. I literally personally was oocly watching in the room, and heard similar comments in the room and, more directly, via page. And I won't get into who I paged what with whom - but I will reiterate the above being the general attitude of entitlement.

I very strongly don't feel villains are obligated to loose. I do loose, and run plots whenever I play a villain. But typically I view being a villain as like being a fachead. I don't feel every player is obligated to do that. I know its the attitude here because I've been told that.

Do I think Tolssk, in this fight, was entirely right? No, not really? I watched the end then read the logs and said so at the time, in the room, and to multiple people. But do I feel he was, as was specifically noted - obligated to 'not chase' the running-away heroes or to let the NPCs go? Definitely not. And he basically never PKs anyone. I cannot, offhand, think of anyone he's ever PK'd in a star wars game. I'm sure they exist, I can't think of any.

One of the other biggest defenders of Tolssk on the old game was Ataru, who saw the crap he put up with. Was Tolssk perfect? Abosolutely not. Was he perfect in the above post or scene? Probably not.

Did he deserve to be treated, for years (and in the above!) as some hideous monster? No. No he did not. And he did nothing out of line. Really. As I was repeatedly told "the fight was fine until he tried to kill the NPCs". And then the freakout occured because of Jedi players who used to be in a clique, who were afraid of him.

And coming from people who locked up my bit, who spent years outnumbering her 3-1, 3-2, 5-1, 5-2, 6-1, and so on - I think that is saying a lot. Its really easy to say "we believe in fair play" and then expect the villain PCs to put up with this garbage.

I do know the headwiz is comitted to not running this place the way other SW games have been run, the way WOD games have been run. And I appreciate that. He won't tolerate what we put up with. But neither does that excuse the past behavior of the above people acting like Tolssk is some bully.

And neither does that excuse silently banning him, especially after he spent days saying he preferred not to play the character again even for Beta, because it would start issues. I literally personally saw him say that multiple times in cgen before bringing the bit IC. We both opposed bringing back the old bits, and said so.

So when I hear on this game "oh our last Jedi never did anything because Tolssk might have killed us" when he was literally there on the day of Order 66 on the past game saving you, and literally knew where your secret planet was and could have told Vader at any time - that's bull. When I hear 'oh he's just an overpowered character' - well, it took a lot of years for him to get that high a level. Years of being active and doing a lot of scenes. And everyone doing the complaining are on bits just as old as him, and have probably never seriously had a PK attempt against them.

But for me that was a daily experience. So, I'm not against this new place. I support the philosophy, and I think SW games, in the past, have been run competitively, and I don't think that was always a good thing. I prefer freeform, to be frank. I won't be returning after this though, and I must speak out against revisionist history.

@Warma-Sheen Some of the HR's (new talents) are super well written, and some of them are pretty bad and go counter to the intended vision of the game. (For example, restrictions on combat powers that don't deal direct damage, when one of the visions of the game is to give more non-damage options.). Essentially, there are a class of powers which do damage (or more usually, condition track damage) based on will-saves, and on the game players get a +5 to will saves. I believe one of the points made was that if not for that +5, he'd have lost the fight in question. To clarify, most of the new talents are pretty well written though.

I mean, the staffer is not Vaapad, but an old player who left the old iteration (a good one as far as my memory goes) - and has said he's wiping the oldbies at the end of Beta, so I'm not sure thats much of an issue. I have seen some oldbies return and bitch about other oldbies, but I expect that to go away once beta ends.

I've seen two combat scenes thus far; one was semi-freeform (with some skill checks and some basic to hit rolls) and the other was coded.

The freeform one was about 5-6 newbies vs a level 11; the newbies basically all got an action a round each in a fairly tough (but slightly) starship; the oldbie was in a more heavily damaged, lower-quality ship and got more limited actions. The newbies had some trouble with the system and strategy, and did pretty darn good until they decided to stop moving the ship.

The second scene involved a level 7 oldbie, an oldbie on a new pc, and a new pc temping someone ambushing a much higher level oldbie, along with some npcs to help them. It didn't go well for them, though as its a no-PK game noone died. Not that the oldbie tried, as far as I could tell, but he did chase them when they ran, and the other oldbies seemed pretty dang annoyed.

Right now the current campaign is a very, very low stakes one on a jungle world, just for a plot for the sake of the beta and testing, I don't think anyone is winning anything considering the oldbies involved, as far as I know, are not getting to keep their pcs or XP after.

Personally, I look forward to a post-beta reset, but I don't think people around temporarily is a problem.