Best posts made by secretfire

@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?

I can't believe noone has ever done this theme yet. I've thought for like...a decade now-ish, it'd be one of the best settings for Star Wars. Avoids cannon issues altogether by being absurdly far in the past (i.e. almost anything can happen) while still being 100% cannon, and in one of the most interesting planets in the entire SW galaxy. Cool beans.

There's a few other 'quick and dirty' ways to handle this:

1. FATE is a really, reaaaaaaaaaaaaly quick and easy system to use. The Inheritence Gambit (pretty good game, but I've been too busy with RL to play there recently) uses it. It basically has a few basic stats, and then 'traits' you build out; and its honestly very adaptable. I think the staff might have a RIFTS game based on it, too.

2. A game like this could easily work with a basic, old-fashioned free-form setup; a writeup on one's skills and strengths, with some sort of limit and app-based guidelines. If everyone is a magical creature or DemiGod, then it makes sense that while many would be 'better' in many things, or really awesome (Hercules/Achilles like in one thing) - not everyone will be a Hercules of all stats, so to speak. At this point in time, everyone mushing has been doing it for 10-30 years, and either you can play fair with people or you can't.

3. While I wouldn't RECOMMEND it, you could probably easily adapt a number of systems that are already coded and gerrymander them into kindasorta working. I mean, there are a ton of ways you could do this.

The problem with using something like Scion is you'd have to code it, then people would have to USE it, tabletop to mush doesn't work well except for the very new systems which had this sort of thing in mind. I mean, there's a reason there are hardly any d&d mushes, and why tabletop games as mu* barely have any combat compared to Actual Tabletop or even compared to freeform games. I can't count the number of coders who announce projects, spend like a year on them then abandon them - its not worth the work for the payoff.

Its HARD to say what will take off and what won't. Most mushes fail, sometimes I have no idea why (sometimes its obvious) - and its hard to say beforehand. I know thats a terrible answer, but its true. You'd have to have a great wiki, I think. I'd start with that, NOT a server.

One of the problems Generations of Darkness had was that it originally planned, from my extensive discussions with staff, to do something like this:

<IC Play>
Timeskip with new history based on IC play
<IC Play>
Timeskip with new history based on IC play

And that was abandoned a few months after it started and it never did that; largely because of internal debate over whether or not to engage with player agency as they interfered with the course of 'cannon' history, but also because of general skittishness over the concept for the reasons above.

Personally, it can work either way, but I think a time-skip every so often is a wonderful idea, as it gives people a potential chance to reinvent themselves and then explain why, and can break up cliqueishness, which is a problem.

The time chosen is super appropriate as the other problem SW in general has is uh, a not-insignificant number of people mistake 'I'm not angry when I do this' for 'I'm doing good and not using the dark side'; which is actually an IC issue at the time too.

Awesome idea for the mush. Reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

PRAISE THE HOLY DWELLER!
PRAISE ATOM!
PRAISE THE GREAT Z.A.X. !

I've heard a lot about this Arx place. I thought they were Roster only, and were kinda patterend off of Firan? To be honest, while I like fantasy games, I've avoided trying anything that sounds too much like Firan. Not that many mushes left these days though, especially medieval fantasy ones.

@rizbunz I don't even mind freeform. Usually makes combat easier, tbh. I always had more combat prps on my freeform places then code heavy ones. A lot of intermediate mu*ers need at least some sort of guideline though. But I couldn't care less. The important bit is a detailed theme, and a system that leaves detailed, flavorful characters with player groups that have some basis for a mixture of types of interactions, so to speak. So rp, plot and drama can dynamically form and proceed.

Sweet. Stargate, ftw!

If your definately going with Dayton, then the other big things you need to decide are tone related. I mean -I- think Buffy (as intended) isn't dissimilar from Angel in tone; just made a bit more juvenile for its intended audience at the time. But a lot of people here feel they /are/ different. So you'll have to decide if you are going with the 'everyone is a student and they are gossiping about mundane stuff most of the time' character drama, or the Angel 'jobs are hard and life is hard, and there is prejudice and bigotry out there and we all have to get along' stuff. They are both talking about the same thing; the monsters as metaphors for the darkness of our lives. Angel had more 'monsters as people' then Buffy did; but I think by Angel Whedon realized the importance of getting along with other people, and how the lack of it turned into another source of darkness and isolation.

I think what you were going for is a city small enough where you can mix that, and Dayton (being firmly in the rust belt) is in the middle where a lot of the....societal issues...that anything Whedon tackled would be front and center. I think you could easily find ways to integrate things; like Buffy had an evil Principle, you could have the Superintendent of the local district be a Trump-style hardnose hunter, who wants to crack down on immigrants whom are actually from a neighboring dimension; and has been harassing these immigrants children. Perhaps a local manufacturing plant is on the verge of shutting down - and the college students find out that an ancient spell, set in the 1920s, kept something sealed beneath it for as long as it was in operation.

But I don't think, from the beginning, you should really get into a 'rut'. I think the way you will be pushed is very, very strongly towards people who will just want to do school RP until the end of time, and if you do that, eventually the game will die (sooner rather then later). I think that RP can and should be important, but the focus has to be, from the beginning, integrating it into a larger 'community'. No matter how old the characters are, the rest of Dayton should affect their lives.

This also gives you ways to push drama. You don't need a 'hunter training school'. You just need 'major ongoing plot hooks' generic enough people can spin off of them, which will naturally 'set' different types of PCs into drama against each other, but not in a combative way. The rust belt is -filled- with tension right now, and its a potent way to mine it. In highschool, this is mostly 'outsiders' (buffy crew) vs Cheerleaders (Cordelia); you just need to find ways to broaden it. Give points of view to NPC groups that disagree with each other...strongly...without being necessarily entirely wrong.

This is a setting where you have armies of girls that can -kill anything-; but what happens when they hit problems they can't stab to death? Those were the things that stymied Buffy the most, and were exclusively what Angel grappled with.