Best posts made by Seraphim73

We're back from our RL-crappiness-enforced slowness around the holidays. The crappy things are still crappy, but Staff is active once more and putting out events and plot hooks. We had a visit from the Krampus over the holidays, and we're putting out not just regular Monster of the Week events, but also some more player-driven ones.

Characters from the Santiago (and elsewhere) have expressed an interest in checking out the Rocher Plantation in the wake of something looking like Rebecca Rocher apparently turning into a toothy creature that tried to bite a sailor's throat out.

The pirates of the Reaver have voted to investigate the possibility of freeing the slaves on the Hembouco plantation to try to gain more fighters against the traitorous pirates of the Bachelor's Delight, Sea Lion, and Pelican.

The people of Tortuga have been assailed by troglodytes, a cipactli, chupacabras, a dingonek, loup-garou, kongamato, and there are rumors of something that is large enough to have sunk a sloop. What will be next?

And how in the HELL did they get to whatever spirit world or purgatory they have been cast into, and more importantly, how do they get out?

There wasn’t a place for comments on the FC/OC question, but my preference is to keep FCs in the hands of Staff and to use them minimally as quest givers and sources of guidance. I voted for a few FCs.

@kanye-qwest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I agree with @Apos. After Auspice's turn in this thread calling people who didn't realize she wasn't using "mod voice" stupid, any subsequent MOD VOICE is just going to come off flip at best, and snarky at worst. Find a more mature way to do it.

So... people were upset that she wasn't being clear when she was being a moderator and when she was being a poster, and when she makes it clear, it's "flip at best, and snarky at worst?" And immature?

If you disagree with the statement, that's one thing, but Apos found a way to state it that wasn't a blatant personal attack:

I think it would read a thousand times more helpful if a mod just said, 'Speaking as a moderator, this thread is way off track and we need to split it."

@lemon-fox said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

I honestly think I was looking for more Arx.

Glad you found it then. Yes, T8S and Arx are very different games, and if one suits you better than the other, that's great. That being said, we have several business owners on the game, and while we usually suggest that they have a hook to get them involved in adventures, it's definitely possible. You're right that small business ownership isn't the aim of the game though, and yeah, it's all about finding what's right for you.

@reason Just wanted to note that most games that run on Ares //do// have a grid. No, you can't walk it from the web portal (unless you use the integrated client), but you can certainly walk it from your client. Can't help you with the slew of arcane commands that start with @ and + -- when I first started with Ares I typed them by pure muscle memory, and it's taken me a couple of years to not type them instinctively.

On topic: I have been enjoying the heck out of The Network. It's an Ares-based game that uses FS3 and has a very interesting theme: https://thenetwork.mugames.org/

@three-eyed-crow Agreed. I think that if your (generic you) character fits perfectly into theme without a ripple... they're liable to disappear without a ripple, no matter how snowflake-y they might be. If, however, you set them up so that they either represent someone who stands out from the theme, or someone who can provide friction to those who stand out from the theme, you're liable to get a lot more good RP (provided you and those around you are willing to RP the consequences of standing out from the theme).

@ixokai said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

FCs come prepackaged with guaranteed roleplay opportunities and "main character" time in plots. FCs are automatically roped into game metaplot, whereas OCs need to find their own roleplay and means to being roped into (and more importantly, relevance in) metaplot

This is not correct. FC's are not given special access to plot: no one is going to start an event and reserve a slot for Luke. They are not positioned as 'main characters' in plots.
...
In the canon SW Universe, Luke is a special snowflake who solves the metaplot. In SW:I universe, he does not have this destiny. He might play a significent role, but it is not written to be so: it will be on Luke's player to make it happen.

I think that you're ignoring the mentality of players here, and it's something you're very much going to have to look out for. In general, if players check a Where list looking for RP and see that Luke Skywalker is in one room, and Abist Trass is in another, unless they've RPed with Abist before, they're going to be heading for the room Luke is in. I honestly don't know what the solution to this is (besides no FCs except as quest-givers, but I understand why you don't want to go that route), if I did, I would happily suggest it. It's definitely something you're going to have to be aware of, however, as FCs will generally get more RP, more weight behind their RP, and thus more position in the metaplot simply due to the OOC weight behind their names.

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time MU*:

(the nazi punching one I can't remember the name of, for example)

The Savage Skies. It's actually the third FS3 game that Blu and I have opened that has magic in it (one in FS3.2 and now two in FS3.3). In each of those three cases (The Fifth World, The Eighth Sea, and The Savage Skies), we designed the magic system around what FS3 could do.

In The Fifth World (FS3.2), we just made magic like any other weapon or armor, and put severe limits on what magic users could do/wear. We went too far on our restrictions on that game, because I tend to be leery of magic being too powerful.

In The Eighth Sea (super-early FS3.3), we added a few other codified things that magic users could do besides just weapons (no armor, since it was a pirate game and not many people wore armor), but they were all outside of combat, or just provided small modifiers in combat. Magic characters could only use their AoE attacks a few times, and their more powerful single-target attacks a few more times, but both had limited "ammo," while the defensive "weapon" did not. We had exhaustion as a consequence of magic use, but it was all RPed, not coded. I think this was actually a very interesting magic system for FS3, even if it required a little ammo manipulation and uncoded rules. Sadly, we leaned too hard into monster-hunting and not hard enough into piracy on our pirate game, and all of the Staff had various life crises at the same time. The rules are still up at: http://the8thsea.wikidot.com/faith.

In The Savage Skies, we got a little more ambitious and included Advantages to track the ability to do different types of magic and full spell lists. But still, everything was designed to work inside the FS3 system; there was no magic healing, no damage-inducing shields, no immobilizing people (although that could be done with Distract, I suppose), no lifting people with telekinesis (mostly because we didn't have damage rules for dropping people off a zeppelin), no countering spells in combat, and other limitations imposed by the system. Exhaustion was mentioned, but not coded. Every character had the capability to learn magic, so we dodged balance issues in that way, but we still made magical attacks in the same realm of damage as pistols, rifles, and the like. I like what we had there, and that's my suggestion on how to generally set up magic on an original-theme game (while tuning it to your own setting, of course).

Unfortunately, if you're using an existing license like Wheel of Time or Lord of the Rings or Shadowrun or D&D, there are going to be some expectations on how magic works that don't fit with what FS3 can do (without a loooooooot of fudging). You either have to make changes to how magic works (you can't slice an attack weave because the system just can't handle it... but you can slice a tied or held weave, because we can handle that by having you use 'combat/pass' and do a versus roll), sometimes very significant changes, or you have to leave a ton of the fudging in the hands of the GMs (which means that your GMs have to really understand your house rules, which cuts down on the number of people who can GM for you), or you can do a lot of specialty coding -- and then you might be better off starting from scratch with your own system that's actually designed to do exactly what you want it to do.

Too random.

I like my bell curves when it comes to dice. Whether they're from multiple dice being rolled at once, or from a bell curve distribution of results... I don't want a 5% chance of a critical failure and a 5% chance of a critical success on every roll (most d100 systems have similar problems for me).

Yes, I'm saying this having played on several Saga Edition games. Yes, d20 drives me batty for most settings. Yes, I can handle it better in Tabletop. But when it comes to a character that I have poured months or years of time into, I want a little more assurance that they won't drop their sword 5% of the time.

I created a spreadsheet of all the military forces in the Wheel of Time, as best as could be figured for Book 10 or whatever we were on by them, split out by what nation they swore allegiance to, where they were currently stationed, what type of soldiers (lancers, horse archers, heavy cav, crossbow, longbow, archers, pike, sword, Aiel, or Trolloc) they were, and whether they were professional soldiers or levies.

In fact, I created at least 9 iterations of this spreadsheet, tracking the movement of forces from one nation to another as PCs moved their troops around.

This was incredibly silly, and yet I still feel drawn to read through the spreadsheet again as I pulled it up to look over the troop types.

Some people see MU*s as zero-sum games: if another player has gained something that they have not, then they have lost something. So if there is a mini-game that provides some benefit, if they don't play it, they're losing. Thus, it's necessary.

It's a more-than-slightly toxic view of MU*s (although one I have fallen into on occasion myself), because it makes them competitive rather than cooperative, but it is a distressingly common one.

@surreality said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

ETA: We don't have guns in the house, but we do have a completely ridiculous prop broadsword right by the door. Hefting that fucker into view through the little central window in the front door has turned more than one person away from the property since.

I firmly believe that waving around a broadsword is the second most effective non-violent home defense technique (after racking the slide on an unloaded pump-action shotgun). Our home defense weapon is a bastard sword under my side of the bed. If there's ever a home intruder, they're going to be treated to a naked 6'3" man coming after them with a bastard sword. If they don't run... they can have what they find in the house.

As someone who has opened and run an original-theme sci-fi MUSH, I can tell you that @Scissors and @FirePuff in particular are spot on, with an original theme, there's no way to give enough shape to the world that enough players will feel comfortable in it to RP without looking over their shoulder.

Some will forge ahead happily, expanding the setting in very themely directions. Some will forge ahead quite happily, expanding the setting in wildly unthemely directions (that they didn't know were unthemely because either it wasn't spelled out anywhere, they didn't read it, or they didn't care). Some will find one thing they feel comfortable with and RP in that niche forever. Some will ignore the setting and play their relationship dramas. Some will look at the copious setting info that has been provided and get turned off (either by elements of the setting or by the amount of information available). And some will look at the setting and try to break it.

If you can find a way to encourage the first and third groups (themely expansion and niche play), tolerate the fourth group (relationship), redirect the second group (unthemely expansion), and discourage the last group, you might be able to get enough people comfortable enough in the world that it can become self-sustaining. Ideally, you would be able to do this simply by how the information is presented on your wiki, and how it is presented (a "suggested reading" group of 5-8 pages is a good start, I think), but generally it'll also be by positive reinforcement toward those who make themely contributions to the setting.

I think that the debate @Apos is having with @surreality and @faraday comes down to the differences between sci-fi worlds and fantasy worlds (someone already made much of this point, and I apologize for missing who it was): You can tell someone that your world is low-magic feudal fantasy and they can play in it while you hash out the details; you can't tell someone that your world is high-tech meritocratic space exploration and let them play in it while you hash out the details.

Sci-fi tells stories via technology (that's why it's -science- fiction (and why Star Wars isn't sci-fi for the most part)), so you sort of need to have details on what the technology does in order to use it "properly" in RP. Fantasy tells stories via wonder, so all you need to know is "what level of magic do we have, what sort of fantastic creatures do we have, are we knights-in-armor or barbarians-in-furs" and you can start telling stories. Meanwhile, the sci-fi game is telling people if they have power armor, if they use kinetic energy weapons or lasers, how ubiquitous space travel is, how fast space travel is, etc.

Yes, I'm definitely exaggerating how easy it is to set up a fantasy game, Arx in particular has done a fantastic job of creating a coherent world that is easy for people to play in. But the thought behind that exaggeration remains the same: you don't need all the details to play day-to-day in a fantasy world, but you do need a ton of those details to play day-to-day in a sci-fi world.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

It's pretty common in games to see exactly what you described, isn't it? The High Lady who's also hangin' out with the peeps at the pier, the billionaire philanthropist who sits at a bar to have a beer with the riffraff, the nobleman who's a great swordsman... these tropes are far from exceptions, they are very often the rule.

I don't have a problem with the nobleman who's a great swordsman, because the noble would actually have more access to both tutors and free time for training (assuming the noble is an "idle" noble, not a head of house).

But I totally agree that most nobles shouldn't have connections to riff-raff, or only to a few selected members of the riff-raff. I also agree that the noble shouldn't be as good at herding sheep as the shepherd, or as good at building a house as the carpenter, etc. To me, it's about opportunity and respectability -- a noble could be a perfectly good floral arranger, if arranging flowers is appropriate in your setting. But they probably aren't going to be awesome at being a butcher or a cooper -- unless that's appropriate in your setting.

The next step of this, of course, is that if you plan to have PC commoners, you should absolutely have these "inappropriate" noble skills be important to plot/mechanics.

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

want to get involved in more, talk to the game staff. Be proactive.

+100. I feel like this applies to everyone, not just support characters. If you want to be involved, talk to Staff. Look for plot hooks. Do something.

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

or even really Wedge most of the time.

Bite your tongue. Wedge is The Pilot. He's the only one with two Death Stars on the side of his X-Wing. Granted, I'm odd (definitely one of the exceptions you mentioned), don't like to play SuperSpecials, and most of Wedge's awesome is in Legends, but I would play Wedge before Luke any day. I just had to say that Wedge is freaking awesome.

@thatguythere said in Spotlight.:

To me I didn't see the pilots on the trench run as the best of the best I saw it as these are the folks we have on hand.

Totally agree that they weren't the best around, they were every single pilot available (they even had a non-junker frontline fighter available for the guy who had never flown outside an atmosphere before). But that doesn't mean they weren't special (assuming that it's a MU* scene where LukePlayer just happens to be the one who makes the shot and isn't pre-ordained to make the shot). Most MU* Events aren't the best-suited, they're whoever could log in at the right time.

I think that if someone is a jerk in real life, they are almost certain to be a jerk online, but if someone is a jerk online, there is only a slightly higher chance that they are a jerk in real life than if they aren't a jerk online.

I agree with @Roz in particular that not treating online interactions as "real" is a warning sign, but I also think that in some cases it's the result of just not thinking things through rather than a conscious choice to treat other people as lesser because you can't see them. That being said, in most cases, I think it's just treating people as lesser because you can't see them.

Also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIFT

@arkandel Just in your head? I've been known to burst into my acapella rendition of The Internet is For Porn at semi-random points. Which is very awkward with a 2-year-old who is starting to repeat things I say.

@twinprince I agree with mixing up how you start your poses/emits/whatever, but I always always always (try to remember to) include my character's name in the pose. Anything else is just asking for confusion. However, I definitely like to use other descriptions for my characters alongside my character's name in the pose. In one sentence I'll use the name, and in the other I'll use a descriptor.

I also like to make sure that if I started my last 2 pose/emit/whatevers or so with the character's name, I'll start the next one with a quote or a verb or whatever. Just to mix it up so that not all of the poses look the same.

Depending on the era, I would totally be down for this. The problems that I've seen with them in the past tends to be "depending on the era," and also "how historical do you want it." Because if it's too historical, than the average player can't play it, and if it's too Hollywood, then the people who really like the era will get frustrated by everyone else. There has to be happy medium, I'm sure someone will find it, I just don't know that I've seen it yet.

@Saulot said in Historical MUSHes:

@Seraphim73 I know I sound like a pessimist, but I don't think there is a happy medium. You gotta accept that you can't please both audiences, and will have to cater to one. I may be wrong since I haven't been mushing for long, and there may have been games that have accomplished it.

I don't disagree. I think you have to pick somewhere on the spectrum (probably like 2/3 to 3/4 of the way in one direction or the other would be my guess) and then be very, very, very clear in the Mission Statement/Welcome where you're setting the game. For The Eight Sea (thanks @tek), for instance, we specifically said "We are playing a Hollywood version of history, with similarly Hollywood interpretations of real-world religions and myths" on the front page.