@Arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
What's the consensus on NPCs?
I'm a firm believer that major Features should be NPCs played by Staff only when they're needed. So you use Forsaken to give orders to your Darkfriends or to terrify PCs who are getting too big for their britches. You use Siuan Sanche to give an Aes Sedai secret orders. You use Rand to put an uppity Asha'man in his place (if need be). You don't use any of them for BaRP or for TS.
@Rucket Eh. They count as Shienarans (don't tell the Malkieri I said that).
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
theoretically draw characters from other areas more easily than a place like Cairhien.
Besides the fact that everyone is going to want to be Domani or Saldaean anyhow (with a scattering of Andorans and Sheinarans too).
I think for me, the information I need to know is:
I'm sure there's more, but for me, those are the big ones.
I'm the sort of nerd who, while playing on 4 different WoT games over 15 years, read the books (as far as they'd been written) about 7-8 times. I figured it would be nice to go back and do a full read-through when they're done.
Also, I had another possible setting idea: start on the exact same day as the books, but set it in Arad Doman/Saldaea. You have to deal with Darkfriends, wandering Aes Sedai/Warders, Children of the Light butting their noses in around the south end of Arad Doman, Seanchan, Aiel later on... and a bunch of stuff happens there, but there's room to breathe away from Rand et al.
Y'all start talking about another WoT MU*, and my brain goes, "Hmm, maybe I should re-read the books," and before you know it, I'm 100 pages into The Eye of the World. Damn it.
I actually like the idea of setting it during the Aiel War, although you're going to have to figure out if you want to allow PC Aiel, and if so, can they "defect" to play with the rest of the playerbase.
I think that you're right about needing some flexible timelines, but I'm not entirely sure why you wouldn't let people start as Blademasters if you'd let them start as Aes Sedai--the power available to a Blademaster is minimal compared to that of an Aes Sedai.
There are a couple of ways that you could handle channeling under Ares, ranging from the simplest (Channeling skill and "weapons" based off weaves, everything else just RPed) to middle of the road (Saidar and Saidin skills, weapons based off weaves, and a compendium of rules for other weaves like we did on The Fifth World), to the more complex (Saidar and Saidin skills, weapons based off weaves, compendium of other weaves, and an added system for channeling weariness).
I agree with the idea that if you have Traveling, you can have grids all over the place, but I would definitely still focus things on a single city (or a single city plus Tar Valon, because you know that people will want to be Warders and Aes Sedai), just have micro-grids for the other cities.
@Wizz Hell, I'd be in favor of most anything in the 1920s/1930s NY/Chicago/LA. Being supernatural is a minus for me, but being Dresden another plus.
@Arkandel Elseworlds games can be fun. But you have to be very, very careful with how far elseworlds you go, or else you can't describe the game to new players easily any more. Recently, I've run into this with Star Wars games: "Well, we started playing during the Clone Wars, but some different things happen, and now the Jedi are still around, but a bunch of them died, but some of them joined the Empire... and anyhow, we're now three years into the Dark Times, but nothing is particularly recognizable," but I think it actually started back on A Moment in Tyme, which is what @Arkandel is describing. I had fun, but I mostly ignored whatever Rand was doing as far as I could and just caused trouble with my Children of the Light.
Now, of course any game that uses an existing story as its setting has this problem, but there are some where the actions of canon characters can send things really awry really fast. I would actually prefer that a game not unshackle itself too far from established canon. Change the details, sure, but keep the general story the same, so that new players have familiar landmarks to orient themselves on.
@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:
Now. Onto your point: social skills aren't harder to fake. Especially if you keep it in somewhat vague terms
Here's the problem with this one... you're obviously someone who can write coherently, and has some idea about how social skills work. The concern being brought up is more for people who don't have any sense of how social skills work, and they're quite prevalent on MU*s, because it's a semi-safe way for introverts to pretend to be extroverted.
The problem many people (myself included at times) have with hard-and-fast do-or-die social combat systems is that you get the character rolling up to another character, insulting them, stating that they're out to get them, and then asking for help. Or something else utterly ridiculous that the socially awkward player (not character, player) thinks is a good idea. And the dice say, "YUP! That's a great idea! You win!" It breaks immersion for many players, especially those who DID spend the points to buff up their social defense skills/attributes/whatever, but just rolled poorly.
@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:
Here's why that doesn't make sense: it would be like expecting someone who wants to play Walter White to actually know how to make methamphetamine.
Totally agree with you that it's one of the unfair things about RPing. You're not expected to know how to throw a punch in real life in order to be able to knock someone out in the game, you're not expected to know how to cook meth to have a chemistry skill in the game, but you're expected to know how to fast-talk someone to do it in the game. That's one of the reasons that in my Tabletop games, I often ask players what approach they want to take, rather than ask them to come up with the exact words.
But, as others have said... this is one of those unstoppable force/unmovable object arguments in MU*ing.
Here's a better solution: you have an impartial judge help come up with the specifics of the outcome after the die roll. So when a player who already won the bluff check writes a stupid pose, the GM can go, "Come on, that's oh so silly, try this line of thought instead maybe."
Totally agree, but having an impartial judge there all the time... probably doesn't work on a MU*. For Furystorm, I came up with something similar: http://furystorm.wikidot.com/combat#toc14
Basically, each player briefly describes the arguments their character is making, the other player assigns a modifier for how that argument would work with their own character's background/feelings (all the important things @faraday mentioned about what makes social combat hard), the dice are rolled, and then the losing player helps the winning player fine-tune their argument to make it as effective as the dice say it should be.
It doesn't fix bad posing, but it does fix nonsensical arguments married to huge dice pools. And, of course, its baked into the rules that you still can't force someone into TS--even with Earthcrafting (magic).
the babysitter comes, and you're found to be in the wrong, then you lose XP or something. You get punished for wasting their time.
This, on the other hand, I would run away from as fast as I could. I'm pretty convinced it would just make calling a GM even more acrimonious, since not only do you have an argument to lose, but now you have XP at stake too.
@Pyrephox said in Eliminating social stats:
Sometimes it means reaching out OOC and just saying, "Hey, I see you're trying to get my character to do X, and you rolled really well, but that strategy isn't going to work. With Empathy 5, you'd probably know that my character would be far more susceptable to bribery than bluster. Would you like to rewind and try a different pose?"
This, this, this. Remembering that you're trying to tell a cohesive story together, and that matters more than which of you "wins" or "loses" this scene is incredibly important (in my opinion).
@Ghost I generally agree with your take on this: that without social combat most systems are pretty sorely imbalanced, and if everything else is rolled for, social probably should be too. I come at it from a slightly different tact, however. I think that if you want social competition to mean anything, there needs to be rules (to prevent Cops and Robbers issues), and if there are going to be rules, there should probably be stats and dice. If the game is focused on pew-pew-combat-all-the-time, you probably don't need social skills, however.
I do, however, also have issues with forcing changes to a character's thoughts. After all, even if you change a character's body (even up to removing a limb), the player still gets to decide how the character responds mentally, but if you change the character's mind (the dice say they really want to trust this person even though the character knows that they're untrustworthy), then the player may have a hard time rationalizing that change of their opinion.
@Rook I "solved" social combat spam for Furystorm by just saying you can only instigate one single social combat per scene.
Setting aside the "roleplaying vs rollplaying" and "mind control and agency" discussions entirely, I would say that whether or not you have social stats should depend on the type of game that you want. If you want a game based around combat awesomeness and (IC but not OOC) social drama with no real teeth, then removing social skills works just fine. But if you want a political game, or a game with any real politics, where the ability to lie and convince matters... you really kind of need social stats, or else (almost) everyone will be perfect IC liars whenever they want to be.
I would say that it depends on your game's focus. If the focus is on what's happening on the ship or ships, you should absolutely have travel time, but if the focus is on what's happening on the planets, then you should arrange some way for travel times to be handwaved or negligible. That way you can have players actually doing what you want them doing.
We did something like that with The Fifth World: there were portals called Waygates that allowed you to travel instantly between them, so despite the game taking place over several planets and moons, there was rarely any need to worry about whether or not someone could be present for a scene (unless they were away from a Waygate in the wilderness).
If you are going to have travel times on your game, I believe that they should be "off-screen," in that it doesn't actually take you 30 minutes (or 3 days, or whatever) RL time to move your bit from Point A to Point B. Instead, just say that the ship is traveling until X RL date, and all RP should happen on the ship until that date (this is even better if you provide some suggestions/drives to RP during that time).
@Pyrephox I don't actually disagree with you. I would love to put together long, flavorful room descriptions with deep hooks that drive RP on their own. I've just learned in marketing and game writing that people have fuck-all short attention spans, and the lower your barrier to entry the more likely they are to actually do what you want them to do.
I also agree with you that people who aren't going to read two solid paragraphs aren't going to read notes or views. I was more thinking that those who were actually interested in RP hooks might take the time to read them, while those who weren't might be more willing to read two short paragraphs instead of two longer ones and at least get the basics.
@Pyrephox said in What locations do you want to RP in?:
*Heidekker Park
I'd say that it's a very nice, clear description, but in my mind, about twice as long as anyone will read. I might suggest putting hooks in views (or is that just making the problem worse because no one will ever read the views because people already don't read the descs right in front of them?).
Maybe something like?
From the parking lots at the top of this popular metro park, the land slopes gently downward to a deep, circular pond. There's a meandering two-mile concrete trail around the pond, leading to a small pavilion and a dock with paddle boats. Other paths are dirt trails worn through stands of pine and brush by generations of feet.
During the day, children play in well-patrolled safety, but at night sex, drugs, and other goods and services are sold in little clearings in the trees littered with empty beer cans, condoms, and other refuse.
Admittedly, it lost some of your detail (including the nice police corruption angle), but I also think that it's more likely to be read in its entirety.
Definitely a balancing act between including useful information and getting wordy enough that fewer and fewer people will read it. And not an easy one either.
@Bobotron I enjoy doing planning sessions in TT, and I actually quite like doing them on MU*s too... but they bog plots down like CRAZY. Unless you can get everyone (including the GM) together ahead of time, and find some good way to provide "all" the information about the job, I think it's a brutal waste of time (no matter how much I enjoy it when it isn't a brutal waste of time).