Posts made by Seraphim73

The one and only "solution" to the linear chargen/exponential advancement "problem" that I know of is just to run chargen the same way you run advancement (that's what my own still-in-testing system does). I would be that this isn't something that Faraday is particularly interested in, because it would involve re-writing chargen, but if it were something that she -was- interested in, it's as simple as just giving new players a bunch of XP and letting them buy up skills/attributes with it. Yes, it's a more complicated system because they have to learn about increasing costs for higher levels, but it makes sure that there's no incentive to stack wicked high skills in chargen and spread out to other skills later.

Sidenote to @TimmyZ -- I don't think the goal would ever be to get all four skills to 10. They would be to get the main two skills to 10, and then the "extra" skills to say... 4. At which point, the person who started with a pair of 8s is going to be way ahead.

@WTFE That's definitely not the experience that I've had using the system for... uh... 3 games now. In each one, players have run scenes using +combat. Given that it's simpler than most tabletop systems implemented into MU*s, I'm not surprised by that fact.

@surreality Absolutely makes sense. On FoH, you also get XP from noms and from events. Goals are intended to be the main way to advance, but not the only way.

Also, you can abandon a goal any time you want, or add one (assuming you aren't at your max already).

I do agree that you have to choose your goals carefully, but the ability to change them at need helps with that somewhat (so does not picking them to depend on specific other players).

To the point @HelloProject and @surreality are talking about, goals could easily be tied to explicit boosts, rather than to XP. Want to improve your character's social skills? Put together a goal where they get elected to the school board--if/when they succeed, they get +1 Bureaucracy and +1 Charisma. Want to improve your character's shooting skills? Put together a goal where they're recognized as one of the best gunfighters in this dusty town--if/when they succeed, they get +1 Pistols.

@faraday has put together a really nice XP-spending system for Ares--you apply XP to skills, and each skill has a cooldown, and when you get enough XP applied to a skill, that skill goes up. As a skill goes up, the amount of XP needed to increase it goes up, so overall learning time goes up too. Yes, it rewards/encourages broad skill bases rather than focused ones, but I generally think that's a good thing. If you didn't want to reward this quite so much, however, you could simply add in a caveat that for double the XP cost, you could halve the learning cooldown. I like the system because you can see XP applied to skills, so you still see progress, even when your skill rating hasn't actually changed.

It's more about method of advancement than what advancement means, but one thing I'm digging on Fires of Heaven is the +goals system. Each character can have up to 3 goals at once, and each goal has a certain number of logs required to complete it. Each week, you can submit one log toward one of your goals, and each log is worth 75 * Your Level XP--up to the required number of logs, at which point additional logs put toward it before "completion" are worth 100 * Your Level XP. Once you've hit the required number of logs (and completed your goal), you can turn in the goal for your XP.

It ties major advancement of your +sheet to major advancement of your character, provides advancement via event and social RP alike, and means that if your character starts to feel like they've plateaued, all you have to do is check their +goals to remember what they're supposed to be striving toward. Now, I would personally make it so that each +goal could get a log each week, rather than limiting it to one log total per week, but I like the system. A lot.

Advancement can mean a lot of things to me (in no particular order):

• The numbers on my character's +sheet get bigger.
• My character gets new tricks or abilities they can use in scenes.
• My character gains some social or political title or pull.
• My character is awarded a tangible reward for their deeds (even if it's "just" a shiny new medal to wear).
• My character reaches an important story milestone, and the next steps in their story (whatever those may be) are laid open.

I guess the most important thing for me is newness. That they have something now that they didn't before, and it's recognizable by me and possibly by others. I agree with @Jim-Nanban that I want something to advance every couple of weeks (I'd say every 2-3), but that doesn't have to be numbers on a +sheet getting bigger for me -- it just has to be something that I can look at and say "Yes, this character is progressing." There's very little more boring, annoying, and frustrated than a character who is stuck in one spot and unable (for some reason) to progress. Advancement is that progress.

Also, I agree with @Derp that starting low and working up and justifications are nice, but if I start really low, I want that first advancement to be fast -- I enjoy playing someone who is a professional at their job more than someone who is just starting out (usually).

@Roz Oh, I totally get it, and usually fall victim to it along with everyone else. Just... I want that "everyone coming down off an adrenaline high together" moment ICly as well as OOCly. It's so rich for relationship building (and I don't just mean sexual relationships, I've seen Speed, I know "relationships based on intense experiences never work").

I guess it's more a whine on my part that I want more of this sort of RP, and a thumbs-up for @surreality for putting together a way to reward it.

@surreality said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

I do not believe in considering downtime between formally organized PrPs, plots, or even pickup GM'd scenes to be 'lesser'. ... This includes scenes like dressing wounds after a battle, discussing how some things worked and others didn't in IC terms, going off drinking to celebrate a particular victory, reuniting with a long-lost family member that finally arrived in the area, and so on -- all of these scenes can have a major impact on the characters involved.

Oh god yes. I agree 100%. I wish very much that more people would keep RPing after the "end" of a GM'd scene rather than just being like, "Welp, we killed the bad guy, and even though we're at the bottom of a collapsing mine, knee-deep in acid, with wounded to carry out and prisoners to rescue, we're gonna log out for the night and not worry about it." (I exaggerate, of course, but you know what I mean.)

I've said it before, I'll say it again, I think that downtime scenes are immensely important for setting and resetting the status quo with your character, because it's only when the status quo is changed that you really find out about your character (if the status quo is "office work and beers after," how do they handle having to save the world? But also, if the status quo is "always out saving the world," how do they handle downtime?)

Totally agree, and I love your emphasis on these sorts of scenes, and the idea of rewarding for them.

• The log applies to one or more game themes (checkboxes for which apply; these will be linked on that theme's info page so people can see what is going on in game related to that theme in play and how people are interpreting it)

Ooooh, linking logs to themes/storylines via checkbox rather than having to put in a link by hand is awesome. Autopopulating the theme/storyline page with linked logs rather than having to put in a link by hand is awesome too.

provided both PCs, the donkey, and the cheese log are all consenting adults

If you've got an 18-year-old cheese log, I don't want to be in the same county as it, let alone the same room.

@surreality Sorry, I was using metaplot imprecisely. I meant 'larger stories, generally run by Staff, that tend to provide the majority of inertia to a game experience.' I think that that would be the 'seasonal' plots. If you're planning to respond to players pushing buttons, that's awesome -- it's my favorite way to GM, and to play, personally -- my one concern (although that's a totally different topic that we totally don't have to get distracted by) is that many players are way too must-be-spoon-fed to make this work. Maybe these seasonal plots can be the way to tie them in and nudge them into poking at the world around them.

@surreality First, let me say that the wiki entries for NPCs, and the shared timeline are awesome ways to keep everyone tied into the world and each other. The one thing that I will warn about (having tried to do the shared timeline on The 100) is that most players won't bother to put their information in there--if you want it there, you or some other designated person will probably have to go through their BG and put it there.

As for your actual questions, I think you've covered most of them -- Input on new areas, new lore, new characters, new abilities, new mini-factions, new gear... that's pretty much everything. The only thing not on the list is making sure that the players feel that they can change or (semi-)control the path of the metaplot. But I sort of assume that that's table-stakes for you.

@faraday said in What MU*s do right:

TGG's combat system, designed by @EUBanana, was amazing.

Yeah, I've always been intensely curious as to how things worked behind the scenes (only having read a couple of logs). Looked like there was a whole lot going on (and maybe like FS3 was a 'simpler' version of this system?).

@surreality Right. You don't have to use the NPC, but if you want to use the NPC, you have to make any updates to the wiki page and post the log.

@Bobotron and @Arkandel
I think this is why you need a Dramatis Personae/wiki page for them. Describe their personality, outlooks on various people/places/things (like the dreaded "Relationships" section, but describe their outlook on Technology, young people, and "whitey" instead), and a link to all of their logs. It has to be kept updated, and curated by Staff to make sure that no one adds in "Likes: fiesty young Brujah who spit in his face" unless it fits, but it should help with consistency. Because I agree with the concern that if one player is playing the "Feature," then what happens if they go idle, or get busy on their PC, or... whatever.

@tragedyjones said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):

• Grid Design

I feel like every room on the grid should have an explicit purpose--and an appropriate purpose is not "to expand the distance between here and there." In my opinion, if there aren't at least 1-2 hooks in the description to explain why someone might be RPing in the room, the room shouldn't be there. I've also seen several systems that allow PCs to add on gridrooms and give them temp-descs ("Need an alleyway for a scene? Add one!"), which I think is a great step between a grid and a roleplay room.

• An End to Bar-P

I don't see a problem with Bar-P... so long as it's just there to re-establish status quo or to discuss how crazily the status quo has been shifted. I feel like slice of life RP is how you make sure that Going Out And Saving The World (or whatever you do on your MUSH) feels different, and not like... Tuesday. But if there aren't enough things going on that the characters have new things to talk about ("Holy crap, did you see the kaiju eat the schoolbus the other day?" "No, that was last week, this week the Cylons attacked, and I'm scared of them!"), then yes, Bar-P gets boring as heck. This ties into Making Things Matter below, however, because it needs a metaplot to constantly reset the status quo, and that, as you and @Arkandel mentioned, requires player buy-in.

• Homework

I've been loving on Fires of Hope's +goals system, and I always think that it's good to have some background approved to make sure that the player understands the theme, current situation, and general power-level of the game. So I'm pro-some-homework. I also rather liked Arx's journal system, because it encouraged providing Staff with general ideas on what your character was up to, which is always nice, and it did so by rewarding you for putting in those reports. (Making some of these +goals public would really help with the PC Storyteller problem @Arkandel mentioned too.)

I think that logging objects are a nice addition to assist with making sure that all of the logs make it up onto the wiki (or at least all of the logs that anyone wants to see), I wonder about tossing in a tiny advancement bonus for consistent logging? An XP every 5-10 logs posted on an FS3 scale, 50-odd XP per log posted on a Saga Edition scale, that sort of thing.

As many people here have said, you have to incentivize the things that you want people to do. If player-homework is helpful to you, give them a reason to do it (besides "you have to").

• Making things matter

This right here is the biggest one for me. If the scene from two weeks ago doesn't matter for what's going on right now... what was the point of the scene from two weeks ago? This also ties in to the reason I MUSH--I want to see the game world react to me and to be forced to react to the game world. Continuity has to be maintained if you want players to buy in to your metaplot/stories, and if you want to have something pushing the game forward and keeping it from disintegrating into a morass of sexy sandboxes.

So I think there are a couple of vitally important points to this:

1. Active bboards. If something happens in a neighborhood, you really have to either mail everyone living/working/whatever in that neighborhood, or (more easily) you have to be sure to post something on a bboard to let people know it happened. Just a summary and a link to the log should be fine--some people will read the log, some won't, but at least the summary will give them something new to talk about next time they're at the bar.

2. An NPC Dramatis Personae with updates. This is actually one of my favorite parts of starting up a game--creating all the NPCs that fill out the ranks of the PCs' unit/ship/whatever. Not all of them, of course, but the Captain, the XO, the heads of the departments, that sort of thing. A name, a rank, a gender, a species, a general personality--that's usually all that's needed. But when I was last doing this regularly, the game I was doing it on didn't have a wiki. Now we can have a wiki page for NPCs, and provide updates as to what they've been doing on the grid. And they should definitely be doing things on the grid, because you should trust your players to use them in scenes (even if it's just griping or raving about something they're doing off-screen) to enrich the world. Seeing NPC1 get shot down in a scene doesn't have nearly as much impact as seeing Natalya "Sweetpea" Latuni, the hardass pilot who chewed out my character for screwing up a landing, and who saved my character's ass three dogfights ago, get shot down.

3. An evolving grid. I forget which codebase I saw it in, but there was a commonly-used-codebase that allowed tempdescs to be added to rooms. It didn't change the description of the room itself, but any player could add a temporary desc to the end of the description. So... having a party? Desc up what's happening and in what areas. Had a firefight? Desc up the bullet holes, cops patrolling, crime scene tape. Big fire? Desc up that one of the buildings is burned down. I think these reset automatically after two midnights, but they could be submitted for addition to the permanent desc if players wanted. Obviously, Staff has to trust players not to go overboard (don't burn down the Elysium every week), but that's part of what all of these require:

4. Trust each other. Players have to trust Staff and go all-in on what they're doing. Staff has to trust Players and support what they're doing, let them do (some of) what they want to, tie it in, make it part of the story. Without both of those, you get stagnation.

I was never on TGG, but I'm a WWII nut, and I was always intensely curious about it. If you do look to open another campaign and are interested in letting in people who weren't there originally, let me know.

@surreality Ookay, that Octopus-woman is pretty dang cool, I have to admit, even as someone who wasn't on-board with the tentacle-y thing to start with. I'm curious how her people would interact with shore-dwellers, but I know that octopi can crawl across land and you mentioned shapeshifting magic earlier, so I suppose that's not a big stumbling block.

Not really on-topic, just a note that I take back some of my earlier 'meh'ness about tentacle-people, and wish I had better suggestions for names for your crustaceans.

@egg Sage Edition is a variant of d20. If you know d20, the transition is pretty smooth. There are also quite a number of players--at least on Fires of Hope, and I'm sure Dawn of Defiance too--(myself included) who are happy to help build +sheets for people.

You can read a semi-brief intro to the system here: http://firesofhope.wikidot.com/event:2017-02-23-combat-primer-ooc

@surreality said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

1. (There are already sirens and mermaids and a few other mer-things, some sparkle-shiny and some shuddersome and creepy.)

What @Arkandel said. Beware the fractured playerbase. I don't see the need for a tentacley-type, but Davey Jones was pretty popular...

2. Taking suggestions for a name that does not suck for a 'more or less crustacean-y based' sort of fish people character class

Hardskins. Shellheads. The Undersea. Carapace People. Crabmen. (Nope, those all suck, sorry.)

3. If there are any really unusual traits of aquatic life that you think warrant attention -- poison spines, camouflage, ink, bioluminescence, mantis shrimp punch-of-death, etc. -- for ideas for powers and such, links and ideas are very welcome.

Sonar. Being able to unhinge your jaw like a shark. Anemone stingers. Clownfish immunity to poison. Being able to spit up your stomach when surprised. Mostly just sonar.

@Ghost Yup, exactly. That's why I integrated the basic ideas into my Alera system.

@Ghost said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

• Green Ronin's Song of Fire and Ice: because if one must Lord&Lady, then a proper system for social dueling with winners and loses will help.

Yes. This. Any game that focuses on politics should have concrete rules for political "combat."

@Jennkryst I tried Denver... a long time ago. I did not have a good experience. I basically came to the conclusion that a theme where you are all criminals who are generally closer to competition than allies... doesn't work so well in an open-world setting like a MUSH. In TT, you're all part of a single team, so you have a reason to work together. On a MUSH... not so much. It also takes a TON of Staff oversight to keep people "interested" by providing them with 'Runs.

I was more thinking the SR3 system being used for something modern/future (I've used it for Aliens, WWZ, and a few other things).