Posts made by Seraphim73

@deadculture said in Space Lords and Ladies:

@Seraphim73 Then it should be less complicated

I agree completely. Even as someone who loves spreadsheets (and I'm definitely the type of nerd who loves spreadsheets), I don't think they should be necessary to check balance and do the math for an estate. For tracking estate movies period over period, I think spreadsheets are -fantastic-, but then the players don't need to see them at all, they can stay Staff-side and just be used to keep track of past actions and present circumstances.

Sidenote: the A Song of Ice and Fire system does indeed have an estate management system. It's pretty simple, with just a little bookkeeping for each estate and skill rolls each period. It might actually be pretty good, although the mass combat system is pretty involved (each unit is basically statted like an NPC).

@deadculture Something this complicated will require spreadsheets. I would suggest handling it one of two ways: 1) google docs visible to everyone but only editable by Staff, or 2) actual spreadsheets only in the hands of Staff.

I would under no circumstances allow players to alter the spreadsheets. After all... as has been said: fuckery.

After that, you just have to decide if you want players to be able to watch behind the curtain (1) or have to trust Staff (2).

If you want to use Ships of the Line, then just swap them with Cruisers (although that doesn't really match for the larger ships being faster... which is odd in and of itself... shouldn't these be smaller, faster, more powerful ships, especially if they don't have troop capacity? If so, then they could be Battlecruisers, and the second-most-powerful could still be a Ship of the Line.)

For the Space Nobel ships, if you want sailing names, perhaps Barque, Schooner, or Brigantine for the middle sized ship and Galleon for the largest? Or Sloop, Carrack, Galleon as you suggested.

For Warships, perhaps Gunships and Assault Ships? Purgators and Annihilators? Defenders and Protectors?

Several others have covered the fragility of game balance here (if you do want to go into something so complex, I would gather together a half dozen of the munchkiniest power-gamers you can and have them try to break the system before you even -think- about opening to the public), so I'll leave that alone except to say that gathering an alliance of PCs to overwhelm other opposition won't necessarily create RP... you'll get a group of OOC friends together who will stealth-group-app, having everything they need to support the wild-ass warships/troops.

No, what I want to address is the names used for the various ship types. They're utterly intuitive. Frigates and Corvettes work well enough, they're both patrol/escort vessels iRL, but if a Ship of the Line is a Battleship, it should be a heavy combatant, better than Cruisers or Battlecruisers (and certainly Destroyers). May I suggest instead the term "Monitor," "Assault Ship," or "Gunboat" (or if you want to keep the Age of Sail-y feel, "Galleon")? Then you can keep the "Cruiser" larger than it without dissonance from people who know ship classes. Next up, Destroyers are less powerful than Cruisers in modern parlance, and having it be the other way around provides cognitive dissonance. Perhaps using Destroyer for the ship between Frigate and Cruiser, and Battlecruiser and Dreadnaught for the two Space Noble ship types?

This may seem like a small thing, but when you have a complex system with a lot of the details hidden behind the curtain, you want the names to be as intuitive and clear as possible.

Totally separate, conscript units are generally useless for garrison duty on their home turf, as they'll just disappear as members desert. The term you probably want is probably "militia" or "levies."

@Deviante
http://theywillreturn.wikidot.com/pub-rumble

@apu and @Deviante There were some great folks on Fifth World. It made Venus and I very sad that our life got so busy that we just couldn't keep up with the pace of running stuff there. Good to see you both around (the bar fight in Volkan with Eirene and Devon still has a few of my favorite moments).

@Arkandel Yeah... some good memories there.

@Faceless Excellent! I like to know people I know. (?)

@ThatGuyThere said:

John Carter the MUSH

Yes please. I've been re-reading The Martian Chronicles, and finally purchased the last two I didn't have (Thuvia, Maid of Mars and The Master Mind of Mars) after 20ish years. I so very much want to play on a John Carter game (books, not movies).

@Misadventure said:

Give an example or three of various grades of memorable?

I think that will wildly depend on your theme. To stick with Clone Wars-era Star Wars, because I already brought it up, how about (given that any of these could becoming TOTALLY AWESOME AND MEMORABLE with the right scene):

Barely Memorable:

• Killing Whorm Loathsome, CIS General in a semi-random skirmish.
• Being elected Senator from a minor planet.
• Being promoted from Captain to Major.
• Passing your Trials to become a Jedi Knight.
• Becoming the leader of a street gang on Nar Shaddaa.

Suitably Impressive:

• Surviving Operation Knightfall as a Jedi by escaping the Jedi Temple.
• Defeating Admiral Trench in a pitched naval combat.
• Taking the place of a canon Senator on-screen due to IC manipulation.
• Being promoted to General/Admiral.
• Being acknowledged as a Jedi Master.
• Becoming a Black Sun Vigo.
• Killing General Grievous as part of a larger group.

Pretty Dang Big:

• Surviving Operation Knightfall by dueling Darth Vader to a standstill and then escaping.
• Defeating Admiral Trench while outnumbered and outgunned.
• Becoming Vice Chancellor after out-maneuvering Mas Amedda.
• Joining Republic/Imperial High Command.
• Taking control of Black Sun.
• Killing General Grievous in a solo duel.
• Killing Count Dooku in a solo duel.
• As a Senator, publicly denouncing the Empire as it is created, escaping Imperial custody with the help of others, and helping to found the Resistance.

Ridiculous and Over the Top:

• Stopping Operation Knightfall by defeating Darth Vader in a duel and driving the 501st back.
• Defeating the entire CIS fleet with a single Star Destroyer.
• Going straight from Padawan to Master because you're JUST THAT GOOD.
• Taking control of Coruscant as the head of Black Sun.
• Killing Anakin Skywalker in a solo duel.
• Killing Count Dooku in a solo duel as a Padawan.
• As a Senator, publicly denouncing the Empire as it is created, evading capture by Imperial forces in the Senate Building, founding the Rebellion, and fighting fleet battles against the Empire within your first year of resistance.
• Becoming Emperor.

I think that most games can flourish with any number of Barely Memorable and Suitably Impressive instances, and can host a couple of Pretty Dang Big events per year. The game -might- be able to survive a single Ridiculous and Over the Top, but probably not more than one.

(Bonus, some of the above are actual IC examples from a couple of Clone Wars era MUSHes I've played on, either of things characters did, or things people tried to do.)

@Misadventure said:

When you think about having an effect, how big an effect to you hope for?

This probably says something about me as a person, but I want that effect to be big enough for other players to talk about it ICly and OOCly.

Perhaps the most entertaining example I've had recently was back on Generations of Darkness, where my clone trooper got the kill-shot on Grievous (fighting alongside a bunch of Force Users and a non-clone officer). It didn't change much theme/setting-wise: Grievous was still dead, the CIS threat was ended, but it gave people a reason to know this one lone clone trooper, and to talk about him (and boy howdy was it great propaganda for Palpatine when he went all Order 66... or rather it should have been, but that's another story).

I want to see PCs and NPCs react to my actions. It doesn't have to change theme or setting long term, but I want to see the setting accept my action and react to it.

@TNP said:

Speaking for myself, I love losing.

Another of my Olde Grandpa Woes is that "people" (by which I mean a significant percentage of players but not necessarily a majority) have started to become unused to and uncomfortable with losing. Personally, I like to lose/have my character stymied 30-40% of the time. Much less than that (like the "never" that seems common in PrPs these days) and I feel like there's no risk involved at all. Much more than that (unless you're playing a character specifically designed to be comic relief/rescue-bait/an antagonist for all the WhiteHats) and I start to get frustrated. But while 25-60% loss rate is acceptable, I think that 30-40% is the sweet spot.

@Lithium said:

As long as you are consistent in the environment and reactions (when reactions should be consistent) then it's all good.

This could have been its own post entirely, it's so important. Everything in the plot should be internally consistent, and consistent with the overall theme of the game. NPCs should never make decisions just because it fits where you want the plot to go, events should not just "happen," and if something has been set up as being one way, it should never appear to be another way (unless there's a consistent explanation for it).

@Lithium said:

I also like it when a scene gets my adrenaline pumping because I may end up in real trouble, might lose the character, or a characters friend might be in serious trouble.

Yes, so very much to your whole list, but especially this. That feeling of "Oh man... I might have actually gotten in over my head, this could be the end of the character or the storyline" is such a rare one these days, and it's so great for the adrenaline, and (provided you make it through) gives you plenty to play with afterwards. Of course, it can't just be "man, the dice are going to kill me this scene," it's got to be something where something beyond random dice luck might stop the character.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

@Ghost
I would upvote this twice, if I could.

I upvoted this post too, as a way to upvote the post @Ghost made twice.

@faraday Actually, I think that players viewing MU*s as novels with their characters as the protagonists is part of the problem, if indeed there is a problem. Yes, the personal story of each character is important, but I would argue that the metastory of the game itself is more important. It's the collaborative work between all of the players (including Staff) that should be the heart of the game, not individual story threads, and when those individual threads are put ahead of the metastory, I think that the game suffers.

If by "the expanded Marvel Universe" you mean the movie universe, then I would generally agree with you that it's been handled well (although Age of Ultron definitely had its issues as a "collaborative" story), but if you mean the comic universe... I would actually say it's a tangled, no-good mess of retcons and retcons-that-should-be.

Now, I don't think that game-wide metastory should run roughshod over the stories of individual characters at the whim of a capricious and violent Staff, but I do think that the relatively recent mania for consent-based gameplay and the accompanying (relative) lack of consequences has hurt MU*ing in general.

But we're way off-topic now. Anyhow, as I said, I think that an Altered Carbon-style resleeving technology could keep the game "dangerous" and allow the metastory to proceed unabated, while still offering some protection for individual story threads.

Everything from @Pyrephox and @GangOfDolls is great, but this, This, a thousand times THIS:

@GangOfDolls said:

It's okay to limit participation.

Start small, build up the number of characters you're comfortable with, and then stick to that limit.

@Ghost said:

I don't care what the game is or what setting it is, and I'm doing my best to not sound like some bitter Grampa type when I say this, but I've come to realize that a grand majority of the MU habit is roleplaying relationship simulation.

Yeah, you're dead on with this. It's a trend I've noticed too, and it's become particularly prevalent (or at least obvious to me) in the last 8-10 years. Risk has become something to be avoided, because the player has put "too much time and effort" into building the character. That giant list of characters on my playlist from A Moment in Tyme? About 1/3 to 1/2 of them died violent deaths that weren't by my choice. It was just part of the game back then, just how it went. Now, players are way more risk averse, and it's more about everyone telling their stories (and no one getting in the way of the stories of others) and less about telling a single overarching story that is larger than the characters.

So...you have to reinvent the wheel.

I agree that non-consent is the way to go, but what if instead of incentivizing dying, you just removed some of the penalties. This works particularly well for Space Lords and Ladies--what I'm picturing is a universe like Altered Carbon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon), where "people" are thought processes, and bodies are just sleeves to be changed or discarded at will (so long as you have the money and the facilities). So if your character "dies," all that they lose is some money, some time (until they can get resleeved again), and maybe some memory (if their memory core was wasted and they have a backup to go back to).

This also neatly gives you the genetic nobility: those rich and connected enough to be resleeved if they die. It also takes some of the emphasis away from babymaking, since such things would likely be done outside of "normal" biological methods.

1. React to your characters. If you're just slamming them with scene-sets and monologues from NPCs, the players aren't going to be interested in the slightest, no matter how good your writing is. On the other hand, if you're reacting to the words and actions of the characters and the players can see the impact they're having on the story, they'll be a great deal more invested and interested.

2. Let the characters impact the story. This is really part of the first point, but it's important, so I'll add it here. Consider point one to be the 'micro' where your NPCs are reacting to the turn-by-turn actions of the PCs, and point two as the 'macro,' where you don't have a predetermined ending, but you're leaving it open to be set by the actions of the characters.

3. Make your NPCs memorable but not annoying. You want the PCs to care what happens to the NPCs (whether they want to make them happy or kill them, so long as they care). The best way to do that (in my opinion) is to treat them as non-consent PCs. You should care as much about their motivations as their plans (why they're doing things compared to what they're doing). This will also help you improvise when your players knock you for a loop (they will).

4. Engage the senses. This is just plain good writing, but the more atmospheric you can make your scene-sets, the better. If the PCs are exploring a nuclear reactor in a colony they've lost contact with ("Is this going to be a stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"), think about the swirling steam that restricts visibility, yes, but also think about how that much steam is liable to make it incredibly muggy, and to hiss around the PCs, and it might even give the air a metallic or ozone tang.

5. Change things as needed. Scenes that are too hard or too easy just aren't that fun (for most people, there are some who love wading through enemies like they've just typed IDKFA). So if the PCs obliterated the first wave, throw a second wave at them (this works for social or physical combat, of course, or even for mysteries... clues that lead to clues!); if the PCs are getting hammered, maybe some of the enemy get distracted by something else going on nearby.

6. Make it matter. Are you running a combat scene? Make it part of a larger battle to give the skirmish more scope (being part of a battle involving thousands can feel a lot more sweeping and important than a brawl with five people on each side, even if combat-wise, it's just five-on-five either way). Mention NPCs facing off against one another at a tournament. Describe the Harpy in the corner talking about what the PCs just did (you don't even have to let them know exactly what the Harpy said... are they getting mocked or complimented in those whispers?). Not every scene has to be (or should be) earth-shattering, but let the players watch the consequences to their characters' actions build.

7. Have the crowd react. If there are NPCs around the action, have them react to the actions of the PCs. There's no better way to have the PCs feel like they're a part of the world than to have the world react to their actions. Especially if there's someone that the PCs want to impress (their superior, a pretty person of the proper persuasion, their parents, or whomever) present.

Ah yes. That's a very valid concern: When the game is set up for players to strive against one another for positions, you definitely need either some separation between IC leadership and OOC leadership. Alternatively, you have another Staffer who players can go to in order to scheme against the IC leadership (someone who is passingly familiar with the organization but won't have the same conflict of interest as the org leader).

I have to admit that I was thinking back to my good olde Wheel of Time days where Guildleaders were sort of Staff, but not really. They did all of the guild onboarding, maintenance, etc, but Staff was a level "above" the Guildleaders, so anyone plotting against the Guildleaders could always go to Staff.

Good to see some old S&S folks around.

@Misadventure said:

I am curious, is there a true benefit to having the IC head of a faction act as an OOC head of a faction?

Single point of contact, no conflicting information, and that's about it.

I've seen it happen where the IC head of the faction decides to make a major faction-changing IC decision without consulting the OOC head of the faction, and then the OOC head of the faction has to scrap all of their upcoming plots/plans/missions and deal with the fallout from that decision (one that didn't make IC sense based on what was going on behind the scenes).

But I suppose that's really just a downside of bad communication more than the divide between the IC head and OOC head--but any time you have multiple people "in charge," there will be some friction of communication, even if they talk frequently.

I'm curious what you would see as the downsides of having the IC head of the faction also be the OOC head of the faction.