This has been a fun discussion, one more question:
How much of the campaign do you foreshadow? I've seen a comment or two about people hating when things get 'weird' or take a drastic turn in a direction they weren't expecting. Has anyone run a game where the end goal was in the open? In BSG, I assume everyone knows they're looking for Earth, but beyond that, do you find it beneficial to keep players in the loop of where a story is going?
I think what might be more effective than just generic asking for RP is asking by page if anyone wants to participate in an encounter of some sort, like a mini PrP. I've been able to generate RP on otherwise slow days just by joining people in public spaces and having something odd happening that can trigger conversation. I'll even just use a random NPC rather than my charbit if that works for the better. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't, but I've had much more success doing that than asking on channels. But I find having a premise for a scene is more important than a general desire to play.
One of my favourite ones that I can remember is having my character find an old DMG for some roleplaying game in an estate sale and breaking it open in the starbucks where some people idle. Seeing all the mystic symbols and gory pictures, my character suspected it might have been an encoded spellbook of some sort. This was fun and goofy enough to break the ice with a couple of other characters and we had a nice afternoon of RP around it. Doesn't all have to be shootin stuff.
My latest batch of beer turned out really well. Just shy of 7%, it's dark and tasty, and gives good head.
It had its moments, that's for sure. I remember one instance when a staffer went berserk and created a bit with a high blaster skill and +attacked everyone on the game, killing them via code. IIRC, they also edited people's +sheets with random buffs and downgrades before the other staff caught on and were able to restore things from backup.
I liked the pips and extra skills, honestly, especially in mushes where people use bar RP and TS to become combat gods, it helped slow that down to a degree.
I think Minos Cluster's success with their distilled skill system was the limit of 2 or 3 noms you could give out during a week, which has gone out of fashion these days.
It's still one of my favourite mush systems, but I do like trying new things, and am keen on giving savage worlds a go, especially with SW: Rifts coming out soon, I won't have to actually 'pick a setting' 
Yeah, in my table top group, I'm running D&D 5 for two new people, and when they did absolutely stupid shit, and the goblins killed them, they were shocked. Like one player's jaw dropped and she just stared at her sheet for five minutes after she was cut down by arrows.
I asked her what she was expecting, running into the middle of a courtyard of goblins when she only had and AC of 13 and like 3 HP left? I think statistically, even with my crappy math, it was improbable that even one goblin would have missed under those circumstances, let alone all 4 of them that were there.
She replied that in 15 years of gaming, that was the first character she's had that died and that sort of move was the usual for her.
I was like, well, you're dead now, and the bard who's been talking shit to the goblins for the past 4 rounds, who you left alone in the corner is probably right behind you. Try to be more careful with your next characters.
Sure it sucks when players who are careful lose a character, I was kind of sad when my Lost Generation dude had his head split open by a german shovel, but I don't even think twice when players who do retarded shit drop like flies. Maybe I'm just old and cranky.
@faraday I've always felt that if you're involving dice, you're inviting exactly that. To me, half the fun of roleplaying games are when things go absolutely sideways because of a bizarre dice roll.
If a story is 90% set in stone regardless of the dice, then why have them at all?
@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
BS Pacifica managed a proper closer (I actually came back for the finale after taking a hiatus, and it was a great experience), but @faraday puts us all to shame, in a zillion ways.
I missed that last few months of Pacifica because work picked up and I didn't have time to log in anymore. It was a fun place.
So, while I've been slowly working through code academy with the goal of starting a mush of some sort at some point, I've been thinking about themes and settings a little bit.
Has anyone played on a Mush with successful campaigns? Like, with coherent plot arcs that players are interested in? If so, how was it pulled off? Most of the time, when I see things like that, it's staffalts ignoring player input and ideas, and things wind up with a bunch of players milling around in bars, only reading bboard 1 about what's going on with the plot railroad.
I'd really be into some edge of the empire action.
If people are blatantly ignoring theme in over the top fashion, banish them to a side sandbox grid and let them have their fun. I've played on a few mushes where I didn't care about theme, but greatly enjoyed the company of other theme ignoring players and the rp we had. I think being stuck in a 5 room mini grid would have been awesome.
If, later on, they wish to interact with your story, then let them make new theme characters without their sandbox xp bloat. Or, when you banish them, copy their sheets so when they wake up from their crazy dream, it's like they never left.
@Ghost said:
I've always wanted a zombie-themed mush with high mortality, an ensemble cast, and a game with a constantly changing grid based on human migration. Like TGG with people having their intestines being eaten.
I was on No Return for a while, but it was pretty much people playing house, having movie nights, and doing yoga. It was like The Walking Dead: Woodbury (but a GOOD Woodbury where nothing bad ever happens and you can be a cute veterinarian who teaches yoga) Edition
I'm sure the game is great for those types who want to play house with minimal drama and never have their characters at risk, but that place was totally not for me.
I think this would work with a completely random character generator. Like, you log in, it gives you: David the gas jockey, or Julia the community college janitor who's sick to death of people shitting on the toilet seats instead of in the toilets, like COME ON PEOPLE!
Then you try to navigate these poor souls through the apocalypse. For some, it might even be an improvement.
I think I'm going to make Kafka Mush:
Where you can fill out apps and file queues all day long for every little thing. Then realize you're short on house rule prerequisites, of which there are many, and their use is so esoteric, so you have to do a whole whack of other queues and wait for them to resolve before proceeding. But by the time they're almost done, the staffer disappears and you wait for a new staff, who has a different interpretation of everything so it's back to square one.
If done correctly, there should only be one PC on the grid at any one time.
@Arkandel We've had bilingual labeling since the stone ages, and people still rag on it here. You'd think Canada was full of immortals who actually fought against Napoleon or something.
Are there comedy Mu*s around? Would the Big Lebowski make for a fun setting?
Speaking of Martin's Pace, has anyone here been able to make it through a Wildcards story? I picked one up to see what was so distracting for the guy and it was awful.
