@bored I don't know about "any other game", since that shit seems pretty unique to WoD and that specific Fading Suns game, and I'm assuming Firan.
That was some toxic shit of the highest caliber and is in no way normal nor should it even remotely be considered normal.
I can't comment on the war stuff since I wasn't involved in that part of the game, aside from the plot I got stolen wholesale from me.
@bored That and Paulus literally stealing plots from multiple people.
And there were definitely entire groups of Firan people secretly plotting to dick each other over because they hated each other on Firan. This was a literal thing that was happening behind the scenes and was kept pretty well hidden. I didn't even know wtf the drama was even about, because I didn't play Firan, but I know for 100% sure due to multiple people's expressed intent, that this was going on.
Watching people pretend to like each other OOCly in order to get into the position to ICly fuck them over because they actually OOCly hate them was some pretty sociopathic shit. Can't imagine what the behind the scenes were like on Firan >_>.
@Derp I'd assume MUDs, MMOs, trading card games, and all sorts of other areas of game design likely have addressed this hundreds of times over.
But overall, regardless of the ability for a game to evolve, if the game isn't even consistent enough to make a design document out of, I'd say good luck with that.
Also, design documents aren't set in stone forever either, even for a game that isn't an MMO or professionally designed MUD or whatever. Design documents evolve with time just like a game does, because you realize that there are better ways to do things, more interesting ways to handle certain things in your theme, and systems overall evolve and a design document needs to be updated to reflect that.
Hell, in tabletop, design documents tend to have version numbers.
@Bobotron Yeah I honestly don't mind if people follow along. I want this to be educational for myself and others. Since I'm learning Python (while simultaneously learning Javascript for career reasons), I don't intend to run into problems like "Omg my coder ran off!"
I do plan to let people help when I get to the coding stage, but my intent is for this to not be a project that will just crash and burn if anyone leaves it. So I'll definitely enforce practices like code comments and such.
@Gilette Damn, I never ran into that when I played. Bit of a shame that happened.
So, while brainstorming this design document, and trying to figure out a system, I've had a bit of a realization.
This might sound obvious of course, but I realize that there isn't really a "one size fits all" system. So what I'm actually going to do is form this system, and thoroughly detail the intent of the system, and the type of game that it's meant for. This might mean that I create more than one system (not for the same game, obviously).
But either way, creating different systems for different types of games, like a bit of an RP toolbox, seems like the best route.
Again, this might seem obvious to some people, but I really thought there might be a way to create a universal system. But the more I think about it, the more that just doesn't seem practical in a way that's actually fun to use.
It would have helped if Firan players weren't OOCly trying to dick each other over and pretty much hijacked the game with their bullshit.
And also that it wasn't run by a literal plot thief.
Otherwise, Star Crusade had everything going for it.
@surreality I've played Arx, I actually consider it a pretty fun game, but I never got very deep into it or tried to run a plot. I got super busy (this was when my GED stuff was happening) and sick (months of being killed by undiagnosed allergies, double pink eye and double ear infections all at once), and fell out of it.
Something I'm doing with the game I'm gonna make is creating a design document. I'm actually looking at video games and RPG systems. Having been a writer on a tabletop book really changed my perspective on a lot of things, so I think that if I'm going to seriously make a game that fits my ideals, I need to create a very serious design document. I think such a document, a bible of intent and specification, is exactly the sort of thing that keeps staff on the same page.
Obviously I don't expect everyone to do this, because this is supposed to be a hobby of fun and such, not work, but I think people could even get away with making just a short five page Google doc or something, with their game fully fleshed out, even what they want the grid to be, before they even lay down a line of code.
Also if there's a way to resize images, you guys really need to add forum documentation somewhere.
I wanted to pipe in on the PrP stuff.
I absolutely fucking love running plot and doing storylines and such, but I have literally never done a PrP on a WoD game. I've also never done it on a few other games for similar reasons.
The simple fact of the matter is, like, it always feels like there's a million hoops to jump through, a million rules to pay attention to, then I have to adjust this, adjust that, pay attention to this minor random ass thing, and etc. It's just, like, fuck it by that point, in my opinion. Literally the only reason that I've never run a PrP in a WoD game, despite actually finding the themes interesting enough for plot, is that it's just too much freaking trouble.
There are games outside of WoD with similar hoops, and I'm also like fuck it. While I throw WoD under the bus for being backward on an OOC level a lot, this is definitely not a WoD unique thing.
But, as I usually preach, don't say "this doesn't work" without adding an alternative, so I am going to explain what I do like.
My absolute favorite place to run plot on was Multiverse Crisis MUSH (back when I played it). Now, I know people who are familiar with the older eras of it are probably like "Get that shit outta here!", but the game actually allowed for very cohesive and long-term plot, and contrary to popular belief, you can't just go do whatever the hell you want and it just doesn't matter.
The system for doing a plot on MCM was this (I'm roughly paraphrasing with my own language, so bare with me if anyone from MCM happen to see this):
You had low tier one-shot plot scenes which didn't really require any staff input. So like, you do a raid or whatever, and its consequences don't really reach beyond that scene, no permanent alterations and such (beyond general character development, obviously).
Low tier stuff with permanent alterations, like you get a new sword or a power or something. This would require a simple filling out of the plot template to explain your intent and plans. It was pretty quick and painless.
Mid-tier stuff that affects, say, a small town.
High-tier stuff that affects an entire world.
Global stuff that affects multiple worlds (it is a multi-theme game, after all).
I most likely got some of that wrong, but this is the overall intent. The jist is that permanency, scope, and intent were the three defining factors of running stuff. I rarely actually used the plot application, because a lot of the time what I wanted to do was beneath the scope of that, though still ran for multiple scenes, because staff were flexible and generally understood if a plot truly had far reaching consequences beyond the characters involved or not.
When I did do applications, I didn't have to worry about a bunch of minor details and keeping track of a million things like some kind of insane bureaucracy. MCM's policies have changed a lot now, so I don't really know what the current stuff is like, but I know that when I played, it wasn't like this huge daunting wall separating me from wanting to do plot (unless I stupidly made it complicated and created a wall for myself).
I think that in MUing, and often even outside of MUing, there's an emphasis on writers and coders, but very little emphasis on designers. This is an experience I've had across many spectrums of the hobby, even outside of WoD and such. The only area of the hobby that I personally played in that actually started to put an emphasis on quality of life code and presentation were the Megaman MUSH/Super Robot Taisen/Multiverse Crisis MUSH circles back in like 2009 (for MCM it was more like 2012, but I digress) when they realized everything kind of sucked. Some other places are starting to do that and experiment too, because it's the logical step to take.
Writers generally focus on, well, plot and all that, writing stuff. Coders generally focus on efficiency and just making things work, but for a coder, what "works" can be far removed from what non-coders think works. In our hobby, there is very little emphasis on ease of use, the end user experience overall, and there is especially no real emphasis on how presentation and common sense policy can impact that.
People worry a lot about "how can I put this fire out/keep this fire from happening" and "how do I make this work". But there needs to be thought put into "how many steps can I eliminate from my code/policy to get to the bare minimum that still achieves the function I desire?", and "how can I enhance the end user experience with presentation and abstraction?"
I know I went beyond the scope of PrPs, but these are issues I have encountered all over the hobby. I have often had ideas shot down simply because people couldn't understand how super minor changes could impact the experience of the game. There is a prevailing belief of "if it's functional, it's fine", rather than "there's always room for improvement".
Imagine if no one questioned the functionality of the first toilet.
Your MUs are this:
When they could be this:
@Seraphim73 said in Identifying Major Issues:
Now I can't even get players to follow up on hooks shoved in their frickin' mouths (this may be my fault for coming up with bad hooks, or being a lot more subtle than I think I'm being, but I think this problem is pretty endemic and not just me).
I'm not sure if this is a hobby wide problem, but goddamn I sure do experience it enough for it to be a gigantic peeve.
edit: Not because Thenomain posted as I was writing, but because I'm a lazy millennial who didn't read.
Players do not need to be spoon fed. Players need to be comfortable in their agency, and we especially in the WoD realm have been beating that agency out of them for decades. Partially because people need to play the game in front of them, partially because we got concerned with people getting rewards. Look at most WoD games struggling with PrPs. First we said that the player must build their own fun from the ground up, then we said that they can't do it without extreme vetting. And that's ignoring the bitchy behavior of manipulative and controlling staff.
Players know exactly what they want, they just don't know when they are going to step on some hyperactive staffer's indignant power-trip.
These are actually good points that I will keep in mind for the future.
@faraday said in Identifying Major Issues:
I agree, but that segues into my biggest problem with the hobby: It's intimidating as heck to someone who isn't already immersed in it. Command-line text prompts. No graphics. Bizarre and unspoken social conventions. The huge difference in experience between one game and another. The general impatience shown towards newbies. Even if you posted an ad on some other RPG forum - I shudder to think what it would be like for someone from one of those worlds to try and play here without a mentor really holding their hand for the first few months.
I actually agree with this. These are problems I want to address when I make my game, making it a game that is easily approached by newbies, possibly with a layer of abstraction that can be removed like training wheels. But either way, that's just something else for the design document.
Jesus, that was unintentionally incredibly well-formatted. I didn't even know numbers indented things.
It's difficult to identify problems across the hobby as a whole, because I find most problems to be game specific. But lemme see...
The reasons people don't usually do this is because often staff can't handle the emotional stress of removing players, or because there are friendships they don't want to damage. Weighing personal feelings against the emotional health of the game as a whole is difficult, and there's no easy answer for that, because staff aren't robots. However, I consider this to be a serious problem.
Lack of foresight and proper planning. When people open games without really thinking them through or considering the implications of various elements of their games. I've said this before, but decisions like if you have a combat system, your policies, how you handle plot running, if you have a metaplot or not, all of these things affect the quality of your playerbase in various ways. Not necessarily always in black in white "good and Bad' terms, but you can craft a game to appeal to and attract a target audience. A lot of people think that the theme is enough to do that, but it's not.
Quality control. Different from above, a lot of games don't make sure they're fully polished before opening. First impressions can impact if people are going to actually even login to your game. You have a player look at an unfinished wiki, and how long do you think it'll be before they come back to check when it is finished and has the necessary information and polish? Or opening a game without the core aspects of your game in place. I also think that PB policies need to be a thing in more games.
This isn't to say that you can't open a game in beta, but this is to say that you need to make sure that your presentation is complete before you do that. Having low player retention and negative word of mouth in an open beta is definitely going to have an impact on your game by the time it's actually finished.
Lack of outside advertising is also a problem, I feel. People usually only advertise within the hobby, and this is a huge mistake. It's something I still consider to be one of the largest reasons that the hobby's influx of new players, while it exists, is slower than it could be. Walling ourselves off from the surface world of RP is something that someone needs to take proactive steps to prove is a mistake (I intend to attempt that when I open my game).
Lack of confidence. While being humble and not a complete goddamned madman is important, it's equally important to be confident. If you aren't passionate in your project and you're easily discouraged by other people's criticisms (rather than taking them with a grain of salt and considering what you can constructively do with the criticisms), then you should probably not bother opening a game, in my opinion. Like, sure, we all doubt ourselves, and it's good to fight through that doubt, but if you're ready to abandon your entire project at the slightest negative opinion or someone saying it won't work, you won't be able to take that project as far as it can go.
If I listened to people, my highly successful Momoiro Clover Z wiki wouldn't exist. Back in 2012, people in the idol fandom said "but the company only has like two groups, they don't need an entire wiki! And they're not well known enough!" Well, I predicted their rise to power and that their company would create more groups, and made the wiki anyway. Now I have people thank me for its existence because it used to be the only English source for information about the group that was anywhere near up to date, and it is now considered an essential source of information within the idol community.
http://momoirocloverz.wikia.com/wiki/Momoiro_Clover_Z_Wiki
Don't let your dreams be dreams. - A Great Man
I'm still working out a system of development that works in the long-term, I haven't forgotten or abandoned this. But I thought I would give an update and make a possible thread about what I'm doing.
The system of development aside, I've decided to go the weeb route and create a Dragon Ball game. There are a few reasons for this, even though I might accidentally attract some people from the MUDing community (there are some good people in that part of the hobby, it's not all bad).
My primary reason for choosing Dragon Ball, despite an inherent interest in the theme (look no further than the insane wiki to see the bizarre depth of setting it has), is the fact that it actually thematically overlaps with my desire to create a system of advancement that works in the long-term. The them in of itself does not lend itself to being very easy to make functional and interesting in the long-term in a way that keeps players engaged, so I believe that by test running a new form of advancement with this kind of theme, it'll be like a freaking trial by fire and any theme after that will be easy.
Aside from that, I intend to use Evennia to do this, which means I'm learning Python. This project is going to be a lot to take, but hey, again, trial by fire, if I can do this I can do anything after this.
If you're wondering why I'm announcing it in this post, it's because now if I don't do it, I'll look like an ass, so now you know!
But this isn't just about me and my theme. This will also be about collecting valuable data that I hope will help other people, so don't worry if the theme itself doesn't interest you, when I finally have things up and running (god knows when), I'll either use this thread or make another thread about my observations of how things are working out, and any challenges I'm having. My intent is to be entirely transparent so that what I'm doing will be educational and valuable beyond the scope of the project itself.
I more or less have a theme concept worked out, I don't plan to just use the show and just be like "OK WE'RE DOING THE ANIME STORYLINES!", I'm taking ridiculous creative liberties.
That's all!
Update: Thread title renamed to reflect the finalized name of the MU. I needed a name that fully illustrated where I stand tonally as a director in relation to other games, a name that we can be proud of, a name with no pretense of pretentiousness. This will be a place that knows what it is, that can be serious without taking itself seriously, because seriously, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Naruto are what the theme is. Let's have some self-awareness about that!
Update 2: I've settled on the name Toonamu, credit to Mega Man MUSH's Daryn. I actually loved the GCZ name, but I legitimately couldn't say no to Toonamu, it's perfect. I now have the draft of the design document complete, though there are incomplete sections due to them needing longer consideration and discussion, or not being practical to write until I have other things finished. Comments are enabled for anyone with a link. Tear this shit apart: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K9JqcQjwLYPNweaSWOc08jgQE07ZiECcClUJGQcYqZ4/edit
Update 3: Table of contents added. It's shitty because Google docs, but it's better than nothing. It should be in add-ons, so you can click show table of contents, I believe. Final version will be in a PDF to avoid this shit.
"Stuff in space is a hard sell"
Maybe on MU Soapbox, where like 90% of the people are WoD players and aren't even anywhere near a reflection of the entire hobby (a true statement that will continue to sting and be debated regardless of its truthiness).
Just make your shit, open it, don't suck, and you'll get players.
Ignore literally everyone else's advice if you don't want to be stuck in a perpetual state of:
"I want to do something cool."
"It's not vampires, it won't work, the hobby is dead."
"Oh, alright, guess I'll make a WoD game."
I'm not trying to shit on people's perspectives and experiences, but in this place the perception of the hobby tends to be extremely narrow and limited in its scope, especially when it comes to people's opinions of attracting players from outside of it or people from parts of it that aren't literally just WoD (you don't have to reply with "But I don't even play WoD/RP at all", it misses the general point).
If you want to do something, do it. Who cares if people on MU Soapbox won't play it, you can still get like 50-100 players without a single person in this area of the hobby wanting to play it.
Just do you to the best of your ability and hope you don't suck, and there's literally no reason you won't succeed.
Being a MU creator is pretty much like being in a meritocracy. It doesn't freaking matter what you do or what you make as long as you do it well. I can't account for one's own perception of quality, but I can say that if you are truly passionate and you truly do make something fun and engaging, you will attract an audience and it don't matter if something is a "hard sell" in one narrow area of the hobby.
And while I'm sure someone is going to have the original idea to challenge my statements with MUDstats numbers, I learned a long time ago that this isn't anywhere near a true reflection of people actually in the hobby and just don't have anywhere they find interesting to play. Which is a part of why you occasionally see a random ass theme get a bunch of players over night (and die just as fast due to staff sucking). Or, when you advertise correctly and take advantage of SEO, how many roleplayers from outside of the hobby can find a game (which is one of the reasons having a wiki that isn't completely shitty is essential these days).
In this thread, we will attempt to post five videos that display a full range of our music tastes!
You have a dangerous road ahead of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tXl0gajdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-i-LhRudP4
@Admiral said in CyberSphere Recruitment Drive:
Also fun fact: Cybersphere was one of the first online whatsits, existing back in 1992. Before the commercialization of the interwebs.
I was gonna make a joke about the movie Hackers being out before 1992, but apparently it came out in 1995.
Why does that movie feel like the 80s? It seemed old even back then.
I very much enjoy Scion, and I do like superheroes. I don't know what all I could contribute, and I'm not sure if I'd be full time necessarily, but I don't mind kicking some stuff around.