Posts made by surreality

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):
...I think three and four might be swapped, I dunno, eyes crossing at this point. I am tired as hell, because all forum whatever aside, this week is special, so I'm just going to stick with this:

6. That's nice. I believe that he was upvoting me in lieu of downvoting you because that option doesn't exist and the internet is full of trolls and dicks. But creating any sort of equivalence between me and your stalker because he happens to upvote my post? Yeah, no, fuck that noise and fuck you if you're essentially likening me to some sexual predator.

That wasn't what I was in any way trying to imply. Dude was never any kind of sexual predator, just a very mean-spirited troll. There's a link to his trolling craziness... somewhere in scrollback at this point.

"The person who seems to think fucking with me for sport thinks your posts are super awesome, maybe think about that." is as far as that goes. Zero sexual anything about anybody... at all. Not even pretend fish people. As in: the person who has been a trolling asshat for sport thinks you're doing a great job right now. I am not alone in reading things... not so kindly here, in your posts, either. I dunno, man. 'Maybe check your tone some if abusive trolls are cheering you on and you don't intend to be coming off as accusatory and hostile' is something I figured was clear enough on its own without getting into any psycho-sexual stalker territory. (In all seriousness, that is not a subject I have any desire to go into with anyone this week in particular including close RL friends and family, and would not be bringing it up even abstractly here, least of all for some vastly misplaced hyperbole.)

And quite frankly? Yes, you're annoying the shit out of me today because instead of actually getting to work on the game, I've had to spend a pile of time playing whack-a-mole addressing all of the worst case scenarios and fear-based assumptions you keep shooting off like you filled a potato gun with buckshot and pointed it at the thread. This is the kind of stuff I am talking about:

@bored said in [Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed)]

I'm not sure how personally hyped I am on aliens and Cthulhu (it's overdone to hell and always = vague world ending plots which are basically the stupidest plots)

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

'What is that, lieutenant? (pronounced with a suitable British f)'
'Ah, sir, I believe it's a small band of fishmen riding seahorses'
'How terribly uncouth. Very well, you may fire when ready.'
'Jolly good, sir.'

I dunno. Then there's what someone already mentioned about it basically being a proven MUSH law that you cannot split up your playing population so I don't know how you have PC versions of any of these things that aren't just traipsing around town with everyone else, also leading to the above.

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

Even if everyone is a werefish (and everyone will be magic whatsits unless you make them snowflake staff-friend only), well, then its a game about werefish.

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

I started off saying you'd likely have me as a curious player despite the flaws, I don't know that anything I'm saying is mean or nasty. I don't know how I'm saying that your game is doomed to fail (I'm pretty sure I've literally implied no such thing anywhere). This is getting to 'simply cannot criticize at all' territory.

...seriously. Buckshot. I could keep going here, but I think maybe you'll begin to see my point. Every one of these things you are flinging out there as a 'truism' not only either is not a truism, or is just a worst case scenario about content. Notice none of the 'I don't like it!' stuff is singled out here -- because, hey, cool, that's fine. @il-volpe said as much and notice how that was fine? Because he wasn't firing off the insistences that everything's going to be end of the world or trite bullshit or Cthulhu or or or or or or or or... and so on. Buckshot made of hand-wringing worst case scenarios, which tend to be things that need to be addressed in some fashion, because otherwise, people assume, 'oh, yeah, that again', whether that's true or false, and then everybody just assumes and nobody ever reads.

This is not being defensive. It is being annoyed as hell that instead of waiting a little while to see what the thing is and how much that sucks, you seem eager to begin a bashing based on what you assume it will be and the worst aspects of all of those things. This sticks me in the position of badly explaining shit on the fly that I've already had to budget 2-3 RL months toward getting down in a draft form that I think will be ready for a rough review, and that is a shitty position to be in.

There's a reason I asked folks to not go galavanting down those roads yet: they aren't even leveled, let alone paved, there are no maps or street signs, and the best answers anybody's going to get on those subjects are going to be about as useful as the directions you'd get mumbled out in broken English in a heavy accent by a drunken old coot at the gas station who uses the places where things didn't used to be as their landmarks. (Read: good luck getting anywhere with it.)

Bash it to bits based on what it actually is with wild abandon if you want to. Seriously. Sledge at will when the actual information is available.

Slinging shit around because of what you're afraid something might be is crap, though.

Edit: FWIW, this is totally nothing compared to what I expect when people see the wiki. Anybody who likes minimalism, yeah, there'll be a second minimalist skin for it, but holy shit will the minimalists hate me like burning for the default. It is seriously apt for the baroque era to the extent that its nickname is 'baroquen'. (Read it out loud if you gotta.)

@bored Fine. I'll go point by point on this.

1. I've been yammering on at length for about a year or two now about working up a wiki-based system that would, because it's the way wiki works, provide incredible measures of transparency. Essentially, even XP spend logs would be visible, since every change to a sheet would be viewable by all and sundry. I also really like the idea of creating tools that enable players to access to and ability to add to all of the game info other than the specific resolution to plots-in-progress, because nothing sucks harder than 'no you can't run that cool thing you put a lot of thought into that would be piles of fun for a bunch of people because OMG GAME SEKRIT THAT CANNOT BE DISCLOSED, because this is the ultimate in suck. I get yelled at about this enough that I figured this is not exactly a mystery or secret to anybody.

2. Cool!

3. No, slut-shaming isn't the concern at all. People are absolutely going to go there, and... honestly I genuinely just don't care if, when, or how they do. There's a 'don't be a slut-shaming douche' policy file on the game, but the bigger and more important file on the game is 'please do not make us ever have to care about what TS you or someone else is having, it's not our business and if you're not one of the people typing it it is probably not your business either'. Will there be notes on how/if/when/why various non-human things reproduce? Probably a sentence or two. It can be summarized pretty easily: there's one kind of fishypeople that has a snowball's chance in hell at interbreeding with anything human because they're the closest to still being human themselves, but it's still a pretty slim chance. This is the Lovecraft stuff in total: the concept of something akin to the Deep Ones bribing a human society with shinies for broodstock and slave labor. Translated, that means this location is 'the most recent place where the thing that directs that shit decided to go about it', but since it was a few hundred years back by now, there's already enough of a population of the fish things to self-sustain for the most part and as that happens, the inter-compatibility drastically fades. (This is also because the first time somebody goes all 'sweet and precious human hybrid merbaby d'awwwwww' all over the channels and drags it into every scene on grid I might actually have to shoot myself in the head; we only have airsoft guns in the house, and that would take a really long time to accomplish the desired end.) That's the sum total of the Lovecraft inspiration, other than the really old mer-things that are, after thousands of years of this crap, really pretty good at making shiny objects that are useful to bribe us greedy humans with. No end of the world, no giant tentacle gods, no Cthulhu (unless @Coin still wants that as a staff name), no Misaktonic University, no Necronomicon, just that vague concept, which is a variation on the Innsmouth/Merrow/Deep Ones theme without any the other Lovecraft universe dragged screaming and unwelcomely along with it.

4. I'm fine with that explanation. I'm also a little frustrated that the first words posted were 'hey, I am not crowdsourcing all the things, please don't do that here, when stuff's ready to be discussed I will happily post that' and immediately... nope. Since part of what I'm doing right now is trying to determine, specifically, how to write directions on the various wiki forms so they'll be as fool-proof and clear as possible, this is especially discouraging, really. Do you all know that? Naw, but dang, if somebody says, "I am focusing on specific questions and am not interested in everybody's universal game wishlists or demands for how things must be or all is lost", it is pretty irritating for that to be more or less the first pile of stuff that appears. Have I been my own worst enemy in this thread somewhat? Sure, and I'm cool letting that stand and letting people draw their own conclusions. It is also a case of 'being your own worst enemy' to completely disregard things like the above, because usually, if someone says, "I am not prepared to go there, when I am I will let you know," and you still go there? You are, actually, being somewhat disrespectful of what's being asked (which is not a good sign) and potentially being a self-important 'I'm an exception, clearly' sort of dick. When this behavior occurs on a game, or pretty much anywhere else, there's a reason people roll their eyes and groan, why it makes everything take ten times longer than it needs to, and why it makes what should be happy fun exchanges of ideas an exercise in frustration and annoyance. This is like going to the annual business budget meeting and insisting that before anybody can get down to brass tacks of discussing ideas to improve the budget, everybody needs to get their uniform sizes for the company softball team to the guy in the mailroom that's going to pick them up next week. Conversation will wander where it will, but don't be shocked if the people trying to discuss the budget at the meeting just sorta stare at you with an irritated squint.

5. If we're going to talk about paranoia? The assumption that staff is going to give a pile of perks to their friends before there is even a game or before there is even an actual staff is pretty high on the list. Here's the quote: "(and everyone will be magic whatsits unless you make them snowflake staff-friend only)". Did it ever occur to you that there might be magic things human characters can do that fish-things can't? 'cause that's a thing. Or that there might be drawbacks to being a fish-thing that not all players may not feel are worth it? 'cause that's a thing, too. Nope, just the race to all the cliche assumptions. There is a reason it is annoying to have the worst assumptions slung around, and have to sit here for hours on end trying to say, "Uh, no, there's no Cthulhu... " because that shit is being slung around so much and so on when I would really rather be getting shit done so it can be shown to people and the actual issues with the actual material can be addressed, not this fear-based mental construct of what it surely must be or entail. If you can't understand why that's annoying, I can't help you, and you can keep calling me defensive, paranoid, desperate to be popular, or whatever else.

6. Nope. But when the person who decided to upvote your attack posts is someone who has admitted to actively trying to harass me over the past few days? Maybe that's something to take into account when it comes to how you're coming across. (The moment I mentioned it, he apparently upvoted more or less every other post in the thread -- seriously, that is a bit more the target you're looking for in terms of people being hyper-reactive to that sort of thing. Also, frankly... creepy as fuck.)

7. If I was worried about that, I would have deleted this post instead of saying, "I'd really appreciate it if this could be locked, I'd delete it but if people want to review this thread and decide I'm an asshole because of it for some reason, it should be left on the record for them to do so." Definitely the behavior of someone desperate for approval and afraid of criticism, to be sure. (Again, with the accusations and assumptions, though. Dude, seriously.)

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

In general, the hobby has very little faith in 'staff picks who gets to play the speshuls.' Clearly even @surreality is somewhat aware of this difficulty, given her above clarification on who gets what (that makes your whole comment pretty unnecessary and a very big derail - good work!)

That everything is open to everyone has never been remotely secret or obscured.

That game I rant on about doing as much as possible to take power out of staff's hands, and make sure the only staff only info is alts, IP info, the resolution of plots in progress (by players or staff), and complaints to remove as much of the power disparity between staff and players as possible? Yeah, that'd be this game.

That game I rant on about being open sheet? With all sheets on wiki, where if and when anybody changes any stats on it, absolutely everyone can read the page history and see if there is any funny business going on? That is this game.

Yeah, totally how shit goes down when somebody's keen on playing favorites: make absolutely everything as public as you can so if anybody has something shady on 'em, the whole world can see it.

And no. I was not joking around about mermaid sex, because frankly the initial gif thing came off pretty rude and dismissive in combination with all the negativity. I gave an answer because sooner or later, someone else was going to ask again, and like I said, I prefer to only answer something once whenever possible.

I am also still not buying that it wasn't an accusation. If it was a concern, you could have asked a question about accessibility instead of slinging that shit. No, I didn't ask @Ganymede to bring it up. No, I still don't buy your logic. That the guy who pulled this (confirmed, btw) is the one upvoting you there? Should maybe tell you something about how you're coming across.

Continuing in the theme of 'am an enemy of joy':

• Alts are permitted.
• No sphere caps.
• No special-restricted-app-only character classes. If staff or staff's buddies can have a PC of it, so can absolutely anybody else.
• Alts are tentatively capped at 5 (it will not go lower than this, I'm resisting suggestions for higher as well but it will not go lower than this) with the usual CoI rules in place. You can only play one of any type of thing, unless it's a Mundane Human; you can have five Mundane Humans if you want, provided you stick to the CoI rules you have to stick to anyway. You can say 'fuck the humans, they suck!' and play five different kinds of fish people if you want.
• Actual historical figures are not allowed as PCs but may be referred to in backgrounds. (I got raided by Blackbeard! I lost a drinking contest to Mary Read! Etc.)
• Backgrounds are actually not required, since it only asks for a brief overview of the character and what you want to be doing with them! ...but you can write one for extra starting points if you feel like it. (This last added simply because I knew the moment I mentioned backgrounds someone would ask.)

p.s. In totally unrelated news I am really kinda disturbed that there was a chart I could reference about fish sex so readily available.

Because apparently 'how you fuck a fish person' is serious business:

• Some fish people have legs! (Read: More or less like you fuck a person with legs.)
• Most fish people can have legs for being on land. (Read: More or less like you fuck a person with legs.)
• If you want to fuck a fish person while they're a fish person, this is going to vary wildly.
  ** The dolphin people will be happy to help you figure this shit out.
  ** The whale people, well, you are going to have to get really creative.
  ** DO NOT TRY TO FUCK THE ANGLER FISH.
  ** Bring a friend if you're a chick hitting on a shark dude.
  ** If something has tentacles, just don't post the log on the wiki, please.
  ** That hole is not where you think it is, forget the kissing unless you're a contortionist.
  ** Most of these things lay eggs. Consult the chart below:
  

Final clarification on grid design, which is not changing, if this is a deal-breaker for you, please move on:

I refuse to consider a single fish-only underwater bar as something even slightly detrimental to a game, which was the initial example provided. No, that example is not something I see as a problem, not even the tiniest of problems. Were this example a genuine problem of some kind, the very idea of a faction-only or sphere-only hangout would be anathema throughout the hobby, and yet they're everywhere, and serve a functional purpose.

I'll happily go on record to be clear: some areas will only be accessible or readily accessible by certain character types, members of certain factions, and so on. This is and has been the case on every single game on which I have ever played save for Shangrila and Akashat, and even Shangrila has some faction-only areas in which others are not permitted or are not permitted without a faction member escort.

The vast majority of the grid can be used at any time by the vast majority of characters without any fancy hoop-jumping involved.

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

I agree with @bored in the sense that I want to play pirates, but don't want to play pirates-and-mermaids.

The difference is, you did so without suggesting there's anything shady or illicit going on, and you didn't leap into a pile of negative assumptions about the most trite aspects of anything that has been referenced.

It doesn't offend me in the slightest if somebody doesn't like something that I know going in is absolutely and intentionally a weird niche concept game.

What does offend me, and is in fact offensive as fuck, is this:
There is not a game yet.
There is not a staff yet, beyond one person who volunteered to ensure that if someone ever has even the slightest issue with me and would feel uncomfortable bringing it up, there is someone with a proven track record in the community as being trustworthy and straightforward to whom they can bring their concerns without fear of reprisal. (There's no need for that fear, but since people still have it, there you go, there's somebody there just for that.)
Despite these facts, there are already accusations that only 'staff friends' will get anything shiny. Seriously? THERE IS NOT EVEN A STAFF YET.

@bored If I posted a thread about the entirety of 'my vision', it would not have been a thread that began thusly:

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

It is the most honest title I could come up with. It's what it says on the tin.

A few quick disclaimers:

• I'm only kinda crowdsourcing here on select weird questions. (This is not intended as a free-for-all dogpile of every wishlist item anyone ever wanted in a game to get thrown in phrased as a requirement.)
• No, nothing's ready to get looked at yet. (Yes, I'll post when it is, promise.)
• Some stuff is already carved in stone. (And, well, deal with it, because it isn't changing.)
• I will totally add more disclaimers don't you test me! <fist-shake> (Ahem.)

General vibe of the project is as follows:

And what follows is a very random list of basic elements with zero detail and a lot of random humor.

If that was 'the totality of my vision', well, that game would have been built in under two weeks.

If you've shown me anything, @bored, it's that no matter how detailed I am when writing help files or instructions, there's going to be somebody who decides to just skip that bit and reinterpret things as they choose, but this, I'm afraid, is not new news.

I don't think you're trying to scuttle anything here for your sake or @Lisse24's, either, but I do not consider it unreasonable to ask that you please keep the questions about theme/setting/inspirations to a dull roar when I have said "that's not ready for prime time yet, when it is, it will be posted". The irony of it all is, the specific things you've been citing about the reason you hate those themes are -- guess what -- something we agree about. I am not interested in an end of the world plot. I'm not interested in actual Lovecraftian mythos. I am not interested in aliens from Atlantis or undersea aliens at all, actually.

I am not and have not asked for positivity only, so that's another fun accusation to add to the pile, I guess. I asked for people to stick to the questions asked, and that I was neither prepared nor interested in going into the laundry list of wishlist or bane items that appear in every thread about any potential new game at this time.

And for what it's worth, '...I see no reason to include anything with tentacles' is a valid and useful reply. I was thinking less Davy Jones' beard than stuff like this:

...but if nobody wants that sort of thing, yes, please say so and spare me the time it would take to write it up!

@Lisse24 The wiki thing is mostly what I've been doing; getting all the frameworks built for stuff. Ideally? I want people to be able to add their own odd creatures and creations (not for actual character classes, but just weirdness out there for NPCs and critters and so on) and crazy lore/etc. for the world and building all of the guidelines for that along with the tools to do it has been a huge job.

I still think it's downright impressive there's already implications of staff corruption and favoritism for a game that doesn't even have its actually game system finished yet, but I guess I am trying to break new ground. (Not sure 'get accused of favoritism before there's even a PC parent finished' is the ground I wanted to break... )

The primary reason I'm asking focused questions is because for the most part, with some folks pitching in with code help, or 'could you skim this and make sure it reads like English' asked of a random friend once in a blue moon, this is a one (wo)man project at the moment. It is a fuckton of work. I simply do not have time to derail into abstract theories on grid design for a full day to satisfy hand-wringing re: an issue that is never going to have an answer that pleases everyone anyway if this is ever going to actually get done to the point that things can be posted for that level of nit-picking and argument.

Much eye-cross, much migraine.

@bored I have to be honest here: the kind of negative assumptions that are being consistently made in your post are exactly why it took me since October to mention anything about what I was working on at all. I asked people to stick to some specific questions (and from the jump, nope), and that a lot of other information would have to wait, because there's a lot (to be specific, I'm betting 2-3 months of full time hours put into the setting/lore details in writing) left to do on it that exists in the brain, just not on paper with its various reference material and citations. I think it is pretty reasonable to say: please stow these questions and assumptions until that information is ready to be shared.

Not only are you making a lot of assumptions about the subject matter -- what it includes and what it doesn't -- but now, assumptions about the availability of options for various character types and even insinuations about staff corruption and favoritism. Thanks, man. That's totally what me and @Coin are known for, I guess.

And the simple fact that some people are freaking out about the very notion that there might be places that only some character types can go being the inevitable destruction of a game that doesn't even have a grid yet, while others are bemoaning that everyone will only want to do one thing (because who'd want to be anything else, I guess?) is precisely why this kind of post is something a lot of people developing games do not find this place to be an especially useful one for input, no matter how much we may all fancy ourselves experts on everything.

Other than easing my mind that @Lisse24 is not going to hate my face for continuing to work on something I'd already put one hell of a lot of time into before knowing she wants to do something similar, this thread has thus far unfortunately been pretty discouraging, and it's especially hair-tear-worthy that it's based on assumptions of what must be going on, rather than what is.

I am honestly not concerned with people telling me what to do with the place, because when I decided to do this, I decided to build the game world I wanted to build, and that is what I aim to do. What I am trying to do here is ask, "There are possibilities in Direction X, is there interest in that enough to warrant writing it up for a setting that is <very rough mix of concepts>?" because I believe in including as many of those things as possible from the outset. Trying to shoehorn them in later when a pile of people express interest almost always makes them appear tacked on like an awkward appendage and it starts to break things, and I'd rather avoid that if possible.

While I'm happy to leave this be so people can see 'zomg surr is horrible' if that's the conclusion they'd like to draw and it remains on the record, I'm going to ask @Glitch to lock it (please?) because it's unfortunately not serving the useful purpose I really hoped it potentially could.

@Lotherio I'm sticking with oceanic themes, but I'll take a peek. Just seeing the way things get interpreted can sometimes be an enormous help. Thank you!

@bored I think I see what you're getting at. The fishy folk in this all have (even if it's far back) human ancestry. All of them absolutely can assume forms humanoid enough to go on land, and they can breathe air and whatnot. Some can pull off looking entirely human while doing so, too. They are, within limits, shapeshifters by default.

Edit: The supernatural elements aren't something I'm hedging on the inclusion of, and they aren't going away. It's not meant to be a strictly historical game by far and I would never be interested in running a game like that. PotC is about the balance being aimed for -- there's weirdness afoot, it's just not going to be the Disney version of that sort of weirdness, which is deliberately campy/silly/definitely sanitized much of the time.

@bored Agreed on the actual Lovecraft being specifically that. I'm interested in the idea more than his specific mythos. I always figure 'inspired by' is good, actually using pieces of anything as it is (even stuff that is allowed like his is) is just too derivative to be interesting, and it also comes with a lot of baggage in terms of that world that I find boring or don't want to use or deal with.

The general notion is roughly: 'old weird sea being takes down islands in a pattern similar to the concept of Innsmouth's creepiness over a period of centuries', each time resulting in a slightly different sort of seafolk that then end up propagating in odd ways. It just happened to end up here the most recently; Ys and a handful of other 'lost island civilizations' are former locations where it had been and done its thing over the course of history, it's just that in Ys it found a partner, who unfortunately went down with the ship, in a manner of speaking. Cue strange possessions and a race to the 'new world' to reunite the crazy cults in a collage of confusion, in so far as that goes. (The cult based loosely on Ys lore takes people and seafolk, and more or less pulls a PotC 'Davy Jones crew' sort of warping on them over time, by comparison.)

More or less the older the iteration of overtaken civilizations is, the 'deeper' they live, the more abstracted they've become, and the less able they are on land. For instance, some of the descendants of the most ancient societies would be taking cues from things like angler fish and so on, and can't ever surface in daylight, and so on, because they're so accustomed to existing in the deep deep regions and have adapted accordingly. I don't really expect to see a lot of takers on those for PCs, mind... but 'stupendously creepy more or less vampire monster fishperson' is neat enough that even if there are only NPCs of them ever made to smite in sheer horror, they'll be fun for that purpose!

...but really, there is a reason for there to be undersea places where people do not go lightly, or with much of an expectation of return.

The WORA wiki hadn't been up for years even when it last was, I think. There was always talk of bringing it back but it was on a perpetual '...someone will get around to it' list.

From what I saw of it when I last saw it (which was admittedly a decade or so ago now), it was mostly random descriptions of current games, a few tidbits like the Swedish Chef translation of Nymeria's infamous desc, I think the Blaze desc, the old drinking game rules, and bitching about VASpider.

Not necessarily sure I want to know what happened from there.

I would not be AT ALL averse to creating a wiki setup for the hobby generally, but I would not want one like that, frankly, even just in that I don't think it's cool to share personal info about anybody other than oneself beyond something like a link to be all 'Oh hey I know you, yay!' or roomies or spouses mutually linking to each other or something, social-media style.

It wouldn't be a horrible idea (and I know I talked with @Roz about it before) as something where people could list (themselves) who/where they played as a tool for people to volunteer info/find each other similar to A Shout in the Dark, but I've been staring at wiki code for so many months now I'm a bit oversaturated.

@Lisse24 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@surreality This sounds a lot like the project that I'm working on, especially the (totes not Atlantis) lost island/civilization myths. Only you have to swap out the mermaid bits and replace with Tropico, because who doesn't want a Tropico/Pirate mix game?

I'm also playing down the spirit world, because I want my game to be more focused on politics and a wee bit more grounded than most MUs (demon bishops? What demon bishops? None of that here!).

I was actually so worried when I saw that, because I've been grinding away on this practically full time hours-wise since last year, and had been planning some of the concepts with someone for five (read: he told me I should do all the work because 'wow that would be cool', then flaked and vanished so I wasn't constrained by only working on it when he was around), so was initially like... oh, god, not again. The last three concepts I was tinkering with I dropped when I discovered there was too much overlap with stuff other folks are doing, so it's been rough on that front -- I'm a 'not wanting to step on toes' sort that way.

I suspect the end results will be pretty different. There are weird demonic forces! Mostly based on the lore of Ys with some Lovecraftian themes (think Innsmouth) thrown in, though, with an odd race between Spain and England and odd disappearances and, well, who doesn't love the crazy theories about the Bermuda triangle?

@Seraphim73 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

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

^ That is totally where I am on those, too. For real.

I'm not too worried about there being places only one group can go. It's already painfully common in most systems people play; if the hobby can get along with only some character types stepping into shadow/the underworld/the hedge/being confined to certain hours or nightzones/etc. in WoD, I don't see it being a huge hurdle. The niche areas just get used much less, on the whole, but they serve unique purposes for their respective classes and pose significant dangers to those who don't belong there. If the existence of those doesn't immediately destroy every WoD game, I have a very hard time thinking similar options tailored to specific groups in any other game setting or system are going to be the sure and certain ruination of a grid and all gameplay.

There's also this, really: mundane humans are the baseline, and there are the most available character classes for human characters. That means sea critters end up with modifications, for the most part, to perform better physically in the water than humans do, but suffer some penalties on land as a balancer.

Someone could create some kind of magic potion to allow a human to breathe under water at depths people can free dive to in order to hang out around there if they felt like it -- and that in itself wouldn't be a big deal -- but the only areas they can't easily access anyway through free diving for short intervals would be at depths considerable enough to do some major damage to the human body (pressure) that people were not remotely equipped to deal with in 1715. There's only so much handwavium for things like that, or nitrogen narcosis, etc. (and that goes for everyone) that I'm comfortable with.

Now, that might be me getting way into the weeds of realism, but it's a thing. Only certain things can go jaunting through the spirit world in game, too, but that's why it's quite literally one small spirit world zone, just like there's one small 'at depths' underwater zone, and there are areas of the standard grid that are equally detrimental to sea critters, where they really shouldn't be if they want to live longer than a few minutes for similar reasons.

@Arkandel Really need to stick to the questions specifically -- a lot of this is stuff that will be explained later, and I am really not going into all the cultural data on the forum. That's stuff that takes so much time to even write once I don't want to exhaust myself getting into it here and now. Language isn't as much of an issue as you might imagine; this isn't a case of natural evolution, and while the societal norms have vastly diverged over a fair bit of time, they have shared origins.

Not all places on grid are going to be accessible for everyone. Some places will be set aside for certain groups, though the vast majority of the grid is open to everyone. Some classes will be more restricted than others regarding where they can go, or when they can go there, or how often, etc.

It is the most honest title I could come up with. It's what it says on the tin.

A few quick disclaimers:

• I'm only kinda crowdsourcing here on select weird questions. (This is not intended as a free-for-all dogpile of every wishlist item anyone ever wanted in a game to get thrown in phrased as a requirement.)
• No, nothing's ready to get looked at yet. (Yes, I'll post when it is, promise.)
• Some stuff is already carved in stone. (And, well, deal with it, because it isn't changing.)
• I will totally add more disclaimers don't you test me! <fist-shake> (Ahem.)

General vibe of the project is as follows:

• Take one series of Black Sails watched at least 8 times back to back
• Take all of the PotC movies
• Imbibe lots of liquor
• Add all of the 'I secretly wanted to be a mermaid when I was a kid' that absolutely fucking exists in this hobby
• Insert one part 'WE GET CANNONS?!'
• Add all of the 'I secretly want to be a pirate even now that I'm an adult' that absolutely exists in this hobby
• Mix in select Lovecraftian overtones <plucks out the naughty tentacle to fling away> How did that get in there...
• Throw in some old lost island/civilization myths that are actually not at all about Atlantis I swear!
• Add a pinch of Lords & Ladies
• Maybe take some peyote? (Improvise here.)
• Throw in a dash of the spirit world
• Acquire copious amounts of rum
• Add in at least one plausible impression of Alien Guy
  
• Toss in just a hint of campy weirdness for garnish
• EDIT: Add the most absurdly baroque wiki layout ever
• Throw in blender, hit puree. (And wait several months. This gives people time to look up how stuff was in 1715, or watch all of Black Sails at least 50 times, either or.)

...if it doesn't make perfect sense, that's fine, but please note I'm not going to go into the weeds on explainers here because it's still being written down and I would really rather only do it once so please be patient until I can simply point to something, it's a lot of work and I'm already behind where I'd like to be on this.

This is not based on an existing game system or setting, and won't be. I'm not going to spend time trying to litigate the flaws in another system when I'm trying to get this one done. There will be time for mechanics input, but it isn't now.

There will be: humans, some spirit beings, and mer, which are more or less exactly what you think: fishy people of various types.

So here's the first questions:

1. Y'all are going to make me make cephalopods of some kind under that umbrella, aren't you. (There are already sirens and mermaids and a few other mer-things, some sparkle-shiny and some shuddersome and creepy.) If you want to be a tentacled creature (of the deep, not hentai), express your wants in that direction here.

2. Taking suggestions for a name that does not suck for a 'more or less crustacean-y based' sort of fish people character class, because after all this time, yes, there will finally be somewhere to play a were-mantis-shrimp (or werelobster, or wereprawn, or werecrab, I suppose, since classes are fairly flexible).

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. I have some ideas, but I did not actually grow up to be Jacques Cousteau like I wanted to when I was six (yes, really), so suggestions or links to truly weird and obscure sealife with curious abilities are quite welcome. (Do not worry about the mechanics, they are in the weeds! Deep in the weeds! Do not go into the weeds! The weeds are full of spiders, stay out of the weeds! The weeds are full of grue! Ravenous, spider-infested grue!)

@ThatGuyThere I would abuse that to hilarious ends.

I would absolutely turn them into henchmen, just to see the day they wake up to realize: "OMG, we're the bad guys, guys!"

I am sometimes a really horrible human being.

You people better be taking notes for when I have to write up weird shit for fish people next month. I'm counting on all of you to remember this shit then when I'm flailing around wildly for ideas and my brain is dribbling out of my ears.

If I remember correctly, IGU was Ninjakitten, Peverel, I think ICE and a handful of others as the core group of sensible folk who are still (whenever anyone catches sight of any of them) cool and sensible folks with good heads on their shoulders.

I don't think IGU was ElectricSoup, though. It was a lot closer to what MSB is now, from what I remember, just without a hog pit or as many off-game topic sections.