Best posts made by Tat

@Gingerlily said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

I felt like I'd seen it before but was not sure. I'll give that thread a look too.

In the meantime, I'd be super happy if anyone wanted to toss in some examples:

1. Examples of metaplots
   2)Examples of plots that are associated with metaplots but not metaplots themselves.
2. Examples of other types of plots that are appropriate for a game with metaplot

Ty ty

You see them a lot in TV shows. Take Buffy, for example. Each season has a Big Bad who is trying to do something Big and Bad. Many of the episodes (but not all) deal with some aspect of the shenanigans caused by the Big Bad on the way to achieving their goal.

I've run a couple of games that have recycled this format. Big Bad has goals opposed to our heroes. They attack city X or steal macguffin Y or otherwise cause chaos in search of this goal. We thwart them. On one game, we were mutant superspies, so there were lots of other plots that weren't related to that particular Big Bad. On the other, we were mercenaries - again, lots of potential for being hired for jobs not related to our nemesis.

Sometimes it can also be a mystery. Lost's 'Why are we stuck on this island?'. The plots then revolve around trying to solve it, uncovering clues, getting into trouble trying to uncover clues. That sort of thing.

Meta plots are really great for keeping story moving and for creating fun, interesting recurring antagonists. They can be a lot of work to run and maintain, especially if you place a lot of importance on letting players affect outcomes and shape the game.

@ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Nothing sucks worse than watching a 3 year old at a near-unconscious state because she cannot breathe. They had her on a constant flow of albuterol sulfate and concentrated O2. For 8 days.

My three year old has a cold and keeps waking up at night to cough on and off for 20-45 minutes at a time.

I can barely deal with THAT. The sound of it makes my heart hurt and everything in me is frustrated that I can't magically fix it.

Which is to say, sympathies, and I'm sorry to hear it, too. I can't imagine.

@Coin said:

@Tat said:

@Roz said:

I just look the most impressive because I post the most here out of any of the staffers.

Wait wait. How do I get to look impressive?

You don't. @Roz is a fame glutton.

Good point.

@roz said in MUSHgicians elements:

@il-volpe If you use Ares, @Tat might also be willing to talk about her process of building a magic system on top of FS3.

I think it really depends on how you want to work it. If you want a system that lets you type 'cast <spell>' instead of 'combat/weapon fireball' and then 'combat/attack person', you'll need to dig into code. If you don't care about being kind of kludgy and want to mostly rely on rolls and GM interpretation, you're probably fine. It's always easier to use a system that is basically interpreting dice according to a set of rules. (Note: I think this is a perfectly fine and even awesome way to run an FS3 game, I've done it with mutations).

The FS3 danger is that if you plan to have combat of any sort - say, adventurers slashing at things in Fillory - it gets complicated to have some people using a sword in FS3 combat to do damage, and not having a nice fireball equiv ready to go. IC improv is all well and good, but a coded system means you had to have time to configure stuff.

And magical attacks are pretty easy, but if you want to really explore the full range of magic - stunning, AOEs, healing, buffs and debuffs, etc - well. That's a lot harder to do well without code. Which is why I did the insane thing Roz describes above.

All of this is to say that when deciding what systems you're using, definitely think about how they will intermingle with FS3, if that's what you're using, especially when it comes to fighty and healing things.

There are a lot of things I've just designed a certain way explicitly because that's how FS3 does or does not work, and I think that's a lot better than designing a system you love and then trying to smoosh it in.

@ixokai said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

A metaplot is not a plot in that you usually don't do anything about it specifically.

The metaplot is the plot happening in the world around you; you might do plots that it spawns, but it, itself, is not touchable as a PC.

I think this depends on the scale of your game, to some extent. And the positioning of your PCs and your plot. If your metaplot is a war, for example, and your PCs are a team of well-trained soldiers, they can (and SHOULD) absolutely affect its outcome.

If your metaplot is a team of shadowy people trying to redirect the shape of the world, and your PCs are the mutant super team who encounters them and foils their plans, you are absolutely affecting the outcome and direction of the metaplot.

I've run metaplots that were bigger than these - politics moving in the background, huge social changes sweeping the country. Sometimes they are necessary to ground your PCs. But they're also the plots people complained about all the time, because they had no means by which to affect their outcome.

In my opinion, a metaplot should be something players can and do affect, and larger, untouchable stuff should be kept to a minimum as much as possible.

@sg

There's an app for that. Really.

@Seraphim73

What it can't do very well without relatively significant additions (from what little I've seen of Spirit Lake, but generally what I've seen from FS3) is slicing weaves, multi-flow weaves, or long-running slice/shield duels (most FS3 affects take place the turn you do them, save for reloading, from what I've seen).

It's been a long time since I've read these books - if you describe how these would need to function, I can probably speak to whether I think you can convince FS3 to do it (and how hard it might be).

@Packrat said in Wheel of Time:

Locking people in weaves of air was also a huge deal in the books and I am not sure how well that would translate to FS3. The ability of literally any competent channeler to immediately and inescapably incapacitate any one (or several if an actively powerful channeler) non channeling person in a heartbeat came up rather a lot.

You could hack this into FS3 pretty easily using subdue. In fact, SL is like 75% of the way there already - I call them 'stuns', but it's basically the same thing. Right now it's a roll, but there's no reason you couldn't make the roll auto-succeed (or just mod it up so the chances are really, really good). As is, you have to hold a stun spell (ie, keep casting it every round) to keep it working, but that's actually on my list to change.

I think even multiple targets would be fairly easy to introduce here.

@Arkandel said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

And that is correct, but notice TV shows also do it more intelligently than that (or do these days, after they've had some time to evolve their methods). For instance how much fun would Buffy have been if the entire run was about that one Big Bad? What if we had, I dunno, seven seasons of The Master plaguing the gang? That wouldn't stay fresh for too long, right?

Yes, you're totally right. A good metaplot knows when to end. If it doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end, then in my book it's not a plot - it's just your setting. And it's probably one of those things people are talking about that players can't affect much.

The length of a metaplot is often quite long - perhaps even years. Some games have experimented with (and I think had luck with) the idea of seasons, to help with metaplot staleness. But at some point things do have to /change/.

@buttercup said in Good TV:

@thatguythere Lol, I acknowledge I may be the unhealthy one in this aspect of a relationship.

IDK man, binge-watching ahead on a show we're both into is like. Grounds for divorce in my house. I will cut him if I come home and he's watched ahead.

Things we aren't watching together are FINE, but things we started together, you'd better get permission before racing ahead!

@Tat
Slicing Weaves: Countering incoming channeling attacks with flows of Spirit (that's easy enough), with a distracting "lash-back" effect if one of your weaves is sliced.

FS3 already has a defense built in - every attack rolls against the defender's defense skill. I'd probably just have a specific skill called 'Slice' and make defenses against weaves roll that. The lash-back effect would take a little bit of code, but I think you could just have a failed attack apply a -1 attack or defense (or both) mod for the next round with some ease.

Multi-flow weaves: Creating lighting requires strength in both Air and Fire (as I recall, and maybe Spirit too?). It gets even more complicated when you get to the idea that the requirements for the same weave may be different for male and female channelers.

This one is harder, but not impossible. Spirit Lake's magic is set up so that you learn a spell, and you have to have the spell's School in order to learn it. It could certainly be made to require that you have air && fire. That we haven't chosen to do so is more a matter of OOC system complexity than anything, honestly. That might be a thing to consider - is it worth it to be super faithful to the texts, if it results in a headache of a system, or can you simplify?

Of note, if you were doing it the SL way, you'd create weaves that do specific things (for us, spells), because you have to config/code them all. If you wanted things beyond those weaves, you'd need some rules for rolling and what those rolls mean.

Shielding duels: Just straight up channeling strength contests, straining to cut the other person off from the One Power (magic). If the other person isn't holding the One Power, it's easy, but if the other person -is- holding the One Power, it's relatively impossible unless you a) distract them, or b) are much, much stronger than them.

So again, FS3's attacks are contested rolls. A skill called 'Shielding' or 'Duel' or whatever is appropriate could just do this as-is. Actually, not even in combat - just do a vs roll. If they don't have the One Power, their stats would be super low. Or mod your rolls. Etc.

ETA: Or magic One Power - we made magic an attribute that governs our schools, you could do that as well and then just roll your raw power for these duels.

Severing (hey look, I've thought of more!): It's Shielding with an edge (literally). If you succeed, you cut the other person off from the One Power forever (for certain definitions of "forever").

Same as above, but with GM intervention to adjust skills as needed on the result of the rolls. Though @faraday generally holds that FS3 isn't built for PvP, so that's a thing to keep in mind.

Overchanneling: Channel too much and you'll get really, really tired. Channel even more, and you might burn yourself out and make yourself unable to use the One Power ever again (for certain definitions of "ever again").

We have a mechanic like this in SL, but it's more RP flavor than something accounted for. That said, it would be pretty easy to add in a counter that ticks up every time you cast/weave something, and ticks back down on a cron, and if you hit a certain level it tells you 'you don't feel so good' and/or creates a job/sends a mail. The primary difficulty here is when IC time doesn't like up with RL time (like you've paused a scene, or fast forward a scene), so you'd want a way to set things manually, too.

@three-eyed-crow said in Xcom thoughts:

You can also give people extra Luck points, and in a situation where characters COULD die in +combat based on conditions the GM lays out, those become pretty valuable.

That's totally what I'd do. In a meat grinder game, luck would be super useful. If you're treating knock-outs as death, that'd be a huge deal.

@faraday Subdue I knew. Stress I missed, but it's super cool and offers a lot of possibilities.

Evernote might work well for you.

@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

@SixRegrets Just manually spent.

Luck is linked to cookies, so you'd add a bit to the cookie code so you also refresh your magic-pool by RPing. This seems appropriate enough and might be kinda great.

Luck isn't linked to cookies in Ares FS3 anymore - cookies don't actually exist as part of core code, it's an optional plug-in. You get luck by being in scenes. Staff can also award luck.

You say that the way luck works is just fine, but the plug-in you describe is a LOT more complicated. It's not just 'earning' the pool, but limiting what happens when you don't have enough points in your pool (ie, what triggers that nosebleed).

Not to discourage you - it's totally doable. But it's probably not a small tweak and will involve touching a lot of core FS3. It's almost certainly impossible to do as a plugin proper without fiddling with the guts of FS3. Just a head's up!

I think a good, constantly-checked listing of such games would be a really excellent second step (after projects like Evennia and Ares and whatever web platform that might come next) to expanding our hobby.

It's frustrating how dang hard it is to find games.

@thesuntsar said in Cat Character Drawings:

MOAR CATS. @Crawfish did this one for a pair of Spirit Lake characters! And it is

This is one of my favorite things ever.

@faraday said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

@Tat said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

It's not just 'earning' the pool, but limiting what happens when you don't have enough points in your pool (ie, what triggers that nosebleed).

As a generic "point tracker" system that's all done with manual effects, it could certainly be done as a separate plugin.

pools - Show your pools.
pool/award - Staff command to award pool points.
pool/spend - Player command to spend pool points.

That really has nothing whatsoever to do with FS3 though. A GM would have to manually apply modifiers or limit what abilities you could roll or whatever.

FS3 itself has no concept of point pools by design (apart from luck points) and as @Tat mentions, it would be impossible to build that in without some heavy custom modifications to the core code.

Good point - the complexity/plugin ability is really more about how much you want to be automated in things like combat and skill rolls vs having that extra step/thing for GMs to track.

@seraphim73 While playing on a Star Wars MUSH with really terrible fleet mechanics, I created a database of all IC ships, fighters, and armies. I learned Microsoft Access to do this. I included things like weapons and ammo so I could do quick cross-comparison searches. I had their current location.

And I updated the damn thing after every. Single. Battle.

I also once created a less fancy database containing important information about various Mass Effect worlds, like climate, who lived there, what species claimed it, how likely it was to have pirates or Prothean artifacts, etc. It was in a Google product I can't remember the name of now and it's driving me crazy that I can't remember it.

Come to think of it, I've done a lot of crazy databases. And spreadsheets.

ETA: GOOGLE FUSION TABLES! That's what it was. Man, I even prettied up the damn things: https://fusiontables.google.com/data?docid=1gkqaWh9ViKttXkqdi3-LMqaV0iezU_Q6p3CJLgg&pli=1#card:id=2

@rnmissionrun

https://aresmush.com/tutorials/code/

It's under the 'tutorials' menu at the top. I haven't had a chance to go through them yet, but I did flip through to see what was there the other day and I was happy to see them, since just going through Ruby tutorials was useful for getting a grip on conventions and basics, but not as useful for Ares structure.

So far I've been finding the Ares documentation to be pretty good.

Another option for 'spawns' if you don't want to get too complicated and really like SimpleMU's separate window/tab:

You can set up a 'puppet' window for a character connection. Anything starting with a certain prefix will go there. You can set up this window to auto-add a prefix. So you could send it anything starting with <Public> and then have it start everything you type with 'pub'.

I spawn my channels this way by having anything that starts with [ go over, and input the prefix myself. I personally like this separate window behavior better.

HI YOU!