Posts made by The_Supremes

@Sunny said:

Looking at the application information/process on the wiki, I feel like I'm looking at a mush from the 90s (and not in a good way, these practices died for a reason). And yet, still mulling it over.

I'll admit I haven't kept current with whatever 'current practices' are in terms of application processing. Our app process is one part working with what I'm familiar with having played NYC/Metro recently, but I got my start in the 90s so there's probably some Old Skool roots there, yeah. It's mostly a matter of what I and the other staff that started the site up with me need, as storytellers and admins, to determine if a character is a good fit and to find hooks to work with.

To my mind, though, the 1990s style app process was 'write a novella' rather than 'answer 10-15 questions about your character and show me a sheet.'

I do have a question, though -- the application process looks really rough, but there's the impression that things are quite dangerous and characters might die. An extensive application process coupled with a dangerous IC environment isn't a recipe for success.

I mean, it's WoD, of course a character /might/ die. If I understand you correctly, you're basically asking about the risk vs investment balance. The danger a character faces is a function of their actions. If you want to play a character that lays low, doesn't make waves, and withdraws from threats rather than confronting them your character can be very, very safe. If that's your style of character, though, I would suggest that they probably wouldn't go near Detroit in the first place, in our setting.

That said, I've been running tabletop games for 20+ years and this isn't my first time to the MU* staffing rodeo, either. In my career as GM/DM/ST I've presided over five character deaths. I think I know a thing or two about balancing setting with story. The goal is also that the extreme 'we're fighting uphill' tilt of our setting is a surmountable thing, meant to be fixed by player actions. I recommend characters who are here with full knowledge that they're the underdogs, and who are looking to fight smart to make a difference.

I'm also curious what part of the app process you object to, in particular, so that I can review. Feedback is always a welcome thing.

The city of Detroit has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population of the city has fallen from a high of 1,850,000 to 701,000. The automobile industry has suffered from global competition and has moved much of the remaining production out of Detroit. Some of the highest crime rates in the United States are now occurring here, and huge areas of the city are in a state of severe urban decay. Upon these real-world stresses, we lay the Classic World of Darkness skin: The city, in 2003 opted to carry out a shrinking of its municipal boundaries, forcibly relocating anyone who lived in the newly disincorporated territories (with race and class disparities rampant in the outcomes of this policy) and essentially surrendering huge swaths of the former city back to nature. The move was called 'Measure 2' and it saved the city a mountain of money woes at still uncertain costs and a stigma of capitulation.

From The Ashes is a Classic World of Darkness game running with 20th Anniversary rules (or as close thereto as we can approximate, absent M20 and C20), and set, as you probably worked out, in Detroit, Michigan. Our game is themed on reclaiming lost things and as such all spheres face an uphill battle and (as of this writing) no 'home base' or organized community. Garou have no caern or sept, Kithain have no freeholds, Mages have no chantries - each for different but (at least tangentially) related reasons. We're telling the stories of how these communities get by in the absence of their usual social apparatus, and likely how they go about re-organizing and staging a comeback. Player characters will be expected to self-govern and self-organize, as well as earning their happy endings.

We are open for Mortal, Mortal+, Changeling, Shifter, and - with caveats and heavy screening - Mage spheres. (Sorry, no Vampire. Maybe someday we'll open it, but as of right now we have no staff competent to run Vampire, and no we're not looking for cold-call applications for staff.)

If you're interested, come check us out at darcness.net:2860 or give our wiki a gander at: http://fta.darcness.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Best person to contact there is The Supremes, (the guy who wrote all this), his schedule is Tuesdays/Wednesdays all day, Thursday mornings, Fridays after 10AM, and Saturdays until 5PM (all times Eastern US). All else is catch-as-catch-can.