@Usekh said:
There are MU*'s that work combat on how quickly you can type? Sure you are not looking for MMOs
TGG kinda did, but it was made to be kind of a MUSH/MUD hybrid in combat (and pretty free form outside it).
Every other MUSH I've played on has just used dice rolls and such. MUD-like combat is really, really, really uncommon outside things labeled MUDs in my experience, so don't worry.
IDK how I feel about the ogier design. Loial looked like just kind of a lumpy dude? Maybe it'll grow on me as he's in more scenes, though.
My dream AresMUSH project which I'll probably never build is a Leverage RPG game (which just uses 4-sided to 12-sided dice pools based on your 'class'). I'm assuming doing up something like this with Fara's MU in a box, minus FS3 (since iirc it functions as a plugin?), is actually quite possible. I just haven't asked about it before because asking about things implies I might actually do them and...the laziness.
Leverage is deeply fun, though, and I miss playing it.
Depending on execution*** I'd be very interested in something like this. I regret missing out on Crucible City in its day and something similar seems like it could extremely welcome.
***Depending on execution is always the caveat. I'm cool with historical games but I think there's a higher degree of difficulty/automatic alienation for some players, so I'd ask 'Why 30s/40s?'
This is my process. Parts of it are probably ‘wrong,’ but it mostly works for me, in terms of making characters I’m excited to play (and being excited to play something is, I feel like, the most important aspect of getting me off my ass and actually playing).
I keep my backgrounds pretty lean. I’m down to a page in a Word doc usually, and I feel like even shorter would be better. I avoid defining as many relationships as possible, to leave room for people to claim to be my Old Whatever ICly. This both keeps things open so I can figure my character out as I play, and keeps me from over-story-ing my PC. So they can actually do interesting things ICly, rather than just having a lot of interesting stories. It’s the old writer cliché of starting your story at the most interesting point in your character’s life. It doesn’t always apply, but I think it’s a pretty good general rule to watch.
If it’s taking me too long to design a character – either in terms of history or concept – that generally means there’s something about the basic idea I’m not really into, and I trash it and start over from scratch on something entirely different. I think too often, players force things that seem like they SHOULD be cool and assume it’ll come together in play. It’s natural to take awhile to find the character’s voice, but if RP becomes ‘work’ I cease wanting to play.
I try to go into a new game as blank as possible, and design my characters to fit the world, rather than the other way around. I realize not everyone does this or enjoys doing this, and plenty of people create characters and then find places to play them. For me, though, it’s a really big deal. I feel like it makes it easier for me to plug into whatever action I want to be a part of ICly, rather than drifting around as a loner without a reason to connect with anyone.
I always build into my background an NPC my character has or had a relationship with that’s strong enough for me to generate internal stories. Sometimes a sibling, or an old nemesis, dead husband, whatever. This will never, ever become a PC I ask anyone else to play, because that’s not the point of it. I’ve found it’s an element that gives my character some grounding, because I can imagine how they relate to this other imaginary person, and I can use that to figure out how they relate to the characters they meet ICly. It also allows me to generate mini character advancing things for myself that are entirely off-screen. Like, if nothing’s going on ICly that I’m super into, I can generate stuff to talk about by bitching about my ex-wife trying to ream me in our latest court fight, or roll my eyes at my roommate’s latest soon-to-fail business venture. It gives me a handle on what my character does when he/she is off-camera, which I find stops me from being ‘bored’ if IC action is a little low.
I don’t play WoD, so I can’t help with game recommendations, but I feel like a lot of character creation stuff (beyond, like, mechanics) is universal. These are just the things that I know personally help me get a PC going (some still fail, of course, but that’s life).
@arkandel
I can't speak for anyone else, but it'd make me feel worse about it. While I don't entirely love the choice, I do get how being inadvertently responsible for the death of someone he loves fits into Perrin's larger arc in the books. If she was evil all along that feels like it lets him off the hook and takes away the thing about it that's actually interesting.
@ganymede said in Make MSB great again!:
Most importantly, police each other politely.
I know there are posts I would've flagged (in so many, many of those ad threads) if there were rules about being on-topic/being the Constructive Section definition of constructive. I think, for all the dumb on these boards, we do an OK job of policing each other in the Constructive section without much moderation, once there's been some agreement on what rules exist.
It wasn't an obstacle for Chicago MUSH but, like a lot of historical games, Chicago MUSH was always pretty small (as was TGG, and the other historical games I've played on. Which is a decent amount, I like them).
Which isn't bad, it's just a thing a gamerunner should be prepared for, so they aren't bemoaning in surprise that playing a game in a historical setting has niche appeal three months after opening one and expecting logins in the 100s or something. I think it can work with the right expectations, just be honest about your expectations.
@saosmash said in Aria's Playlist:
@Aria YAY MIA.
Co-signing this right here. Very awesome to play with you again.
I still check the "New" and "Updated" section on MudConnector from time to time when I'm restless.
http://www.mudconnect.com/
I don't know that I'd call it reliable, but I never felt like it was hugely reliable in terms of telling me if a game was active. Just if it existed and was up. A lot of games put up listings and then never get beyond the initial stage of Headwiz and Nobody Else Logged On, of course, but that always happened. Just looking at it now, hey, a Grimm place exists I haven't seen listed anywhere else.
@arkandel said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:
@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:
Does anyone else remember, about 10-15 years ago, how Staff could be hands-off and players would entertain themselves? And it wasn't all BarRP? People ran plots for themselves, for their friends, etc...
I think part of that is nostalgia.
And part is higher numbers and greater excitement when things were still relatively new and fresh.
I do actually think it's gotten worse over maybe the past decade, as the way we absorb/interact with entertainment has become more passive. You can log off now and find a ton of things to do the "work" of entertainment for you, whereas MUing requires some active participation, and after years of MMOs and on-demand stuff, I think that actually has gotten a bit harder to accept. I don't want to have too rose-colored a view of The Olden Days, but I feel like this is a societal change, not just a MU change.
I agree smaller player populations is also a part of it, though. It's all bigger stuff, imo, than one staffer can entirely change, beyond trying to encourage the culture they want on their game.
@kay
Even 20 unique players isn't guaranteed on a MUSH beyond the initial NEW PUPPY I WILL CRUSH ITS SKULL WITH LOVE rush of randos (I view 20 unique players as like mid-sized, but that may be just my biases), especially at all hours. Mostly I'm saying be willing to stick it out for a few months and drive activity that isn't your ideal on a more niche property. If you're up for that, few things are un-doable.
@apu
I remember Bhagyamma
I have a lot of nostalgia for Gallipoli. WW1 is still my favorite, and it hit at the time I could be most involved OOCly in helping it along. Always been happy about how it came off (and how history gives you a natural end point to something).
One reason I enjoy having dice as an option (apart from my love of randomness) is my experience starting on consent-based games. Where, as bad as this sounds, I felt like I spent the majority of my time being an outwardly-graceful loser because I inevitably didn't want to Internet Argue as long as someone else. It wasn't even so much, "I shot you! Nu-uh!" stuff as, "OK, well, it's their turn to be awesome this time, I can be awesome next time...or next time...or next time..." And so on. As much as I know it's fundamentally incorrect - because I've had very fun and unpredictable experiences on stat-less games with players I trusted - I associate systems with occasionally getting to do notable things, not as a hindrance to it.
@templari said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
For the most part, it's just simpler to keep it all in game. Oh, and well, less bots posting dumb shit on a MU*, unlike wiki's.
I have yet to see a half-way decent wiki in which bots/spamming was a problem. If it is, I usually take this to indicate incompetent administration or an abandon-ware game...which is useful in and of itself since it's a clear sign I should not waste my time.
I'll confess I'm just not a person who LIKES traditional L&L games so the following should be taken with a grain of salt. It's possible this is just for a different audience than I inhabit and that's fine (I always feel like I'm in a slightly different demographic than a lot of players when I do end up on fantasy games, but the people who like L&L seem to REALLY dig it).
One of my big frustrations with these games though is the feeling that commoners are essentially accessory pcs to nobility, who can't really pursue impactful stories of their own, or do things without faction approval. I wonder why they're even playable characters at all, in a lot of cases. I can see that you're doing stuff to make Seedless useful but unsure how they're useful as independent entities rather than as some noble's knight etc.
I don't mind being a low power character but I never approach my bits as a supporting player in someone else's story.
Anyhow this looks quite interesting even if maybe not entirely for me.
@tinuviel
I hope you're intimating you're apping a thinly-veiled Kirk analogue...
I still log in to OGR (still feels wrong to call it Gateway) and MUS*H a handful of times a month to check the boards. To my knowledge there's still no better social box doing what they do, for better or worse. The embassies on OGR don't seem to be maintained anymore, but benign neglect is maybe preferable to that brief time that crazy person Ra had taken it over.
The MUSH/MUX list on mushcode.com is what I tend to use to find active games.
@HelloRaptor said:
why don'we just add something to whatever log template we're using where we can put a rating on it?
Because rating systems are stupid and don't work for shit? See the difference between PG-13 and R today, and between either and the same rating on movies a decade ago.
If people want to make assumptions about what NSFW means beyond 'The person who tagged this figured you probably wouldn't want to get caught reading it at work.', fuck 'em.
This. The MPAA is a terrible organization and nothing should be modeled on it ever.
A note about graphic sex or violent torture in the 'summary' line of a log is nice, but I generally don't care (also my workplace, the bank that blocks almost everything but randomly not most wikis, doesn't care about most things that aren't pictures or videos).
@pyrephox
Yeah I don't think staff should be obligated to support plots for random street sweepers if what they want to run is the high magic intrigue game. That's just going to lead to dilution of resources and frustration for both players and STs. But I do want games to be upfront and blunt about what they are interested in elevating as important characters. Most L&L games are all about nobles from a utility standpoint and that's fine. It's the encouragement of characters that aren't actually entities unto themselves where they typically lose me.
