There's also the ability to use an RPG system (FASERIP?) and have sheets done by staff so players don't even have to deal with it. I'm all for making character claiming as easy and painless as possible. Let a player choose a character, write a desc, maybe something about their RP plans, and let them go is my take on it.
@ghost I think I would play the crap out of that.
Death. I know it's dumb to rage against such a natural thing but I just lost one of my cats, one I've had for 19 years, and I'm alternating between sadness and rage.
My problem with no alts is that you're probably killing a game before it even gets started. When I opened my DC game I put a hold on alts and I literally had people tell me they'd be back when I open up my alt policy, that they weren't investing time in just one character. Just my experience.
As I've said, when I opened Clone Wars there was an immediate and overwhelming request for a gear and starship system. Just judge noting stuff wasn't enough. People wanted to be able to type +weapons or +stats/ship and see their stuff. We(staff) were afraid that the game would just turn into a tabletop simulator with things starting to go "I swing my lightsaber at you..." +roll but nothing like that happened. People were giddy to see their stuff but I noted no real increase in the use of the +roll system. People just RPed their shit as normal.
The Orville is by far my favorite show on TV right now with The Rookie coming in second. The Orville makes me feel like I'm 15 years old again watching TNG.
A lot of good stuff in this thread so far! I'm loving it and kind of getting excited. Here are some of my thoughts...
1: I really like the idea of "all mutants being available" in a non Year 1 setting. I'll have to look into that storyline.
2: I'm a big fan of using a system. I could have a FASERIP or Marvel Heroic system up in a few days.
3: Alts will be tricky and may come down to a limit (2 or 3) and staff making judgment calls on if a player can take a specific character based on their other alt(s).
Anyway, I'm heading home from work and will be playing The Division for a few hours but I'm anxious to check back later. Good talk everyone!
While I'd have to think about a staff/help/code position(and speak to some people) first I can say that, regardless, I would suggest Ares over Rhost for the following reasons...
1: It can be largely used "out of the box" for a game like this.
2: It has tremendous support both on the Ares forums and the Ares discord for any changes that do need to be made.
3: You could use FS3 pretty much as is for a Star Trek game and it'd work well. Beyond that you could customize it quite nicely using the various configuration options to make species feel unique and help people spend their points based on position and rank and what not.
4: It has a built in combat system that would support both personal level combat and ship level combat. It's pretty simple and straight forward while offering a bit of depth with various options. I've been playing around with it on a Star Wars themed build and the people I've beta tested stuff with have had a blast(especially the starfighter battles).
5: The web integration is some next level shit. If you went with FS3 it's have online character generation, profile pages are made automatically, almost anything you can do on the game can be done via the web, and my favorite part is that scenes can be done piecemeal style for those players who may need to do some on the game but then some on the web for various reasons.
Anyway, that's my sell for Ares.
From what I've heard the guy has a history of mental illness and has been charged with stalking someone at least once in his past.
@scourge I would say "no" to Exiles types but I would not be opposed to the original 5. They're the reason I got back into reading X-Men to be honest.
I did a plugin for the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG by Green Ronin games but never released it publically. I did it as a way to learn Ruby and Ares. I coded it over the course of a vacation last year. So there are already lots of options and learning how to do it, if you have the desire obviously, isn't that hard(the learning curve is fairly reasonable).
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Well I'd argue that if you're only RPing for XP than there's something wrong to begin with. I RP for fun, XP and advancement is connected to that but not my driving goal for RP.
I think having tiers of play could help with the dinosaur problem and maybe diminishing XP gain as a character progresses through those tiers till you just stop gaining XP entirely (60XP? 70?)
Granted, I come primarily from superhero games where I've played the same version of a character for years. I get the wanting a character to grow and expand but if you ONLY rp to get that XP then...I dunno. I think you're doing something wrong.
I'd rather find a balance so players don't feel overshadowed by other players than commit to a system that just feeds the XP hunger machine.
This is pretty much exclusively how I've played for the last year or so. A few friends were interested in MUing but were intimidated by joining existing games so I created a private server for us. We've since evolved to using Ares for the web functionality and we have great fun with it.
My wife just texted me that she found the War for Cybertron Ultra Magnus box for $30 at our local Walmart. I'm actually giddy.
@wildbaboons said in Social Systems:
Agency is the big one here. Social stuff against NPCs all day, but no, I don't care how high you rolled on your manipulation/persuasion/whatever roll. You're not going to convince my character that drowning kittens is a good idea.
I think that's a bit hyperbolic. I think people have a hard time separating themselves from their characters and it's not just online that this happens. In my TT group we had one player who refused to use the intrigue system when an NPC was trying to convince her to dedicate soldiers to some battle. Her stance was "My character would never do that" and that was that even though there was no reason why her character wouldn't aside from "I don't want her to". Which is fine but part of the fun we were trying to have with this game was rolling with all the punches, even and especially the social punches thanks to the intrigue system. Ultimately the GM said "Ok, spend a destiny point for the auto-win" and we all moved on but it left a stale taste in everyone's mouths.
No, no one could ever convince you to do something that goes against your moral character (drowning kittens) without supernatural powers but maybe a friend convincing you do make a bad decision in the heat of the moment? Maybe! To me that's part of the fun of playing a character that isn't me, using their various stats and in-game systems to determine what they would do. Maybe not all the time but some of the time, sure.
Yes, I intend for Jedi to just be another character type people can play. I'm hoping to have other force user types as well(such as a Nightsister type of character native to one of the game worlds). One of the key locations is going to be a fledgling Jedi temple and one of the key themes is rebuilding the Jedi order after 20 years of war.
Strangers who come up to me while I'm in a store, minding my own business, put their hands on me(on my shoulder) and say "I feel so sorry for you" because I choose to wear a mask in public.
Welcome to Lovecraft is looking for storytellers (Directors) and builders(Stage Hands). We're a mortal horror game powered by a modified version of the Slasher Flick RPG. We're a game looking to emulate horror TV and movies from a mortal perspective. We're nearing a time when we think we'll be able to open we just need to nail down a few things first. One of those things is trying to find some people willing to lend a hand in building and running the game. We're looking for the following...
Directors: These are our plot runners. We're looking for people who can help run staff plots as well as PrP plots. Even being able to do something once a week would be a great help!
Stage Hands: Right now we're mostly looking for builders to help flesh out our grid but we'll also eventually need plot staffers, character generation helpers, and all the regular stuff.
We are not ready for players at the moment, when we are I'll post a regular advertisement in the ads thread. If you are interested feel free to come and chat with us at lovecraftma.com:1880. Thanks!
I'm all for the OOC Room. Honestly, I don't think it encourages anything except social interaction. If people aren't going to play they're not going to play. If there's no OOC room they'll either idle IC in a private room or just not log onto the game. I've seen too many ideas spring from OOC Room chatter to not include them on my games.