Posts made by ZombieGenesis

Decided to post this in response to the other DC thread that's formed. I've been working with someone on a DC game that plays off of Flashpoint. We're not quite ready for a full on open but we might be able to start taking on players in a day or two.

In response to the other thread, we aren't a Legion of Superheroes game and don't have anything specifically set up for them but there's also nothing stopping a group of players from creating Legion characters and doing Legion RP. I'd be fine with even creating a Legion specific play area/grid.

I'll leave our working ad below. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll let you know when we're at a point where players can come take a look.

Ad

Flashpoint changed everything. Realities were created, merged, and destroyed. Hoping to put it all right again The Flash tried to restore reality to what it once was. He failed. Things were similar but not the same. Familiar heroes and villains were returned but in newer, younger, incarnations. Histories and relationships were changed but it didn't stop there. Ripples of the Flashpoint would continue to be felt throughout this new universe. People would be reborn manifesting as versions of themselves ripped from other realities and timelines. Welcome to DC Rebirth MUX where anything is possible.

DC Rebirth is a game based on DC Comics using the New 52 timeline as our base. From there we add the potential for Elseworlds characters pulled in from their native realities into this one. Our goal is to create an easily accessible game with a continuity to build upon (New 52) that also allows for players to play whatever version of a character they want. It's a game where realities collide, where familiar heroes are often replaced with strange and unusual versions of their classic selves.

We offer a streamlined character generation system using the DC Heroes RPG as our backbone and the Comic Vine website as a means of minimizing tedious data entry for character backstories. We offer a number of "mega" grids (Metropolis, NYC, and Gotham) and a number of minor grids (Oa, Themyscira, Atlantis), as well as the option to add RP spots on the fly. While we offer a +dice system for conflict resolution we also allow and encourage consent based RP using your +sheets as a guide for your character's abilities and limits.

@Auspice Here's their main page: http://www.modiphius.com/star-trek.html

I'm taking part in the Star Trek Adventures play testing and was curious if anyone was interested in playing through the latest adventure they sent out. Not sure how we'd do it, I could set up a MUX box for us to play on or we could do it play by post somewhere or whatever.

Just curious if anyone would be interested right now. The system seems pretty neat and I'm anxious to see how it plays.

While I was intrigued by this game (notably the characters) I avoided it at first because, frankly, I suck at FPS. It's free to play this weekend, however, so I decided to give it a shot. My wife and I had a surprisingly fun time (enough that we're thinking about picking it up). While we had fun there was one very frustrating aspect to our play...

Just about 75% of our deaths came at the hands of a Bastion player in turret mode. On top of that a Bastion player in turret mode ate up 90% of the "play of the game" reels. I got so sick of dying and having the kill cam show me an over the top of a turret view of a Bastion player.

Even with that, however, I think they won me over with this free to play weekend.

Update: Things went a bit tits up in my RL for the last few months stalling the game (along with a few other things). I won't go into it here but for those of you interested in the state of the game you can log in and I've left a BBPost explaining things. You should also see me on more often now that things are stabilizing in my life. Thanks for understanding.

I played a game once (I can't think of the name, sorry) where the "to succeed" roll was based on a percentile of 50 + (Player A's Attribute/Skill - Player B's Attribute Skill). So if Player A had a Fighting of 60 and Player B had a Fighting of 45 their To Hit roll would be 65 (50 + 15). In the reverse Player B's To Hit would be 35 (50 - 15).

Maybe this came from the old Call of Cthulhu/Basic RP system? I don't remember. I did not care for it, however, because even relatively small disparities in skill led to entirely one sided altercations.

That's the unfortunate thing about DC and DC games. I've run my fair share of them and OCs generally don't work on the Justice League level. Not that they couldn't it's just that when you start dealing with Superman and Batman you almost have to start thinking in the abstract and that gets touchy when you start considering player made characters.

Marvel also benefits from their characters having a better focus on what they can do where as in DC you start getting characters that can do everything.

I've been tempted to try a DC game focused on the Teen Titans or Young Justice where the character power level and focus is a bit more even. Or something like the Earth-2 Planetfall story where the heroes are forced to find a New Earth to start over with all characters kind of being OCs but being able to take on FC mantles. At any rate I think any DC game would need a focus. I've tried running DC games where everything was allowed and it rarely went well. Generally the game just became Gotham focused anyway so that's probably the best route for any DC game, make it Gotham-centric.

No problem. The offer is there if you need/desire to take me up on it.

As for uptime my last bit of downtime came about 1 year ago. Before that I was going on 4 years of straight uptime. The place where I host my box is really good.

I can host you for free so long as you don't mind using TinyMux or are capable of setting up your own codebase.

The reason this needed a disclaimer is because a LOT of erotica is pretty much derogatory crap (or worse rape stories) written by people who don't really understand the subject matter (ie: 50 shades) or don't understand what it is that /makes/ something hot, let alone what is good writing. If people just grab random erotica and read it under the impression it's going to help them, well it's probably not.

All of this is entirely subjective. While I've never felt disrespected or criticized by anything I've read I do agree that there is a lot of erotica out there that could be considered poorly written. That said I've seen some erotic series that I thought were terribly written gain a very rabid following. I feel erotica, more than any other genre, shows us just how diverse we are as a people. This is all thanks to the fact that we don't have publishers declining to publish stories because of their personal feelings on the matter. If someone wants to write and publish something...they can!

This has led to an amazingly diverse genre that has, literally, something for everyone. When you have a genre this diverse a lot of it, possibly most if it, won't be for everybody. Whether it be a style of writing or the specific subject matter it is going to resonate with some people and not with others. I have a peeve where the use of the word "rump" to describe someone's ass just turns me right off. Not even sure why, it just does. Because I don't like it I would not say all books that use the word rump should have a disclaimer on them, however.

As for your mention of "or worse rape stories) believe it or not rape is one of the biggest requests my wife and I get as writers of erotica. There is a large demand for rape fiction and it's not all from men, I'd say half of the requests we get come from women. Again, everyone is different in what they find sexy and erotic. Now I'm not saying that just because there is a demand for it you should write it, I'm just noting that there is a shocking (to me) amount of demand out there for very hardcore/violent sex.

If any kind of disclaimer was needed it might need to warn newbies to erotica that they might want figure out their own hard limits and learn to identify what stories may offend them and avoid them.

There's a /lot/ of erotica out there, a crazy amount. Everything from Dinosaur porn to Bigfoot to supernatural romance to office romance to every other kink you can imagine. Not all of these make for good reading or help write anything remotely good when it comes to TS.

If you want the best bang for your buck, so to speak, /TALK ABOUT IT FIRST/. Don't just drop sexy times on your partner and muddle around grasping at straws. Talk about what language is good, what limits and squicks might be had, even what person (When dealing with two individuals of same gender 'you' can go a long ways to differentiate who is doing what rather than she/her he/him/his or whatnot).

Communication is key. No two people are going to like absolutely everything the same to the same amount, and it takes some effort to get things to click as best they can for everyone's sexy times enjoyment.

This I agree with very much. As a player I play both male and female characters and I've had both sexes just sort of jump right into sexy goodness when I wasn't ready, prepared, or willing to do so myself. I don't think great in depth talks are necessary but certainly making your partner aware of your own limits (or lack there of) might be a very good thing. I think Shang's +kink system works very well as a passive way of setting up what you're willing to do as a player. Barring that I think liberal use of +finger notes is a good thing too. Pre-emptive communication as it were.

@ThugHeaven I could not agree more. My wife and I read a lot of erotica (we also run a side business where we self publish our own) and one thing we have learned over the years is that there are often gold nuggets to be found in even the shittiest of stories out there.

We've often been shocked to find out we find this or that is sexy based on how it is portrayed or written in an otherwise forgettable or awful story. Those bad or poorly written stories often led us on a path to find stories that were perhaps better written. Sometimes we even find ourselves really enjoying a story in spite of the flaws to be found within it.

It's difficult to constructively reply to a statement made up of out right lies, made up half truths, and passive aggressive innuendo but I'll do my best.

You can't expect a bunch of strangers to behave as a team and function as a well oiled machine and work things out together and push through the plots together.

Then why play on a game where you play with a bunch of strangers that are expected to behave as a team?

Empire Bay had /1/ staffer. 1. I've yet to see a /single/ MU* work with just a single staffer because of sheer time constraints.

A lie.

Not everyone can make the 'scheduled' times, not everyone is interested in the same stories, not everyone's characters even have the same drive and focus to /get/ involved in many stories.

If you don't have the drive to RP why are you on the game? Why are you here? I had one dedicated staffer and 2 volunteer players (in addition to me) creating multiple plots for a variety of different character types. We ran regular scenes as well as offered our time when it was convenient for players. Not sure what else is needed here.

A game needs staff as much as it needs players, staff to help guide players, to run stuff, to just answer questions without waiting for an @mail to get answered, or a job to get processed.

Again, I have 1 dedicated staffer in addition to myself as well as 2 volunteer players handling things. Given our modest player base this has proven to be more than enough.

With only one staffer it can feel more like play by post than it does anything else because it's just social RP in between waiting for mails/requests to get answered, or if you're lucky enough to be able to make a scheduled scene that the /1/ staffer can run.

Another statement predicated on an outright falsehood.

Empire Bay was understaffed. That simple. Once on the grid there was no real direction at all other than put in a request to check up on one lead or another... which doesn't really make for a lot of RP opportunities while waiting.

There was and is plenty of direction to be had for those looking for it. I also note the snarky passive aggressive way you keep implying the game is closed. It's not. It's been open for over 3 years now and will be up for another 3 years for as far as I'm concerned. It'l have it's ups and downs and I'm fine with that too.

My team provided ample opportunities for dedicated RP scenes as well as flexible plot nuggets that could be followed up in individual scenes as dictated by anyone looking to investigate them. Some players took advantage of it and others didn't. The point I made is that simply providing things to do for a playerbase is not guarantee that said playerbase will be active.

@Lithium Would seem so, yup.

@Lithium
I'll reply to say that once again you open your mouth and have no idea what you're talking about.

@Thenomain said in What would a superhero game need to be/do to bring in a new player base?:

What would a superhero game need to do to bring in more people or a bigger base, a second answer:

Give the players something to do.

That's about it.

I honestly wish it was that easy. In my most recent foray into running a superhero game, Empire Bay, we had a ton of plots started up with people attempting to run scenes on these plots on a regular basis. On top of these regular scenes we had leads left dangling for people to look into at their leisure just by contacting staff. Now what it led to?

Nothing.

People kept making excuses to not show up to the regular scenes, we received not one single request to look into the dangled leads we had put out, nothing. I felt bad for the guy who was really spearheading these things, he put a ton of work into it and nothing came from it.

I'm not sure what the answer it but just creating things for players to do isn't it.

My suggestion? Create the game YOU want to play at, find a small number of players that share that dream, and have fun. If it grows and you get a ton of players, great! If not? Well, at least you and that small core group of people are having fun.

I won't say it's piddled out but I hit a wall in the code and it kind of put me in a coding funk. I actually just started looking at things again. I think I'm gonna take a basic approach to force powers. It's not exactly what i want but it's probably the easiest way to go.

So in short, it sputtered but didn't piddle out. It's moving forward just slowly.

@Three-Eyed-Crow
It was a combination of really liking them and liking the way they were integrated into the Buffy-verse. I still play one in my TT game. I think they fit very well into the B-Verse.

I love Highlander style immortals. I play one in our TT oWoD game as well.

Unfortunately they are an example of something that I think works well in a TT setting but translates poorly to a MU.

Ugh, Buffy. I tried running a Buffy game but...players ran me right off. I hate to be "that guy" but every day was something new and horrible for me to deal with. I allow Highlander Style immortals but that's not good enough, I need to allow 1,200 year old Highlander style immortals who get extra points for combat stats you know, for reasons.

I allow player created demons with very few restrictions...welcome to the club of all combat stats getting straight +5's and every demon being immune to all types of damage.

It was a nightmare running that game for even the brief time I ran it. Everyone wanted to be THAT special snowflake.

While that is not entirely fair (I did run into a number of great people and had some good scenes) I would warn anyone looking to get into a Buffy game that "special snowflake syndrome" will run rampant.

All that said I do have a Buffy game kind of ready to go and would be willing to host it and work with people on it. I just won't run it myself.

Has anyone checked out Plane Shift Zendikar?

The idea of playing in Zendikar seems all kinds of cool. I've only been able to skim it since I'm at work but was curious if anyone else has checked it out and had thoughts on it? The races look very cool but I'm curious about play balance.

I loved 10 Cloverfield Lane. I wouldn't call it a horror movie though. More like a drama with thriller and sci-fi elements. Some great scenes. And, yeah, best part was clearly John Goodman.