Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG

junipersky

We are unlocking this thread with the following notes:

This is a reminder to please adhere to the rules of engagement for this section of the forum. This is not rough and rowdy. Do not be rough and rowdy.
No one gets to decide another person’s sexuality. No one gets to gatekeep or invalidate another person’s sexuality, or gender expression, or anything of the sort. This is not appropriate at any level. Further actions on this will be grounds for a ban.
Accusing a game of bigotry is a big thing to throw around. Come with real receipts, not just because they took disciplinary action against you.

Roz

I feel like these posts should also get moved over to the Rough & Rowdy thread.

@Pavel said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@HannahBananna Oh, honey, you have no idea. But this isn’t the personal attacks section of the forum.

AND YET you couldn’t resist throwing gasoline on the fire and doing it anyways.

Tez

@Roz said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

I feel like these posts should also get moved over to the Rough & Rowdy thread.

Yeah. I’m of two minds on that myself, personally, which is why I didn’t immediately. Let me temperature check on that.

Pavel

@Roz said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

AND YET you couldn’t resist throwing gasoline on the fire and doing it anyways.

I could not.

Ashkuri

@Tez Silent Heaven seems like a nice little game, honestly. I think the posts should be gently moved, so that new viewers don’t have to scroll through the rowdy content in order to get a sense of “what is this game.”

Pavel

@imstillhere said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Tez Silent Heaven seems like a nice little game, honestly. I think the posts should be gently moved, so that new viewers don’t have to scroll through the rowdy content in order to get a sense of “what is this game.”

Agreed. Move the nonsense that barely relates to the game from a disgruntled former player. Keep it around, but it doesn’t need to be here.

Tez

Forked off a big ol chunk to https://brandmuday.mythicus.net/topic/410/silent-heaven-gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss

somasatori

For what it’s worth, by the way, I really liked my time at Silent Heaven and always found people very helpful. Jumpscare is good about looking into player complaints and does a good job at resolving things. I kind of bounced off of Silent Heaven because I don’t think RPI is the thing for me these days, but I really respect the work she’s put into it. Aside from the theme and setting, the technical aspects of the game are stellar, that chargen will be burned into my brain (in a good way) for a long time. So, if you haven’t tried it, I’d say give it a go.

Tez

Moved a post from HB and a reply from Pavel off to the SH:GGG thread, so if you thought there was one here, you aren’t imagining things. I’m just gaslighting you by moving them.

Pyrephox

@somasatori said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

For what it’s worth, by the way, I really liked my time at Silent Heaven and always found people very helpful. Jumpscare is good about looking into player complaints and does a good job at resolving things. I kind of bounced off of Silent Heaven because I don’t think RPI is the thing for me these days, but I really respect the work she’s put into it. Aside from the theme and setting, the technical aspects of the game are stellar, that chargen will be burned into my brain (in a good way) for a long time. So, if you haven’t tried it, I’d say give it a go.

Going to enthusiastically second this. It didn’t end up being quite my thing, but the technical aspects are amazing, and I love the chargen, as well as things like the journal bit where you could keep staff updated on what your character was doing.

Rinel

@somasatori said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

I don’t think RPI is the thing for me these days

what is an rpi

somasatori

@Rinel said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@somasatori said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

I don’t think RPI is the thing for me these days

what is an rpi

Roleplay Intensive! It’s usually a MUD or MUD-adjacent game where there are minimal OOC commands for the sake of immersion. You may also not see character names until you engage in an introduce command. There are usually other things involved like character occupations, automated economy, items, etc.

ETA: On Silent Heaven, for example, there are no channels for speaking, but there is a ‘whispers’ system that allows you to kind of connect to people at a distance. There also isn’t a tell/page system. All of the OOC channels are on a discord, so the game itself is its own experience.

There used to be a game called Towers of Jadri that was a fantasy setting which incorporated a lot of these kinds of systems as well, as well as a MUD called Iconoclast that – while not using introduction commands – was RPI insofar as you had occupations, plots, engagement from that perspective, along with robust clothing and equipment options, mobs that would occasionally attack you, etc.

Rinel

@somasatori

Interesting! That sounds… in some ways like it would make being immersed a lot harder. But interesting!

Third Eye

@somasatori said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

ETA: On Silent Heaven, for example, there are no channels for speaking, but there is a ‘whispers’ system that allows you to kind of connect to people at a distance. There also isn’t a tell/page system. All of the OOC channels are on a discord, so the game itself is its own experience.

This something I’m genuinely curious about the logic behind. Doesn’t the Discord introduce an OOC element that the game itself is built around minimizing, if that’s the design choice being made? Was it just seen as necessary for some kind of OOC communication and the Discord was already in place when the game opened?

Selira

@Rinel I actually find it a lot easier to get immersed! There’s a reality the character lives in that has some more verisimilitude, like not knowing who people are on sight. It’s basically something a little more code-heavy than Arx is, for reference to a game you have experience with. Silent Heaven has things like move speed, labor effectiveness, attractiveness adjectives, and how fancy you can make clothing all based off of your stats.

@Third-Eye There’s really not a sense of OOC being not a part of this game. There’s anonymization of the help channel and we’re not allowed to share character info on the game’s Discord, but the OOC channel is pretty freely used.

Also a mild correction – there is an OOC channel, but it’s only for within the same room, and there are tells, but they’re in the form of the ‘hiss’ command and they’re ICly part of the in-lore explanation of how communication happens. OOC communication over hisses is largely discouraged unless actively needed for a few things – basically, the goal seems to be minimizing OOC chatter but not removing it.

somasatori

@Selira said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

Also a mild correction – there is an OOC channel, but it’s only for within the same room, and there are tells, but they’re in the form of the ‘hiss’ command and they’re ICly part of the in-lore explanation of how communication happens. OOC communication over hisses is largely discouraged unless actively needed for a few things – basically, the goal seems to be minimizing OOC chatter but not removing it.

Oh! Thanks for the correction there. I wasn’t aware of the hiss command when I was playing. I do agree that it very much felt I was in the town of Silent Heaven when I was playing

Simon

(we need inline spoiler tags!)
It was a lot of fun, but also extremely strange as I haven’t done an RPI style MUD for at least 20 years. Maybe I’ll come back some time, it seems like people are still really enjoying themselves when I pop into the discord from time to time.

helvetica

ngl, delighted by the idea of everyone hissing at eachother

Wizz

@helvetica

how every conversation begins in Silent Heaven:

alt text

Jumpscare

Silent Heaven usually gets 1 new account created per day.

The day after Arx ended, Silent Heaven started getting 5 new accounts created per day. It has not stopped.

Around the same time, Andruid also posted an article about Silent Heaven! You can read it here: https://writing-games.com/silent-heaven-supernatural-horror-game/

I’m sure the player numbers will even out over time, haha. For now, though, I’m thankful that the core SH playerbase has been so supportive and accommodating to the new players. We’re doing our best behind the scenes to improve the game as well!

So I have to give my thanks to everyone who’s given Silent Heaven a try in the past week. Even if it didn’t hook you, I’m still appreciative that you gave it a try. And if you had a problem, my DMs are always open.

watno

I’ve been struck by how easy it is to hook into the town’s lore, get RP and start writing story. And I appreciate the lore is something the players are all learning together and there are not pages of things you have to learn/remember before you start playing. CGen was unmatched for its swift simplicity and for not making a very cgen averse person like me just flail and give up.