World Tone / Feeling
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I too am on the Grimbright or Nobledark train – if the world is dark, I want to be able to make positive change (even if it’s small); if the world is bright, I want there to be a little grittiness to it as well.
I want my characters to succeed somewhere between 51% and 70% of the time – if they succeed all the time, it doesn’t feel like the stakes are really there, and if they fail more than half the time, it gets frustrating.
In the last decade or so, the world has been grimdark enough, if the setting is going to be either grim or dark, I want to be able to punch it in the face.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in World Tone / Feeling:
I want to be I want to be able to punch it in the face.
I also would like to punch most of the universe in the face. When and where do we start swinging?
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@Jenn said in World Tone / Feeling:
When and where do we start swinging?
I mean. Technically you’re part of the universe. One of the few known intelligent bits who would understand the impact of being punched in the face.
So.
You could start there. Or your nearest enemy-shaped human.
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As long as the ooc atmosphere is polite to cordial/friendly (prefer it closer to the friendly side), has some boundaries around public ooc/rl oversharing, and where staff helps people who are freaking out because they dont actually like the game leave, I am pretty genre flexible.
I like trying new things as far as theme/world/genre/ic feel!
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@Roadspike said in World Tone / Feeling:
if the world is dark, I want to be able to make positive change (even if it’s small); if the world is bright, I want there to be a little grittiness to it as well.
People seem to be saying this a lot, so I’m kinda curious what “touch the world” mean in terms of MUSH gameplay.
Can you share some concrete examples from a player perspective of what this looks like on a MUSH?
I know a lot of us have run games over the years and probably think we’ve done this from an admin perspective, but I’d love to hear some player-side examples of this in effect on a MUSH.
I’m much more of a storyTELLER than storyPLAYER, and I’d love to be better at making stories responsive.
On Dragon Wings · https://pern.gaslightswitch.com · pern.gaslightswitch.com port 4201
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@KarmaBum I have a few ideas and examples:
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One the private games run by friends, they started with authoritarian governments / police states locking down planets / settlement. Much of the stories were about breaking that down and overthrowing things. Literally overthrowing things.
One of the things that was particularly fun about one of them is how as the story changed, the entire page theme would change. New colors, new images, new CSS: all of it to reflect different settings, different places in the story.
It’s PROBABLY not super common, though. These were small games with a close GMing.
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Way back when, long ago in the misty days of @Roz, @sao, @Tat, and I running an X-Men game, players actually took part in shaping the world in terms of manipulating the outcomes of legislation. We (Sao) did a fair amount of announcements to reflect the IC news and updates as well.
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Everyone loves to see their actions reflected in game-wide updates and announcements. Firan and Arx both featured that to greater or lesser degrees. It’s cooler still in my opinion to see an actual shift of culture or laws. I’ve been working on my long-dreamed generational game where the ability to shift an in-game culture is a mechanic, somewhat modeled off Crusader Kings.
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I like temporary room descriptions that can be updated on public spaces to reflect events that have happened, but sometimes people forget and it loses its impact. Still, I like that as an idea: a grid that updates to reflect actions people have taken.
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@KarmaBum For me, “touch the world” means seeing my actions (or the results of them) spread through the IC world. Whether that’s something as simple as some slang that I created spreading to Staff-run NPCs, having the First Minister mention the brave, heroic actions of a group of knights who saved a puppy (“Hey, that was me!”), or having a Staff-run plot integrate something that I did as a player GM (the zeppelin that I had PCs defending just showed up in the midst of this big fight and saved the day!).
I want to know that what I’m doing has an impact on those around me, PCs and NPC, because if I’m not able to impact what others are experiencing, why am I playing a multiplayer storytelling experience/game?
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@KarmaBum said in World Tone / Feeling:
People seem to be saying this a lot, so I’m kinda curious what “touch the world” mean in terms of MUSH gameplay.
That’s something that’s always confused me as a game runner. If I’m playing a game, it’s because I like the setting. The idea of fundamentally changing the setting has always felt weird to me. Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.
Folks don’t seem to be satisfied by the more modest victories that don’t upend the theme: finding a supply cache, winning a battle, opening a store. To me, these are all things that touch the world, just in non-game-breaking ways.
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@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:
Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.
This bit caught my eye. You are absolutely right. Not every game or gamerunner has or even WANTS this scope. Even if they do, you may have players with very different ideas of what fixing feudalism means. Being clear about scope can help shape expectation.
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@Tez said in World Tone / Feeling:
@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:
Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.
This bit caught my eye. You are absolutely right. Not every game or gamerunner has or even WANTS this scope. Even if they do, you may have players with very different ideas of what fixing feudalism means. Being clear about scope can help shape expectation.
It’s definitely an interesting tension. Some aspects of a setting I tend to be fundamentally uninterested in changing, because they’re too foundational. I never wanted to just – somehow overthrow feudalism or cure class divide on Arx, for instance; it was too core to the structure of everything. But we did make some pretty big changes over the years, both in regards to regaining magic in the setting and in pretty notable cultural shifts, such as restoring the Lost Gods to the Faith and all the plots surrounding thralldom in the Mourning Isles.
So I’ve definitely experienced both sides of this: I like seeing the impact of my actions, but I’ve absolutely also get annoyed at players who seem to be attempting to just – change the entire setting.
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@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:
Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.Having had to deal with players wanting to wipe out the adversary in a world(s)-at-war game with an asteroid strike… I don’t get it either. The only thing that I can think is that some people just want to “win” the game, not realizing or not caring that if someone “wins” a MUSH, then the MUSH that exists is fundamentally over. Sure, something like it may be able to continue on, but it won’t be the same game that brought people to it.
