Missed Settings

bear_necessities

@somasatori sounds like a lot of work

somasatori

@bear_necessities Well, true. What was that old fairly toxic staff motto? It’s not work if you enjoy it?

You could also offload a lot of the ST duties to players and have them run PrPs, which would probably suffice, especially if you don’t have a particular grand narrative you want them to follow.

MisterBoring

What about turning the West Marches into a game somewhat inspired by The Last Ship? The main section of the grid is a large naval vessel with plenty of room for people to spread out and do their social RP, but the plot bits come when the ship moors somewhere, and the grid extends to include a chunk of land, or another abandoned ship, and the PCs organize to go deal with the ST plots and find resources. If the ship isn’t moored somewhere, the exits are just removed and the players have to stay on the ship.

Pyrephox

@Ominous I would LOVE THAT so much. There was a game that briefly tried something like that set in London, but it never quite launched. But yeah, a society of spooky investigators, whether it was ‘official’ or not, would be great if you can find a way to keep the ‘missions’ coming, knowing that 80ish percent of players will not run anything.

Jennkryst

@MisterBoring said in Missed Settings:

If the ship isn’t moored somewhere, the exits are just removed and the players have to stay on the ship.

This is smol boat/helicopter erasure!

Ominous

@somasatori said in Missed Settings:

@bear_necessities said in Missed Settings:
Take the guiding principles behind a West Marches game for this: make the standard town area be your home base where people get refueled and are generally safe. The plots and scenes run by GMs/Keepers/player-STs-if-you-allow-PrPs are where the danger comes in. All of the in-town stuff is handled by players and any player ST reps you have, the only staff involvement in plot stuff happens when you assemble investigatory teams to search out the Mythos lore. You wouldn’t be running a town MUSH, the players would just be doing their social RP and whatnot while you occasionally (weekly or semi-weekly basis) come in to run mythos stories.

This is what I was going to say. In my vision of the game, the base the agents are stationed at is like Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project, Groom Lake (Area 51), or something. The base is the town and has facsimiles (bars, restaurants, a theater, etc. staffed by soldiers or their family members) and no one leaves except for missions, until they and their family, if any, are “decommissioned”. Mages, vampires, werewolves, etc. can’t be decommissioned; well, they can, but the agency uses the sun, silver bullets, etc. instead, which probably adds to the uneasiness people have around their supernatural allies. Just how allied are they, when there is no opt out option?

Evilgrayson

@MisterBoring Stargate was a fantastic setting for similar ideas. Lots of RP in the base, occasional scenes further afield, and missions to the planet of the week.

dvoraen

@Evilgrayson said in Missed Settings:

@MisterBoring Stargate was a fantastic setting for similar ideas. Lots of RP in the base, occasional scenes further afield, and missions to the planet of the week.

Stargate is practically an excuse for “theme park” RP of a sort, where you just say: “This world is like <theme>!” When I thought about it that way, I was like: “… Why haven’t I seen more Stargate games?”

Jennkryst

@dvoraen said in Missed Settings:

Why haven’t I seen more Stargate games?

Because the show ruined the perfectly good plot potential as laid out by the film, I will not be taking questions at this time.

Gashlycrumb

@dvoraen said in Missed Settings:

Stargate is practically an excuse for “theme park” RP of a sort, where you just say: “This world is like <theme>!” When I thought about it that way, I was like: “… Why haven’t I seen more Stargate games?”

Ha. What if all the PCs are in a holodeck simulation, or a a horrible wires-into-your-brain VR system, or something in between. They’re dropped around different ‘Westworld’ type theme-parky things, possibly deadly ones 'cause there’s a touch of ‘Saw’. Who will survive, and at the end, which characters who were picked up along the way will turn out to be real brainwashed people who think they’re from the Old West or Pompeii or whatever, and which will disappear forever?