@eddie I was going to go off on a bunch of your earlier points, but several others already got there with very similar things to what I was going to say. Plus… Woah… I just got to this post:

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Truth of the matter is…

And I’m pretty sure that your own story tells us everything we need to know about you. You “invested” time, effort, and in-game currency into something and didn’t get the attention of a player you were interested in, the attention that you felt was your due.

You realize that putting in time, effort, and money into another person without a business deal involved is called “being a friend,” right? And that you aren’t owed anything for it? Particularly not anything of a sexual nature? There is no ROI on being a friend to someone, you do what you do because they’re your friend, not because you’re going to get something out of it.

@sao This isn’t a direct reply to you, but you were the last one on the thread talking about this subject. For me, it’s the difference between “I don’t distrust you” and “I don’t trust you.” I’ll play on a game with Staff that I don’t distrust. I may not fully trust them, but I’m willing to offer them the chance to earn that trust. I will not play on a game where I don’t trust Staff. That is for the people who have already burned me or someone who I do trust.

And I agree that life is too short for the stress of “do I trust this person I’ve put in a position of power over my fun or not,” and this has only gotten more true as my life has gotten more full.

@Apos Agreed. Any time that someone asks me to define a term that should be common knowledge, I assume that they are just looking for clearly delineated rules that they can push the envelope on and then claim that they’re not breaking the actual rules.

Everyone should know what “creepy” means, and if they can’t avoid it, then they can’t play on any game I run.

Like a few of the previous posters, I couldn’t finish reading the log. It was disgusting. The use of the Luck point to gaslight a character “because it’s funny” was particularly heinous.

Apart from and beyond the horrific content, I also found the future-imperfect tense (or whatever ‘will’ and ‘would’ and the like are) posing grating.

Sorry, @Cobalt, that you had to deal with that, but also thank you for dealing with it so that it didn’t continue (even if it led to you closing your game down).

The parent(s) of student(s) at my district were picked up by ICE and detained. The student(s) are with family, but it’s still shaking up this tiny-ass rural, progressive island community. And it’s shaking up me too even if I’m white as Wonder Bread.

When you’ve got your brain-weasels going full-bore, and then someone reaches out about RP, and those nasty scratchy bitey things quiet down for a little bit.

@Pavel I get that you’re trying to take the most generous interpretation, and I was too – until I got to the talk about ROI. I completely understand being disappointed that a storyline didn’t work out how I wanted it to, how I planned for it to. I get that, it’s happened to me, and it’s sucked.

But, unless there was some specific agreement, no one should be talking about return on investment in interpersonal relations unless it’s some version of Prue Leith’s “It’s not worth the calories” where you’re deciding that the other person isn’t worth your time and so you’re disengaging yourself.

To expect a particular return on your investment from the other person, particularly where romantic RP/TS is involved… that’s way too close to “I bought her dinner and drinks, I deserve sex” for my comfort.

As for the other situation that @eddie mentioned – I really feel for them about that one. That sounds like an uncomfortable situation, and a boundary that they set properly and which was then crossed by another player. That’s not cool at all.

To me, the core of a Lords & Ladies game is that characters are grouped by families or groups that are competing for influence and prestige within a larger feudal or semi-feudal structure – and that the characters are influential people within the setting.

Now, this could be:

• wayfinders who lead family canoes between Polynesian islands, competing for pride of place
• competing cyberpunk megacorps all under a Corporate Court – so long as the PCs were high-level executives at the corps, rather than disposable espionage operatives
• knights and barons and viscountesses living in fantasy castles
• mafia families under a capo di tutti capi
• technoknights and starship captains in a semi-feudal, multi-system space empire
• daimyo and geisha in the Shogunate (or a fantasy version thereof)
• minor landed gentry in Victorian England (or a fantasy version thereof)

I don’t think that pseudo-European matters, but I agree that combat is usually going to be a means to gather influence or prestige rather than the point in and of itself.

I would actually love to see a Lords & Ladies game using FS3 autocombat for attacks on reputation – leave any physical combat to just straight rolls, because it’s just not as important as the social maneuvering.

@Pyrephox said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

There are patterns of abuse that can really on be seen AS A PATTERN, because each individual incident is small and easily dismissed.

This is why reporting even just “a creepy feeling” is so important. More than once, I have gotten reports from multiple players (and noticed myself) that a player was giving off a creepy vibe, testing those boundaries with people. When confronted, the creep revealed themselves via their responses and were removed – after they were removed, several additional people came forward to say that they had been targeted.

If you are being victimized by someone, chances are that you are not alone in this. If I (as Staff) get one report of someone being generally creepy, I’ll watch them more closely, but if I get four reports from people in three different playgroups? Yeah, that person’s probably gone, even if each of the reports is just “felt like they were pushing boundaries.” Unless it’s obvious, I’ll talk with the prospective creep, but it’s definitely going to be easier a) to be direct with them about the problem, and b) to obfuscate those reporting the problem, if I have multiple reports.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I think handling intrigue with dice-mechanics is kind of a problem.

This is always going to be one of the biggest debates in MU*ing. I have many thoughts about it, but I think there’s a way to avoid that entirely:

Have dice determine affects on reputation (which I would use like health in an L&L game), but not interpersonal RP. So there’s no “convince another PC to support your cause by throwing dice at them” and there’s no “fantastic RPer with crap dice wrecks everyone around them despite having the stats of a mostly-dead tortoise.”

Have social dice work on Society, but not on PCs. So even if Lord Cantwrite blathers on about “toxic ruffle syndrome,” in his pose, if he’s got the dice (and presumably the background) to back it up, he can cause people to look in askance at Lord Rufflelover, at least for a while. This might be because Lord Cantwrite’s mommy is a Duchess, or it could be because he’s well-known to have influence at Court… whatever the case, Lord Rufflelover can still stand up to Lord Cantwrite’s bullying, but Society is going to notice Lord Cantwrite’s disapproval, and Lord Rufflelover’s suit for Lady Biginheritance’s hand might suffer until he can do some damage control.

I actually love a combination between Royal Heir Finds One True Match (not necessarily love, but a good match), and Bridgerton MUSH; something like this:

There’s an NPC Royal Heir (or maybe two, depending on Staff interest and availability) that everyone is at court to meet and hope to marry, but if PCs want to settle for other PCs, they can. Sure, they don’t get the brilliant and powerful connection, but they might get someone they actually match well with. This would also allow there to be PCs of the same gender as the Royal Heir who might not be interested in a Consort match with the Royal Heir. They could even be of higher rank than the prospective matches, and with chargenned connections to the Royal Heir (probably closer personal connections the lower ranked they were for a balance). This leads to a situation where the Crown Princess’s hunting gal pals or the Crown Prince’s lords-in-waiting can get in on the politicking and can provide connections – but are the prospective matches buttering them up to get closer to the Royal Heir or because they really like them?

You could also theoretically have a Consort selected alongside a Royal Spouse in a given season, if two players play the game particularly well, one romantically and one politically.

I do like the idea of the Royal Heir being played by any and all Staffers to avoid scheduling burnout – and wonder if doing so would allow any Staffer to see unshared logs by the Royal Heir (I think it might?). I like the idea of releasing the private logs at the end of the season, and agree that the Royal Heir should not be TSing during the Season.

I also love the idea of an every-week-or-two Court Reporter sort of gossip sheet.

I also also love the idea of Love Letter as an inspiration.

@MisterBoring As @Third-Eye mentioned, there was a mini-bubble at the start of each new Season on the Network, and at the beginning of each Hiatus between Seasons. Some people preferred the Hiatus time in the Dome, some people preferred the Seasons, some people came back whenever a particular Season interested them.

Since most Seasons were 4-8 months, there was definitely a tail-off partway through most Seasons, but it did capture the burst at the beginning.

@Faraday Agreed 100% – what defines BarRP for me is that it’s just two or more characters sitting in a bar making small talk without any purpose behind it, usually because one player asked on a public channel “Hey, does anyone want to RP?” and then another said, “Sure! Meet you at That Bar” without having any further idea of what they wanted to do.

I think that characters going to a bar to try and show off their fan-language skills and send increasingly-elaborate messages with them could be fascinating, as could meeting in a salon to have piano-forte duels, as could being presented at court (although there would have to be some chance for interactivity to that one, or it could get seriously boring).

Add in to this meeting in salons to make and break alliances between the prospected prince(sse)s, having scuffles between commoner supporters, duels of honor and dishonor, accusations of pre-marital hanky-panky, trips to the seamstress that are more like putting on a suit of armor for battle, and carriage races or chases… there’s definitely a whole lot that could be done with a Bridgerton-ish setting (especially if there was also the opportunity to make a match with a lesser noble if you fail hard at wooing the Heir).

@Ominous As for the description “in my style,” I think you could do that even more directly:

The Heir of Kingdomname needs a match! Each Season will be filled with grasping members of the high and low nobility, all struggling to stand out among the crowd and nab themselves a crown through demonstration of their clear social quality.

Pretty Princess Simulator is a humorous game of dynastic intrigue and politicking in a fantasy renaissance setting. Players will portray eligible nobles trying to win a future crown, family members of those nobles trying to advance family fortunes, or servants looking to engage in some skullduggery to get ahead.

Staff will provide opportunities for the prospective spouses to meet with the Heir and their intimate circle to learn more about their likes and dislikes, and will guide players through a Season of matchmaking, providing a backdrop on which the characters can create and break alliances as they chase the crown. Once the Heir makes their choices and the Season has completed, there will be a time skip with a new generation of would-be Consorts and a new Heir. The game is intended to poke light-hearted fun at the Lords & Ladies theme, especially shows such as Bridgerton, while still being a high-quality example of such entertainment.

@bear_necessities said in The 3-Month Players:

OK but what will people RP?

This is something I always want to think about when creating a game – and what I want to put into the mission statement to guide and explain every game I work on. I think that every game should have a sentence/paragraph that talks about the OOC community you’re trying to create, and a sentence/paragraph about what characters will be and players will do.

For example:

Fly the unfriendly skies in airplanes that never were, casting spells, dodging dragons, and fighting fascism in the late 1930s. Characters will be members of a “free” militia, The Sky Guard, secretly serving the interests of the French and British governments from an airship base. They will crisscross the Continent finding high adventure.

This describes the setting in an IC manner and emphasizes a “radio serial” feel.

The Savage Skies MUSH is a game of dieselpunk adventure and modern fantasy. Players might be flying against air pirates one week, gathering information on Nationalist Spanish movements the next, trading spells with minions of the Drachenordnung another, and then treating with a great dragon to convince it to join the cause at the end of the month.

This provides a definition of the game OOCly, including the type of events that might be available.

All characters will be explicitly tied to the militia group at the heart of the game, either as a fighting member or one of the smugglers, informants, and hangers-on that work directly with them. From there, you’ll work together with other players to create your own adventures within the setting and metaplot provided by Staff. Staff-run action will take place in Adventures of 1-4 months, with some time between them.

This describes the expectation for players on how they’ll interact with the game and who they can play.

@Jennkryst I would probably let it sit organically for a little while (whether that’s a few days or a week), and then put up a time limit warning (about the same length of time) after that. Mostly that’s just because I would rather teach people to react on their own, rather than wait for a prompt, but I recognize that sometimes the prompt is necessary.

I always want to keep in mind that I want to reward the behavior that I want to see, so giving those who respond on their own a little bonus (and letting them know it) would be reasonable.

Agree with @MisterBoring’s note that some people will complain even if you reach out and ask them directly to intervene… and you’re never going to please those people. And there is value to @Jennkryst’s yeetable sign.

I think that there are several interconnected issues at play here in how PCs interact with plot:

• Plot Hoarders who don’t like to share because they want to do all of the things.
• Making sure that NPCs aren’t being used when there are PCs to get the spotlight.
• Making sure that plot doesn’t get hung up due to inactivity and just linger.
• People who “should” have been involved in the plot not hearing about it.

At their core, it feels like where this becomes particularly applicable to L&L games is where you have a feudal basis, so the Lord of Crakehall really should be brought in to deal with things happening around Crakehall, but if the player is idle or not in the right crowd, someone else might come in and fix the issue, even if that would “never happen” ICly. A good Staff team with good players can rationalize this away well enough, but one bad apple will spoil the whole rationalization and turn it into a morass of blame and disgruntlement.

I think that an effective way to deal with this is what was referenced above but not quite laid out directly: a chain of impact.

So if there are zombie coyotes in the Westwood, then Staff first has some folks at the lowest tier of PCs run into them (squires, unlanded knights, nobles out of direct succession, etc). If those PCs report it up the chain, then everything is good and Staff doesn’t have to intervene further except to run scenes for folks as the problem gets passed up (and hopefully back down) the chain. The Captain of the Guard is warned, assigns several PC guards to deal with it, reports up to the Head of House who adds a noble leader to the group and a few NPCs who will serve as off-screen beaters to bring the zombie coyotes to the PCs. Excellent. When the Captain of the Guard is warned, a bbpost goes up, so if some nobles are often in the Westwood for other reasons, they can reach out to you to see how they could be involved. If there’s a Bandit King of the Westwood… well, hopefully you reached out to him and his people at the same time as the squires, but if not, he can get involved now too. You have some social scenes and some hunting scenes, and your plot is off to the races.

If, on the other hand, the squires never report the zombie coyotes (they’re idle or hogging plot or whatever), then the Captain of the Guard gets an official report from a hunter that there are zombie coyotes in the Westwood attacking hunting parties (slight escalation from the first incident), and now hopefully the rest of the plot works as above (and the squires get chastised ICly for not saying anything if it was a choice they made). If the Captain of the Guard doesn’t do anything either, then there’s a bbpost about an attack on an outlying village, or maybe random nobles are pulled in for a picnic that goes horribly wrong. Either way, the Head of House is now involved (whether they’re a PC or an NPC), with bigger consequences because two levels of folks haven’t handled the problem, and your plot can continue. And if the bbposts go out when it’s still a problem, not a solved one, then your Westwood-frequenting PCs can either ask to get involved at that stage, or can integrate the incidents into their RP and stay uninvolved otherwise.

As for the tangential problem of having NPCs do the work of PCs, I think that this can be addressed directly and OOCly by Staff to the PCs who control those NPCs. If your Captain of the Guards puts in a request to have a group of NPC guards go out and hunt down the zombie coyotes, a note that they have PC guards who might like to be involved, and that the plot can hold for a few days while they reach out to those other PCs, should handle that. Of course, if a couple of the PC guards were the first ones to encounter the zombie coyotes, they’re already involved, and are likely to want to stay involved – hopefully they’ll be working with the Captain of the Guards to pursue the plotline.

I feel like if there’s a system to allow a character to affect the world with dice, they’re great. If there’s an attempt to allow a character to affect another PC with dice… I’d prefer not to.

@Gashlycrumb Then don’t let PCs app into immediate positions of power. Create a setting where your succession rules are flexible, and have the Faction Heads and their current #2s be NPCs to start with, and then move people up as they “prove” to the players and staff that they’re worthy of it.

Heck, that would even allow for some in-faction competition as opposed to only between factions. And if the succession rules are flexible enough, you can encourage rising above people rather than killing them off to get ahead.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

If Abelard has enormous influence in ‘society’ and everybody loves him based on his dice, but every single PC thinks he’s an insufferable prick and an idiot, it’s rough.

See this just tells me that Society doesn’t actually “love” him, but they fear his family’s influence (or the dastardly things he’s done to others, or even that he’ll get his stink of failure on them) so they let him do what he wants. The PCs, being special as PCs are, might stand up to Abelard despite his influence on Society.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I think handling intrigue with dice-mechanics is kind of a problem.

This is always going to be one of the biggest debates in MU*ing. I have many thoughts about it, but I think there’s a way to avoid that entirely:

Have dice determine affects on reputation (which I would use like health in an L&L game), but not interpersonal RP. So there’s no “convince another PC to support your cause by throwing dice at them” and there’s no “fantastic RPer with crap dice wrecks everyone around them despite having the stats of a mostly-dead tortoise.”

Have social dice work on Society, but not on PCs. So even if Lord Cantwrite blathers on about “toxic ruffle syndrome,” in his pose, if he’s got the dice (and presumably the background) to back it up, he can cause people to look in askance at Lord Rufflelover, at least for a while. This might be because Lord Cantwrite’s mommy is a Duchess, or it could be because he’s well-known to have influence at Court… whatever the case, Lord Rufflelover can still stand up to Lord Cantwrite’s bullying, but Society is going to notice Lord Cantwrite’s disapproval, and Lord Rufflelover’s suit for Lady Biginheritance’s hand might suffer until he can do some damage control.