@Roadspike said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
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.
Those people are probably my second biggest pet peeve in the entire MU hobby after the multitude of sex pests and other creepers.
@Roadspike said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
People who “should” have been involved in the plot not hearing about it.
There’s a subgroup of these people that are another interconnected issue:
Using the previous example, if a group of PCs find out about the zombie coyotes and are informed they will endanger the tavern that they prefer for all of their RP, but they still take no actions, then when the zombie coyotes overrun and destroy the tavern they do the majority of your RP at, they’re not allowed to complain that the results aren’t agreeable.
Other than that, I totally agree with everything you said.
What about plots with invisible timers for this particular conundrum?
Example:
A horde of zombie llamas is coming down from the mountain pass and threatens the noble kingdom of Kinwoodie because they are attracted to the location of the legendary Golden Interspace Toothbrush. Lord Hampsterplanet and Lady Puremanse discover the horde and become the first players to interface with the plot. The staff keeps an eye on their activity to check for a few things, namely whether they are spreading the news among the players, and also what activities they are taking to thwart the raving hordes. If they immediately offer some solution to the staff that would effectively thwart the horde, well, alright. That can happen. It doesn’t mean they didn’t want to share the plot necessarily, just that they, as their characters decided immediate action was necessary. Can’t hold that against them. If they shuffle off and tell the other PCs about the horde, that’s great! Then the PCs can work together to discover that llamas of the zombie variety can be particularly thwarted by a healthy application of Whizzo Butter. Plot gets to the majority of players that want to see plots, and everyone is happy. If they do the naughty thing and conceal the plot from other players on purpose and don’t go with the “immediate danger needs immediate responses” option, staff waits a specific amount of time and then has NPCs inject the plot as random serfs and peasants come screaming into Kinwoodie yelling about llamas and potentially also the blancmange that ate their children after challenging them to a table tennis match.
I agree with the idea that NPCs should just be for boring bits, or set dressing at the most. Plot stuff should be handled 100% by the PCs.
@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
The PC is supposed to be Machiavelli, but what I see is Mr. Magoo.
If I had a dollar for every instance the way someone perceived a character or the way a character is being played is wildly different from how it appears in their sheet & background, I’d be running DOGE.
Heck, I’m guilty of playing a character in a way that isn’t remotely how I’ve described them. Many many times.
It’s just a difference in perception. What one person perceives to be the actions of a genius is another person’s Johnny Bravo.
I’m not much for L&L games, but there’s one L&L-ish game that came out recently as a TTRPG that I’m sort of interested in: Our Brilliant Ruin. It’s a post apocalyptic game set in a world where the aristocracy chose to basically ignore a calamity that poses a threat to all of existence, The Ruin. It’s a strange energy that’s slowly turned all of the world into a rusted, collapsed, monster filled wasteland, with the exception of the Dramark, the last bastion of aristocratic society. The aristocracy is perfectly fine just maintaining the status quo for the small bit of the world the Ruin hasn’t claimed yet. Players can be members of noble houses, servants to those houses, or the unbonded, who aren’t attached to the nobility in any way, but also aren’t kept safe by them.
Oh, and did I mention it’s 100% free?
The Magicians is one of those series that I could never get into. I have nothing against it, I even own the whole trilogy (a kind Christmas gift from an old friend years ago). Everytime I pick it up to read the first one, I get about a third of the way in and just stop. It never clicked, even after my SO made me binge watch the TV series with them.
As far as magic school subgenre of stuff, there are examples of that I do enjoy. Most recently the anime / manga series Mashle. I’ve just never been able to get into the Magicians for whatever reason.
There is a game for that particular group:
I have no idea how to convert it into a MU, but I always thought a Car Wars MU would be sick.
@Gashlycrumb said in WoD/CofD/Supernatural Games, One Splat or Many?:
Abelard builds a magical tank in his garage in less time than it takes Brigid to make a telephone call to her mentor, because Abelard’s staffer was quick and Brigid’s was away this weekend.
Having a staff that’s on the same page as far as activity and response times is so crucial in my opinion that it should always be on the mind of at least the person in charge of the whole game. I’ve been on more than a few games where spheres died because the staff assigned to them do next to nothing beyond the bare minimum, even less in some cases.
I understand that staff is completely voluntary, and RL > Game, but staff is volunteering to make the game run well, and if they’re not able to keep up with the rest of staff at a certain level of productivity, they shouldn’t be kept as staff. And if headstaff of a game can’t find anyone they trust to do the job correctly that’s also able to maintain that activity level for that sphere, maybe they shouldn’t have that sphere open.
It’s absolutely frustrating when the staffer assigned to you, or your sphere, or whatever is basically just a voicemail at capacity because they would rather play on their other PC or focus on some other staff task they’ve been assigned.
I think preventing the “all other spheres must die” thing is on the staff to prevent but at the same time, you can’t hold to theme for some of the WoD (especially OWoD) spheres if they’re expected to be buddy buddy because some major magical aura is preventing it. (Mostly talking about Vampire - Werewolf here.) Ultimately “a ritual long before the start of game says no” is sort of lazy in my opinion.
As far as day zones / night zones go, I prefer that people just set the time of day / night when they set the scene, and adapt to whomever they’re playing with. Day zones / night zones, again, seem lazy to me.
The families thing that TR / FC had was cool because at least you had the whole “blood is thicker than water” thing which didn’t feel as arbitrary as “ancient NPC said no”.
At least in CWoD / NWoD, the whole “kill other spheres” is replaced with “we’re wary of other spheres, but we don’t try and kill them outright as long as they stay in their lanes” (with a few exceptions, like the Cheiron Group with their whole we chop up everybody else to make ourselves better).
I think I’m done rambling now.
While I’m thinking about it, one thing I really dislike with multi-sphere WoD games is where there’s just an arbitrary “binding ultimate magick ritual 9000” that prevents any sort of conflict, and also permanently makes it night time in the entire grid and lets anyone go into the Umbra and all manner of nonsense.
At that point, it’s just goth supers.
I will also echo the either 1 or keep it limited approach.
My experiences with kitchen sink style games usually is that the splats just isolate anyway, or one splat becomes dominant in the overarching story of the game and everybody else feels ostracized. In one case over a decade ago, the game didn’t actually have enough people to realistically support a kitchen sink anyway, and ended up with roughly 2-3 characters per splat.
I would kill for a Mummy centric or friendly WoD game though. Not gonna lie.
@Roz Ahh… I wasn’t aware that Blood of Dragons and those two were related. That makes the lack of GoT / ASoIaF MUs make lots more sense now.
@Prototart So in this Sailor Moon / oWoD crossover, did the Sailor Scouts turn into different WoD Splats? Was Sailor Moon able to use her transformation to become a Brujah?
@Raistlin said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:
Game of Thrones universe
Did Blood of Dragons close? I’ve never played it myself, but I’ve heard about it many times, as recent as last November.
All this talk about Battletech and Mech-based MUs, I’m surprised an enterprising coder hasn’t attempted to link a MU to MegaMek.
I made a big list previously, and now there are more ideas, this time exclusively TTRPGs I want to MU-ify.
The Star Wars nerd in me is screaming at the idea that the end of Episode IX somehow indicates the Sith Empire is taking over.