@somasatori Now you’ve got me thinking about how to do Dune with FS3…
Posts made by Roadspike
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RE: MU Peeves Thread
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RE: MU Peeves Thread
@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.
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RE: Episodic Games & 'Down Time'
@MisterBoring Whether or not that’s better, I don’t know if it’s practicable. And there are folks that really like that down time between episodes (I like some, just I would prefer that it be a couple of weeks compared to a month or three, again, I know people who prefer the downtime to the episodes, so YMMV).
I think that the only way you could possible get anywhere near even just a couple of weeks between episodes is to have two Storyteller Staffs, because there’s going to be some cooldown time and some administrative ramp-up time on either end of an episode. Even then, I think it would entirely depend on the setting/theme of the game whether the shortest possible downtime is the best option, a medium length, or a long downtime. I think that if you have intense episodes without much time for the players or characters to catch their breath, you’re going to want a medium-long amount of downtime; if you have episodes that meander and have time to catch your breath in the midst, then I think you would want shorter amounts of downtime.
I could see, say, a WWII game that has people at the front (or on alert at the airbase or whatever), needing a month or so between campaigns, to let the characters (and players) breathe and find their new status quo. But I could see a murder mystery game needing much less time between cases (because you’re probably going to get a little bit of investigation time and some breathing room in there, and it isn’t likely to be as life or death all the time as a combat game.
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RE: Episodic Games & 'Down Time'
@bear_necessities This is an issue for me too – after the first 2 or so Hiatuses, I wasn’t much interested in most of the “cruise ship” RP in between Seasons on the Network. I know that others really loved those times, even more than the Seasons. Miniseries helped quite a lot during Hiatuses in order to get in even more short stories.
It could be interesting to have a second Storyteller team (or just one more Storyteller) whose duty was to run story during the downtimes. On a game like The Network or HorrorMU*, this could be someone who runs the conspiracy that’s behind the program (so that there actually could be a mystery for players to unravel). On another game it could be someone or a group of someones who runs a shortened Season – or just have two Storyteller teams (led by a couple of Administrators) who alternate seasons and then you don’t need downtime at all.
I agree with @Roz that a game probably does need some downtime if you’re having episodic stories, since they tend to be a little more intense and go-go-go than your “standard” storydriven game.
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RE: MU Peeves Thread
@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:
Side peeve: why do games insist that they are in beta for years?
Agreed. I wish that MU*s used the alpha/beta/gold terminology like most video games do. It would make it much clearer what stage of development the game is in and what sort of experience to expect.
Alpha: Hammering on theme and systems, making sure there aren’t any obvious bugs.
Beta: Testing with a wider audience, looking for anything that a smaller alpha group didn’t find.
Gold: Ready for full release to the public – changes can still come when necessary (patches!).
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RE: Nynrose's Personas
@Nynrose Congrats on finishing chemo. Best wishes for your recovery.
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RE: MU Peeves Thread
@Rinel As someone who is white as a sheep in a snowstorm and somewhat frequently plays minority characters, and as someone who has looked at how someone was playing a minority character and felt very sketchy about it, I echo @mietze’s advice. It’s entirely possible that someone else has shared their concerns about the portrayal with Staff, and hearing it from two, three, or even four folks can let them know that it’s not just one person’s feeling, that there really is something wrong with the portrayal.
At that point, hopefully Staff can be diplomatic enough to find out if it’s an honest mistake, or the minstrel show that @SpaceKhomeini mentioned.
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RE: Good things in Mushing
@Roz I think its the same reason that so many great stage and screen characters smoke, and the same reason @Pavel mentioned – it’s a great thing to do with your hands. You can alter how it’s done to indicate emotion, distraction, pain, or something else, and it’s something to //do//.
I remember hearing somewhere that people on stakeouts or casing a joint often smoke, because no one questions (questioned?) a smoker standing outside in front of a building, but if you’re lingering around doing nothing, it’s suspicious.
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RE: Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants
@Alveraxus Credit where credit is due, I got the idea from Clockwork’s game The Network.
I certainly don’t mind you pitching it, but I just polished up how he handles Seasons and Hiatuses and made it specific to what you had presented.
Edit to avoid double post:
@Alveraxus said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:One of the other debates was how accessible we wanted to make retired characters.
I like the idea of being able to emit older characters, but even if you swap servers (or change everyone’s name to CoinRetiredIV or whatever when a timejump happens so you can reuse names), you can always just refer to the past sheets and make any necessary rolls by hand. You don’t need the actual bit to be accessible – just still existent.
I would absolutely suggest having solid rules about when it’s okay to do this (I would say “for social scenes but not to use political weight or for use in combat” – but put nicer), because as mentioned, there are going to be people who want to use their character’s parents to provide weight for their character’s ideas.
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RE: Plagiarism
As a gamerunner, I would give someone plagiarizing someone exactly one chance to explain themselves (and change the text in question). If I didn’t like the explanation, or they refused to change it? Believe it or not, straight to ban. If they had an explanation that sounded reasonable and matched up with what the plagiarized person had experienced, I would consider the plagiarist to have used their one strike that they were going to get, and watch them closely the rest of their time on the game.
As a player, if a game plagiarized another game… I’m just not going to play there as soon as I find out. I am going to go with @Nilli 's description of plagiarization, because I’ve used ideas from other folks either with attributation or with permission and attributation, and I’ve given folks permission to use ideas/text of mine, and I find both of those just fine. If someone has written policy/concepts the way you want it, and they’re okay with you using it/tweaking it/etc… I don’t have a problem with that.
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RE: Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants
@Roz Just riffing. And yes, I think that limiting player-created content in general so that you’re closer to (but not quite) a roster game in the first generation would be a good idea. Keep things a little more controlled and reset each time jump so that the game keeps on a trajectory that Staff is comfortable with. For example, if a Romeo & Juliet storyline brings two opposing houses together, either use the time-jump to split them apart again, or even better, to set up another alliance against them so that the sides shift each time-jump and player actions have impact, but don’t upset the story Staff wants to tell.
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RE: Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants
I like the general idea of this – one of the things I love about The Network is that there’s a set end-date for each of the parts that you play (not the actor, but the parts in the shows they participate in), which lets me play concepts that I would never try for a long-running character, but could be fun for 3-6 months.
Have the freedom of knowing that you’ll only have a character for 9-18 months (I think I would keep things flexible so that if it takes a little longer or a little shorter to tie up all the plotlines Staff wants to tie up, that’s fine), you have a lot more freedom to create the type of character you wouldn’t usually, and you have a lot more freedom to explore stories about loss and failure (because you’re just losing for one generation, you can gain it back next generation).
One concern that you might have is player-created Houses – are you going to let someone else take that House over next generation, or are the players who created it going to feel like they own it now? Are they going to be disappointed that the vision of the next generation doesn’t match their vision for the house?
Something I’ve noticed from The Network is that downtime to arrange the next generation is going to be very important, and you’re going to want something for players to do while you’re sorting it out. The time it takes to disseminate the information on what happened over the last 18 years, approve/alter/deny everyone’s proposals for what their previous characters have been doing and how their new characters grew up, and getting everyone on the same page is not going to be insignificant, and you -need- to have something for folks to RP during that time. Maybe there could be a 1-month break at each time-skip where staff can put up a list of major events over that 18 years and players can do vignettes in the midst of any of them? Show how the previous generation matured and the next generation grew up through the major events of their lives?
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RE: MU Peeves Thread
@mietze Yeah. This is definitely something I both see and feel very much so. And I think that about the only thing Staff can do is specifically stake out some events for “people who haven’t gotten as involved as they’d like” to create some GMed scenes without plot-lickers. It’s not a perfect solution and has its own problems, but it’s -something- at least.
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent
@Roz We keep talking about how we can bury bodies in the back acreage, but never do it. I think they want their nutrients.
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent
After having a tree come through the wall of our house last year, another tree fell on both of our cars this year. One is likely to be pretty wrecked, the other has one broken side window and some dents and dings.
Plus usual holiday-related stresses. Yay.
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RE: Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
@Coin I actually think that Star Wars is one of the few universes which could really be well-served by some additions/changes to FS3. Last time I was looking at it, I figured that it would be really good to add/change/carefully balance the following (at least) to make it really feel like Star Wars:
Force Boosting Stats in combat
Deflecting/Redirecting Blaster shots (check for Blasters only?)
Force Powers (listing, defenses, non-attack uses, attacks)
Armor = Unnecessary but useful, definitely not overpowering.
Permissions to use gain skills (Control/Sense/Alter/Lightsaber).
Permissions to use armor/weapons?
Racial bonuses.
Balance between autofire blasters/grenades and Jedi with lightsabers.I’ve tried to do most of those things with base FS3, and I was not very successful with it. It’s doable, but the balance has to be done very, very carefully, and there’ll definitely be some kludging to make it feel close to Star Wars.
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RE: Baldur's Gate 3
@Roz Thankfully, Patch 5 has provided another way to recruit her.
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RE: IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance
@sao said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I prefer PvP that is character versus character, not player versus player. I don’t want to be combative with other players. It is not my jam.
I remember a push a while back for PvP to be renamed to CvC to emphasize exactly this point. I think it’s a great point that needs to be made and feeds into @Pyrephox’s point above: if you’re actually playing player-versus-player you might as well be playing Team Fortress Classic, because the only acceptable move is to obliterate the other person as soon as you can, so they don’t do it to you.
If you’re playing character-versus-character, there’s room for infinite intermediate steps that can build a relationship between the characters, even if it’s one based on hatred and mistrust. It leads to ongoing stories, not an orgy (or a whimper for said job-based kills) of destruction that then ends the storyline of at least one character.
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RE: As a gamerunner, what is the ideal number of players you aim for?
@KDraygo Very much this. I think 8-12 players per active, storytelling Staffer is probably right around what I would be comfortable with.
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RE: IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance
@Polk said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
The way I think of it is, some people just want to hole up and tell their own story arcs. They don’t want to mess with you and they don’t want you messing with them.
But there are also players (fewer, but they exist in substantial numbers) who feel empty if they can’t “influence the grid” in some way. They want consequences to exist.
I feel like you’re describing one extreme and then somewhere in the middle of a spectrum and trying to set them up as diametrically opposed when I’m not sure that they are. It feels to me like the majority of players want to have significant control over their own character’s story arc, but still influence the game world as a whole.
Or maybe that’s just me and I’m projecting. I certainly don’t see the latter group as being PvP-advocates (they certainly could be, but they don’t have to be). I also don’t know why a MUSH would particularly want players who are just going to hole up in their rooms and tell their own stories, except for the illusion of activity. But if you step off the extreme on that point of the spectrum and get to the players who mostly want to tell their own stories within a greater world – I think that those players work very well with the players who want to influence the grid, and I don’t think there’s much threading of the needle to be done.
@Alveraxus said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
Let’s say the player of Helen wants to have a fun little plot where she gets kidnapped by the character of Paris.
I don’t think that theoretical Helen-player is the hide-in-their-room type, and has to know that running off with the wife of a proud king is going to have major impact on the grid.
@Alveraxus said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
Actual violent acts between characters should be few and far between because there will be law (strict law) that governs things.
In my experience, PvP-eager players tend to be very bad at determining the “right” level of response to a threat. I know that I’m generalizing very broadly, but from what I’ve seen, even in social situations, the tendency seems to be to go from 0 to 100 immediately, because if you don’t go scorched earth, they’ll just come back and attack you. Never mind that a back-and-forth antagonism makes for great RP as long as both players are onboard for winning some and losing some.
I would suggest being very, very explicit in what is allowed/encouraged and what is not, and perhaps even putting in very clear bumpers like “This society is highly-policed and security-conscious, if your character attacks or murders someone, they will be caught and removed from the grid as they are held for trial, put on trial, and sentenced to imprisonment.” That’s probably too strong, not knowing the theme you’re looking at, but it would probably be good to have something in policy that makes it very clear that you’re looking for social violence, not physical violence, and that those going over the top into physical violence will not be tolerated. – Oh look, @Pyrephox got there before me!