@Roz said in PBs:

Generative AI like Midjourney and other similar tools is also using images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes. But it’s doing so at scale in a huge way, and it’s also profiting off of the use.

So just don’t use Midjourney or other for-profit AI tools? It’s not difficult roll your own Stable-Diffusion (which is open source) and make your own models if you want to be absolutely sure no profit is happening. It’s mostly Python anyway.

Even if you want to argue that someone is being done harm by using a picture from a movie to represent your character, even if you accept that argument as true, it is still actively far less harmful then systems that take these materials for profit, and allow for users to actually put an actor’s likeness in visual poses and scenarios that the actor never performed.

I disagree. For one thing, if you’re using AI art for custom character purposes, then you are not utilizing the entirety of someone’s likeness (unless you’re using something specifically trained on that one person, I guess – but in that case, just don’t use that model). Otherwise, there would be no point in utilizing AI at all; just use a photo. No one will be able to tell who the models were used. Unlike with a photo PB, which is absolutely certain what person is involved.

Secondly, if the model is made for a for-profit system like Midjourney, then they already have the requisite rights and permissions. That’s part of what you’re paying for when you buy a license for Midjourney.

So utilizing a person’s picture without permission wholesale is a hell of a lot worse than using either licensed graphics or minute tokens of an aggregate which no one will recognize anyway.

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Warma-Sheen said in World Tone / Feeling:

a game where there’s danger around every corner that’ll get you if you slip up for a moment SHOULD make characters risk avoidant. The problem is that most games don’t provide a reward that is worth characters overcoming that risk avoidance.

I’m skeptical that there’s any manner of reward that would get players to risk their characters to death at the drop of a hat.

In my experience, most people don’t mind losing big – even going as far as character death – as long as it’s cool. No one wants to die just from slipping on a banana peel or even just randomly getting shot in the head by an outlaw. They want to go down in a blaze of glory, or with some amazingly funny Rube Goldbergesque series of coincidences, or through something that exudes pathos.

No one wants to die like a scrub.

@Warma-Sheen’s description of the crunch-storytelling continuum seems pretty apt. I know I definitely prefer the storytelling aspect of that; I find combat systems and dice throwing to be supremely boring and I’ve hated nearly every single combat scene I’ve ever been a part of.

Though I think this might be more of a scene-by-scene thing than an overall tone. I don’t see why a MU* can’t have room for both worldviews as long as everyone knows beforehand what a specific scene is expecting. The hard part would be quantifying where, exactly, on the crunch-storytelling continuum a scene lies.

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

On a similar vein, one thing I always like to do is get personal with plots and incorporate aspects of a character’s background. But I always find myself hesitating. I’m gunshy about possibly ruining some idea they had about their character and stepping on toes.

Based on my experience, that’s very rarely the case, but it has also definitively happened before and it just feels bad. Now, of course, you can just ASK the player in question if you can use some aspect of their background in a plot, but that is sometimes really, really awkward if you don’t know the player very well or if the point you want to touch would have a much better impact if it was a surprise which would be ruined by asking for permission.

So having some sort of RP preference like for violence scenes/death/metaplot involving given carte-blanche to utilize a character’s background in plots would be handy.

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

@STD said in Player Ratios:

What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?

If somebody has a cool idea to change the world in a way that fits with your game vision, why would you require them to have OOC tokens to do so?

Conversely, if somebody has a terrible idea to change the game world in a way that wrecks the game, who cares how many tokens they have? It’s still not something you want.

It was mostly just a way to prejudge storytellers so that constant permission wouldn’t be necessary. The whole “fits your game vision” is the problematic bit; someone who has run a few dozen smaller scenes can just go ahead with whatever big idea they have without having to bother staff.

I donno, it probably wouldn’t work. I was just spitballing without really thinking it through. OP wanted some sort of inducement system.

Alternatively, maybe tokens would be equivalent to spaces. Like… there can only be one big world-changing plot active at any one time and tokens are used to reserve those spaces. The effort involved in gaining those tokens might reduce flake-outs.

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

I’ve also considered the angle of giving people tokens for running story which they can cash in for Insert Incentive Here. I’ve toyed with the idea of the incentive being staff attention, but I very, very, very much want to kill the idea that staff attention is better than player attention.

What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?

That, I find, is a big impediment to players running stories. So if you’ve proven yourself with smaller plots (like, say, plots personal to a specific character), you earn the right to just go with something that changes the world?

Wanna blow up a building? Two Story Tokens. Have a major political figure assassinated? Three. A war? Four. World-wide apocalypse? Five.

@Juniper said in The 3-Month Players:

Because if all you have is lubricant you don’t have an engine, just a bathtub full of grease.

I’m suddenly imagining one Season (Session?) having the gimmick that every single player character is an Isekai of some sort.

@MisterBoring said in The 3-Month Players:

@Ominous Have there been any games previously that ran on a seasonal format? If not, it might be something to take a chance on. If nothing else, it gives the people who are going to stay around more things to be interested in as time goes on.

The Network and HorrorMU had seasons, I believe.

MUs based on already established properties – especially those which are still on-going – likely have a big advantage on the “what do we do” question.

The simple fact that the main show/game/book/whatever can provide inspiration if not full plots to be lifted eases the burden on storytellers.

I remember there was a Babylon 5 MU* back in the day that lasted up through the end of the series with very stable player-counts because the show kept giving new context, plot feeds, and storylines that the game would incorporate and use as inspiration for additional stuff.

One personal problem I have is that, after a MU is established, I get gunshy about running PRPs. There’s no reason for this feeling, honestly, but I always feel like I’m intruding on others’ stories even if that is clearly and explicitly not the case. This is definitely a me problem and not a problem with games overall, but I wonder if others have this particular brain worm as well and that might account for things petering off after three months.

Three months also tends to correspond to college break and vacays. Not sure how much that matters considering MU players are all old now.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

@STD oh god. Now I really want to work up a homebrew for my table-top game and do a Strange Luck game, where all the PCs have Strange Luck, and every time you roll anything you also roll for Strange Luck first, it’s just a pass fail, pass and the whole table quickly brainstorms some extremely unlikely result for your attempt. And there’s a timer set for a some random length of time between five minutes and half an hour, and every time it goes off you get another bit of Strange Luck. I wonder how far we’d actually get.

That actually sounds really fun!

Though rather than a timer, you could do something like Fate points, where you get Strange Luck points for roleplaying certain things or accepting story complications or setbacks.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I think of that short-lived TV 1990’s show Strange Luck where the protagonist is invariably drawn into things and solves them via a series of weird coincidences. The only one I can actually remember was him finding a glass eye in a can of beans, and later in the show dropping it and narrowly avoiding getting shot because he bends down to pick it up.

I think I remember that show. One bit I remember from it is that he would buy scratch-off tickets and always win the exact amount he needed to pay for a meal.

I also vaguely remember an episode involving a guy incorrectly on Death Row and scheduled to be electrocuted at midnight. The main character winds up tracking down the REAL culprit (who is remorseful to the point of attempting suicide), attempts to get to the prison to stop the execution, but instead ends up crashing into an electric pole… which electrocutes the actual culprit while saving the falsely convicted innocent man.

But, yes, stuff like that.

Demon Lord, Retry is especially good for that sort of thing because the titular demon lord is a both a complete conman yet also constantly insists that none of the coincides that happen around him are a result of meticulous planning (which all the other characters immediately assume is the case, especially when he denies it).

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

The PC is supposed to be Machiavelli, but what I see is Mr. Magoo.

One sort of sub-genre I like is the clueless/misinformed protagonist ending up being attributed masterful abilities. Things like Demon Lord, Retry, Please Let This Grieving Soul Retire, or The Eminence in Shadow. Or something like the Ciaphas Cain series (though that is less that Cain is clueless rather than a complete coward).

That is sort of the inverse of what you’re talking about here, but I wonder if the same sort of idea could be applied with the characters attributing amazing plotting abilities to the bit after-the-fact even if the players all know that what happened was ludicrous.

It’d take cooperation with others, of course, and the person playing the fluffed character would have to be pretty up-front about their inability to actually be Machiavelli, but it could be an interesting roleplay challenge.

One game idea I’ve had battering around is a sort of Stargate/Isekai hybrid.

A portal is discovered which leads to a fantasy realm. Contact is made and is “friendly” (insofar as governments and corporations can be described as such), but there’s a lot of intrigue involving the Imperial Court and the supra-national secret organization that controls the portal on the Earth side.

Specific corporations are given latitude to open research and development on the other side of the portal and the wealth of new materials and phenomenon are a treasure trove (“This dragon hide is amazing! It uses carbon nanotubes weaved in microstructures that allow for incredible strength and resistance!”).

Meanwhile, the Imperials want the amazing technology that the Earthers have. Seeing a Vulcan cannon eviscerate a group of rampaging demons is highly impressive and the sheer quality and scale of material brought through the portal is staggering.

Players would be members of the Earth expedition – military, scientific, corporate – or higher-ranking nobles/commoners of the Imperium. So you’d also get some Lords and Ladies play in there.

While Earth-based scientific culture would be impressive on multiple levels, the Imperials would still have both home field and material advantage (the portal is only so big and the massive energy requirements means it can only be active for a short period per day). Plus, there’d be magic which, by its very nature, is resistant if not impervious to scientific inquiry.

I doubt this would appeal to too many people, though.

I like the definition that a metaplot affects every character even if they don’t realize it. It also typically changes something major in the setting, though that major change may only be seen by specific characters.

An example I can think of is a oWoD MU* years back that had a metaplot centering around Locational Weirdness of a small city and it’s environment.

In specific, every sphere had different aspects of this Weirdness to attend to. For Werewolves, the Wyld and Weaver were best buddies for some reason and absolutely crushing all the Wrym spirits around. Things were still hella imbalanced, but imbalanced in a much different way from normal WoD.

Vampires had to contend with blood bonds simply not working any more. With anyone. This naturally threw huge wrenches into the vamps power structures. And now they actually had to treat their Ghouls well, since they could just rebel and weren’t mentally shackled to them any longer. Tremere were forbidden from entering the area and Sabbat were almost unheard of since the Vinculum just… didn’t work any more, so they quickly fell into infighting. Meanwhile, Anarchs moved in and quickly established themselves due to the massive power vacuum caused by blood bonds failing.

Changelings had to contend with a huge influx of Glamour. The place just glowed with the stuff. The downside is that this meant Bedlam was a constant threat and that all kinds of dangerous Chimera born from the dreams and nightmares of mortals around the place infested it. Some had to search out and purposefully cuddle up with Banal people just to keep the Things and ODing on Glamour at bay.

Mages – both Union and Traditional – made a pact to study the Weirdness. They also both lost established Constructs/Chantrys and there was a mystery there with both; in both places, the resident magi just simply disappeared without a trace. Magic also just… didn’t follow the normal rules where these places stood – the Technocratic Construct was without power and trying to reestablish it always met with failure (sometimes catastrophic), and the Traditions Chantry always treated ANY magic cast in it as Extremely Vulgar, regardless of paradigm. The Higher Ups wanted this thing Solved, so there was an oddly close working relationship between the Union and the Traddies. They met every week in the back of a bookshop/cafe. Donuts were supplied.

And regular mortals got treated to all kinds of bizarre weirdness. Disappearing alleyways in placed they’d been to a thousand times before, odd shadows that didn’t quite match, glimpses of Things just at the corners of their eyes, strange dreams and nightmares, inspiration striking with skills and knowledge they had no practice or understanding of, inexplicable equipment failures… and equally inexplicable equipment successes (“… This car has no engine. How is it running?”).

@Faraday said in Metaplot: What and How:

• Babylon 5 MU basically followed the key events from the TV series, with variations influenced by the PCs.

As a side note, I’d KILL for a Babylon 5 MU*. Sadly, one of the best (if not THE best) Sci-Fi TV series seems to have been mostly forgotten. Sigh.

@SolarFlare said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Hobbie "Surely these little robed beings with glowing eyes who stole my ship parts CAN’T be the ‘Jawas’ people in the cantina are complaining about stealing all their ship parts!

“I don’t know, Kandu. It’s a mystery. If only there was some sign or information about what these mysterious ‘Jawas’ are-- HEY! Dangit, those little robe guys started stealing the repulsor lifts on the speeder again! Jeez. Now, back to the mystery of Jawas…”

@Prototart said in MU Peeves Thread:

somebody on a WoD game once asked me to justify why my char had Dancing 4

like

Look, don’t you know how DANGEROUS Dancing 4 is? You’ve be able to cut up the rug and defeat Antedeluvian vampires in a breakdancing contest! Your pirouettes would dizzy the minds of mages! Werewolves would howl in defeat at your disco moves! Changelings would have no choice but to bow to your Thriller! Your ballroom dancing would shake the very pillars of heaven!

Totally understandable to ask for such mind boggling power to be justified.

@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:

This is why I try to write characters who are boring as fuck in their backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoy “random nobody gets drug into a world of whatever and has to adapt” stories.

This was why I liked playing bog standard humans in WoD MU*s. Just someone completely absent from the machinations of mages, the centuries old plots of vampires, the chicaneries of changelings, the violence of werewolves, the… bandages?.. of mummies, etc.

It was really neat to toss them into the world with these kind of characters and see what happened to them. Interestingly enough, most of the time these standard human characters ended up being quite popular with the supernatural crowd. It amused me to think that there was only, like, ten normal humans in the entirety of the WoD and I was playing one which all the other supernatural entities were trying to court.

@Hobbie said in MU Peeves Thread:

The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.

Or go the Old Man Henderson route and just make an insane background that has everything and the kitchen sink to justify any possible weirdness.

@Pavel said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:

@Gashlycrumb said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:

Ask B.F. Skinner about it.

He’ll just go on, and on, and on, and on about pigeons…

In college, my dad attended a guest lecture by Skinner in which he talked about Behaviorism. At the end he did a demonstration with one of the trained pigeons.

It didn’t perform as it was trained.

Skinner was clearly annoyed and embarrassed. My dad thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen.

Even in psychology the old adage applies: never work with children or animals.

For me, I never play FCs/Roster characters. I just can’t get into them; they’re like ill-fitting suits. Always off, never comfortable. I need to play a character I create, even if said character is fitting a specific niche.

That said, I have no problem playing with FCs or Roster characters.

But as others have stated, if you’re just going to make OCs second-class characters, it’s probably better to go with Roster-only. Players will generally pick up on that attitude and you’ll slowly end up with a mostly or all Roster-only MU* anyway.

@Popes

Is Liberation the one where all plots have to come top down? And there’s only predetermined characters allowed in every sphere?

Yeah, I’m not surprised that place has basically become deadlocked and slowly dying. That sort of top-down play went out in the 90s because it’s completely unworkable in MU*.

I am surprised it lasted this long, though.