The blog has been quiet. The MUSH has not been quiet, or, at least, between two wizards, the system, the ever-expanding +news and +help files, and a thousand other nuances, the MUSH has been very happening.
The gifts are being written and added. Many of the news files are in place. Many more are written, and others are in the rough draft stage. Much has been done, but much more has yet to begin. Personally, I know for every one task I complete, I come up with two more ideas that are either must-haves or are just plain cool.
I have not yet started the grid, but there’s time for that, plenty of time.
What I have been compiling and meditating upon has opened my eyes more to the philosophy of games and the many, many differences between RPGs. For example, one such insight may very well compel me to +search/news my way through the +news files and exchange almost every ‘role-play’ I have written in the past for ‘story game’. I suppose that is one bit of evidence that this is not a grudge game (nevermind that this is completely different from every other Anitaverse game that has yet to crop up and usually whither) or a sandbox. A story game will not be ‘my’ game or ‘your’ game, it will be the players’ game, and it puts the story in the hands of the players, not staff. That aspect has to be my favorite aspect of the entire system, or one of them.
I should save the rest of the chatter for Jonquil. While I understand the system, he can explain it far better than I can. My point is, things are going well, and we’re still excited.
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Aside from pushing the game’s setting around upon our all ready cramped plates, staff has been deliberating design decisions. Really, the deliberations are responsible for the change in setting, and although we have not yet decided on any one time or place as of yet, there are several things that are important to us and thus to the game.
First, every character has the potential to be kick ass from the beginning. If a character is not, the player has gone out of his or her way to ensure this as they will be given more than sufficient points to create effective and efficient character sheets.
For this reason, character abilities, gifts, will be quite extensive. We will also have extensive lores to support our gift system and players’/characters’ interests.
As Jonquil hinted in the last post here, one design consideration is setting — We need to centralize RP yet also free up other RP options. One problem we’ve encountered elseMU* is game fragmentation through player-cliques, and we want to avoid this without cutting out factions, cultures, and opposition.
This reminds me. I know one person admitted that she does not really like vampires despite playing in the Anita-verse setting, and I think that applies to a great many players. We have decided to be vampire-centric because they are the most powerful beings, and they generally control the main of territories with lesser groups, most often clans of were-creatures, creating alliances or peace treaties with the local vampires and ‘paying’ them off by loaning their people to the vampires as guards and foods. Sure, it isn’t ideal for those being ‘borrowed’ but that’s just one dark aspect of an even darker theme.
Such a theme, by the way, has us leaning towards non-consent, but this in no way means the players do not have control over their characters! Our system is geared toward negotiations, ICly and OOCly. We strongly urge players to be responsible, proactive, and respectful rather than passive, oblique, or equivocating. Don’t be afraid of confrontation because you are afraid you are going to get wiped out. If you think ICC will be severe, you should talk about it with the other players involved before kick-starting. That said, even if you don’t, staff will discourage players from having their characters off yours or, worse, locking your character away and preventing you from continuing play. So, why non-consent? I think that answer will be better suited for the FAQ later on.
I’ve recently written news files on staff responsibilities and possible staff positions, but I’ve been reconsidering those positions:
We won’t have faction-specific staff. That means no one staff will have complete control over any one faction. We came to this decision early on for several reasons. First, we want everyone to be aware and be able to deal with all the spheres. There’s so much day-to-day stuff that is better handled when spread evenly through staff. Second, we probably won’t have that many staff members. Third, on some level, we see this as helping ensure things are fair for everyone involved.
We won’t have staff who only run plots. Well, I’m not planning on it, not now. Our plots are plot-arcs, and everything else is player-introduced. In no way will any plot introduced by staff have a planned ending. The endings are up to the players. This helps because most of the time, in my experience, players feel that there are right and wrong choices, and I have personally seen situations where staff expects a player/character to do a specific X before Y can happen. It’s messy and unfair. It’s limiting and stressful. Our way means that the players always win, that the players take things in the directions that interest them rather than staff.
And that brings us to the roles of staff… Staff exist to serve the game, to keep the history, ensure the game functions within what little confines there are in theme, and furnish story and support as players request. We are not here to make the players cry, to glorify in being the big, bad bosses of a game no one wants to play. We want to help create a story everyone can enjoy, but that does not mean we have any investments in the outcome of the story. Later there may be special staff with positions listed as Story Tellers, but these wonderful people will be players who want to introduce new elements to the game, who have volunteered to help the rest of staff run NPCs and even some random scenes for extra color. I hope we do have those people. They will certainly be very valuable, but even then, they will not exist to control the story but to extend the scope and depth of the story as play unfolds.
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We started on TinyMUSH, but now we’re trying RhostMUSH. Jonquil has finishes creating the +news system and has setup the basic gift system, and I’ve been fussing about to make things appealing to the eyes. That project also includes setting up our weblog, so here it is.
Also, we have anomaly jobs, and we’ve decided upon a theme for staff names — flowers. I want to avoid using flower/herb/plant names that are obvious choices for possible character names. (Oh, but that’s long, long down the road, no?)
The first two acts of our game’s overall story-arch have been picked. The first act, as anyone should be able to tell, is “The Eagle & The Peafowl.” I admit I really like the symbolism there. The second act does not yet have a name, but I’m in no hurry to come up with it.
Jonquil is working on the decompile, so I’ll likely finish ‘spiffifying’ the weblog and get back to working on +news files.
PS: I’m terribly excited about all of this.
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