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as someone who played and staffed on an x-men-derived, OC-heavy game with freeform powers for years back in the day…
…i wouldn’t want to go back to appstaffing those lol. it got so exhausting defining limits. i think i’d like SOME sort of system framework nowadays.
@Wuff said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@Jennkryst said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@Colette said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
Rogue with bondage powers
I think you keep confusing what people mean by this. Everyone agrees skin-to-skin contact with Rogue will drain powers. Its just the solution is always ‘put Rogue in a full body bondage-esque catsuit so there’s never skin to be touched’.
Few ever thinks to just put a restraining collar on her during day to day slice of life scenes. Like someone couldn’t make one aesthetically pleasing, or waterproof. People remembering that not only is she able to control her powers, but she isn’t even getting her flying brick power set from Carol Danvers any more either. Going with that is a breath of fresh air.
Well, yeah. You don’t have Danger Bondage Sexy Times if you do it that way!
I like a mix of both - dice for resolution of your stuff, but stick some narrative-bending things in the dice. Prime examples here are the FFG dice, both the Genesys rules and L5R.
@Colette said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
Rogue with bondage powers
I think you keep confusing what people mean by this. Everyone agrees skin-to-skin contact with Rogue will drain powers. Its just the solution is always ‘put Rogue in a full body bondage-esque catsuit so there’s never skin to be touched’.
Systems add impartiality (and wonderful randomness!) to conflict and challenge. I’ve been doing freeform lately and I’m really not a fan because all it takes is one powerplayer with an ego to muck it up for everyone else.
If everything goes right and everyone is trustworthy and willing to write collaboratively towards a common end goal of a great encounter, yeah sure freeform is good. But when Barry Supervillain says “nuh uh I am an expert in your kung fu ways so I instantly win” and the dice rolls otherwise, well, numbers don’t lie.
I may be getting cynical lol.
It depends on the people I’m RPing with. If it’s either of my regular RL groups, freeform is fine. If it’s a game with a bunch of relative strangers, I’d rather have some sort of structure to the task resolution and character sheets. I’ve had several bad experiences in the past with freeform games with strangers (a PBEM and a couple of forum games) go absolutely haywire because everybody had a different interpretation of how capable given characters were.
Both?
I like to improv into a scene and see what happens. I like to be able to write a story without saying X attempts to … then wait the roll to continue. Although, I value the roll system too for people who never want to lose. That just becomes no fun.
Also, I like to randomize things. Let’s see if I fail X. Do we go left or right, looks like the dice say this…
I like the combination. Which means this post was super unhelpful, but I guess it’s just what mindset I’m in for the day.
I like systems, to the extent that they support the story and the players and encourage RP. I like the element of random chance that dice bring, I like that +sheets force people to pick what their character is good at and what they’re not good at. To me RP is improv and the system/dice is one of several things giving you new prompts to improv with. I like that.
My forays into MUCK RP and Discord RP where there were no systems were not satisfying to me. A little bit of “you can’t fight this character because it is IC for me that I never lose so you will die,” lots of “I got you” “nuh uh, no you didn’t” like kids playing, and lots and lots of characters who are the best psycho killer in the entire universe at every single weapon that there is AND the best at persuasion and social skills AND the best pilot AND the best mechanic AND the best doctor, etc. I think that stays on the rails a little more with a +sheet/dice.
Many of my friends have long experience with freeform games wherein the players all seem to have been pretty mature and did accept losses/failures, did pick a lane for their skills, etc. I just personally don’t have that experience, so “at least some mechanical systems” is my personal preference.
@Ominous said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:
My dream server would be a combination RPI-MUSH. I love the fact that when your character enters a room, you don’t get the actual name of the other characters. I’m not sure how you square the circle of characters with vague identities and players with set identities, but I’d love to see it.
I may be biased, but take a peek at how it’s done in Silent Heaven! Characters appear as their shortdesc until they type GREET. You can also introduce other characters by typing GREET (name).
There are in-game photographs, too. You can identify people in a photo to other characters, based on who your character knows. You can even look at the details of photos, allowing you to read a specific character’s description at the time the photo was taken.
The players, without any prompting, designated a spot in town where their characters leave behind mementos and photographs of past characters who have left Silent Heaven in one way or another. It’s really sweet.
If you, as a new character, looked at one of those photos, you’d just see a bunch of shortdescs in the photos. But if someone were to tell your character a story about them and identify them by name, the shortdescs would be replaced with characters’ names. In that way, the departed characters can still have their names remembered by characters who have never (and will never) meet them.
Not yucking on anyone’s yum, you do you, this is just a me thing, but:
Personally, freeform>>>>>>>>>
I don’t even like roster games. Half the fun, maybe even more than half the fun for me on any game, is building my own character, my own concept, my own ideas, doing a lil worldbuilding, customising everything I can, I wanna flex those creative muscles. I like seeing what other people come up with, sometimes doing a lil collaborative improv (like hey seems our characters have some backstory features in common, what if they knew each other from before?) etc.
The more creative freedom I have, the happier I am. I’ve invented entire cultures/societies with a bit of an amateur conlang on games that let me.
