Secret Society

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  • RE: Liberation Drama!?

    @Alamias said in Liberation Drama!?:

    @Aria I can log in via cell phone, so it’s definitely something IP or provider related. I wonder if I was collateral damage in an IP ban or something…

    It’s possible. I have no idea who you played, but if you want to PM me, I can always ping a staffer the next time I see one online and try to ask. 🤷

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: Star Trek Games

    @Gashlycrumb said in Star Trek Games:

    secret creepy fascist organisation of time-travelling murder hobos

    Section 31 is only fun when it is a dude who thinks it’s real, but it isn’t. Or a try-hard who thinks it’s really cool, Starfleet definitely needs a second, soopar seekrit intelligence arm, and just constantly fails because everyone else makes fun of this dumb thought.

    … ahem.

    So the ‘when’ is as important as the ‘where’. If you set it after Romulus blows up, and Romulans are kind of migratory, then options open a bit. If you set it after Picard, literally everyone in Starfleet has PTSD for Picard S3 reasons. Picard also feels like it plays things fast and loose with Stardates, so ???

    Not terribly important.

    (I do realize for the Romulus Nova to be a plot point, the game would be set a decade after the TNG/DS9 crossover bubble, which is more important than Picard fast/loose timey wimey)

    Fun dates/basic timeline

    2365 - Q Who, Borg meet cute
    2369 - Deep Space 9 S1
    2370 - TNG finale during December, leads directly into…
    2371 - Voyager MIA
    2375 - Odo asks Kyra if she would still love him after he becomes an ocean of goo
    2379 - Star Trek: Nemesis
    2380 - Lower Decks S1
    2385 - Martian Shipyards go boom
    2387 - Romulus Supernova

    Anyway, Deep Space 69 (pun intended, what with all the TS) can be a joint mission base for exploring… somewhere. It could be Romulans just found out about the Supernova, and DS:69 is stationed in a system where another K-type Dwarf Star looked like it was going to Supernova in the past, but abruptly stabilized, and we are here to find out why/if that can save Romulus. Or it could be a hub where people are looking for nearby worlds that could serve as a colony for relocation, with multiple plots around making sure things won’t violate the Prime Directive, sticking it near a modern day Shackleton Expanse, or maybe even near the edge of Klingon space, which gives them a reason to be involved.

    Or both! Alternatively, something else. Whomst can say?

    Obviously have your different class ships for different missions. Alts are cool, just don’t let one person be the chief engineer on every ship. Maybe even say they can’t have a second engineer unless they have command and science alts, also? Now we’re in the weeds and need more feedback from other players.

    posted in Game Gab
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    I’m a big fan of each room having an RP purpose. Maybe it says something particularly cogent about the setting (there’s a monument about a past incident or historical personage), maybe it’s a “critical” RP location (the mess hall on a military game), or maybe it’s a place I think could host RP even if it’s not typical (a dingy alley in a Steampunk game).

    But I believe that each and every room should have 2-3 RP Hooks in it. So you’ve got a laundromat, because people like RPing talking to strangers while their undies tumble – why not note that one of the driers sometimes chews up clothing, or that there’s a phone number written inside the door of one of the washers in permanent marker, or there’s a camera in one corner with a screen showing that everyone in the laundromat is being recorded. Little things that people can integrate into their RP and use to spark IC discussion or action.

    Whether you’re Grid-based (like most MU*s used to be) or Locations-based (like Ares), this style works, and can turn what could just be vague names that could be drawn out of a hat to run scenes in into something that can help inspire RP.

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    @tsar said in MU Peeves Thread:

    @Jumpscare said in MU Peeves Thread:

    in 2 years

    Oh my god has it been open that long? I feel like we were JUST reading posts about you developing it. Two years is great, congratulations!

    Thanks! And congrats on launching yours!

    Running a game is a far greater responsibility than developing a game. Once it’s live, your players will be playing even when you have IRL responsibilities. There’s always the looming thought in the back of my mind that I need to check in when I’m not home, because what if a bug happens that breaks the game, or some troll has shown up overnight?

    I try to relax, even though there have been 2 instances in the past 2 years where I decided that I needed to go to sleep and that I’ll check in on the morning, only to wake up to a disaster I could’ve fixed the night before, haha.

    Just remember to forgive yourself and keep going forward. Some beloved players will just stop playing one day. And that’s okay.

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    @Warma-Sheen said in MU Peeves Thread:

    Fully serious question. How do you really expect staff to build a limited number of places people want to go to when you have a constantly shifting player base who all want different things?

    Great question!

    So having just opened a game myself (ahaha lol screaming), my original plan was to just do one big room per area. The game itself is an ocean with a bunch of island city states, so I was like “One room per city state, boom, done”. Because at the end of the day, descing 40+ rooms just felt like a chore to me.

    MY GOOD FRIEND @Nilli was more into descing out spaces, so she went ahead and did I want to say like 3 rooms per city state. And they’re, I think pretty classic MU hang out spots.

    If we need more spaces, or players want them, it’s easy to build them out. We’re operating on Ares, it’s super convenient.

    And I guess I should clarify when I say I don’t like big grid games, it comes down to that I personally don’t want to build a giant grid of rooms all at once, or have a room of dead business and empty apartment buildings. That said, I also specifically created a game where that’s more or less not a thing that’ll happen super often.

    But otherwise, yeah. I can ignore the rooms that are used less often, it’s not the end of the world.

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    @Jumpscare said in MU Peeves Thread:

    in 2 years

    Oh my god has it been open that long? I feel like we were JUST reading posts about you developing it. Two years is great, congratulations!

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    @chorus Agreed. I hadn’t considered that there might still be places without the ability to jump to a hangout spot directly. Its 2025. 😛

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: MU Peeves Thread

    @tsar said in MU Peeves Thread:

    I personally am not a fan of big massive grids. I’d rather build exactly the places I think people will go and no streets and call it a day.

    Fully serious question. How do you really expect staff to build a limited number of places people want to go to when you have a constantly shifting player base who all want different things?

    I think the grids are there because staff wants to put all possible options out there for people and people can pick for themselves and ignore the ones that don’t. In theory it seems easy enough for a player to pick the places they like and use them, and ignore anything they don’t want to use. If there are 5 places you want to use and 1000 that you don’t, the other 1000 are irrelevant anyway. Just ignored them.

    But reading the thread I see people saying that it is a negative if a game has rooms they don’t want to use. I don’t understand that, personally.

    posted in Rough and Rowdy
  • RE: AI PBs

    So AI isn’t so much coming for my job as it is creating more work for my colleagues. I see.

    posted in Game Gab
  • RE: AI PBs

    @MisterBoring Technological Darwinism.

    posted in Game Gab