I was thinking about this earlier today (literal shower thoughts), or a little bit in parallel. About what characterized the games I’ve felt the most success on. Disregarding basic things like “I need there to be people around to RP with whose RP styles and schedules generally mesh with mine” and “I need staff to not be creepers and not allow creepers” – those will go without saying. But I realized that one of the biggest things for me in the DNA of a game is:

A sense of discovery.

This is achieved on a small scale with just characters getting to know each other, because that’s two people on a lifelong discovery of new details about each other. But what really thrills my brain is when there are mysteries and unknowns to the world on some level, and part of playing on that particular game is figuring out more about those.

@Roadspike said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@Roz Thankfully, Patch 5 has provided another way to recruit her loot a new camp outfit for Shadowheart.

FTFY. 😄

@sonata The Grand Opening for Ascension Sojournes is December 8th! Now accepting group applications. Some bonus chargen dots will be given to each person applying in the group. This offer ends on December 8th!

I have three more invites, please hit me up if interested.

I had fun adding this, so I thought I’d share!

I am working on player/thing descriptions. The avatar isn’t required but spices the interface up a little. I want to address a few more commands; then, I have to decide if I want to start adding Cyberpunk Red elements. 🙂

screen shot

@KDraygo said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

So PvP games may work best on games with short episodes, where characters are “wiped” or killed off in each episode, without consequences that are long lasting. If you lose or die, it’s fine because in a month or two, the slate is wiped clean and a new story is created.

This is our hope, because our theme cycles through PCs by time jumping generations every six months. This is part of the design because we feel it will give players the “freedom” to go big and do heroic things and not feel FOMO by no longer having their epic character anymore because “anymore” might be a couple of months at best.

Like supporting PC on PC conflict, we anticipate that this will cause some self-selection among players who don’t want to invest time in a character that has a 6 month or 12 month shelf life.

But hopefully it will draw in players who do embrace the idea of playing a character’s arc until it ends and then starting over with a new one.

We’ll see how it works in practice.

Game’s good, would recommend.

I’ve already thrown enough of my soul at it that I am already burning out!

I’ve used this one for the past 3 years now. The paper is nice and thick, and I use the lined undated paper in the back to keep journal and notes. I use fountain pens, and generally there’s no ink bleed.

@Jennkryst said in As a PLAYER, how many staff would be ideal in a game?:

I want more staff than players, so when the player nagging inevitably burns someone out, there are plenty of replacements available until the burn-out fully recuperates.

I now know I want staffers who are allowed to have player bits, so it’s not like pulling teeth to recruit new staffers when breaks happen.

I need enough people to have variety, and to also have nice soft buffers from people I don’t mesh with. (Not necessarily bad actors, but people who just don’t like me or I don’t like them.)

@Polk Well, at least one of the major difficulties has been made pretty publicly apparent on the boards in very recent memory.

@Zz Me!

@crawfish Or you can be an overachiever and do both!

laugh cry

Seriously though. Thank you for that reminder. It is very much appreciated.

Discussion thread!

TEAM RIFLEMAN

@Meg said in City of Shadows - Discussion:

@GF lol, I have been ragging on this post all night in my head. Thank you for joining in because it is so ridiculous.

Also like, uwu I am an all powerful goddess but man, I don’t know how to create a world so maybe you can help me? And then we can rule it together? Despite the story clearly stating that the dark goddess of dark things forever and ever has already created other worlds! That she could go rule on her own.

Please give us the motivation for why the dark goddess herself who rules over all the land the dark touches just wants to chill and rule half of a world?

Going by the theme setup and that everyone can do it with everyone (regardless of age)… The dark goddess is willing to co-rule because the ‘pervy girl’ is putting out often enough and with a lot of creativity.

@Faraday said in Staff Capacity:

Most players come to be entertained.

While I agree with the sentiment, I want to change the wording of this just a tiny bit.

Most players come to have fun. And that should absolutely include staff. It’s a game, after all, being on it should be fun. And that’s where a lot of this talk about staff capacity and limits etc, falls flat: it seems to forget that rather obvious point.

If you, game runner/player/staffer/whateverer, are not having an appreciable amount of fun then something needs to change. Fun is the whole idea.

ETA: To keep the thrust of this back with the ‘STrP vs Prp’ discussion: IF something isn’t fun, players won’t do it. Some players just always find running things fun, some players need encouragement for it to be fun, and some players will never find it fun. If you, as a game runner, can find a way to make the first two categories of player happy then you’ll get more stuff run by players.