The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.

EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.

@KarmaBum Eh. I know how it is. You can run an event every hour, 24 hours a day, and some people will still only do BarP for all their interactions while complaining that there is nothing to do.

I think that there are a lot of MU* players out there that have very specific unmet interests. Most MU* players have been playing the game for a while now and know exactly what they want. A new game comes along that sounds close grabs their interest, they give it a shot, it doesn’t check all their boxes, and they move on.

@MisterBoring I have also been wondering about this recently. This thread and my partner watching a lot of reality TV series like the Bachelor(ette), the Mole, Million Dollar Secret, and also a bit of Bridgerton have combined with me recently playing Fire Emblem and Unicorn Overlord with their harem anime elements and my constant desire to run a lord and ladies game, resulting in the crazy idea of doing a parody lord and ladies MU*.

At first I was going to call it Pretty Princess Simulator, but maybe The Courtship of the Crown Prince might be better. Basically every season will start with that generation’s crown prince having his debut and all the eligible noblewomen of the land coming to try to woo him into marriage, using their wits, wiles, political connections, etc. to do so. At the end of the season, the best noblewoman (or nobleman, maybe we will have a gay crown prince or a crown princess every so many seasons to mix things up) will win. All of the kingdom’s politics, wars, natural disasters, regime changes, economic swings, etc. will take place in the background during the intervening years. Every season will have a crown prince with a different personality, tastes, hobbies, etc and the noblewomen will need to figure them out and try to use them to their advantage to snag the future queenship. Hopefully the time skips between seasons changing the world would be enough of a change to bring the bubble players back to try again with a new season.

@KarmaBum said in The 3-Month Players:

@Ominous this idea sounds neat but what will people RP?

Blatantly ripping off @Roadspike 's template:

Woo the crown prince of the kingdom with wits, wiles, or wyrdings in this fantasy setting. Characters will be trying to find out what they can about the prince, use that to their advantage, and try to thwart the efforts of others in getting closer to the prince. They will attend balls, gossip amongst themselves, participate in duels, attend events to showcase their brilliance to the royal family, and plot against one another.

Pretty Princess Simulator is a game of romantic intrigue and politicking in a fantasy renaissance setting. Players might be eligible noblewomen trying to win the future queenship, the family members of those noblewomen working to help them, servants of those noblewomen or of the royal palace, or a small cadre of the prince’s friends, tutors, and personal staff who hold the secrets to the prince’s heart.

All characters will belong to one of the many noble families of the kingdom or their servants. You will be endeavoring to get your one of the eligible noblewomen in your house selected as the bride to the crown prince or you will be one of the prince’s inner circle working to achieve a personal secret agenda. The first month will be the arrival of the eligible noblewomen to the royal palace leading up to the crown prince’s debut. The next few months will be filled with varying events to attend and make oneself known, leading up to the crown prince’s final selection and marriage.

But yeah probably a lot of BarP. Unless the royal family goes full reality show and has the eligible noblewomen participating in ridiculous contests. And, since this idea started as a parody of L&L, that might actually be the route to go in.

@RedRocket This speaks to my OSR D&D gaming heart.

@Tapewyrm You’ve got to have some crunch somewhere for the social RP fluff to be based on. How can we bemoan the ongoing war with the orcs, if there is no battles in the background? How can we gossip about the King divorcing the past Queen and marrying some nobody from a backwater house if that doesn’t happen? Meringue topped with marshmallow fluff topped with whipped cream is sweet but not very filling. You can’t make a good dessert with just that. You’ve got to have some substance under it all.

@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:

I think the issue is so often when the consequences come around those consequences are out of the player’s control. Which can be completely reasonable/logical! But they feel helpless and more easily feel slighted/pissed/unaccepting of the outcome. Especially if there is a hand behind the outcome such as a GM/Staff telling them what happened.

When bad results happen, I think you have to push it back on the player and let them make a choice. I was recently watching Critical Role’s new campaign and their use of their new system Daggerheart and I thought it was perfect for handling the scenario of a bad outcome/consequences in a MU*.

As an OSR GM, when my players tell me what action they want to take, if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear, I try to make it clear and confirm that they still want to take the action.

"Player: My character is going to jump the chasm to get to the other side.

Me: That’s going to be a d20 roll under strength with a -2 for they length of the jump. If you succeed, your character will be on the other side of the chasm. If you fail, your character will fall into the chasm and, while your character can’t determine the exact depth, it’s enough that there is a strong potential for their death. Do you wish to continue?"

GMs should treat action declarations more like hovering over the options in a Paradox Interactive strategy game story event. Tell the player what the odds of success and failure or what die their going roll, the difficulty number or whatever, and whatever bonuses or penalties they have. Tell them what success looks like (because what they’re attempting may not get them what they’re actually after), and tell them what failure looks like.

@catzilla That’s clever and a good use of AI for MU* purposes.

Honestly, I am coming more and more around to the idea that all PBs should be custom created art and/or AI generated images. The use of images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes has been making me more and more uncomfortable over the years.

@sao You’re a doctor! Not a MU* player.

@Juniper said in AI Megathread:

People call this “hallucination”. I think we should stop letting them assign a new name to an existing phenomenon. The LLM is malfunctioning.

No, it is not. What the AI spits out is meaningless to the AI. It just spits out what the most likely next set of words are based on the input it received and what it has already given. For it to malfunction, it needs to start writing sentences devoid of grammar. As long as what it writes is grammatically correct and a somewhat rational statement, it has succeeded

It is saying things that are wrong.

Yes, but factually accurate answers are not the purpose. Grammatically correct sentences are.

It is failing to do what it was designed to do.

No. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do. It’s failing at doing what entrepreneurs, marketers, and other PT Barnum snake oil salespeople want the public to think it can do.

EDIT: To actually contribute something to the thread, about the only thing I am willing to use AI on for MU purposes is played-bys and maybe creating images on the wiki for the various venues on the grid. I have grown tired of seeing Jason Momoa as the image for Seksylonewulf McRiptabs #247.

EDIT 2: Typoes.

@MisterBoring said in System for Mech Game:

Not sure about the integrating with Ares part, as I’m a noob to Ares.

• Lancer + Lancer: Battlegroup - In my opinion, this is the new hot mech game. Where the tech in Battletech is a product of its time (the 1980s), Lancer updates that tech stuff to make more sense given current tech (Mechs are 3d printed, people can be backed up onto a hard drive type thing and restored to life if they die) along with a more anime art style.

Awesome game in an awesome setting (especially the Karrakin Trade Baronies) by an awesome creator. Unfortunately, it is probably compatible with FS3. FS3 is a rather unique skill/resolution system that I don’t think is really compatible with most TTRPGs without heavy modification to either the code or the overall TTRPG’s mechanics.

@catzilla That’s clever and a good use of AI for MU* purposes.

Honestly, I am coming more and more around to the idea that all PBs should be custom created art and/or AI generated images. The use of images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes has been making me more and more uncomfortable over the years.

So, as I was riding home from my Friday happy hour binge after a completely shit week, (God, I hate laypeople who think they can argue law. Which is hypocritical, because I am a layperson, a well trained layperson, but still a layperson who argues law) and I came up with a “rule.” It’s kind of like some states where you have to inform a home invader you’re about to blow their head off if they don’t leave, before you’re allowed to blow their head off. I drunkenly call it the Duty of Informed Consequences. If your character is going to take offense, hold enmity against, try to ruin, whatever another PC because of something they just did or posed, you MUST OOCly inform them that their character has “done fucked up” and give them the chance to retcon, repose, whatever. You do not have to specify what the exact problem is, but you have to go “Hey. You done fucked up. You get one re-do.” After that, if they go “Nah, I am good,” or the try to make a new pose but still do the fucked up thing again, you get to ICly hammer them or at least try to hammer them for their shit.

@Pavel said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:

if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear

I think this point here is often a point of contention. What’s obvious to the person running the story isn’t always obvious to those of us playing the story, especially if it hasn’t been communicated accurately. Sure, some of the responsibility is on the players to ask follow up questions, but I’d really advocate for those telling the story to go that extra half a mile in making hazards and risks more explicit.

Well, my example was from OSR D&D. What I was meaning was cases like “I attack the orc with my longsword.” In that scenario, the player, unless they’re new to D&D, should know the roll and what the consequences of failure are (not hitting said orc). Basically, anything that isn’t a standardized action in the rules should be clarified between the GM and the player. For MU*s, pretty much every action is not standardized, so the GM should always be informing the player what failure looks like. I will note, though, there are cases where there is no GM but failure is still possible. In a L&L game, a PC might make a speech or whatever and staff reviews it later, makes them roll, and decides because they did a terrible job a mob has formed, and this decision takes place obviously after the player has already taken their action. I’m not sure how to address that.

EDIT: Drunken spelling and grammar. Then again, this is a drunken edit, so maybe the spelling and grammar were right the first time.

@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:

I think the issue is so often when the consequences come around those consequences are out of the player’s control. Which can be completely reasonable/logical! But they feel helpless and more easily feel slighted/pissed/unaccepting of the outcome. Especially if there is a hand behind the outcome such as a GM/Staff telling them what happened.

When bad results happen, I think you have to push it back on the player and let them make a choice. I was recently watching Critical Role’s new campaign and their use of their new system Daggerheart and I thought it was perfect for handling the scenario of a bad outcome/consequences in a MU*.

As an OSR GM, when my players tell me what action they want to take, if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear, I try to make it clear and confirm that they still want to take the action.

"Player: My character is going to jump the chasm to get to the other side.

Me: That’s going to be a d20 roll under strength with a -2 for they length of the jump. If you succeed, your character will be on the other side of the chasm. If you fail, your character will fall into the chasm and, while your character can’t determine the exact depth, it’s enough that there is a strong potential for their death. Do you wish to continue?"

GMs should treat action declarations more like hovering over the options in a Paradox Interactive strategy game story event. Tell the player what the odds of success and failure or what die their going roll, the difficulty number or whatever, and whatever bonuses or penalties they have. Tell them what success looks like (because what they’re attempting may not get them what they’re actually after), and tell them what failure looks like.

@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:

Also I want a Grimbright/Nobledark sci-fi/fantasy with mechs and lords and ladies and dragons.

Allow me to introduce you to Lancer. You’ll want the Dune-esque Karrakin Trade Baronies setting. Though, it’s mostly a D&D 4e style game, e.g. a miniatures wargame focused on tactics with very few mechanics for out of combat stuff.

@dvoraen said in World Tone / Feeling:

I never thought I’d see “sex worker” meaning “tax collector” in even a fictional government, but here we are.

Do…do I even want to know what it is they’re collecting as “taxes?” I suspect I would want to refuse any tax refunds.

@Tez said in World Tone / Feeling:

• Everyone loves to see their actions reflected in game-wide updates and announcements. Firan and Arx both featured that to greater or lesser degrees. It’s cooler still in my opinion to see an actual shift of culture or laws. I’ve been working on my long-dreamed generational game where the ability to shift an in-game culture is a mechanic, somewhat modeled off Crusader Kings.

@Pyrephox and I are both hankering for a city-state setting centered around the politicking of the various guilds, noble families, what have you. This sounds like it would work well with those mechanics.

• I like temporary room descriptions that can be updated on public spaces to reflect events that have happened, but sometimes people forget and it loses its impact. Still, I like that as an idea: a grid that updates to reflect actions people have taken.

I have recently taken up looking into the FutureMUD Engine, because I have found that I am more of an RPI guy than a MUSH guy. Anyways, in the engine Creator’s YouTube Video on room building, he talks about how the engine has overlays for zones that are basically different instances of the same zone. While people are playing in one, you can building in the other. Then when you want to switch which one is publicly accessible, it’s just a toggle. In the example he gives, he talks about one zone having an after a disaster overlays that they switched on to replace the normal zone to represent all of the damage down to the area by the disaster. Such a system seems like a great way to manage updates over time that reflect the effects of the PCs actions

@bear_necessities I am surprised you hadn’t encountered it before. It’s been a bit of meme in tabletop gaming since Brighthammer and Midhammer

The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.

EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.

@Pavel Norm!