This is the only AI roleplay I want to see.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1lxqbxa/i_am_actually_terrified/

@Muscle-Car said in Numetal/Retromux:

Lots of points of failure led to it but it was universally avoidable if any one of the balances had worked.

I feel like this sentence describes the world we’re living in.

@dvoraen said in Numetal/Retromux:

I couldn’t think of how to do an inverse to “Hog Pit.”

First you ban someone who replied to a do-not-interact request with “message received.” The rest just happens organically.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

I’m saying that they are dying because they are being run the way a small hand full of whiny forever-victims who instigate the problems they then complain about want.

What are these ghost town games you speak of?

What were these massive PvP games you miss?

Name them. No more generalities.

@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.

I love a well-designed grid! If you’ve got nostalgia for a grid, please feel free to be a tourist and walk around Silent Heaven for a day. There are roughly 45 rooms in the main RP hub, and they’ve acquired quite a history in 2 years.

I think it’s a better use of time to push for reining in the corporations, rather than dissuading the average joe twelvepack (the AI gives him more abs).

I don’t like AI PBs.

I don’t like PBs to begin with. I’d rather read your desc. But I especially don’t like AI PBs.

I tolerate them on the Silent Heaven server, but they go to a separate channel below the channel for human-made creative works.

In Silent Heaven, we have between 15 and 30 open scene requests at any given time. You go up to an NPC, say, “I want to talk to you about (thing I want to do).” That opens a scene request. It’s kind of like a job system, but it’s IC, so staff can pick one up and roll with it when the character is next around.

The order that I do them? Whichever I have the energy for.

There are no tokens, no queues, no priorities. Yes, it means some people will wait a while for their scenes, but it’s more important to not burn out Storytellers.

@Roadspike said in Player Ratios:

@Gashlycrumb The whole idea of share points might work for some games, but it feels like it is absolutely rife with the possibility of the perception of bias. Like, “X told me that it only cost them 3 share points to get spotlighted at a plot, but it cost me 5” or “how does Y always have so many share points?” or even just “I never get into a plot, even when I have share points, Staff must be manipulating event signups.”

Even if none of that is actually true, the perception can destroy trust in a game.

I don’t like these systems for this very reasoning. But I just now thought up a suggestion for games that do use these things. What if any spotlight cost half your points?

I don’t know how that would work in practice, but I suspect it would discourage absurd grinding of points. And over time, the spotlight-stealers would have to put in twice as much effort to not fall behind the little guys. Inevitably, though, the little guys would have their chance in the spotlight.

I’ve got a few examples!

First, for when players try to do roleplay that’s outside of what the game’s theme supports:

Right on the front page of the Silent Heaven website is a handful of things that can’t change about the town of Silent Heaven. One of them is, “Silent Heaven isn’t in any set location. Outside contact within Silent Heaven will never happen. For what it’s worth, consider the town to be on an entirely different plane of existence.”

This didn’t stop the playerbase from wanting their first major plot to be building a radio and attempting outside contact. I told them, “Hey, this will probably end in failure. Do you still want to go through with it?” And I love my players, because they went all-in on this plan. While they scavenged all the items to build a radio, I got to brainstorming what sort of effect this could leave on the town.

When the event began a couple weeks later, they had assembled the radio at the highest point they could find in the town. With all that effort, I rewarded them with someone speaking on the other end. Someone who seemed to know exactly who they were. Someone who said they’d send some friends to their location to collect their bodies. After they dealt with that fallout, and the hostile monsters coming their way, it soon became apparent that they summoned a demon that loves putting on radio shows. And that there was likely a radio station somewhere in town!

That event set a precedent that attempting to go against the unchangeable boundaries of what the game can support will have unintended (and fun) consequences.

However, when someone wants to do something that tests the boundaries of what I’m comfortable roleplaying, I’ve had to say, “Unfortunately, we don’t have support for that kind of roleplay.” Someone here taught me that line a couple years ago and I’d encourage everyone to have that line in your repertoire when your players are going very far in the wrong direction.

In the realm of smaller changes, last year, the PCs successfully banished the campy lust demon from the town. They then proceeded to vandalize and desecrate his den of opulence, which was situated across a river that characters could only reach via raft or kayak. Given that nobody was there to stop them, we gave them a free-for-all and updated the room descriptions afterwards to reflect their destruction. One character even stole a king-size bed, but the player roleplayed the mattress slipping off their raft and sinking into the turbulent waters. There was no reason to do this other than the player thought it would be fun and realistic. I love rewarding self-induced losses, so now there’s a king-size mattress in the description of an underwater room, complete with bedsheets and pillows, that any character who can swim can see.

It doesn’t take much to give a player a sense that their character matters in the world. If they can point to something in-game and say “I made that happen,” that makes most players happy.

What makes them unhappy is if you undo what they’ve done. If a well-enjoyed Big Bad Evil Guy is assuredly dead, it makes players feel like they don’t matter if her hand rises out of the rubble sometime later. Recently, someone performed a ritual on what remained of a BBEG, causing echoes of the past to be broadcast briefly. Some characters interpreted this as the return of the BBEG and got really miffed about how their efforts didn’t matter, to the point that I had to tell folks that that wasn’t what had happened, and that’s she’s absolutely dead dead.

I hope this helps!

@Trashcan said in AI Megathread:

What most people are expressing is the desire for transparency, to know if AI was used to create the content they are engaging with in the MU* space, and if there was more of that, I expect there would be less false accusations to go along with it.

There’s even a real-world example of this! That one Ares L&L game that used AI and was quickly called out for not disclosing it.

@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:

The kind of people who log in to a world of darkness game just to sit in a bar and make small talk are baffling to me.

Just go join a discord or a forum.

The same thing is true of people who hang out in bars just to hook up for TS. Why are you on a roleplay game with a complicated combat and stat system when you could just go to one of many games where you can literally be anything and bang anything you can imagine.

If they’re having fun and not harming anyone, is that a problem?

In Last One Standing and LA2043, I know it was because the lead storyteller burnt out. In those early months, you need to give your players lots of story opportunities, and actionable and tangible things to do when you’re not around. And you need to be there practically day in and day out.

Launching a game is the easy part.

@Faraday said in Why MUSH?:

@Jumpscare said in Why MUSH?:

Yeah, at least with Ares games, it takes 3 months for the story to be abandoned.

I kid, but I really have played so many Ares games that fizzle our within 3 months.

Sure, but I’ve played on so many PennMUSH games, TinyMUX games, etc. that fizzle out within 3 months too. For as long as the hobby has existed, the vast majority of MUs have never really taken flight. Ares just helps more at least get to the “open” phase.

That’s a good point! And I think Ares does a great job of it.

@Juniper said in Why MUSH?:

The trailing off without resolution is why I don’t RP on forums anymore. At least in a MUSH people don’t start and abandon a story a week.

Yeah, at least with Ares games, it takes 3 months for the story to be abandoned.

I kid, but I really have played so many Ares games that fizzle our within 3 months.

I think what draws me most to MUSHes is the amount of effort that goes into making the world. It feels like you’re playing in the world, instead of other methods of storytelling where you’re writing the world. It’s more rigid than a sandbox, but less rigid than a linear story-based video game.

I prefer roleplaying where what matters most is the interactions between characters, and MUSHes are right in that sweet spot.

I love writing, and MUSHes are my favorite medium.

I haven’t played anywhere since I started running Silent Heaven in June 2023. But maybe you’ve seen me before.

Last One Standing - Claire, whose plot to bomb their captors during a ceremonial performance was prevented because another PC damaged a book she was reading.

Arx - Lilia’s third player, who tried hard to hide her dark secret while teasing it around, and was told OOCly that people knew already.

This is a Glitch - Katlin, who was ready to leave a huffy negative review about how thoroughly glitchy the resort was.

The Free Zone - Prim, the doctor who got savagely eaten by zombies and was never the same after she was rescued.

Minor appearances - I was only in one or two scenes and I don’t remember my character name: Gray Harbor, Spirit Lake, Liberation, Sindome, Haven, Concordia, LA2043, and that one short-lived Canadian zombie apocalypse Ares game from 2023.

@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

@Jumpscare I get a Coup (the card game) vibe from this.

Halfway through writing it, I thought, “This is coming together a lot like Coup. But with more emphasis on roleplay.”

Here’s a light-crunchiness intrigue system for a MU game. There are five steps, which I’ll expound on at the end of this post.

1. Roleplay in AresMUSH scenes as normal, except you have the option to conduct a secret exchange with any character in the scene. If you both agree on an exchange, anyone in the scene can protect the secret via being clandestine or by standing guard.

2. Play as many scenes as you like!

3. Use your class’s special abilities throughout the week as desired. More on those later!

4. At the end of a week, conduct covert actions. Relish in excitement as secrets are revealed.

5. At the end of a month, spend influence on Royalty. Gasp at which Royalty survive and who gets the axe.

---

PREFACE

• There’s nothing in here regarding worldbuilding. You can invent your own Kingdom, all the House customs, Royalty naming conventions, etc. and layer it all on top of this system. This is only the crunch that gets things rolling and gives every player something to do.

• This system is untested and likely unbalanced. I came up with this in only a few hours. I have no idea how well it’d play out. But it comes with just enough moving parts that it’s easy enough to slip in balancing fixes as needed.

• Characters in higher positions aren’t meant to hold their positions forever. This allows for political shifts and eventual turnover. The lower you are on the hierarchy, the easier it is to get by.

• All scenes with secrets in them are public for everyone to view, except for the secret. Public scenes can be considered IC knowledge when read.

• Messenger scenes (AresMUSH text scenes) are secrets themselves!

Suggestions and questions are welcome! Please forgive me if I use the wrong term somewhere, haha.

---

CHARACTERS

Each character is a member of one of 5 different social classes. Some classes are separated into two or three designations: Independent, House, or Court.

Independent - An independent character holds no loyalty to any House, and therefore can make deals that benefit anyone with little risk. Conversely, without House support, your character does not receive any wealth each week.

House - A House character is loyal to a specific House. As a reward for their loyalty, they receive weekly wealth. In general, as part of a House, your character should be focused on supporting the other members of your House. Your character can take actions against someone in their own House, but every coup comes with a risk.

Court - A Court character is part of the Kingdom’s council, responsible for uncovering conspiracies and maintaining peace among the Houses. They’re a neutral party, or are supposed to be. Bribes are always a thing; it just takes the right character to accept them.

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CLASSES

Here are the 5 classes, ordered from lowest to highest.

Vassal - Independent only.

You are among the lowest class. Your home may be part of a House’s land, but you owe loyalty to nobody. You can pack up and move anywhere and be anywhere in a day’s time. You aren’t competing with anyone at the higher classes, but they’ll always come to you when they need something.

Special abilities:

Crafting - Roll to create materials based on the location of the scene you’re in. Can be used once per day, but also can be saved over time for a better roll. This can be done in a Vignette or part of a larger scene.

Escape Artist - You can’t be arrested.

Class Change - With enough wealth, you can buy your way into a modestly better life, moving into any other class except Royalty.

Merchant - Independent or House.

You’re the reason everyone else above you doesn’t have to worry about the minutiae of the world. You keep things moving so they don’t have to. It’s an ideal position for anyone who doesn’t want trouble.

Special abilities:

Manufacturing - Combine materials into salable items that the other classes want or need (to be determined). Each type of manufacturing needs its own production facility.

Construction - Use materials to redecorate, upgrade, and expand land (rooms).

House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, in addition to weekly wealth, you’ll have free use of the House’s specialty facilities.

Enforcer - Independent (Mercenary), House (Guard), or Court (Seneschal).

Secrets need muscle to protect them, and princesses need muscle to uncover those secrets. If you want a steady position that won’t be derailed by politics and you don’t mind getting a little dirty from time to time, an enforcer’s life is for you. If you don’t care to be dictated by anyone, you can work outside the constraints of Houses as a Mercenary. However, if you crave more dictation, you may act as a Seneschal for the Court.

Special abilities:

Lay of the Land - When infiltrating a physical secret, you bypass Stealth checks if nobody is assigned to defend it. If part of a House, this cannot be used on your own House.

Armory Access - If you spend your influence on a coup, it gains +1 influence.

House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, you will receive weekly wealth and your pick from the House’s arms. Additionally, guards have the responsibility of carrying out arrest attempts of colluders within your House.

Court Advantage - As a neutral party among competing houses, your goal is to sniff out conspiracies and bring to justice anyone who may cause unrest in the kingdom. You receive weekly wealth and some of the best tools to carry out your mission.

Diplomat - Independent (Messenger), House (Noble) or Court (Inquisitor).

Someone needs to run around and get everything done. If you love interacting with all levels of society, a diplomat is the perfect choice. Why should it matter if you read secret messages from time to time? You’re getting everything done for everyone, and growing your notoriety at the same time.

Special abilities:

Message Carrier - When infiltrating a messenger scene, you bypass Stealth checks if nobody was assigned to defend it. If part of a House, cannot be used on your own House.

Influence Trade - You may publicly publish secrets to gain 1 influence per secret.

House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, you will receive weekly wealth. However, your influence has restrictions – your influence cannot be used to sabotage Royalty in your House, or to support Royalty of another House. People know you, too – if you take part in a Conspiracy or Coup, your name will always be made public as a supporter, even if it fails.

Court Advantage - There’s nobody to hold you accountable for your actions except a Seneschal. Because of this, you’re typically expected to support your Seneschals.

Royalty - House only.

You’ve landed this seat; now all you’ve got to do is keep it. With an ever-increasing influence target to stay in power, you’re always one step away from being the target of the next coup.

Special abilities:

Bribery - You can secretly take wealth from any House to instantly have wealth available. This can be done in a Vignette or part of a larger scene.

Favors - You can grant up to 5 additional covert actions (below) to other characters, with a maximum of 2 additional actions to any one character.

Marriage - With the other character’s permission, you may promote anyone to Royalty of your House through a marriage with your character.

Above the Law - You can’t be arrested.

---

STATS

Each character has 12 stats, best organized in a grid, for their abilities to keep and find secrets. For example:

          Physical | Social | Messenger
Stealth      3          4         1
Search       2          3         1
Strength     1          3         2
Support      2          4         5

The columns are the type of secret:

• Physical is any secret that involves transfer of physical items. They can be in exchange for wealth, secrets, other physical items.
• Social is any secret that involves a physical transfer of only wealth and/or secrets.
• Messenger is any scene carried out through messengers (i.e. AresMUSH’s text scenes) and any secrets transferred that way.

The rows are actions that can be taken on a secret:

• Stealth is your ability to hide a secret. Everyone involved in a secret gets to roll, except those who choose to protect it.
• Search is your ability to uncover a hidden secret after all protections are undone.
• Strength is your ability to protect a secret, or force your way past any protections.
• Support is your ability to lend support towards any of the above, for a scene you weren’t involved in. Think of it like having resources to hire or command someone offscreen to help.

I envision character creation to be something simple, like assigning one 5, two 4s, three 3s, three 2s, and three 1s. Maybe a bonus for starting as a Vassal, such as changing one 1 to a 4.

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WEEKLY EVENT - COVERT ACTIONS (SPYING)

At the end of each week, you have X amount of covert actions, based on your class and any actions gifted to you by a Royalty’s Favors this week.

• Vassal: 2 covert actions
• Merchant: 1 covert action
• Enforcer: 2 covert actions
• Diplomat: 3 covert actions
• Royalty: 1 covert action

There are 3 actions you can take:

• Protect: Add defense to a secret. Roll Strength if you were in the scene, Support if not.
• Infiltrate: Remove defense from a secret. Roll Strength if you were in the scene, Support if not.
• Spy: Attempt to acquire a defenseless secret. Roll Search if you were in the scene, Support if not.

You may target any scene with a secret from the past 4 weeks with your covert actions. After 4 weeks, a secret can no longer be spied on. If you have multiple covert actions, they can all be used on the same scene, if you want.

Everyone has 2 days to submit their covert actions. After the deadline, all covert actions are resolved at the same time:

1. Protect actions are rolled and added to the defense value of each secret.
2. Infiltrate actions are rolled and subtracted from the defense value of each secret. (If the defense value was already 0 at the start of this step and you’re an Enforcer or Diplomat, check if “Lay of the Land” or “Message Carrier” let you skip the next step and you automatically acquire the secret.)
3. If the defense value of a secret is now 0, Spy actions are rolled on that secret. If your Spy roll meets or exceeds the Stealth score, you acquire the secret. Otherwise, you can reroll Spying in a future week to add to your previous roll.

Normally, covert actions aren’t revealed, though I imagine there can be items developed by Merchants that do all sorts of exciting effects to add twists to covert actions.

Any secret in a scene your character was in that’s successfully protected for two weeks nets your character +1 influence.

If you don’t submit your covert actions in time, you can hold them over until the next week. If they’re not used by then, they’re gone.

---

MONTHLY EVENT - USING INFLUENCE

At the end of each month (or 4-week period?), everyone has 4 days to spend their accrued influence on votes of support, acts of sabotage, or a conspiracy and coup. You may also purchase influence with your wealth, unless you’re a member of Royalty.

Each member of Royalty has a support goal they need to reach to hold their position. This number increases each month until it’s no longer sustainable. Votes of support are worth +1, and acts of sabotage are worth -1 when checking if the goal is reached.

If it’s reached, the member of Royalty keeps their position. If it isn’t, they’re deposed – stripped of their wealth, and sent to live as a Vassal.

A conspiracy and coup is a two-month action.

The first month is spent on organizing a Conspiracy against a member of Royalty. It requires at least 10 influence spent for a Conspiracy to be active. When this happens, the game is notified that there’s a Conspiracy developing against the targeted character. If the Conspiracy isn’t successful, nothing is announced, and all influence spent on the conspiracy is secretly refunded.

On the second month, influence is spent on pushing the Conspiracy to a Coup. The amount of influence spent on the Coup must be more than the amount of influence spent in support of the member of Royalty. If this number is reached, the coup is successful, the target is killed and the player gets to play out a death scene if desired. The voters of the Coup are kept a secret, and they can vote to promote a character to Royalty after the death scene.

If the Coup isn’t successful, however, the names of every character who voted for the Coup are revealed.

---

GUARD & SENESCHAL ACTION - ARREST

Each House has their own customs and goals, as well as opposing Royalty who may not have your character’s best interests in mind. It’s completely okay to break these rules IC to further your character’s goals or to attempt to ruin a Royalty’s day. When a Guard or Seneschal believe they have enough of a case against a character, they can attempt an arrest on that character.

When an arrest attempt is submitted, the targeted character can choose to go peacefully or make a run for it.

To make a run for it, the character abandons their wealth, then makes a plea to a specific House to be taken in. The Royalty of that House vote by the end of the week whether or not to take the character in. If a supermajority votes yes, the character becomes a member of that House at the same Class and is marked as “Wanted” by the previous House (if any) and cannot rejoin that House. Otherwise, the character is captured.

If going peacefully or captured, a Trial Scene happens where the arresting Guard or Seneschal presents their evidence. Another Guard or Seneschal is chosen to speak on the behalf of the accused. Both parties may reveal secrets that support their case.

After all evidence has been argued, the Jury may ask questions of both the accused and the accuser. In a Court Trial, the Jury is made up of Inquisitors who vote on whether the person under suspicion is guilty. In a House Trial, the Jury are the Royalty. If a supermajority is reached in favor of Guilty, the character is deposed – stripped of their wealth, and sent to live as a Vassal. Otherwise, the character is innocent and cannot be arrested for this matter again.

In a Court Trial, the arresting Seneschal gets +1 favor for a guilty verdict, and -1 favor for an innocent verdict. If their favor ever dips into the negatives, they’re deposed.

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ADDITIONAL MECHANICS

More mechanics can be built on top of this basic system, like Merchants focusing on land expansion and building projects to influence Royalty income, but the goal with this outline is to be as simple as possible to give a little crunch to the L&L MU formula.

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GAMEPLAY

With all of that out of the way, let’s summarize what we do with all of these game mechanics!

1. Roleplay a scene with other character(s) and decide whether or not to conduct a secret exchange with them. All characters in the scene decide whether to protect the secret via Stealth (being clandestine) or Strength (standing guard), or decline to protect it.

2. Play as many scenes as you wish throughout the week, but be sure to wrap up scenes with secret actions in them by the end of the week. You can open a continuation scene afterwards!

3. Use your class’s special abilities throughout the week as desired:

• Vassal: Craft resources. Upgrade to another class.
• Merchant: Manufacture items. Construct buildings.
• Enforcer: Make arrests. Speak at a Trial scene.
• Diplomat: Publish secrets. Vote at a Court Trial scene if you’re a Seneschal.
• Royalty: Take bribes. Distribute favors. Get married. Vote at a House Trial scene.

4. At the end of a week, conduct covert actions on any scene performed in that week, based on your available covert actions. Use items to cause special effects or boost your rolls. Relish in excitement as covert actions are resolved.

5. At the end of a month, spend influence to raise or lower the reputation of Royalty, or try to bloom a conspiracy into a coup. Gasp at which Royalty survive and who gets the axe.

And above all, don’t forget to enjoy playing your character!

That’s all! Please feel free to pick this system apart at your leisure.