@Roz There’s also the idea of a setting that focuses on children as the main character. That can be acceptable as long as the content isn’t horrible. Examples would be things like Kids on Bikes or Tales from the Loop. Both focus on kids as PCs, but in both cases they’re very Goonies / Stranger Things adjacent, so the worst thing that happens to the kids is minor injuries or getting chased by a robot bent on rewriting history.

I wish I had time for a game right now, as I’m craving Shadowrun something fierce, but with work and school being crazy, I barely have time for the game I do have a character on. And I definitely love playing to mechanically weirder builds (like those weird niche riggers who rig infrastructure rather than drones & vehicles).

For me, it’s safer to just avoid using Children as NPCs / PCs in a MU because it seems to always attract really crusty people before too long, and it’s just better to avoid that. Mentioning them in passing without them being present in a scene is fine, but them actively being a part of the ongoing scene / storyline is not (for me). Generic Example: A character has a photo of his kids from their first marriage on their desk, but doesn’t ever interact with them because the ex got full custody with no visitation in the divorce. The character might mention missing his kids in passing in conversation, but at no point do the children appear in the narrative.

@Yam said:

until there is nothing but LLMs RPing with LLMs

My dark side wants to build a fully Cross-Sphere World of Darkness MU where all of the PCs and NPCs are driven by LLMs with zero human input, and the logs are uploaded to the wiki every day.

@dvoraen

This is my go to ugly cry gif.

Peter Cullen, Voice of Optimus Prime

Tim Curry, absolute bloody legend.

@dvoraen Dayman?

@Gashlycrumb Most of the methods I’ve seen used to success were all OOC transparency techniques. Players would have OOC conversations prior to conflict scenes between their characters to coordinate the conflict. It was sort of like pro wrestling in that the scene would be somewhat planned out prior to it starting, but the ultimate end result was left up to the dice (or other mechanics depending on the actual system being used). In some cases, the OOC conversation led to one player deciding that this was definitely their character’s loss, and the entire thing was somewhat pre-planned. Also, in all cases, the end of the session included a decompression exercise so that everybody could properly deal with whatever bleed they might have.

One of the biggest first steps a game can take toward a more healthy CVC environment is to stop calling it PVP. PVP is for Rainbow Six Siege or League of Legends. CVC is one avenue where roleplay meets conflict. CVE is another (though, as an IT professional, referring to PVE as CVE causes me to double take because CVE is a special IT term). I only call it PVP if the story of the characters doesn’t matter at all.

@Gashlycrumb said:

It’s not uncommon to meet people who say they love PvP. I don’t think I’ve seen them making characters who are in opposition to their PvP loving friends’ characters so they can play that out, but I would presume that it happens on games that are more PvP-friendly than ones I’ve been playing.

Yeah. Most of the games I’ve seen that have been CvC friendly and succeed at it have built up a lot of OOC tools and methods to make that work. I have yet to see the OOC techniques and tools for that really catch on in the MU hobby, but I have seen it work in other online RP formats and in live play (the strongest examples of this were LARPs where workshops and care were given to make sure the players understand that their characters are in conflict where as the players are not).

To add to the PVP conversation: I’ve met more than a few players in online RP situations (forums, MUs, and similar) who prefer PVP because they aren’t getting the kind of villain / conflict they are looking for from the PVE elements (be it stuff they run themselves or stuff run by other players / staff). In one particular case they felt weirdly selfish in trying to participate in the PVE conflict of the week.

All this talk about connections between Arx 1 and Arx 2 makes me wonder if an archaeologist type character would work in Arx 2.

@Faraday said:

And yeah, those prices seem crazy, but keep in mind that with AOL at the time you were also paying $3-4/hour just to check your email and access early internet forums, on top of whatever you were paying your phone company.

Looking through my archive of old CDROMs, I can also confirm from a few AOL CDs I kept for my collection that AOL had an unlimited plan as well that was $20 a month.

Yep. Main character syndrome all the way.

@Apos That’s cool. Are there going to be parts of the Arx 2 backstory that will cause devout Arx 1 players to squee?

@Apos said:

It’s canonically the same game world, if warped by the passage of ages and catastrophic events, though I am trying to write it so it should not require any knowledge of Arx 1.

Do the actions of any of the PCs in Arx 1 directly connect to said catastrophic events?

@Roadspike Agreed. In my experience, I’ve witnessed plenty of people get competitive over who gets to resolve the big plots and stuff, and get just as toxic as direct PVP can get. Some people live in a permanent state of “If I’m not winning, I’m not having fun, and if I’m not having fun, nobody else can.”

@Apos I’m gonna ask a juicy question:

What’s the biggest secret in the original Arx run that nobody uncovered?

Reggie Bannister has finally gone between the poles for good. (Really bad Phantasm reference.)

@Thionoxial said:

Is there anything that CAN be done so mushing is remembered as ‘having been a thing’ in a century?

If nothing else, we can upload our dead wikis and game sites to electronic archives, like archive.org.