@Hobbie That maybe so, but what is a “sizeable population” and why is that our default metric for success? I’d much rather play on a game with two dozen committed, skilled writers who are enjoying themselves with an event every other week than a high-octane game of five hundred people all trying to compete in who can come up with the most confusing name for their genitals.

@KarmaBum The same thing we RP every night! Sex and bar-related things!

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:

How do you provide an experience for 60 people that is so good at the beginning that it will hook some amount of players even after everyone who came to check out the new hotness has gone on to the next hotness?

You don’t. You provide the experience you can, and that’ll either appeal or it won’t. Losing a vast swathe of players is going to sting, losing a vast swathe of players while you’re burnt out and struggling is going to sting while you’re burning.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

What’s the alternative though?

The only one I can really think of is to invite people specifically, rather than allow for general admission.

It’s standard New Hotness. We see it with TV, we see it with video games, we see it with basically all forms of media in some fashion. It’s a tale as old as time. You’re not going to appeal to 100% of people, but 95% of people will want to try the new hotness. After a bit, the ones who don’t like it will leave. It’s not really a mystery.

I already know how to MUSH. From the technical (using commands and such) to the cultural. I don’t have the time or interest in learning a new way of doing things in an alien culture.

Heartthrob actor Richard Chamberlain, star of The Thorn Birds, dies aged 90

‘End of an era’: John Hemingway, last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, dies

@MisterBoring said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

Using the previous example, if a group of PCs find out about the zombie coyotes and are informed they will endanger the tavern that they prefer for all of their RP, but they still take no actions, then when the zombie coyotes overrun and destroy the tavern they do the majority of your RP at, they’re not allowed to complain that the results aren’t agreeable.

Without being able to dive into the nuance of a real situation, in this instance I can understand the reaction of the PCs here – sensible or not. If they’re not interested in your plot, mayhap you should have your plot impact something/someone else.

@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.

Agreed. I think, like in @Ominous’ original point, people like the King, the Duke of Westmorland, or the Grandpoobah de Doink should be NPCs, with the PCs being the lackeys. Either lower nobility or commoners.

In a WWII game, for instance, one would presumably want to be a Ranger or a Tanker or a Spitfire pilot, not King George VI or General Eisenhower.

@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions.

Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?

NPCs are for doing the boring stuff, like paying taxes and being poor, not the exciting stuff like fighting and feasting.

Britain’s oldest performing drag queen, Maisie Trollette, has passed away aged 91

A bit of a niche one, but anyone with a toe in the British queer community has likely heard the name.

@Floof said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

I have no idea how it’d work but I’ve always kind of wanted a game inspired by Ark: Survival Evolved/Ascended

If you want dinosaurs, go play a WoD game.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I don’t think the characters in Pride and Prejudice are nobility

@Gashlycrumb said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

And L&L is probably among the easiest themes to run.

In my experience, L&L is more like the icing on the cake. Arx being (in a very, very, very reductionist view) L&L & Magic & Elves. L&L is set dressing for the so-called real game.

Whenever someone mentions The Magicians I get it confused with The Librarian(s) and I feel the urge to watch those movies (and the subsequent TV series) and then make a game out of it. Somehow.

@Prototart said in WoD/CofD/Supernatural Games, One Splat or Many?:

all super-goths, all the time

With the occasional trenchcoat-wearing, samurai-sword-carrying genre-savvy wanker.

@Gashlycrumb Oh absolutely, we’re not really disagreeing about anything substantial. Staff shouldn’t be treated as martyrs for deigning to volunteer their time, but should be politely respected and thanked a little, they should be held to the same standard as anyone making a promise of commitment outside of exigent circumstances, and if code staff they should probably just be left alone to ensure they don’t make something weird out of boredom.

ETA: For the record, staffing a WoD MU is worse than working a trauma helpline.

@Gashlycrumb said in WoD/CofD/Supernatural Games, One Splat or Many?:

Hobby. Game.

Ah, I see. Where you’re making the distinction is not where I thought.

I, also, don’t think that it’s a distinction worth making. It’s a hobby-game-fun-thing, sure, but it’s unpaid mental and/or emotional labour in service of people who aren’t me. Thus, volunteer work. Much like being a sports person and being an air traffic controller are both work. One is fun (hopefully) and ultimately frivolous where the other is neither of those things, they’re both still work.

@Gashlycrumb said in WoD/CofD/Supernatural Games, One Splat or Many?:

It’s not really untrue but it’s the wrong framework, I thinks.

That depends entirely on how one typically views “volunteering their time for the community.”

MU staffing is not like the volunteering their time of someone volunteering to pick up trash from the sidewalk, it’s more like my volunteer gig working the trauma helpline. It’s very nice that I’m taking time out of my schedule to help, but if I bail without telling anyone, people are rightfully annoyed because there needs to be someone available during the period I said I could be there. And if I do a piss-poor job, people are going to be negatively impacted.

It’s a community service, it wouldn’t exist without unpaid people doing hard work, but it’s also a job. That, on a much less drastic scale, is MU staffing.