Posts made by Reason

@Kumakun said in Is it Cyberpunk enough?:

This question was raised on MuHaven, and I thought I’d continue it here: If Pondsmith’s masterwork Cyberpunk ruleset is too chunky to turn into MUSH - what other rules do justice to the tropes we all love about what it means to play cyberpunk?

I don’t want to detract from a discussion on alternative CP systems – that’s a topic I’m fairly interested in understanding folks perspective on, but that said… I don’t think the CP ruleset is too chunky to turn into a MUSH.

There’s nothing too tricky there – the sheet code isn’t really that particularly complex, and the dice code would just need to do an X + Y look-up against the sheet, then optionally add a modifier.

The hardest part would have been all the gear, except there’s a google doc floating around somewhere (not more than a google search or two away, think I came across it on reddit originally) that has everything all nicely formatted into a table that you could just download and treat like a little gear DB.

-r

@Pavel said in CHROME THE FUCK UP! Cyberpunk-edgerunners:

@Reason said in CHROME THE FUCK UP! Cyberpunk-edgerunners:

they’re really, really, really not good and given how iconic netrunning is for the genre, that realization really took some wind out of my sails.

From what I recall from reading about the Red period, the net was basically obliterated. So it makes sense that netrunning would take a back seat.

Sure. My take away was just that it was less that netrunning takes a back seat (which is fine) and more that the way the replacement net is handled is mechanically ugly and thematically silly.

-r

@sixregrets said in [CHROME THE FUCK UP!

@Reason I get the hesitation, but in a time when your SF options in MU* Ares/Evennia-land are essentially Firefly or Pern, I really think a proper hard SF game could do well. Or at least I would hope so.

Possible! It’s a genre with a lot of recommend, and a lot of the dynamics of CP Red are unique, compelling, and refreshing – there’s a subtle post-apocalyptic feel that’s a departure from our classic 1980s cyberpunk genre.

It was just hard to motivate myself to work on building the game after staring at the netrunning rules – they’re really, really, really not good and given how iconic netrunning is for the genre, that realization really took some wind out of my sails.

-r

@Wizz said in CHROME THE FUCK UP! Cyberpunk-edgerunners:

I’ve powered through about half of it in a night, it has been so good to me. The soundtrack, the stylized action sequences, the trippy portrayal of cyberpsychosis, it is just…firing on all cylinders and sooooo much better than I expected.

The one downside is that it makes me want a pure cyberpunk MU* so bad that it makes me PHYSICALLY ANGRY AAAAAHHHH

I had the skeleton of CP Red Chargen built for an Evennia game but was just so utterly depressed by how netrunning was handled that I abandoned the effort.

I think I had gotten as far as the ability to build everything but a gear inventory, with a fully integrated +dice system. I should scour the interwebz and see if someone’s written reasonable houserules for netrunning.

-r

@shit-piss-love said in How long should characters last?:

I love this topic so much, because I have learned over the years that I seem to be on one extreme of the spectrum for how one enjoys PC play.

…

I strongly suspect that I love this pattern because I’ve been the Forever GM since the 90s. Playing a character, for me, is less about the story I am experiencing and more about being the hand behind experiences that others enjoy. I also really like being a Conflict-driver because there is truly no one a character is closer to than the people they are at odds with. It’s a kind of intimacy that, done in a positive and collaborative fashion, is unique to the medium.

Forgive the follow-on to thread necromancy, but I love this response. I’m at least a decade removed from a MU* career, but share similar instincts and hadn’t fully internalized the “Forever-GM” aspect as a possible root cause.

This is one of the reasons I prefer games that have generous character roll-over policies that are tied to players vs. characters.

-r

@MisterBoring Interesting and thought provoking – you seem to have given this more than some passing thought.

Either allowing fraction rewards, or multiplying the required XP for an advance by some value (Perhaps a multiple of the current tier?) were other thoughts that crossed my mind.

Have there been any MU* attempts at Numenera already? I kind of live under a rock with respect to all things MU*, so forgive my ignorance.

-r

@MisterBoring You’ve definitely given it more thought than I have!

All of those options could be viable.

If there’s a way to set up the system so a player doesn’t become dependent on another player without first having an opportunity to make sure they can gel together, that’s likely ideal.

…meanwhile… How compatible does that XP system look with a MU*? Looks like it’s about 100 XP or so to take a character from chargen to its maximum? Unless I’m miscalculating? Might need an overhaul to fit into the typical character lifespan of a MU* along w/ some incentives to promote character rollover.

-r

@MisterBoring It’d probably need to be something incentivizing but not overly heavy-handed.

Perhaps that before the advantages of a specific Rank can be conveyed, some milestone of thematic criteria is necessary to establish? Something with sufficient structure to give characters a nudge, without creating an unreasonable burden.

As an aside, I’ve often been a fan of low-friction CharGen systems where players don’t languish for days in the “Background Approval” queue, and Staff members are subjected to pages and pages of… well, you know. So maybe a replacement for a traditional background approval process is that sometime between game-entry and a major milestone advancement, some story beats have been negotiated between staff/player.

I don’t know – I’m just thinking out loud. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions, @MisterBoring ?

-r

@IoleRae Another thought could be to gate character advancement on establishing, rather than starting with (edit for clarity: starting the game with), one or more of the connections articulated.

Requires less upfront coordination during character generation to streamline the process, but then incentivizes interesting roleplay.

-r

@IoleRae said in Numenera?:

@Reason

Removing or changing that changes the best things about the system, though I think it could be carefully done.

Yep – that looked like the one area that would need a little nip/tuck.

I’ve found (but could be wrong and everyone’s individual experience may vary!) that on a MU*, some kind of Group/Organizational memberships out the gate of chargen can help foster (what I’m guessing would be) similar interconnectiveness and relationship dynamics.

But cool – so, sounds like you enjoy the system. What have you liked about it the most as a player / GM?

-r

Just stumbled onto Numenera. Looks pretty streamlined + clean, setting looks interesting. Doesn’t look like it’d be that hard to code at first glance, either.

I didn’t see any MU*s using the system when I took a glance – anyone have experience w/ it?

-r

@IoleRae

Oh! Built right into this site. How awesome. Cool, thank you.

Every once in a while I kid myself that I’m going to fire up a character on a MU* again, so having access to a MU* list is part of flirting with that fantasy, hehehe.

Thank you.

-r

Is there a site around these days that keeps an updated list of online MU*s?

-r

@Meg Interesting. Useful background, thank you. Sorry you all had to go through this experience.

-r

I want to apologize for the following question, but in my defense I live under a rock and only lurk to periodically lie to myself about the likelihood of playing on a MU or building one.

That said… what’s the tl;dr of all of this? As far as I can piece together, a community revolt of some sort occurred – based on the perception of unfair bannings? Is that it?

-r