Mafiascum.net

Yarrrr.

You're missing my point.

I mean like yes in general broad themes are good, and themes that can draw from multiple IPs let you have more diversity of characters (school was p great), but given that we've had like HP and GoT shit like Black Sails should be able to get 18-20 people, even if some people are wikiing for characters

On an aside, players should never have to search for characters on their own right. If some form of link is given that makes character searching easier, I doubt there will be a problem.

Or even treat it like a board game where the characters are cast already and everyone is assigned one. Type up a bio for each character. Maybe have a video clip or at least image of each.

In post 604, zoraster wrote:Or even treat it like a board game where the characters are cast already and everyone is assigned one. Type up a bio for each character. Maybe have a video clip or at least image of each.

This was a thing for MLS out of necessity. It worked well there because there were 20 players and 20 character options.

For a game like DBZ where there were hundreds of potential characters, I wouldn't like something like this. For a game like MLS where there are a set of things that have to be chosen, it's probably helpful

In post 602, BROseidon wrote:I mean like yes in general broad themes are good, and themes that can draw from multiple IPs let you have more diversity of characters (school was p great), but given that we've had like HP and GoT shit like Black Sails should be able to get 18-20 people, even if some people are wikiing for characters

I think the note here is general interest vs "can it be done" and it's more a question of "what is this thread used for"

I sort of envision the UGI thread to be about gauging if there's enough potential interest in a game, which is why people give feedback here like "no, don't"
But I can see how that would discourage modding, too, so I don't want this to be people pissing in each other's Cheerios, yknow

I view it more as building early hype + finding people willing to co-mod on a given theme.

Like we should encourage people to run games, and telling people "no ur theme sucks" isn't helpful. The only thing close to that I would condone is people saying "hey we've had a lot of themes similar to that recently maybe think about running it after some different themes are run too"

If anything, pushing people to mod either very broad themes that enable multiple IPs (School, Detectives/Cops that Klick just announced) or pushing them to mod things that aren't super popular (DBZ, Black Sails) is a way to encourage thematic diversity if thematic diversity is a stated "good" thing

I think that's definitely something that needs clarification, then.

My main concern is that people spin their wheels on a theme that has no support or traction from the community.
But right now, we have a shortage of mods rather than players, so it's sort of IMO worth saying "if you want to build it, build it" and crossing the "what if the theme sucks and has no interest" bridge whenever we come to it.

Honestly, not that hard to re-skin or re-theme a game if the theme itself winds up bombing.

I dunno that thematic diversity is a good thing.
I think thematic relevance/buy-in from the community is probably the most important.

But then again, this community played a game I modded based on flavors of ice cream, so like, I think people just like playing Survivor.

I think that thematic and mechanical diversity are both pretty important. Yes, there are a lot of people who either don't care about theme or enjoy using theme as a way of learning about new things, but there are also perhaps more people who would play games if we had some different themes to get them to try their first game

Are you say Pretty Super Vanilla wasn't the best theme ever? It was so kawaii!

We had 27 people in a game about neds declassified school survival guide i.think zor is right, people aren't exactly hard to get

Honestly to me the biggest thing with a theme: different looking characters.

Nexus I had so many problems with because everyone had a weird name and I couldn't keep track of who was who. MLS same problem.

In post 613, hiplop wrote:We had 27 people in a game about neds declassified school survival guide i.think zor is right, people aren't exactly hard to get

the characters where "people in school" in general. stretched pretty loosely

I think theme most definitely correlates with interest. NAH had a ridiculous amount of applicants for its time, and part of that seemed to be due to the ability to play as literally whatever you wanted. Some people are more inclined to play Survivor if they can play to a certain aesthetic.

Sure, but kind of the question isn't how many times over can a game fill but are there enough players to fill its slots well?

Have we ever had a large social game cancelled due to lack of applications?

In post 618, Xalxe wrote:Have we ever had a large social game cancelled due to lack of applications?

iirc TheBadOne tried to run Pokémon Battle 2 but there weren't enough applications. I think that was mainly due to the format of the game though, and then we retooled it to be pretty much all challenge-based and then we got enough applicants after that

Personally I think the only important thing is having characters that can be easily distinguished from each other. It confused me a lot playing DBZ how there were characters named Android 16 and Android 18, and I completely gave up on spectating MLS because the avatars were team logos with no distinguishable characteristics

Yeah, that's probably a good point, too. Having distinguished, different characters is important with a theme to make sure they're not all samey

I mean I thought MLS was fine because everyone was just a different city except for the two New York where one was an energy drink

I'm going to play new york mati in the next one

In post 614, hiplop wrote:Honestly to me the biggest thing with a theme: different looking characters.

Nexus I had so many problems with because everyone had a weird name and I couldn't keep track of who was who. MLS same problem.

In post 620, CuddlyCaucasian wrote:Personally I think the only important thing is having characters that can be easily distinguished from each other. It confused me a lot playing DBZ how there were characters named Android 16 and Android 18, and I completely gave up on spectating MLS because the avatars were team logos with no distinguishable characteristics

wow okay steal my post