Revolution!

[wiegeabo]

Please. You want to be Batman so bad, but you just can't admit it to yourself.

 

[Spike_x1]

Well played, wiegeabo. But rest assured, my next assault will not be as transparent.

 

[Byrd Man]

I think I can get into this whole posting a picture along with your convo thing.

 

[wiegeabo]

The difference is that Spike is just using the pictures hanging on his wall that he stares at as he falls asleep.

Now that I think about it, you're probably doing the same thing.

 

[Byrd Man]

I think you're on to something.

 

[wiegeabo]

That's a guy who's not hurting for self-confidence.

 

[Spike_x1]

Events continue to pass all according to plan...

 

[Carnage27]

Do we have any updates on this? Just curious.

 

[wiegeabo]

The process takes time:

First, MB has to ply the admins with copious amounts of liquor.

Then he has to finish having his way with all of them.

Then they have to regain consciousness.

Repeat 3 to 12 times before he remembers why he's doing all this.

 

[Carnage27]

I figured.

 

[Spike_x1]

Do not forget the camera. Blackmail material must be obtained.

 

[wiegeabo]

That's your job.

You're supposed to be looking in from the outside, taking pictures while MB puts the goat masks on them.

 

[Spike_x1]

I am... preoccupied...

 

[Batman]

Do we have any updates on this? Just curious.

The update is, well... literally nothing. My post hasn't been met with reaction whatsoever, even to swat me down on the idea. I'm gonna try bumping it and getting more attention, and failing that, simply PMing all of the admins to see what can be done.

On a more productive note, I plan to start cleaning up the forums within the week, moving all of what's inactive to archives and moving the rest to one section. Just to sort of try out the potential new format.

 

[Keyser Soze]

Wow, I just discovered this thread today. Read all 5 pages, and some really interesting discussion going on. One thing I'd like to add.

Does anyone watch Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares? I stopped a few seasons back, as it was getting repetitive. But when I watched, it seemd Gordon Ramsay would offer the same advice to failing restaurants week after week: don't spread yourself out too thin with a vast menu, but instead have a limited menu of things you can do well.

I think we can apply that to the RPGs. Instead of having like 2-3 games for Marvel and DC on the go at any one time, then a bunch of Misc RPGs, perhaps we should go back to basics, and limiit things right down to just the Marvel RPG and the DC RPG?

 

[Byrd Man]

That's something we've kicked around over the years, but we never really decide on it just because people are more partial to one RPG over another one.

Would we boil it down to just one DC RPG, one Marvel RPG, and then one Misc?

Both Marvel games are floundering, WoH is on its last leg before the relaunch. UDC and CAH are the two most active games right now. If we trim fat, I think those two are top dog and have to stay.

 

[trustyside-kick]

If we allow ourselves to treat both the DC and Marvel games with more flexibility (UDC and All-Star Lite-ish), such a transition would be easy for some people perhaps and it works better with the fact that DC for example relaunched recently.

I'd be fine with that for the sake of the future of these games. Then have the third game be CAH since it allows 100% creativity.

 

[Batman]

Neither UDC or WOH need to go anywhere. The former is doing incredibly well when you consider the state of the games, and there's a tremendous amount of interest in the latter's relaunch. The real problem lies with people not having any sense of self control when it comes to spreading themselves out, and that's always been the case. It was never a matter of there being too many games, because everyone ultimately has the choice of where to join and how many to join up with.

 

[Erin]

Just something to consider about the way the DC and Marvel games are run:

Right now players have to choose existing, published characters in the respective worlds to play in the RPGs, and that's cool, if that's what you're into, but it totally excludes players, like myself for example, who love the DC universe or the Marvel Universe, but who refuse to play published characters.

Now I know what you're thinking - give someone the okay go to create a character and they will just rip off whatever their favorite character is in the universe. And yes, there may be some of that. But isn't that what the approval process for characters is for in the first place? To tell the truth, I don't think that should be a tremendous concern anyway, because people who want to create their own characters to play in the universe will want to do exactly that - create their own characters. They're not interested in ripping off existing super heroes.

As for putting a two or three season cap on how long you can play an existing character, that's all well and good, but it essentially means that people looking to join the RPGs now end up with this overall message:
You cannot create a character of your own, so you have to pick an existing character from the world. Unfortunately, all the ones you have any interest in writing for are taken, so you can:
A. Wait around until we get to a new season (whenever that may be, we're not exactly sure ourselves) and hope that a character you want to play is free, OR
B. Find another RPG somewhere else on the Web that will either have an existing character free or allow you to create your own character that fits well into the world.


Do you see what I'm getting at here? B renders a much more immediate result, but unfortunately means that prospective players are finding somewhere else to go.

 

[wiegeabo]

Neither UDC or WOH need to go anywhere. The former is doing incredibly well when you consider the state of the games, and there's a tremendous amount of interest in the latter's relaunch. The real problem lies with people not having any sense of self control when it comes to spreading themselves out, and that's always been the case. It was never a matter of there being too many games, because everyone ultimately has the choice of where to join and how many to join up with.

And many people who do that, instead of just dropping out of a game or two when they know they're spread too thin, try and keep posting in everything. Then they burn out, and drop everything.

That's why I still support the rule that, after you're signed up to play a certain number of characters (like 5), GM's in games have the right to not accept any new applications from you.

Actually, I'd support only letting players have a certain number of characters, and that's it. But I don't want to deal with all the *****ing and moaning from those players who can actually manage 124 characters at the same time.

 

[trustyside-kick]

If it wasn't obvious, I'm letting the Ballad of Saints: A Fantasy RPG die. Looks like even when you have the entire story planned out, in this current RPG climate a game can't thrive. I'm not going to sweat about it anymore.

The argument that the number of games wasn't a problem was true over a year ago. Nowadays? That is definitely a factor. Hence why I approve the 3 games thing Keyser mentions. Just allow yourselves to be more loose with DC and Marvel to be an amalgam of UDC+DC and All-Star+MU and it can work. Heck, I'm probably the most anal person about cannon for the DCU (I keep myself up to date with crap I don't even read just to know the cannon) and even I can get behind it as one of the AGMs of the DC RPG.

I just want the games to thrive.

 

[trustyside-kick]

Take a look at our RPG Community compared to last year. There is about at least 6-8 people who don't really play anymore compared to the norm (not considering some of the Marvel people because those guys always seemed to ONLY play Marvel games I'm talking about people that ventured and played more than 1 game). With our much smaller community, those of us that are "left" or actually left as in active enough to play ANYTHING can't be playing so many games as it's been proven with the current state.

 

[Batman]

If it wasn't obvious, I'm letting the Ballad of Saints: A Fantasy RPG die. Looks like even when you have the entire story planned out, in this current RPG climate a game can't thrive. I'm not going to sweat about it anymore.

The argument that the number of games wasn't a problem was true over a year ago. Nowadays? That is definitely a factor. Hence why I approve the 3 games thing Keyser mentions. Just allow yourselves to be more loose with DC and Marvel to be an amalgam of UDC+DC and All-Star+MU and it can work. Heck, I'm probably the most anal person about cannon for the DCU (I keep myself up to date with crap I don't even read just to know the cannon) and even I can get behind it as one of the AGMs of the DC RPG.

I just want the games to thrive.

Letting the games thrive is one thing, but I'm not about to be so desperate as to become counter-productive and kill whatever's currently working. Because what's the point? What, to limit down the number of games for no reason other than to be all neat and tidy? I'm sorry, but no. All sense of fun will pretty much go out the window and it'll be the final nail in the coffin. So you can bet that's exactly what would happen if we "combine" WOH and UDC and ASM with 616. They'll lose their own identities as games and concepts and no one will want to play in something as convulted and sloppily thrown-together as that. Not to mention that you have the issue of clashing continuity, ideologies between people running the games, people playing the characters... honestly, such a mess that limiting the games to three would create is exactly the type of thing that we need to avoid, not champion.

Besides, we still have the main issue of a lack of newcomers. How exactly are we supposed to attract new players if we suddenly just do away with any sense of variety? One player in the forums, for instance, gets to be Superman. One player gets to be Spider-Man. Batman, Captain America, ect, ect, ect. It's a complete turnoff when you consider that over the years, we've been getting different players in each of the newer games left and right because of that variety, because of the chance of multiple slots for such big characters in universes that vary. To do away with that is regression for the sake of experimentation, and that would be the true death of the games. After all, one of the biggest problems that we've faced as a community is an overall attitude of practicality versus entertainment, or more of a serious-driven mindset versus just being a group of people that want to have fun with these games. What you're describing reads more like a reinforcement of the former than the latter.

 

[trustyside-kick]

You entirely misunderstood what I meant. We would treat DC and Marvel more like their counterparts should the application of a new player arise that desires to do so. It would be our own continuity stemming off of the two companies current universes but with some of that flexibility from UDC and All-Star (though this is easier to do with DC since they just rebooted than Marvel) but it is just an idea. Not saying it is any prettier with this further explanation but this is a "lesser evil" compared to what you implied I was saying.

I wasn't saying just put the current UDC cannon with DC and with the Marvel games together. The easiest with Soze's idea is to have just a DC and Marvel RPG with 100% new cannon then and only those 2, and then the CAH RPG for 100% user created content.

Each game is at like what...6-9 people playing in them at the moment? With some games those players playing sometimes 2 or even 3 characters that make up a so called "big roster". At least half of the people who have weighed in in this thread do not even actively or currently play the games right now. I'm being realistic: our RPG community is small as heck. Some of the small group only plays in 1 or 2 RPGs to begin with and there are some who play in almost all or all the RPGs (like 2 people). For people that actually play right now the community is practically non-existent. Again, as my shorter post above mentions the # of games is relevant more than before with the current amount of actual players.

 

[Carnage27]

While I love the idea of only having one game in Marvel and DC, personally I can't imagine the RPGs without some sort of One Universe game.

Maybe that's because it's the game that got me into the RPGs, but I think it can easily be one of the most dynamic and interesting if supported.