Shadowrunner MMORPG Project Need Intersted Persons Options

[Ori0n]

In plenty of other games you can be resurrected by party members, OR you can lose a % of XP and start at a pre-chosen destination in the current zone.

Yeah it's like other games, but its a good way to do it I believe...

but you could also use your "karma" or whatnot to keep from death

[James McMurray]

I was thinking perhaps a Luck stat that would partially mimic Karma Pool / Edge. Have it apply to all rolls by adding x (depends on what mechanism is used for success tests). When you "die" you permanently burn luck to arrive in the hospital, and also lose cash to pay for your hospital bills. Luck can be raised via experience (see below).

One way to keep death from occuring frequently would be to have most things deal stun damage, presumably because of the armor you're wearing. Critical hits could deal normal damage, or perhaps that could be restricted to really high powered guns and spells. In either case though, when your stun meter is full (or stun hit points are gone) you fall unconscious. You wake up in the respawn section of whatever zone you're in.

For instance, if you're in the Renraku Arcology's mall (renamed of course) then you wake up in the security offices. Any illegal or offensive gear you have has been confiscated. You can talk to the gaurd on duty to get out. The easiest route would be to bribe him (modified by negotiation), but different levels of etiquette and con would open up different dialogue options to possibly get you out free. One interesting side quest might involve getting some dirt on the gaurd so whenever you're caught you can blackmail your way out for free.

Speaking of experience, we should definitely follow a level-less system where XP is spent as it's gained. It allows for more fluid advancement then the typical levelling up methods, and stays closer to SR.

Shadow: the relevant frequency of death depends on the PnP game's GM. If this is to be a MMORPG, PvP will be expected. PvP without death would turn a lot of people off on the game. And yeah, PvP in an SR game is a bad idea in my opinion, but to sell you sometimes have to cater to the masses. In an ideal world there would be a choice between PvP and non-PvP servers so everyone could be happy.

[JesterX]

Here is my idea about death:

I think that death can be resolved with a Doc Wagon contract...!

You can purchase Doc Wagon contracts to get a certain number of free resurrections and respawn at an hospital. Of course, depending on what type of contract you have (Standard, Gold, Platinum), You might have to pay a certain fee in extra.

If you don't have a Doc Wagon contract, you can maybe respawn in an hospital and have a big penalty to your karma.

What do you think about this?

[eralston]

I think handling death in with the "docWagon" paradigm would be pretty good. It would also be a good reason for some of the penalties imposed for dying in most MMOs

I don't quite believe I'm typing this, but...

I think we should seriously consider leaving Astral Space out of things as far as a traversable destination (so, leave it in, but Perception and Projection on the part of player characters should be evaluated based on the platform's ability to support it and the time/effort requirement of putting it in). I would be the first to say that an SR game NEEDS shadowrun, but if we, as amateurs, can back away from a potentially awful implementation problem by just excluding it form our universe for now, I'd be willing to say a Manapunk game doesn't NEED that part of shadowrun.

So, everyone posting here is going to message Ori0n and say what part of the project they would like to work on right?

[Laser]

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what you mean by including astral space without including perception or projection. Would it then just be something that is referred to?

Yeah, Docwagon contracts are a good idea. Make sure that they're available to starting players -- in MMOs player deaths often occur on a bathtub curve: a lot when they're new, a fairly steady amount in the middle, and more late in the game as they run out of ways to advance their character and seek to further advance their equipment by taking on bigger challenges. Inasmuch as Shadowrun/manapunk probably wouldn't have levels per se, there would be less ... hmm, "capability curve", I'd call it, to get over, but a similar trend would probably appear with regards to overall player experience.

[Shadow]

I think the Doc Wagon is a great way to handle the thematics of death. When you die though there should be a time penalty, not money or karma, just time that you can't play the character. Call it healing time. You are free to play another character, just not the one who died.

[Laser]

I'm not so sure about that. How much time are we talking about here? Most MMOs have some degree of player vs. player competition, and if the time limit is too long, the inevitable PKers and gankers will be really annoying.

[Dranem]

[Shadow]

[Smilin_Jack]

[James McMurray]

An MMORPG without PvP capabilities will not sell. A game without advancement will not sell. Gamers these days like to learn new stuff and use it on other gamers.

[Shadow]

Well thank gosh were not trying to make a game that sells. Lets make a game thats fun to play. The great thing about SR3 is that out of the box, starting character kick butt. I never really worry about advencement becasue it is the adventure that brings me back, not the need for more karma.

[Smilin_Jack]

[eralston]

"Astral Space", or some place full of living energy where spirits live parallel to our own, could be used to explain how our spirits (or whatever) and magic are able to manifest in the real world. For instance, "The Weave" in Forgotten Realms is easily likened to Astral Space except there is no access to it (D&D does confuse this analogy by having spells that cause astral projection-like states, so don't over analyze my attempted relation).

I think we should pull together a team of writers to figure out the universe. Anyone interested, please PM me with a blurb on your "direction" with the fiction and your experience writing.

Other than those members, everyone else can mince about the world. I have a couple starter questions:

1) Do we want to be on earth? We could be in pretty much any fantasy universe, just fast forward to ultra-computers and cyberlimbs

2) What is the role of "metahumans"? (will we have them, what will they be, etc)

[Lagomorph]

I'd be glad to help to this project, I've got 2 years C++. I'm a SDET by trade, so I can do dev work or testing work.

[Shadow]

I was speaking with a co-worker about this and I had some great ideas.


1. Character starting should be nearly as strong as a character who has been on for a year.

2. Starting Gear should be just as good as veteran gear. I.E. A Colt Manhunter purchased by a newbie is just as good as one purchased by a experienced player.

3. Monsters, NPC's, and the like shoudl have a uniform stat like they do in the SR books. No "level 60's". Some monsters will be tougher than others (just like it is).

4. You should be able to do anything you want. Walk down the street and shoot NPC in the head. Great. But there will be in-game consequences (the star shows up and carts you off to prison and executes you).

[eralston]

Yes, death as a penalty isn't nearly as good as prison. Though, I would always make it possible to break out of the prison if one just knew how, had enough cooperation from other PCs, and has gusto

I don't know if I can agree with the concept of extremely flat character advancement. I think it would be important to emphasize that in this game "power" isn't as important as "interaction". That has mostly stuff to do with how guns are amazingly equalizers than the concept of eliminating a level-driven system in favor of a skill-driven system.

I want an interaction-centric, skill-driven game where the biggest indicator of power level is "who you know, not what you know" and, naturally, what you have done.

[James McMurray]

[Shadow]

[eralston]

Any other opinions?

I would actually say that I was attempting to imply that other races could be added as long as they had distinct advantages. Perhaps we could tap the metavariants. The easiest technique would be races that excelled by vocation so players might concentrate their abilities (which is pretty much the only mechanical reason for races).

[Shadow]

I would like to see it as a tree. You make an elf, now you can play the elf sub types.

However, I think a limit should be put on how many are allowed. For instance, in Battlefront 2, only so many classes of the rarer characters are allowed. This helps and keeps people from all playing the jet pack guys.

Now say you have 200 players, and 150 make night elves, well thats just not realistic since night elves are the 1% of the 1%. So you would either need to allow limited Metavarients, or use them as rewards. I prefer the hard line and say limited.

The way to keep the first ten guys from making NE's and not letting anyone else play them would be that if you go so long without playing the character he becomes locked until such time as the server becomes balanced again.

[Laser]

[Shadow]

[Smilin_Jack]

[eralston]

We cannot eliminate advancement and if you do not get better with time we will not get any long-lived characters which means no long-lived players. You also won't eliminate the unbalancing associated with panther assault cannons, some weapons are just better than others. Taking such a lemma to its extreme: why have unique characters at all if it threatens game balance?

I must agree that PvP can be fun. Gankers certainly prey upon its open availability, so it being possible while just walking around certainly blows. Suppose you were on a run. One player could be hired to defend a target while one person is hired to eliminate it. That would be a totally legitimate (and highly fun IMO) PvP situation.

Controlling populations by limiting classes and races seems like a good idea, but much like eugenics in the real world, people will ultimately just find it appalling. Such as in the rocketman scenario, there is no guarentee that every player will get a chance to play every type if the types are given away first-come-first-serve. You might pull something off with changing servers based on population, but that also cuts out a big deal of community building associated with people having "home servers" for a group of friends.

One possibly workable solution would be to control the demand for types instead of the supply. If a server is overrun with elven mages, start stressing the jobs elven mages cannot accomplish.

An interesting supply-side solution would be instilling racism in the NPCs. For instance, in the real world bigotry crops up when a single minority is seen as growing in the face of the majority. If you are overrun with Elves all those human NPCs might be worred about the elves "takin' our jobs!"

That's a little hard to implement, because it involves kind of low-level content manipulation, but if it were built-in from the start it would be a hilarious occurence for NPCs to stage a riot against the PCs on a server to punish the players for glomming onto a type.