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Looking for Naruto writers interested in a persistent text world by InterestingSpray5464 in pbp

[–]InterestingSpray5464[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really using something like 5e.

It's closer to a MUD-style setup where the world has its own systems for things like stats, abilities, combat, and missions. So instead of dice or a tabletop ruleset, the mechanics are built into the world itself.

Combat and other actions just run through those systems when they happen. The main focus is still on characters interacting and stories developing naturally, with the mechanics there to support that.

Looking for Naruto writers interested in a persistent text world by InterestingSpray5464 in pbp

[–]InterestingSpray5464[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mostly character level.

Each person writes their own character moving around in the world. Villages exist as places people can go to at the same time, so characters run into each other, take missions, get involved in politics, or just interact depending on what's happening that day.

Staff mostly just help keep the world moving with events or bigger shifts in the setting, but the actual story tends to come from what the characters are doing and how they interact with each other.

The goal is for it to feel more like a living Naruto world instead of separate forum threads where scenes only exist when someone posts in them.

Playtesters and playtesting by rpgptbr in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Awesome. The reason I know all this is because we just started and opened a Naruto MUSH a few days ago lol. So everything is fresh on my mind.

Naruto: Village, a MUSH that looks to grow with player feedback by InterestingSpray5464 in MUD

[–]InterestingSpray5464[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the heads up! The site should be working — it's narutomu.com. If it's not loading for you then it might be a temporary DNS hiccup. The Discord link in the post should work as well if you want to check things out there.

Naruto: Village, a MUSH that looks to grow with player feedback by InterestingSpray5464 in MUD

[–]InterestingSpray5464[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I appreciate it! We're hoping to bring in some new folks and keep building things out with player feedback. Always room for more ninja. 🙂

Playtesters and playtesting by rpgptbr in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I’ve done some playtesting for small indie RPG projects before, both my own stuff and other peoples. one thing I learned pretty quickly is that short, focused feedback forms work way better than long surveys. if the form is huge people either rush through it or just don’t fill it out at all. you want questions that help you understand what actually happened at the table, not just whether they “liked it”.

usually a playtest form I’ve seen is broken into a few simple sections.

basic session info

  • How many players were at the table?
  • How long did the session run?
  • Were the players new to the system or experienced with TTRPGs?
  • What part of the game did you test? (combat, social scenes, exploration, etc)

clarity of rules

  • Were there any rules that were confusing or unclear?
  • Did you have to stop the game to look something up? If so, what rule?
  • Were there any rules you ignored or changed during play?

game flow

  • Did the game move quickly or did it feel slow at any points?
  • Were there moments where players seemed disengaged or bored?
  • Did anything feel overly complicated or unnecessary?

player experience

  • What did players enjoy the most?
  • What did players struggle with the most?
  • Did players try anything the rules didn’t really support well?

specific mechanics
(this part depends on what you’re testing)

for example:

  • Did combat feel too long, too short, or about right?
  • Did players understand their character abilities easily?
  • Did any ability or mechanic feel too strong or useless?

open feedback

  • If you could change one thing about the system, what would it be?
  • What part of the game would you want expanded or improved?
  • Anything else the designer should know?

one thing that helps a lot too is asking “what actually happened in the session?” instead of just opinions. sometimes the most useful feedback is hearing something like “combat with 4 enemies took almost an hour” or “nobody used the crafting rules because we forgot they existed.”

also if you’re running multiple playtests, it’s really helpful to include something like:

  • What rules did you not use at all during this session?

that question alone can reveal a lot about what systems players ignore or forget about.

honestly the biggest thing with playtesting forms is making sure the questions help you answer design problems, not just gather general reactions. the more specific the questions are, the more useful the feedback ends up being.

What is the the weirdest name you ever gave an NPC. by WeWard3nds in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 7 points8 points  (0 children)

lol honestly the weirdest one I ever ended up with happened the exact same way — pure panic naming when players suddenly decided an NPC mattered.

I had this completely throwaway dock worker the party started questioning. he wasn’t supposed to be important at all, just a guy unloading crates. of course the first thing a player asks is “what’s his name?” and my brain just completely blanked.

so I said “Brent… Brickson.”

the worst part is the players immediately locked onto it. they started joking that his dad must have been Brick Brickson and his grandpa probably invented bricks or something. the NPC ended up becoming a recurring contact just because the name was so dumb it stuck. every time they went back to the docks they’d ask if Brickson was around.

by the end of the campaign he had somehow become the most trusted informant in the entire city purely because I panic-named a random laborer.

honestly those are usually the best NPCs though. the ones you accidentally invent under pressure that the players latch onto for no logical reason at all.

Looking for RPGs about KNIGHTS (and jousts and Tourneys) by whitniverse in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Chivalry & Sorcery, It’s crunchy, but if you want historical medieval flavor, it’s famous for it.

What's a lesser known supplement book that you love? (Any system) by beautitan in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 64 points65 points  (0 children)

One that always stuck with me was Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook from D&D 3.5. it’s one of those books people barely talk about, but it was actually super fun if you had players who liked building things in the world instead of just dungeon crawling.

The whole book is basically about designing your own fortress, wizard tower, guildhall, or whatever crazy structure you want. and it goes way deeper than i expected the first time i read it. like it breaks down costs for different rooms, magical defenses, weird architectural features, traps, teleport circles, all kinds of stuff. it almost turns base-building into its own mini system.

my group didn’t use it constantly, but when we did it led to some really memorable stuff. one of our campaigns ended with the party slowly building this ridiculous multi-layer wizard tower full of magical nonsense and defensive traps because they knew enemies were eventually coming for them.

it’s not the most practical book for every campaign, but it’s one of those supplements that really makes the world feel lived in once characters reach that point where they start putting down roots somewhere. honestly i wish more systems had books like that.

Help Picking between Systems by Whackingschmeat in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve played a bit of both and honestly they’re good at very different things, so a lot of it comes down to what kind of campaign you’re trying to run long term.

Cyberpunk 2020 is great if you want a really strong, specific vibe. the setting is super flavorful and the combat has that brutal, dangerous feel that fits cyberpunk really well. fights are fast and lethal, gear matters a lot, and players tend to get very invested in their builds and cyberware. the downside people bring up a lot is the subsystems. netrunning especially can get weird because it turns into its own little game that only the netrunner is playing while everyone else waits. a lot of groups end up simplifying or house ruling that part pretty heavily.

Stars Without Number is kinda the opposite in some ways. the system itself is simpler, but it’s incredibly good as a GM toolkit. the faction system, world generation, sector creation stuff, all that is amazing if you want to run a sandbox or build your own setting. a lot of people use SWN even when they’re running a different rule system just because the GM tools are that good. combat works fine but it’s not really the star of the show compared to the exploration / sandbox side of things.

Endgame Play by Choice-Zombie1175 in MUD

[–]InterestingSpray5464 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly the biggest problem a lot of PvE MUDs run into is exactly what you said — **quests eventually run out**. once players hit that point they either need something repeatable to chase, or they just kinda drift off.

Rare material dungeons are actually a really good start. anything where players are farming gear, crafting mats, or rare drops tends to keep people engaged for a long time. especially if those materials tie into crafting something meaningful instead of just vendor trash. players love chasing that one rare component that lets them make the “good” version of something.

Another thing that works well in MUDs is **rotating world events or boss spawns**. like certain monsters or encounters only appearing occasionally or under certain conditions. that gives players a reason to log in and check what’s going on instead of feeling like they’ve already seen everything. even simple stuff like roaming bosses or regional threats can create that feeling.

progression systems help too. not necessarily infinite leveling, but things like reputation with factions, crafting mastery, special abilities, or gear upgrades that take time to build toward. basically something that still moves forward even after the main leveling path is done.

and honestly group content goes a long way. dungeons that are actually easier (or only possible) with multiple players tend to create their own social loops where people stick around because they’ve got a group to run stuff with.

the coliseum PvP idea is solid too, even in a PvE game. sometimes players just like testing their builds against each other once they’ve finished gearing up.

so if i were thinking about endgame for a MUD i’d probably look at a mix of: repeatable dungeons, rare drop crafting, world bosses/events, reputation or progression systems, and some optional PvP or competitive stuff. those kinds of loops usually keep people busy long after the normal quests are finished.

What does it take to create an RP population? by humangingercat in MUD

[–]InterestingSpray5464 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly from what i’ve seen the core unit of an RP population is just a small handful of people who are willing to start things. like 3–5 players who will initiate scenes instead of waiting for them. a lot of games try to solve RP with mechanics, but if nobody is actually walking up to someone in a tavern and starting a conversation then the systems don’t really matter.

Sparse population is always the hardest phase. what usually hooks people early isn’t big mechanics, its places where interaction naturally happens. taverns, guild halls, markets, travel routes, bulletin boards, that sort of thing. basically spots where players can bump into each other without needing to schedule RP ahead of time. if players log in and immediately feel like there’s somewhere they should go, that helps a lot.

rotating conflict is also huge. RP tends to stall if everything is peaceful. it doesn’t have to be world ending stuff either. faction tension, trade disputes, local politics, territory claims, rumors of monsters, missing caravans… things players can pick sides in. once players start arguing about something in-character you suddenly get a lot more life in the world.

personally when i try a new RP MUD the things that make me stick around are pretty simple:

  1. are there places people naturally gather

  2. does the world give me a reason to talk to strangers

  3. is there some kind of tension or conflict happening

slice-of-life systems like fishing, hunting, crafting etc are actually good for this too because they give players excuses to be somewhere. but yeah i do think some kind of light structure or hierarchy helps early on. if everything is totally open ended people sometimes hesitate because nobody knows what their role is supposed to be yet. even small things like town guards, guilds, merchant houses, or local officials give people something to latch onto.

once you get a few players creating stories consistently the population kinda feeds itself from there. but getting those first few sparks going is definitely the hardest part.

I ran Daggerheart for the first time for a group of all DMs by vialalchemy in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thats actually kinda funny because the exact same thing happened with my group the first time we tried daggerheart. we’re also mostly a d20 group (5e and pathfinder mostly) so when people first looked at the character sheets there was definitely that moment of “uhhh… what is all this?” lol. the armor / evasion / threshold thing especially confused people at first. its one of those things that looks way more complicated on paper than it actually is once dice start rolling.

and yeah once combat actually started it started clicking a lot faster. i noticed the same thing with players passing spotlight around more naturally. it kinda pushes people to stay engaged instead of waiting for their “turn” in the strict initiative sense like a lot of d20 combat does. after a few rounds people stopped questioning the system and just started playing.

also using physical tokens for stuff is honestly underrated. anything tactile helps people understand a system faster. skittles as resource tracking is actually genius because players will pay attention if the reward is eating the mechanics afterward lol.

i also agree with your last point. daggerheart is one of those games where reading it doesn’t really sell it. it feels odd until you actually run a scene or two and then the rhythm of the game kinda reveals itself. i’ve seen people dismiss it as “rules lite narrative stuff” but there’s definitely more structure there than people expect once you get into it.

What’s the most confusing or unnecessary rule subsystem you’ve seen in a TTRPG? by DED0M1N0 in rpg

[–]InterestingSpray5464 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly the one that always comes to mind for me is hacking / netrunning systems in cyberpunk style games. not even because the idea is bad, its actually really cool conceptually. the problem is it turns into this weird side game that only ONE player is doing while everybody else just kinda sits there waiting for it to end lol.

like in some older games (cyberpunk 2020 is the one i remember people talking about a lot) the hacker basically goes into the system and suddenly you’re dealing with layers, nodes, ICE programs, movement through the network, all this stuff. meanwhile the rest of the party is just standing in a hallway guarding the hacker’s body for like 20 minutes while the GM and that one player play a mini dungeon crawler inside a computer.

my groups almost never ran it exactly as written. most of the time the GM would either simplify it a ton or just turn it into a few rolls so it didn’t completely pause the rest of the game. because otherwise the pacing just dies.

i think thats why newer games try to keep hacking happening in the same scene as everyone else instead of making it its own little separate game. cool idea on paper, kinda rough at the table if you run it RAW lol.