So you're a message gamer, maybe a player, maybe a GM, maybe both. There's a constant thoroughfare of message games on DreamLyrics but is there a genre of game that you're missing? A message game that you want but don't know if anyone else does and never thought to ask?

We asked this question back in Q2 2010 and now here we are in Q4.

http://www.dreamlyrics.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=406369#Post406369

The clear demand for Horror message games in Q2 was precipitated by the complete lack of Horror games on the board at that time. We start Q4 with 4 Horror games in play, so it's just possible the survey did its job.

It will be interesting to see how your appetites have changed. For example, there was equal demand for Supers and Fantasy games, yet Supers currently stands at 5 games and Fantasy at 12 (8 of which are D&D).

Tell us what genre of message game you'd like to see more of on DreamLyrics, and if you have a specific game, tell us in a reply.

Well, I suppose I could just say either "BLK" or "Blackpowder", to give you a reminder. A couple of historical games like that one would be wonderful.

And I may be one of the few who even recalls URC: United Royal Court, from the old rp forums on Compuserve. But that was also an interesting game with some great characters and plots. It also moved very quickly, since it combined both message threads and online live rp.

Oh my, United Royal Court. You're not the only one: Heh, I still have all the details for Fortesque and Earl (later Duke) Eliott, even a few game logs, tucked away in my archives. You had the Bronduskan principality of Rouen, if I recall.

I would love another courtly intrigue game. At times the old URC descended into out of character drama, which was unfortunate. I even ran a couple on here, such as Court in the Act a few years back. Art ran a Babylon 5-style interstellar intrigue variant that was great whilst it lasted as well.

So yes. Other, namely courtly intrigue.

I voted Espionage, for one reason: I am trying to lure Don into running the Burn Notice game we discussed some time ago. I want to play Fiona *a lot* <g>.

It would take a talented Michael, and be limited to 4 PCs, I imagine (Sam, Jesse, Fiona and Michael, since his Mom and Barry don't get enough face time to warrant PC's). Lots of local action options with a running "who burned me" subtext to deal with.

If it weren't for this personal issue, I believe I would vote post-holocaust, because you can handle any number of players and keep them involved, and there are all sorts of action options from recon, fighting, looking for leftover tech stuff, sheer survival, and so forth. Hey, you could run The Postman <g>.

Nicki

Hmm, yes I think I agree with Doretta, not about BLK per se but about historical games. Historical settings can be quite fascinating to GM and play, and I've found removing the element of fantasy to be surprisingly liberating.

While I think I'll vote for Other, my second vote would have been for Science-fiction of the space opera variety. Star Wars maybe.

Oh aye, Nicki Jett. Sorry for cutting off the discussion in the Q2 topic! The poll in that topic was broken by the server migration anyway.

I think VtM's tendency to devolve into a late-night soap opera is caused by the GMing demands TheDarkJedi mentioned.

For a message game's story to go anywhere, it has to be driven by the GM or it will meander, inevitably. With a small group of players you can perhaps run a VtM message game along more conventional, D&D-style lines but you won't be getting the most out of the VtM setting imho.

A mechanic that allows players to take-over for the GM on an ad hoc basis, distributing the workload, would make a VtM message game more viable long-term.

Probably not just VtM either. Many message games fold because they become unmanageable for the GM.

COurtly intruige is good.

And oh my yes, URC had some. . .OOC politics. . .

Of course, some of these categories can be combined: Political intrigue can mix with many of the other categories.

Absolutely, Art in the Blood. I said last time that I'd generally consider Espionage as a subgenre of War or Crime, but I guess they can be a subgenre of Espionage too!

I would say that political intrigue and espionage can go well together.

We have a strong showing for Others so far, but I'm not certain what others they are. Doretta and me voted for Others (Historical), what are the other two votes for?

And hey, make sure all your players/GMs vote here too. Give 'em a nudge or for us, eh.

I'd have thought 'Other, namely courtly intrigue' was clear enough.

Time to dust off Houses of the Blooded in that case

Actually, a Historical game might be nice. As would a non-D&D Fantasy game set in a non-D&D style fantasy world.

Yes, my Other vote was for Historical games, as well as a courtly intrigue game (system-less, of course). <g>

OTHER - courtly intrigue agreed.
interestingly enough i was trying to get an Amber-like game going, based on this theme, but rough going. Maybe i'll try again in a few months

i suppose political/historical/courtly/not-so-courtly espionage/intrigue would about cover it for me.
how about an elizabethean one? or something set in the Italian renaissance?

Sounds like Castle Falkenstein would fit the bill quite nicely.

It would be for someone who doesn't have muck in their eyes. Cheers.

To meet the demand for historical courtly intrigue, I think a GM would be wisest not to muddy the waters with another genre. That's possibly why Drakwn's Amber teaser didn't take-off, or even Nicki Jett's Patient Zero.

For example, there may have appeared to be demand for horror and espionage games, but not necessarily horror espionage games.

So perhaps Castle Falkenstein and Houses of Blooded's fantasy elements would put players off, I don't know.

I can definitely catch Silk's drift about non-D&D fantasy, I think there's always a demand for that, just as there's always a demand for D&D fantasy.

I think a game of Falkenstein would be a great for courtly intrigue.

For the record, I was interested in Drakwn's game but two things stopped me applying
- bad timing, busy RL period & just enrolled in a new game about to start (that has precedence)
- Game concept wasn't clear enough for me to imagine it. Like Amber, read the original series a number of times but not much player experience

hmmm. i'll be happy to put a clearer set of teasers up. but i hear what nemarsde is saying about too much going on. Perhaps I'll try reformulating it to come up with a concept which is clearer, and not attached to a specific genre...

or someone else can start a game for me to play in :O)

or both :O)

Aww, Drakwn, don't give up on that game. Those of us who have nibbled really like the concept as is.

Not going to give it up, might table it for a bit.

How do people feel about Fantasy/Historical/Intrigue as a mix?

standard fantasy races in historical framework, mildly steampunk but without the punk?

:O)

URC had incredible potential, but it was greatly hampered not only by the OOC drama, but by co-GMs who in many cases hadn't really agreed to work together, who favoured their GMPCs and their pet players too much, and who didn't have clearly defined roles at all (and lest anyone accuse me of hypocrisy, I'm including myself in all of those accusations ;)).

The setting, though... that was the part I truly loved. It was the gaming equivalent of a Guy Gavriel Kay book. I don't know if anyone here has read the likes of The Lions of al-Rassan, The Sarantine Mosaic or Under Heaven, but if you haven't, you should. It's our history disguised as a fantasy world, with all the freedom that entails, and infused with the subtlest of fantasy elements (the talking mechanical birds in The Sarantine Mosaic are a delight).

I'd love to see that URC/GGK kind of "historical fantasy with subtle fantastic elements" setting once again, with all the courtly intrigue that implies, but this time, combined with the traditional model of a single GM who manages an NPC cast and the world at large, and a published game system instead of GM fiat for arbitration. That might tempt even me back to online games.

Hear Hear! Love GGK, love those books, would love to play in a game of that sort. Add in Ellen Kushner's 'Swordspoint'...

I'd love to run a game like that too, but would need SERIOUS tiem spent developing the world. Not any time soon.

I voted other because I suppose I'm more for the overall tone of a game and no as much for the specific.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing some magical-realism based games though.

Now that's grabbed my eye, Raven! What do you mean by "magical/realism based", do you have a published example?

I'm thinking Borges style writing actually. I've seen people host those types of games with various systems. But there isn't a system for it that I know of.

Not familiar with Borges, but also intrigued.

Jose Borges was an Argintinian essayist and poet who acquired some fame as an advocate of the "chaos that rules the world and the character of unreality in all literature."

His most famous books, Ficciones and The Aleph are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers, religion and God.

His works basically defined the genre of magical realism, which was a reaction against the naturalism and realism of the nineteenth century. During his life he became progressively blind, which a lot of critics suggested helped him create his signature literary symbols through imagination. Some of his poems are basically dialogues with such famous figures as Spinoza and Virgil.

Nicki

huh. If we're going to be playing games in this genre they are going to be needing a good amount of explication for the poor and unwashed such as myself unfamiliar with it.

Personally, I don't see how it could actually be translated. Magical Realism is more about thought and dialogue than action, which I think would be about as exciting as watching paint dry in a BB format.

It would be almost as exciting as doing a game based on Dialectical Materialism... <g>

Nicki

Nicki,

There was a question about preference, and I answered. That's all. I would say there's some flavor of MR in various games currently being run.

It's obvious I disagree with your statements; however, from your words I believe it is best we leave it at the fact that there are differing thoughts on this.

I'd rather not hijack this thread to any larger extent.

No, you're probably right about the "flavor," although as I understand it, there is some argument as to what actually constitutes MR. I just thought an entire game ambience devoted to it would be difficult to manage, what with all the time and effort required to sort out the philosophical perameters. But... it might be interesting if you could pull it off.

I posted this in another thread, but what this forum really really needs is a Pathfinder game.

Has anyone ever figured out how we can do a Harry Potter game without getting sued. I know that's always been the fear.

Is that really a concern? Wouldn't it have to be for pay or for publishing, before they can sue you? And I would think Potter has long since passed into the public domain, like Band-Aids or Jell-o.

Nicki

Potter has developed a rep for getting Foxed by Rowling that's almost as bad as 20th Century Fox's Foxing. Whether it's deserved or not, I'm not so sure, but Rowling's stated a few times that she's quite happy with free, online fan works.

See HarryPotterFanFiction.com with 65,000 Potter stories and 30 million hits a month.

Their copyright policy is near identical to ours, so we should be absolutely fine to run a Potter game.

If anyone wants a functional (and I think actually rather good) rules system for Potter gaming, feel free to use mine. It's bare-bones and keyword/description focused, but I found it worked fairly well for its purpose.

Wushu might also work well for Potter, since fans could use all their knowledge of the setting in describing their actions and increasing their dice pool. But then Wushu heavily favours success, whereas failure is a large part of Potter (and growing up in general ).

Agreed. Wushu, HeroQuest, and FATE were significant inspirations for my own system. It's all about writing down what's important about or to your character and then using those important things in play to drive the story.

Also, the system is diceless because it was designed for use at AmberCons. It would be easy enough to add a small degree of dice (say, coin-flips for each point ala HEX or some such), but not at all necessary.

Well, I'm not sure how things have changed over the years, but I do know that several years back when someone wanted to run an HP game the brakes were put on because the admins expressed fear of litigation.

Then again, I may be remembering things completely wrong. It's been known to happen.

If that was a commercial venture, Barry, then I can see why 'they' would want to prevent that ... without the licensing agreement (i.e. dollars changing hands).

I think I remember the occasion Barry's talking about. Iirc there was an ongoing lawsuit at the time involving the Harry Potter A-Z, an abridged version of The Harry Potter Lexicon a work that had put a question mark over all Potter fan sites.

In the end, Rowling, her publisher and the judge seemed in agreement that the Harry Potter A-Z just contained too little original material to qualify for fair use. It was largely a cut and paste job, according to them.

We'll never know how accurate that assessment was, of course, but either way, Harry Potter's online fan community flourishes to this day with Rowling's consent. It seems she even got over the writer's block the court case apparently caused her.

A message game on DreamLyrics would be almost entirely original. No problem there. The GM wouldn't even need post Harry Potter resources on DreamLyrics since there are so many other sites they can link to.

Whilst it's not a game that'd interest me personally, I can see no reason why it couldn't be done.

I think the concern was that DL is pay to play, and thus it could be considered using her works for financial gain.

DreamLyrics is a technically a social activities club with a registration fee, and is a non-profit organisation.

It isn't a paid for service per se. In this context, paying to join the club doesn't guarantee you that you can run or play in a Harry Potter game.

I know it seems pedantic, but it's an important distinction to make.

Just my 2 cents here, but one could run a Potter game but to do that, you would need to call everyone and everything by a different name:

Hogwarts = Pigzits
Harry = Henry
Hermione = Henrietta
Ron = Rob
Nobody uses "wands", they use "rods".

Concepts could be the same but no toes get stepped on.

As I said...



Np.

The question is, who would want to run it? I can imagine it being even more prickly yet mercurial to handle than a Lord of the Rings message game. :s

At least with LOTR you can set it in the Fourth Age, job done. Or some time long before the War of the Ring. You still have the flavour.

But what's Potter without Hogwarts and Voldemort? Showing my ignorance here.

hmm i dunno , I think Henry twiddling his rod in the hallowed halls of Pigzits doesn't quite do it for me

In all honesty (and being serious for the moment), how many law suits to date have been filed against DL for copyright infringement since the site started? For that matter how many request to remove due to copyright violations have been received by the admin’s?

I’m going to make an educated guess here and say exactly zero

I’m pretty certain that these major corporations will not bother claiming against a zero profit tiny members only roleplay club. Put simply, under the tortuous and fiendishly complicated international copy rightlaws you are not worth suing. I know US courts sometimes like to think they have jurisdiction in the UK but I promise you they really don’t

If you want to run a game, syndicated or not just go for it!

Well be honest, I doubt you'd be playing the actual book characters. Odd's are, they'd be NPC's. You'd make your own characters, but the universe is the thing.

Ahem, well Saph, why don't you start one up? <runs like hell>

Actually, KenSeg's WW2 super heroes game gives us an intriguing notion. WW2 Harry Potter. Iirc there was plenty of witchcraft and wizardry capers during the war. What's-his-face, Gellert Grindelwald, frex.

Now I would definately play in that!

"Expecto Patronum ya Nazi scumpile - take that back to Uncle Adolf too!"

hear hear!

play those who came before!

I have one game planned and that'll do.

Wimp <G>