I sent a variant of this as a letter to assist@skotos.net. I haven't received a reply, and I don't expect that I'll receive one. I'm posting it here (with some modifications) because I think the game as it was originally conceived isn't working and needs some "perking up". I invite responses, but please keep it civil. My proposal is just a suggestion.
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Having played and worked in LC for several years, and having for a time been Lead StoryPlotter, it became clear to me that most of those who logged onto LC were not at all interested in horror. In fact, only about one or two percent of those with whom I interacted had any knowledge of the work of Lovecraft or of the Cthulhu Mythos. The general impression I got was that players logged in for one or a number of the following reasons:
1) They had friends who were playing and wanted to schmooze and RP with their pals.
2) They were bored and just wanted to RP without being bothered by horror or insanity or anything else. (I discovered, during my time as LSP, that when I presented horror, players tended to run away from the game. They obviously didn't want horror.)
3) They wanted to RP "bad boys" or "bad girls" who engaged in antisocial (and non-period) behavior, and all that Lovecraft stuff could go hang itself.
4) They were remnants of the original LC playtesting PCs who had come over from Castle Marrach and enjoyed the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Lovecraft Country was their private fiefdom.
Needless to say, the above four categories of players has shrunken drastically over the years. Where back in the early 2000s, we could see perhaps as many as two dozen PCs logged on for an evening of horseplay (please, no horror: we're having fun), now, in 2018, we have zilch. Believe me, I have looked.
A large part of this, I think, stems from LC being "a niche market of a niche market". Perhaps even more than that. LC, as originally conceived, was designed for players who embodied all four of the following:
1) wanted social role-playing, AND
2) were interested in "noir style" RPing, AND
3) wanted a little horror and fright in their interactions, AND
4) were interested in Lovecraftian motifs.
It is my contention that such players are few and far between, and that the abysmal turnout of PCs night after night bears out my opinion.
So what to do?
What I am going to suggest is radical surgery. This might seem utterly dreadful in light of the work that Wells and Willow put into bringing Lovecraft Country into existence, but given the predilections shown by the players over the years (and the relative success of other Skotos games like Castle Marrach and Ironclaw Online), radical surgery may be the only way to salvage all the work that has gone into the game. Otherwise, we might just as well shut down the servers and save the electricity.
So this is my proposal:
GUYS AND DOLLS: NOIR AND GANGSTER ROLEPLAYING IN THE 1930s
Concept: We have a sleepy (or not so sleepy) New England town that's basically a haven for all kinds of gangsters and gun molls. The big cities are where the really mean stuff goes down. This town, however (we'll call it Arkham for now), is a kind of vacation resort for the baddies. But that doesn't mean that the baddies give up their evil ways. By no means! It simply means that ambushes, kidnappings, thievery, and other skullduggery goes on at a more relaxed pace. PCs start off as small-time crooks, bad boys and bad girls. They can just schmooze, or they can work their way into a local gang or a syndicate. These organizations are involved in smuggling, rum running, nefarious activities involving protection rackets for the local stores, and so on. And yes, there are guns and knives. But there are limits on guns and knives.
Let me explain these limits.
New PCs cannot have guns. They don't have enough status. In order to acquire weapons, one has to have both an IC and an OOC investment in the game: a paid account, maybe even a premium account. More than this, though, in order to obtain weapons, a PC has to be a member of a gang or a syndicate, and this takes IC time. (Maybe the academic system of the current LC can be repurposed for this.) One has to be "trustworthy". This way, we don't have some cowboy logging on with a trial account, buying a gun, and killing everyone he or she can find. (More on this below.)
Along with this, the game doesn't allow you to kill unarmed citizens or newlies. Even if you could, doing so would demonstrate that you have no class. So your reputation suffers. It shows you're not a stand-up john/jane, and you get drummed out of your organization (and lose your access to weapons).
More than this, though: if you are trusted enough to have a gun, you are also valuable enough to the mob to have a bodyguard, a CNPC who is with you at all times except if you send him/her away. The CNPCs firearm skill is slaved to your own: if you are good with a gun, the CNPC is equally as good. And firearm proximity is a factor: if someone points a gun at you and the system picks up that point that that trigger pull, your bodyguard responds instantly. Roll the "dice": success is measured in firearm skill vs firearm skill plus a random number. That is, if you try shooting (or knifing) someone, you stand a non-trivial chance of getting killed. (If the CNPC bodyguard proves too cumbersome, then the CNPC could be done away with, but a PC's firearm response is automatic: if the system detects a gun pointed and fired at you, you automatically draw and fire yourself. Same skill vs skill, plus random chance. The CNPC just adds another level of difficulty for those who want to assassinate someone: they have to deal with the bodyguard AND with the PC, or else get the PC alone without the bodyguard.)
Let's go on. LC is a night game. So we hypothesize that a lot of the real crime takes place during the day. At night, however, we can have illegal stills bubbling away on the Island and around the Reservoir area, smuggling (the boating skill lessens your chances of getting stopped by the municipal shore patrol), poker games (wouldn't it be fun -- and profitable -- to knock over a high stakes game?), RPing the bad-boy/bad-girl stuff: drinking, parties, vulgar gangsters in fancy tuxes and gowns in the nightclub. (I should perhaps add that, in my experience, players don't want to play innocent, 18-year-old freshmen: they want to be nasty, worldly adults. Fine, let's give them exactly that.)
Someone gets killed? No, the player doesn't have to restart from scratch. He/she can come back as a new character with a new name, and maybe one or more of their skills takes a hit, but they can join up with another gang or just play Joe-schmoe on the street. They do, however, lose their weapons (and are invulnerable to weapons) until they work their way into an organization and once again become the IC version of a Mafia soldier. Vendettas against previous character kills are not forbidden: the new PC can be the brother/sister of the slain character, working his/her way up the organizational ladder until the time is ripe for payback. (Of course, payback has its hazards.)
"Bosses" of the gangs and syndicates can be played by staff or VPs. We can have law enforcement in there, too, if players want to play cops. But being a cop in the 1930s is chancy work, particularly when the criminals essentially run the town. Arresting the wrong person could well get a cop fired, at which point he/she becomes Joe-schmoe on the street. And maybe the mob tries to solicit him/her for a new member: always a good thing to have someone on the payroll with friends in the police department. And then there's always graft, corruption, fixed trials, bribes, and so on.
If nothing else, watching the PCs in LC caused me to come away with the feeling that players want conflict and organizations and rivalry. LC didn't and doesn't have anything like that. I remember there was an attempt to get fraternities and sororities started, but belonging to one didn't seem to benefit the PC, and it was just "a thing to do". No one got any real buzz from the game.
So I'm proposing a radical shift. No more students. No more struggling toward academic degrees that don't give the player anything except the right to put "professor" or "doctor" in front of their IC name. With the revamp, we've got the bad people fighting each other subtly or not-so-subtly. Oh, a PC might go to the library to study up on chemistry, but only so he/she can make better booze or spike someone's drink. (Needless to say, "sneak" and "hide" take on a whole new IC lease on life!)
This revamp could be sudden or gradual. When I started playing LC, we had only...maybe...six square blocks of playable area and a handful of stores. I went ahead and, over time, finished the map and added stores, so we eventually had the whole area south of the river available for RPing. The town just slowly expanded, unannounced, though we opened Farmer Pickman's field and the Reservoir area with a bit of fanfare. (The Island opened before I became staff.) Incremental changes in character generation could be implemented, and descriptions of rooms and areas could be changed over time. Or we could shut down the game, open a can of elbow-grease, and get everything altered for a big rollout (good PR possibilities here). We already have CNPCs: we just change their emits. Things might be a little rocky at first, but the attractions of "badness" will, I suspect, make the players put up with the rough places.
We would need a dedicated staff, though. People who are really going to put some effort into the game. As I myself put a lot of sweat and effort into LC, I'm not going to suggest something, that I'm not willing to undertake myself: if you need me, I volunteer.
Respectfully,
Harvest Wheatly
(former LSP)
=====
Having played and worked in LC for several years, and having for a time been Lead StoryPlotter, it became clear to me that most of those who logged onto LC were not at all interested in horror. In fact, only about one or two percent of those with whom I interacted had any knowledge of the work of Lovecraft or of the Cthulhu Mythos. The general impression I got was that players logged in for one or a number of the following reasons:
1) They had friends who were playing and wanted to schmooze and RP with their pals.
2) They were bored and just wanted to RP without being bothered by horror or insanity or anything else. (I discovered, during my time as LSP, that when I presented horror, players tended to run away from the game. They obviously didn't want horror.)
3) They wanted to RP "bad boys" or "bad girls" who engaged in antisocial (and non-period) behavior, and all that Lovecraft stuff could go hang itself.
4) They were remnants of the original LC playtesting PCs who had come over from Castle Marrach and enjoyed the fact that, for all intents and purposes, Lovecraft Country was their private fiefdom.
Needless to say, the above four categories of players has shrunken drastically over the years. Where back in the early 2000s, we could see perhaps as many as two dozen PCs logged on for an evening of horseplay (please, no horror: we're having fun), now, in 2018, we have zilch. Believe me, I have looked.
A large part of this, I think, stems from LC being "a niche market of a niche market". Perhaps even more than that. LC, as originally conceived, was designed for players who embodied all four of the following:
1) wanted social role-playing, AND
2) were interested in "noir style" RPing, AND
3) wanted a little horror and fright in their interactions, AND
4) were interested in Lovecraftian motifs.
It is my contention that such players are few and far between, and that the abysmal turnout of PCs night after night bears out my opinion.
So what to do?
What I am going to suggest is radical surgery. This might seem utterly dreadful in light of the work that Wells and Willow put into bringing Lovecraft Country into existence, but given the predilections shown by the players over the years (and the relative success of other Skotos games like Castle Marrach and Ironclaw Online), radical surgery may be the only way to salvage all the work that has gone into the game. Otherwise, we might just as well shut down the servers and save the electricity.
So this is my proposal:
GUYS AND DOLLS: NOIR AND GANGSTER ROLEPLAYING IN THE 1930s
Concept: We have a sleepy (or not so sleepy) New England town that's basically a haven for all kinds of gangsters and gun molls. The big cities are where the really mean stuff goes down. This town, however (we'll call it Arkham for now), is a kind of vacation resort for the baddies. But that doesn't mean that the baddies give up their evil ways. By no means! It simply means that ambushes, kidnappings, thievery, and other skullduggery goes on at a more relaxed pace. PCs start off as small-time crooks, bad boys and bad girls. They can just schmooze, or they can work their way into a local gang or a syndicate. These organizations are involved in smuggling, rum running, nefarious activities involving protection rackets for the local stores, and so on. And yes, there are guns and knives. But there are limits on guns and knives.
Let me explain these limits.
New PCs cannot have guns. They don't have enough status. In order to acquire weapons, one has to have both an IC and an OOC investment in the game: a paid account, maybe even a premium account. More than this, though, in order to obtain weapons, a PC has to be a member of a gang or a syndicate, and this takes IC time. (Maybe the academic system of the current LC can be repurposed for this.) One has to be "trustworthy". This way, we don't have some cowboy logging on with a trial account, buying a gun, and killing everyone he or she can find. (More on this below.)
Along with this, the game doesn't allow you to kill unarmed citizens or newlies. Even if you could, doing so would demonstrate that you have no class. So your reputation suffers. It shows you're not a stand-up john/jane, and you get drummed out of your organization (and lose your access to weapons).
More than this, though: if you are trusted enough to have a gun, you are also valuable enough to the mob to have a bodyguard, a CNPC who is with you at all times except if you send him/her away. The CNPCs firearm skill is slaved to your own: if you are good with a gun, the CNPC is equally as good. And firearm proximity is a factor: if someone points a gun at you and the system picks up that point that that trigger pull, your bodyguard responds instantly. Roll the "dice": success is measured in firearm skill vs firearm skill plus a random number. That is, if you try shooting (or knifing) someone, you stand a non-trivial chance of getting killed. (If the CNPC bodyguard proves too cumbersome, then the CNPC could be done away with, but a PC's firearm response is automatic: if the system detects a gun pointed and fired at you, you automatically draw and fire yourself. Same skill vs skill, plus random chance. The CNPC just adds another level of difficulty for those who want to assassinate someone: they have to deal with the bodyguard AND with the PC, or else get the PC alone without the bodyguard.)
Let's go on. LC is a night game. So we hypothesize that a lot of the real crime takes place during the day. At night, however, we can have illegal stills bubbling away on the Island and around the Reservoir area, smuggling (the boating skill lessens your chances of getting stopped by the municipal shore patrol), poker games (wouldn't it be fun -- and profitable -- to knock over a high stakes game?), RPing the bad-boy/bad-girl stuff: drinking, parties, vulgar gangsters in fancy tuxes and gowns in the nightclub. (I should perhaps add that, in my experience, players don't want to play innocent, 18-year-old freshmen: they want to be nasty, worldly adults. Fine, let's give them exactly that.)
Someone gets killed? No, the player doesn't have to restart from scratch. He/she can come back as a new character with a new name, and maybe one or more of their skills takes a hit, but they can join up with another gang or just play Joe-schmoe on the street. They do, however, lose their weapons (and are invulnerable to weapons) until they work their way into an organization and once again become the IC version of a Mafia soldier. Vendettas against previous character kills are not forbidden: the new PC can be the brother/sister of the slain character, working his/her way up the organizational ladder until the time is ripe for payback. (Of course, payback has its hazards.)
"Bosses" of the gangs and syndicates can be played by staff or VPs. We can have law enforcement in there, too, if players want to play cops. But being a cop in the 1930s is chancy work, particularly when the criminals essentially run the town. Arresting the wrong person could well get a cop fired, at which point he/she becomes Joe-schmoe on the street. And maybe the mob tries to solicit him/her for a new member: always a good thing to have someone on the payroll with friends in the police department. And then there's always graft, corruption, fixed trials, bribes, and so on.
If nothing else, watching the PCs in LC caused me to come away with the feeling that players want conflict and organizations and rivalry. LC didn't and doesn't have anything like that. I remember there was an attempt to get fraternities and sororities started, but belonging to one didn't seem to benefit the PC, and it was just "a thing to do". No one got any real buzz from the game.
So I'm proposing a radical shift. No more students. No more struggling toward academic degrees that don't give the player anything except the right to put "professor" or "doctor" in front of their IC name. With the revamp, we've got the bad people fighting each other subtly or not-so-subtly. Oh, a PC might go to the library to study up on chemistry, but only so he/she can make better booze or spike someone's drink. (Needless to say, "sneak" and "hide" take on a whole new IC lease on life!)
This revamp could be sudden or gradual. When I started playing LC, we had only...maybe...six square blocks of playable area and a handful of stores. I went ahead and, over time, finished the map and added stores, so we eventually had the whole area south of the river available for RPing. The town just slowly expanded, unannounced, though we opened Farmer Pickman's field and the Reservoir area with a bit of fanfare. (The Island opened before I became staff.) Incremental changes in character generation could be implemented, and descriptions of rooms and areas could be changed over time. Or we could shut down the game, open a can of elbow-grease, and get everything altered for a big rollout (good PR possibilities here). We already have CNPCs: we just change their emits. Things might be a little rocky at first, but the attractions of "badness" will, I suspect, make the players put up with the rough places.
We would need a dedicated staff, though. People who are really going to put some effort into the game. As I myself put a lot of sweat and effort into LC, I'm not going to suggest something, that I'm not willing to undertake myself: if you need me, I volunteer.
Respectfully,
Harvest Wheatly
(former LSP)
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