I don't think quite a few of us are pissed off or anything - shit, I fully intend to join in the next ... whenever my laziness lets up. Probably a few days so I can properly birth a Xan expy.
The second mission just started a few weeks ago, so it could be a while before mission 3 starts. I think Piecewise is capable of running multiple missions at a time - I, however, am not so much. It might be partly how short his responses are in comparison to mine, but I think a large part of it is also the fact that
he's just a better GM.
This is my first time GM'ing anything at all (or participating in any sort of online (or non-computer) RPG, for that matter). I got a baptism of fire, more or less.
The WAAAALL!
Hey man, like others have said, the only one whose opinion really matters here is the gm's, consider the rest of us as so much bleating sheep.
That said, yeah, I might have been a bit smarter to notify PW (and maybe drop a linky in here) when you started, to ensure he was on board (which he very probably would be, he doesn't mind people using his systems) and so nobody would feel as if this thing was going on 'in secret'. Making the 'inspired by' banner a bit more obvious on the OP might also help, it honestly looks kinda hidden in plain sight.
I agree on both counts; in hindsight, I really wish I'd informed him right at the start, but again - I didn't actually think anyone would join. I think I actually expected MAYBE five people, if I was lucky, and certainly not enough for three full squads. (I have a low opinion of my work most of the time.) As to the latter - the link not being visible enough - I will rectify this promptly.
Finally, what I think ticks some of us sheep of a little is that some things (armory entries and the intro text, for example) are copied, but with minor alterations to it, making it look like you were copying it but tried to hide the fact rather clumsily. Even though that was probably not the intention, coupled with the fact it wasn't really announced in here, that's the impression I got at first.
Yeah, intro text, armory entries, mostly copy-paste. The minor alterations weren't so much "trying to hide that I copied", but more "I think I would like this better if I did it like so". If I was actually trying to hide it, I would've given everything different names and certainly wouldn't have told Piecewise in the first place.
As to announcing it in here - going to point up to the answer above. "Hi guys! I'm starting a new version of ER that I fully expect to fizzle and die!" doesn't sound like something worth saying. I just really, honestly didn't expect it to last this long.
As for the paypall, if it doesn't work, maybe just remove it? Or make it work and ask PW if he wants a cut from the proceeding?
Would probably remove it, yeah. Even if it did work, nobody would be paying me anything anyway - none of the ltheory guys have actually noticed it doesn't work.
All in all, good luck with your game, I hope you and your players will enjoy yourselves. I'd hop over and join, but I have my hands full here already herding our own suicidal cats, so I think I'll just observe the ancient tradition of lurking.
Lurking over there will be a lot harder - my posts are
considerably longer than those of Piecewise. You have several novels worth of reading ahead of you. Another major change is that people don't die as much. It's hard for me to kill people.
Way too nice. Still working on that. I'm hoping to (hopefully) off at least a third of my player base this mission, but we'll see how that goes.
That whole game is as "loosely based" on ER as my speech is "loosely based" on my thoughts.
Tries to be the same, but not quite all the time so, both unintentionally and deliberately in some aspects.
EDIT I'm just making an analogy here. Have no idea who the GM of that game is.
"Loosely based" is indeed very loosely defined.
The major differences are as follows:
- Players start in CASKETs (fragile tin-can spaceships) and can transfer to and from foot when they wish. They can also purchase larger ships, or weaker ships if they want to focus on foot combat - which is not advisable because there will always be things to totally wreck infantry. Infantry, in REKT, is more of "oh god my ship is going to explode this is my last chance to stay alive" or "hole too small to fit my ship, looks like I'm going to have to go it on foot and hope I don't get splattered".
- The stat system is partially different. I used Piecewise's starting stats system (+2,-3 etc), but I have a lot of stats that aren't there, and some stats double as on-foot in-ship stats. Could be a bit confusing but I don't know how else to explain it. Basically, how agile your ship is defines how agile you are.
- Rolls are very different. I don't know entirely how they work in ER, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't work the same way. I might roll ((Energy + Conventional) - (Maneuverability + Engines) / 2), for instance, to see if someone manages to hit a fast target with a railgun round.
- I use a "layering" system to determine how turns work; people get infinite actions per turn (and generally make full use of it), but executing multiple actions of the same type make them less and less likely to hit - unless you have very high stats.
- People don't die NEARLY as much... I only had two deaths the first mission out of ten or so. This saddens me because a large part of what makes ER so awesome (in my opinion) is that people die so often.
- People level faster. This is largely me being nice and not wanting to kill people off.
- I took out some of the things that felt "silly" to me (for my own personal value of "silly"). REKT uses, for the most part, real-world physics (with some deviations like artificial gravity and nanobots (I love me some nanobots)). It also means you won't slam into an asteroid and explode while trying to fly around it at some random point... really, people don't die nearly as much.
- Reading updates can take a while. Writing them can take even longer. I think my record longest post was over 8000 words in length - that's like two or three novel chapters. I add a lot more detail than Piecewise does - which is probably part of why I feel overwhelmed sometimes.
- Although the intro text is (mostly) identical, the plot is completely different. Most of it circles around a race of multi-universal aliens called Quantums that, while far more powerful than humanity, are struggling to survive as their remaining population is hunted down and destroyed by mysterious phenomena.
- There are a decent number of items in REKT that are not in ER, and vice versa.
- REKT is larger-scale; instead of a handful of prison inmates aboard a ship, I have a giant prison ship of 30 million inmates, with 1 million of which being part of the REKT crew (basically HMRC). Apart from that, the whole "prison ship" premise is identical, and the Tartarus is the counterpart of Paracelsus' Sword; the prison idea was something I always really loved about ER. Most RPGs I've seen (granted, I haven't seen many) paint the players as the good guys. I like the idea of them actually being the villains, though I plan to mix it up plotwise later on.
- I am not as cool as Piecewise in any way, shape or form, and nor is my game as cool as ER. It's just on the ltheory forums with people I know better and don't feel intimidated by. (the "intimidation" factor is actually why I never joined any RTDs on the Bay12 forums, although I used to watch several.)
@Talvieno: As others said, if piecewise is cool with it, I'm double plus cool with it. I mean, even though you may have copied a lot of things, it's obvious you've put a lot of work in the game and in trying to make it fun for the players.
I simply said that informing piecewise beforehand seemed like the polite thing to do, because he hadn't published a ruleset or anything like that and the game was still ongoing.
Agreed, I should've informed him a long, long time ago.
And yes, I've put a lot of work into it too - not as much as Piecewise for sure, but GM'ing is a lot more work than it sounds (at least if you haven't GM'd before, like me).
@Talvieno As others said, as long as PW is cool with it, we're cool too. I've read some of the rules, armory, and part of mission thread, and I have to admit that you put a lot of work in it, even if based on Piecewise's assets, and it's distinct enough (SCAMPS isn't STEVE, for one - he has quite different relationship with inmates, and that is plain obvious, even though they use similar voice-colors; and that's beside mentioning the biggest difference - ship-oriented vs. 'infantry'-oriented). I think it's okay to use someone else's assets as long as you mention the creator, and now we see that you used them in good faith (rather than 'ripped off' as we might have initially feared). So - good luck!
Oh, god no. I never intended to rip Piecewise off in any form. I just wanted to play a game with my friends on what's become my home turf, and they wouldn't have joined Bay12 just to play ER with me anyway.
And thank you for the well-wishes.
@Talvieno: it's all good if piecewise approves, and looking at the game I don't see any particularly compelling reason why he wouldn't (it is a rare and flattering thing to be an influential forum game GM, after all). Looks pretty good, and is definitely a distinct game. Probably the most successful ER-derived game I've seen thus far, even. Keep up the good work, though maybe edit the OP a little.
The OP edit shall be done, good sir, and thank you.
Way I see it his game is more like a parallel worlds D&D campaign than a truly new RTD.
That in itself isnt such a bad thing, I mean just look at all the different perplexicon clones.
sometimes a fresh take on things is fun.
little heads up at the start of the game would have been good manners, but as long as he isnt profiting off of piecewise' efforts and credits him properly I dont really see any issues if its a legitimate spino-off.
I think "spin off" would be a very appropriate way of defining it, yes. And again I agree that I should've informed Piecewise when I started. It somehow didn't occur to me then, but I did tell him as soon as I was back on Bay12.
Don't worry about it man, I personally have no problem with what you're doing. I think the main problem people had, judging from the responses, is that a lot of stuff in there is extremely similar to things in ER, and the link back here is very small. I think it made people feel like you might have copied a lot of stuff wholesale, changed small things and then claimed it as your own. I don't really have a problem with what I've seen, personally, though. Even if you did take a lot of the base stuff from ER, you've clearly expanded it into something else and you're doing a lot of original work to run it. It's not like you're just copy pasting missions or something silly like that.
So you have my blessing to keep doing what you're doing, but if you want to appease people, I think the best way to do that is to make that acknowledgement of ER a bit more prominent. Because, like I said, I think it was less the fact that a lot of base stuff was very similar, and more the fact that the way it's structured, people could think you're trying to hide the origins of the stuff. Which, I mean, You came to me and told me about it so I feel like you're not that kind of person, but that might be what people thought.
And to my players, I posted those links to show off what a fan of the game did and maybe to give you an alternative game to play while I'm neck deep in anatomy. He came to me and told me about them, and I wanted to tell you guys. So, you're free to not like what he's doing, you're free to tell him this, but don't do it out of some sort of misguided attempt to defend the honor of ER. While I do appreciate the sentiment, it's not what I'd like in this case.
I'll make the link much more obvious.
It wasn't small to keep people from noticing it - I think I really just went overboard with formatting. Most of my players have actually taken a look at Einsteinian Roulette as a result of REKT too. I'm not trying to hide the origins in any way, or claim it as my own work - and was actually kind of stunned that you guys thought I might be attempting to. It never occurred to me that it might be thought of in that light.
Definitely going to fix it now though.
...
Okay
Talvieno forgiven, and apologies for the heat. didn't think Piecewise was onboard with your game.
No need to apologize; I understand your point of view entirely. And thank you.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2536780 times)