Hello there!
My friend and I were looking at using AresMUSH for a mecha-based game. I know that the FATE system (as in the book), could support mecha, but I wasn’t so sure on Cortex. What is more important however, which is what I am looking information from here is how flexible are these systems within Ares?
Can you have the system understand this the pilot sheet? This is the mecha sheet? How about handling transforming machines? Or machines that are AI driven and have no pilot? This is the type of stuff I am looking at, as all these type of things would probably get hit on eventually by players.
The other thing is I’ve read that AresMUSH is more designed for PvE scenarios, but we probably be looking at also PvP interactions. I was leaning to FATES for this reason, because it would keep people from Min-Maxing, where with Cortex (at least by what I’ve read on the system), min-maxing could take place.
Again, I’m just looking for some advice and what people, who have experienced these systems, might thing and how flexible the systems are to these ideas.
While I am also not afraid to learn code, sadly my code knowledge begins and ends with PennMUSH, I have 0 knowledge in ruby or java. The best website knowledge I have is old HTML. So, until I can take a look under the hood to understand the translation from PennMUSH to how Ares see things, the less I really want to fiddle with it; Thus looking more at straight out of the box for now.
Ares** isn’t designed for PVE specifically, but it is designed for transparency. So when considering it for a PVP game you have to figure out what your specific goals are. For example, character profiles are public in the out-of-box code, and the census shows you who’s in what faction. If you don’t want folks knowing who the Imperial Agents are, you’d either need to write a bunch of custom code to make that all secret, or put that info in the secret admin notes instead of the profile, or something like that.
Regarding your mecha questions - the skill systems other than FS3 only come with chargen and a simple die roller. Your PC would have a character sheet, but everything else would need to be sorted out by the players manually and/or rolled by a GM just like in a tabletop version of Cortex or Fate.
** - FS3 is absolutely designed for PVE only, but FS3 is independent of Ares as a whole.
We are not to worried about hiding who is in what faction, or how many are in a faction. I personally find the whole secrecy thing silly, always have. Given rule of thumb of RP is to not meta. And sometimes open info helps players new to a game figure out if they want to help a faction that might be lower in numbers then another.
Also thank you for the info on the other systems. That is something we will take into consideration as we continue to kick around the idea ball.
Sounds like the transparency wouldn’t be an issue then.
Also, I figured it was obvious but just in case, I figured I’d clarify that you could absolutely make whatever Cortex/Fate mecha-related code you wanted. Having stats for vehicles and commands to transform or whatever. There’s just nothing like that built in already.
And sometimes open info helps players new to a game figure out if they want to help a faction that might be lower in numbers then another.