Virtual Reality MMO in an RPG

This thread fell off the board while I was out last night. I'm trying to come up with mechanics for a virtual reality MMO feel for a tabletop setting. I'm taking a bit of inspiration from Eclipse Phase and other mech games. Your "Avatar"--the body that you have in the virtual reality which in-game is your Class--is different from your "User"--the player character that you control, here given a different term to prevent confusion, since you're playing a player. All your basic Traits cover what you're capable of and how well you can "steer" a your Avatar (along with mental and social abilities). This is full immersion VR, so even though the players could be pasty faced losers or crippled teenage girls in reality, in the virtual world they're sword swinging heroes. Special abilities and magical power are covered by Talents, which can be purchased with Upgrades, which are gained through exploring the virtual world as rewords. You'll also have Experience for increasing your abilities as the User, which can be used for skills or traits, as well as Assets like a good machine or an attractive Avatar.

The plot of the game is that within the virtual world, one of the AIs has grown rampant, and is slowly corrupting the world, which is leading to problems in the real world (since everything is connected), including the typical "people hooked into the machines are going into comas". The players are people who were defeated by the corrupted data and given the chance to fight back when another awakened AI, weaker but benevolent, granted them debugging access that lets them alter the data or whatever. Technobabble.

>48080833
>Have you already considered that there might be a very good reason for these shows to ignore these particular MMO aspects?
Yes. And those reasons are obvious: It would be confusing if the characters weren't visually consistent. That's also why characters in anime rarely change their clothes or put on armour. That's not all that big a problem in a tabletop to begin with.

>It's not so much about death being the ultimate consequence but there's very few actual consequences to failing at an mmo.
>Maybe it's because I'm just ignorant of this genre but I'm just not seeing how you can get tangible drama from playing an MMO.
Usually in these games the characters are trapped in the MMO. I mean, I suppose I *could* still do that, and still manage to work in the Avatar swapping somehow, but mostly it's that the Virtual Reality stuff extends beyond the MMO. Everything is virtual reality now. You can go to the movies as an Avatar. You can go to the mall. Think of it as if it were what Second Life wishes it was. The Rampant AI getting out of the game would be a Very Bad Thing for all involved, and that's beyond the usual "your friend is in a coma" thing.

Of course, the problem with that is that I can't really think of a reason that actual authorities wouldn't be getting involved. At least without something like a conspiracy by the Company.

Log Horizon--an anime where the characters are all transported to an MMO world and they learn to manipulate the mechanics of the world--has it so that death doesn't actually mean anything. Characters die and then they resurrect at the Shrines in the main city. But after a while players who've die a lot realize that they're forgetting some of their memories of the real world. That's the kind of thing I prefer to "you die, make a new character". Games where Death is the ultimate You Lose screen don't interest me, they're a dime a dozen.

Damn, guess this isn't interesting to anyone.

I will sat something but i gt lost in the text, the thing is all ove the place.

In what way?

I can't find the point you're trying to make, maybe my brain isn't working at full power.

You're not the only one.
I didn't get it, even with my brain at full power.

I don't get what you're asking. I'm just explaining my ideas. What part of it is confusing?

I understood most of the thing its just badly composed

I had a similar idea for a campaign game no long ago
I understand that you want to make the user and avatar different things, I had a similar idea for a similar game. I wanted the avatar and the user to have different mechanics because what the PC did outside of the game will be part of the story. Think of MMBN
Basically the user will be a like in Gumshoe and the avatar like DnD

The plot would had taken the characters outside of the game across the VR internet. I had this epiphany: Why do we need services like Second Life instead of making VR a protocol so anybody can set up their own VR space in any machine they want?
So the avatars will go from a fantasy forest to outer space to a shopping mall with one simple command.

MMBN?

I'm not actually going to have the real world be a focus (since obviously the people who play an MMO together won't be on the same continent half the time). I don't want to use two different systems, though. That's one of the reasons I'm looking at Eclipse Phase for inspiration; it has Ego and Morph as separate things, and you change out your Morph all the time.

>The plot would had taken the characters outside of the game across the VR internet. I had this epiphany: Why do we need services like Second Life instead of making VR a protocol so anybody can set up their own VR space in any machine they want?
>So the avatars will go from a fantasy forest to outer space to a shopping mall with one simple command.
In my setting the default would be that you have a different Avatar for each game, but with their special magical Twilight Bracelet debug magic, they'd get to take their cool fantasy game Avatar into the mall to fight the Corruption there.

>MMBN?
Mega Man Battle Network

you and I have very different ideas.

I didn't think we didn't.

Like I said, I'm going more for the original .Hack// and the video games. I should probably rewatch the OVAs that came with those games.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. To offer something though, I'd say the best way to handle it would be to use a more robust system for when they're on the net, and a lighter one for just a few skill checks in the real world.

Presumably, you want them to be spending a lot of time in the MMO, and that's where a lot of the action will take place, so you'll need more rules.

The main issue I always see with these plots is there has to be stakes, but also a reason why they can't just walk away. I mean, you can't just have a game about some friends playing WoW.

This is why usually shows have the people trapped in the MMO instead, so there's inherently a reason to be online and care about outcomes. Of course, that isn't the only way, but you'll need to justify what they're trying to accomplish online, who's behind it, and why the admins or police haven't gotten involved.

More information would be helpful.

here.

Just saw If the real-life players aren't even in proximity to eachother, I really wouldn't bother with real-life stats. Clearly most of the action will be done online, so anything offline is basically just splitting the party for no real reason.

Also, if you're having it so they can transfer avatars between 'games', that would imply that either all of these games are using the same source-code, in which case that's less necessary to have a special item to allow it, especially if some of these are just glorified chatrooms.

If they're intended to be entirely seperate games, then transferring between them would be a mess that basically requires magic.

As for fighting 'corruption', that sounds rather vague. Is there some virus overtaking these virtual spaces? Why can they not just shut it down and do a system restore? How do you fight a computer virus using your WoW Tank? Not sure what you're going for here.

I'm not trying for "real" versus "online", I'm trying to treat the stat divisions as being more like piloting a mecha.

>If they're intended to be entirely seperate games, then transferring between them would be a mess that basically requires magic.
It's ̶M̶a̶g̶i̶c̶SciFi, I ain't gotta explain shit. But yes, all of the games are more or less part of the same system. Think of it as the internet, but VR. And there is basically magic.
>Is there some virus overtaking these virtual spaces? Why can they not just shut it down and do a system restore? How do you fight a computer virus using your WoW Tank? Not sure what you're going for here.
The corruption has to work within the bounds of what exists within the network, and can't just do whatever. It's limited in power, even if it's strong enough to effect the real world. It's essentially a virus taking over the internet. The good AI that gives the players the power to combat it using their WoW Tanks is essentially just corrupting them as well, but for the greater good. As such, it also can't just give them the power to instantly think about rewriting something and make it so. It's been ages since I played the .Hack// games, but if I remember, the Twilight Bracelet had to be charged up or something first.

As for why the system can't just be shut down? I don't know. I'm still working on that. Maybe because doing so would require shutting down the entire internet or something. Maybe because the company in charge is trying to keep the information secret so that nobody knows everyone connected to the network could potentially be in danger.

>even if it's strong enough to effect the real world.

That sounds incredibly dangerous. If this thing can affect the real world. I don't think the company in charge could easily cover it up.

Why are the players tasked with stopping it? Can the company or government not handle it?

I think the only way this makes sense is to trap at least some of the players in the game it stops the company/goverment from shutting it all down because they would essentially be fragging a group of innocents.

The idea of death not killing the user but slowly turning them into an npc after multiple deaths sounds neat though

Why is it so important that the pc and the avatars have two seperate stats?

What will the characters be doing outside of the game? If they're playing with their minds how does their physical stats come into play?

It seems like the best way to handle this is to just have the avatars be a card that they slap onto the sheet.

Something like

>"WoW Tank"
>5800 hp
>*special abilities*

If they're going to be switching avatars a lot the avatars should be simple or the pc's should otherwise it might just be too much of a headache to deal with multiple characters and rule changes.

Effect the real world mostly as in "put people into comas", which wouldn't immediately be connected to anything in the real world. Other things, like banking or whatever, would presumably be harder to break into (whether by corrupt AIs or hackers in general).

The players are just in the right place at the wrong time. They're people chosen by the good AI to fight the corruption.

I'm going for something similar to the way angels and demons are treated in a lot of settings. They can't just drastically reshape everything, only corrupt or manipulate. The Gods can't poof everything better. It's essentially a "blessed by the Gods" scenario, but with a digital bent.

I think that even if it was public, the company would never shut down the entire internet.
I'd probably have players lose Avatars when they're destroyed by the Corruption. If they're killed bad enough, they might go into a coma in the real world and exist in the digital world as a minion of the Corruption.

But, yeah, I really do need to find a better reason for why it's secret without just having it be "you work for the company" or something like that (though "you work at the company but are trying to fix the problem instead of hide it" should be a valid character concept).

I feel like everyone is looking at this the wrong way and I'm not sure if I'm bad at explaining this or what.
>Why is it so important that the pc and the avatars have two seperate stats?
Because I want to simulate the fact that your Warrior on WoW and your Rogue are different characters, but the person at the keyboard is still the same.
>If they're playing with their minds how does their physical stats come into play?
This is virtual reality. It's The Matrix.
>If they're going to be switching avatars a lot the avatars should be simple or the pc's should otherwise it might just be too much of a headache to deal with multiple characters and rule changes.
This is a thing I'm concerned about, yeah. I'm not going to worry about things like different inventories or anything like that, because it would be way too damned complicated. I'm thinking of limiting the amount of Avatars you can have as a User side thing. You'd purchase more with the User Experience, while you'd buy special abilities for your Avatar based on a consumable item called Upgrades that are in-game currency and rewards (which again would be usable on any Avatar, because juggling which Avatar has what in which inventory would require way too much bookkeeping).

Yeah but in the Matrix anyone who jacks in don't use their physical stats they use their programs, Neo can't use his abilities in the Matrix outside of the matrix, at least not until he develops innate wifi then he can hack machine remotely, he still can't fly or reasurect people.

Trinity doesn't keep her increased reflexes, and no one seems to be martial arts masters in the real world.

You're saying that these are average joes anywhere from 400 lb pasty slobs to 8 year old korean girls and the game lets them become great warriors how does their physical stats matter then?

It's a little confusing

They can do things in the Matrix that they can't do in real life, but if Neo was crippled in real life, he'd still be able to walk in the Matrix. His ability to control the body that he's in is what's used, not his actual physical body.

>You're saying that these are average joes anywhere from 400 lb pasty slobs to 8 year old korean girls and the game lets them become great warriors how does their physical stats matter then?
I'm saying that there are no physical stats. Let's talk Eclipse Phase, since that's the thing that exists that's closest to what I'm trying to do here (and probably I'm just going to jack that system a bit).

You don't have Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. You have these:
>• Cognition (COG) is your aptitude for problemsolving, logical analysis, and understanding. It also includes memory and recall.
>• Coordination (COO) is your skill at integrating the actions of different parts of your morph to produce smooth, successful movements. It includes manual dexterity, fine motor control, nimbleness, and balance.
>• Intuition (INT) is your skill at following your gut instincts and evaluating on the fly. It includes physical awareness, cleverness, and cunning.
>• Reflexes (REF) is your skill at acting quickly. This encompasses your reaction time, your gut-level response, and your ability to think fast.
>• Savvy (SAV) is your mental adaptability, social intuition, and proficiency for interacting with others. It includes social awareness and manipulation.
>• Somatics (SOM) is your skill at pushing your morph to the best of its physical ability, including the fundamental utilization of the morph’s strength, endurance, and sustained positioning and motion.
>• Willpower (WIL) is your skill for self-control, your ability to command your own destiny.

Your skill list is the same no matter what Morph you're in, because as long as you're acclimated to the Morph, you know how to perform those actions well enough. Some Morphs will give bonuses or penalties to certain things, but your baseline is the same no matter what body you're in.

There are also certain traits that are primarily Ego and others that are based on your Morph.
Initiative, Lucidity, Trauma Threshold, Insanity Rating, and Moxie are all based on your Ego, which means they're generally the same no matter which body you're controlling.
Speed, Durability, Wound Threshold, Death Rating, and Damage Bonus are all based on your Morph. Obviously the physical body that your in is what determines your health, how hard you hit, and how fast you are.

Essentially, there are only mental traits. They determine how well you can manipulate the physical. Or, in the case of my thing, digital.

I'm not seeing the main point here.

Are you the same user as a few months ago? Because with the amount of handwaving you do, it kinda sounds like you just want to play Cyber Sleuth.

Months? Maybe? I think I made one thread. What handwaving are you talking about? What's Cyber Sleuth?

Bump

Since you mentioned Log Horizon yourself have you tried to check it's trpg book?

Okay, from your opening post it seems like your players have three areas of custimisation. The Avatar can do stuff according to in-game rules, the Decoding abillities run by technobabble, and the User that controls both.

Or maybe the User uses the Avatar akin to weapon or class gimmick, and the decoding is a sort of meta abillity of the User. At least that's a version that makes sense, I guess.

Well, we've had quite some MMO threads already, so by there's a standard procedure for campaigns:

>The MMO
This is basicly your setting, figure out how it works. Keep in mind that a Virtual Reality game would work differently than the MMOs we already have. Especially if it's a full immersion game like SAO. Search for either terms on 4plebs and note all the bitching about SAO. You basicly need to make a decent game, then make a good game about playing that game.

>The Users
How the player characters interact with the MMO. That's where you have the debugging and the user abillities, and the whole trapped-in-a-game stuff. Try to keep things simple. Use attunement or something as a caster stat and keep intelligence to the player characters for hacking. Think how much action happens in the MMO and outside of it, then allocate mechanics arcodingly.

>The Campaign
At last you need to take care that everything comes together in a decent shape. For example, it would be a tremendously stupid idea to have the user just be a Shadowrun hacker, while the avatar is a DnD character. Playing that way would be needlessly complex. You also need to make sure that your language is clear so that in and out of MMO don't get confused. Unless the bleeding together of fantasy and reality is a theme of course.

Do your characters have access to data drain? If .Hack IMOQ is anything to go by, have hub towns to chat with player npcs (npcs that are players of the game) for gossip and allow for rarer materials or stronger equipment to be available through player to player trade instead of the npc npc (npcs that are npcs npcs)stores. The town portal that ports you to dungeon maps need a keyword combination to bring you to to them so there are some merits to exploring or something. Infected enemies in the .hack series basically had their stats set to -1/100 hp so you couldnt kill them, maybe have roundabout ways to kill them and get your players actually debating through the game meta to deal with this cheating boss. The .hack series had the data drain attack that extracted the virus from enemies so they could deal damage normally but im not sure if this is a good route to go for. Im referencing .hack alot. It will be easier on me if I knew if you know what Im talking about

>What handwaving are you talking about?
>It's ̶M̶a̶g̶i̶c̶SciFi, I ain't gotta explain shit.

That's one thing being handwaved and is on par with handwaving how FTL works.

Decoding (along with certain other Talents, like the Friends List Telepathy and stuff I'm not sure yet how to model, like logging out and other system related things) are basically Talents (the same things Avatars have) that stick with you no matter where in the virtual world you go.

The Avatar will basically be equipment, with Upgrades being used to make your Avatar's abilities better. Think the way weapons work in Final Fantasy Tactics (Advance, since that's the one I played). You get new abilities by leveling up your Class while having weapons equipped because the weapon is what has the ability. *Something* similar to that, and the way that you can change your Class out. Marche is the User, Blue Mage is the Avatar.

While the MMO is the core of the game (the pnp game), the idea is for that to just be the central hub. The players will also be able to explore the parts outside of the "MMO" like the shopping malls and movie theaters and digital parks. These places are also threatened, since it's all the same system. I'm probably not going to fully flesh out anything, at least not the point where there's a full map of Azeroth or anything (for one because that's not the type of game I like to run). While the main "Campaign" focus is following a general .Hack// guideline (Aura gives you the Twilight Bracelet, fight the baddies), individual stuff is left up to the GM.

Like I've said in other posts, the system is less "you have two character sheets from different games and more "your stats are all based around how well you can control a body".

To elaborate: That's on par with handwaving how FTL works, it's sort of par for the course. I'm not trying to handwave how any mechanical things work.

>Do your characters have access to data drain?
That's the idea. The characters basically meet Aura and she gives them all those kind of abilities. You're right that a simple data drain might be a bit boring. I'll have to give more interesting Debug Talents, and design bosses that are a bit more puzzly and challenging.
>Im referencing .hack alot. It will be easier on me if I knew if you know what Im talking about
It's been years since I played the PS2 games or saw the anime, but I literally used a still from the upcoming movie, and that's the best image I could find after googling "dot hack" terms for an hour.

yeah, the company that did .hack games now do naruto games. I dont think there will ever be a return now that sword art online filled the niche

I like how in Log Horizon you can use the menus, but that's always the worst way to do things, and food doesn't taste as good.

>To elaborate: That's on par with handwaving how FTL works, it's sort of par for the course. I'm not trying to handwave how any mechanical things work.
you've read SAO, right? That Seed thing? Actually really important and the lynchpin of all the VRMMO shit they do. Without it, almost none of the skills that the MC gets would even apply in any other game.

In the same way that Mass Effect has to devote a significant chunk of lore maintaining how important the Mass Effect is to FTL, whatever made it so that all of this software is hyper-compatible has to....exist.

>you've read SAO, right?
No.

Also, I don't know Mass Effect, but I'm pretty sure they could just... not explain FTL and it wouldn't change much. If the analogies bother you, it's on par with handwaving how there are so many different races in fantasy games. Or magic in fantasy games.

I mean, all that I'm really handwaving is the how and why of video games and digital apartment tours being on the same network.

>it wouldn't change much
if that's how you see it, then I don't think I can really help you. Just like last time, I just can't agree with how you're focusing so much on one aspect while handwaving others. It won't encompass all VRMMO style concepts.

What do you feel I shouldn't handwave, and why?

I'm having trouble parsing through all this, so maybe next time you can format everything instead of just linking the past thread.

I'm looking back at and:
>But yes, all of the games are more or less part of the same system.
that's actually okay. Now could you maybe add a vague history on how that happened? Something that can be referenced and implied to players? Some understanding of the basic network infrastructure is going to be needed if your main antagonist is some sort of supervirus. Whether it's .HACK or Log Horizon, the characters there were or eventually became informed of the internal structure of the game, or at least what the game is "supposed" to be in comparison to what they observe.

I just can't get a sense for the substance of whatever campaign you have in mind, when your main reference is people falling into comas and yet there's supposed to be nearly no real world segments.

>Think of it as the internet, but VR.
this makes no sense. You ever tried a google cardboard? When I think internet, but VR, I imagine the youtube app. You stand still and watch videos. I'm sure you meant to evoke a sense of spatial presence and "travel", but the internet doesn't really have those concepts as it is right now.

>And there is basically magic
....look. Go play Cyber Sleuth. That will give you more help than I could ever achieve. MAYBE S.L.A.I. , but that one's a rather obscure and different beast entirely.

It's not a campaign, it's a homebrew. And the events of the virtual world are effecting the physical world, that's why everything is done in the virtual world. There's no point to being in the real world if all the problems are in cyberspace.

>When I think internet, but VR, I imagine the youtube app
I mean actual full immersion virtual reality, akin to The Matrix.

>....look. Go play Cyber Sleuth
I feel like you're not really understanding me here. "Basically magic" as in someone said transferring between the separate digital worlds would "basically require magic".
The AI that gives them the ability to fight the virus/corruption is essentially giving them techno-magic. It's the same way that the characters in The Matrix can manipulate The Matrix. They have cheat codes.

>It's not a campaign, it's a homebrew.
and I don't feel like you're understanding me.

It's a homebrew, a SETTING, right? And part of that setting is
>But yes, all of the games are more or less part of the same system.
?

That's not a footnote, that's a big part of the making this whole thing function. Give it some detail.

>The AI that gives them the ability to fight the virus/corruption is essentially giving them techno-magic.
and I repeat myself. Go play Cyber Sleuth. You want techno-magic, you play that and take notes and perspective on how you want to implement it.

>You want techno-magic
I feel like you're misunderstanding me. I'm using "magic" in a narrative sense. Like, the phasers in Star Trek would be magic. So would FTL. Or a full immersion virtual reality system.

"All virtual realities are on the same system" isn't really something that needs more fleshing out than that. I mean, I'll probably do it in the end anyway, but it's definitely not some integral lynchpin that I need to determine before I can proceed. I don't need three pages of in-setting history describing the history of VR. Neither do I need specific mechanics on how the VR works, certainly no more attention than Shadowrun gives its cyberware or most games give FTL. Even in Mass Effect how the mass effect drives actually work doesn't really matter to the actual gameplay or even story.

then don't make a three-page history. Make a 4 sentence history. It doesn't have to be long, it just has to establish the assumptions that you're taking before you introduce all these game jumping mechanics, and open whatever plot angles you want for possible campaigns.

I have repeatedly done that in this thread. "The virtual worlds are all connected and both the virus and the players can move from one to the other" is all that needs to be said about it.

Only system I can really think of that comes close to what you're looking for (I'm sure there's more, and I'm just not aware of them) is Cartoon Action Hour. In terms of forms, you have a default form, and then alternate forms are based on how many points you spend on the form (so some forms are weaker/stronger than others), and anything from the base form that would reasonably make sense transfers to other forms automatically.

And assuming you're not aiming to have everyone be equal in everything, this method of how forms is handled basically translates to people spending their time in different ways. So it means somebody with weaker forms but a stronger base form spends less time in the various games, but has more knowledge/skills that translate anywhere. Somebody with a stronger alternate form has been playing the games a lot and may be playing a particular game more than others.

But unless you plan on drastically altering this system, it probably won't be the best fit, and can only be a method of getting some ideas on how to do things, since the system's main purpose is emulating 80's cartoons, and so things are on the simpler side, and there's things to kind of limit constant usage of abilities (since in cartoons, this might translate to being visually boring).


And I know this isn't what you're looking for, but if trying to come up with different avatars and separating users ends up not working, you might want to check out The Strange; again, at least for ideas if the gameplay doesn't seem interesting. Basically the idea of the game is that you're traveling between different worlds and there's different ideas on how a character might work or be adjusted to fit into different worlds.

>(I'm sure there's more, and I'm just not aware of them)
I've said Eclipse Phase like twelve times.

One last bump

>Everything is virtual reality now. You can go to the movies as an Avatar. You can go to the mall. Think of it as if it were what Second Life wishes it was. The Rampant AI getting out of the game would be a Very Bad Thing for all involved, and that's beyond the usual "your friend is in a coma" thing.
Have you watched Summer Wars?

No. Chances are I haven't watched any of these animes. I'm only even aware of Summer Wars tangentially and only because there's a lot of porn of the brown haired shota.

You should then. The internet in Summer Wars is actually not VR, but it's explored with avatars and every avatar is tied to a person's ID. The stake of the story is ID theft by rampage AI, causing global economic collapse and electronic fuckups.

Basicly, the internet is a city in WoW. You run around with your avatar talking to different people to do stuff and also can use menues for much of it. Everything is happening via that city and the game for it runs on a potato.

It's barely related to what you're trying to do.