Disregarding trolls, romance, sexuality, bullshit, etc. how would you run a Sburb game? What system would you use?

First 4 Acts are good, and also where stuff like alchemy and such actually happens. Act 5 slides in quality, Act 6 nose dives into trash.

You need the players to have a lot of free mobility to make it feel authentic.

Homesuck(because it's not a very good story) needs a shit ton of pre-game building of the environments. Classspects, quests, sprite programming/cgess people undergoing mutations from said sprite programming, first guardians, time bullshittery, how the cosmology works, the house building/ interplanetary portal stuff, time bullshit. JUJUs, anything to do with god tier classpect power. All of it is very shinanigans heavy. Munchkinry would have been very easy to pull of in homestuck canon if the characters had not been spazzing out every three seconds and any
PCs even the ones who play for fun are going to assfuck the whole system just by being rational human beings.

The best answer is to not do it.
Best

That or just steal from the setting to make your own manageable ripoff.

I stole Lands and alchemization heartlessly and I will continue to do so.

>never getting to receive to mass amount of boondollars from leveling up your echeladder

Would you gain XP from crushing monsters and just living?

It's easy

TPK the players, resurrect them, then give them an ending that makes them wish they died

Firs thing I'd do is toss the bubbles. You die, you go insane in a hellish afterlife of Horrorterrors tearing you apart. Your dreamself dies, you go insane and die from the dreams slowly murdering you. Death is fucking bad don't do it.

Plus I'd toss all the extra selves and have them merge when you Godtier. The whole point is to become your divine and complete self. Fuck no ultimate self.

I'm gonna have to go with either the most common suggestion here, Mutants and Masterminds, or another system with as flexible and more flavor-based power system. You need something that are both extremely outlandish yet also very limited without getting very creative, so using systems that require creative input on the players' parts for powersets rather than something with conventional history-based powers and abilities will probably do you much better.

I'd have to disagree with this, it discards some of the more interesting aspects of the setting's multiverse, and cuts back on the kinds of shenanigans both you and your players can pull from my perspective, and given the nature of the setting's promotion of absurd and weirdly specific shenanigan abuse, I wouldn't factor that out.
On the extra selves merge upon godhood thing, I'm pretty sure they do that anyway, but only to all living extra selves from a single timeline, hence why prototyped Jade did but not prototyped alternate future dave.

>I'd have to disagree with this, it discards some of the more interesting aspects of the setting's multiverse

Those interesting aspects lead to massive cast bloat and endless scenes that went nowhere with dead characters nobody cared for. If you can make them work, great, I'd rather the bubbles never have existed. I need for death to have a dangerous meaning instead of a time out.

And for the fusing, I'm just pissed Ultimate Self never ended up being a thing, and would toss the idea that it's some nebulous nothing instead of an actual spiritual goal. Fuck it, Jade SHOULD have fused with every single one of her timelines. Homestuck had great ideas that went nowhere.

They don't. The flashes near the end show that if you die, you leave a ghost, and your other self gets to live. Godtier is a lie. You just end up in a black hole while some other you gets to run around. Unless you kill your dreamself on the bed.

Homestuck ended when Condy killed everyone. The retcon and subsequent events are what went through John's brain at the moment she snapped his neck, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge style.

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, can you link your sources?

As a lifelong GM and writer, seeing how lamely the ending went was a weird kind of catharsis rage. There is SO MUCH you could do with "retcon powers and time collapsing" and he picked the softest, fastest, easiest, laziest, most quiet way to do anything with it.

Go watch the Remember flash. We see The John who died on the bed rising as a ghost.

To be honest, what we're seeing is just poor continuity and a story losing sense and place, but it implies you die, you a ghost. You do not merge. And all the ghosts now go to hell in the black hole or whatever happens. The end, no moral, boring story.

just rewatched and, huh, that really is john from his bed...
Still, I'm not sure if that entirely renders the mechanics of ascension as false. There is a recurring statement in the mechanics of ascension that consciousnesses merge upon ascension, and that even if ascension is aborted the merging of consciousnesses cannot be aborted, so perhaps this suggests both that consciousnesses merge /and/ a ghost of the dead individual is made, perhaps due to death needing to always result in a ghost? This may also suggest that an individual who has died and then is brought back may be capable of producing multiple ghosts, rather than a ghost being pulled back into a repaired body.
You are right, that's definitely a ghost of the john that ascends, but given that we have explicit statements on how got tier is supposed to work, I'm not sure what to do with that info. Has this ever been brought up or clarified in any official manner?

>Still, I'm not sure if that entirely renders the mechanics of ascension as false.

Stopping you. Right there. Right fucking there. I read it all but you're stopping there.

Because none of what you said matters, because Hussie has no idea and does not care, so you have been given authority to make up whatever you want.

Nobody fucking knows or cares who could answer you. Just roll with it - in my take, Godtier no fucking DUH combines all your living and dead selves together.

It hasn't really been brought up or clarified officially, but what you said makes sense to me. It doesn't contradict anything, and if we do follow what they said, and hussie's whole thing about "marios," it makes sense.

I dunno, the more I think about it the more I think I could play with it, like having someone who can merge ghost selves with living selves for power boosts and someone who can resurrect the dead using their combined power to basically farm bubbles for their own ghosts.

Fuck him and his Marios. Doomed timelines were stupid after their brilliant initial reveal with Doomed Dave and Rose.

...

Fuck you Jack. Do you know how hard I internally weep for what was done to you? Any fucking idea? #1 injustice of the entire story.

It's crazy how everyone forgot about that.

Literally the first thing Terezi did when she appeared the comic is kill John, and by extension all the other kids. Her first appearance and she murdered a child for her own amusement. And yet she's somehow the "good one", despite doing the same things as Vriska, who is obviously evil. Vriska, who she resurrected instead of any of her other friends, including the one Vriska had just murdered.

Fuck Terezi.

GURPS is the only thing that could handle SBURB's autism. Crafting, base building, classes, godliness, and all.

If you mean Homestuck as it actually is (Which you don't), then clearly Monster Hearts for all of the teen romance and drama. A similarly narrative system like FATE could work as well.

Terezi was clearly going to be the Vriska of the story, and she was doing great with that intro of murder, before Hussie had the idiot idea to scoop in another 8 useless NPCs into the merch pile.

Doomed timelines is a really cool time throttle mechanic before it turned boring and meaningless. Good for games at least.

I'd use GURPS, but it'd be a pseudo-Ultralite system with a lot more freeform.

There was an entire homebrew system made for it, based off of 4e, which works surprisingly well for the setting.

>Terezi was clearly going to be the Vriska of the story, and she was doing great with that intro of murder, before Hussie had the idiot idea to scoop in another 8 useless NPCs into the merch pile.

Four trolls are all we need: Terezi, Karkat, Sollux and Kanaya. Yeah, you lose out on gems like Aradia, but that's a price worth paying to avoid the mess the comic became.

Having said that, I think that Homestuck was still salvageable at any point before the Retcon. Hivebent may have been a wrong turn but it fed right back into things happening in the story and the plot actually advancing.

Finally, someone who agrees 4 was all we needed. Keep It Simple Stupid. I seriously did not care or want the other 8, I felt like things were already unsalvageable by the time Three Years came around.

Retcon could have saved it, but it needed to have been seriously bombastic and Problem Sleuth Finale grade to make up for it. Instead of John tearing apart time itself to end English and try to find their ultimate end, he instead got pushed like a wet fart into a limping credits.

for all the shit the ending got wrong, I do believe it is a good storybook version of how Veeky Forums player groups should deal with That Guys.
Someone ruining your game by powergaming the shit out of it? Problem is simple, leave him to play by himself and go play something else somewhere else.

Tbh I don't mind extra one-note gag characters, It's just that the tumblr fandom latched onto a couple specific gag characters and took them for more than they were, and Hussie pandered to them with character and narrative bloat.

>Retcon could have saved it

I disagree. Throwing out years and years of comic just because Hussie wrote himself into a corner was a major 'fuck you' to the readers. If something doesn't matter, it shouldn't be shown on screen. He should have either finished the comic right there with only Roxy and John still alive, or ended it with everyone dying and the mission failing.

Speaking of which, the alt-kids were just as pointless as the extra trolls. Only a couple of them were relevant or interesting, and all their traits could easily have been rolled into the main cast without changing much.

Personally I didn't mind the gigantic cast or the weird finagly timeline bullshit, but I guess I'm just used to keeping track of a lot of characters and storythreads more than some people simply because of the bullshit that is shared continuities in comics and shit.

I guess I just don't get pissed off as easily. Might help that I started reading right as the gigapause was coming to an end, so I got most of it all in one large binge.

One thing I wish homestuck would've had more of, and that I really like, were the Ancestors. Not the dancestors like Kankri and Mituna and all that, but the Ancestors. Seriously, I like the concept of being born and being left clues to who it was who came before you, and they're basically fucking demigods.

I kind of want to do that for my next game-- each pc has some sort of progenitor that lived long ago, and was effectively the best at "blank" in the world.

My own current game by fortune has had time stuff happen thanks to player initiative, so I've decided because of some insane rolls during story events to essentially follow the Ultimate Self plot idea. Been a hell of a good run for self-discovery in the characters.

The most complete one is A User's Guide to the Apocalypse

Unfortunately it's built off Chuubo's Wish Granting Engine

The system matters far less than the world and "story", but I do think there probably needs to be an alchemy system designed for the game, even if its very simple.

I've had a fun time running a sburb campaign with that truly miserable 4e hackjob that was on the mspaintadvetures forums, and I believe that the system is really just a backbone for the players to understand their capabilities

Isn't this what Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine was made for?

What is that, exactly?

Honestly, I think Fate is probably your best bet.

Mutants and Masterminds is a good system, but it shines when you have a lot of time to prepare and crunch things out slowly. Homestuck/Sburb by its very nature is a bunch of arbitrary bullshit that happens by the seat of your pants, with the connections falling into place way afterwards. It's why most Homestuck homebrews fail because everyone wants to autistically crunch out the class and aspect combos on top of alchemy when in the comic alchemy boils down to mashing silly things together and aspects/classes are pretty open ended.

With Fate you can play into this well with its aspect system. For instance, you could have a player who is a Bard of Time. Invoking their aspect lets them help themselves through time fuckery, but you can also compel it as the GM in order to make them maintain stable time loops.

I've never played Fate, but I definitely agree with you there
I once had a friend who wanted to conjure an entire system with classes and aspects with different abilities and trying to define what each class can do, which seemed to ruin the spirit of sburb

Now, would you make your party choose their Titles or have those come out in the story? Does the Class actually need to be their "class", so to speak, or should it be their story role as it seems to be in the comic?

>Disregarding trolls, romance, sexuality, bullshit, etc

youtube.com/watch?v=aDEdKzAZgko

1-1=0

You'd need some base stats for categories of everyday items, and what results when you alchemize them together. For example a refrigerator is Heavy III, Metal I, Cold II, and when you mash it up with something else it adds those amounts of heaviness, metalness and coldness to the resulting item. Grist cost is derived from the stat increases and how many generations of alchemization you've done.

Assign classes and aspects randomly, or at GM's discretion. Roll land qualities randomly or at GM's discretion.

There's probably a joke here about stealing money or the game never being released but I won't go there. it hurts

It all started with that nigga Chuubo

He had an engine what granted wishes

I think OP means the cool stuff from the comic, like the classes, building houses, teleporting around planets, and alchemy

I kind of like this idea for alchemy. Good idea, man, that makes it simple to break down and construct any item if it's that simple.

And thats some lame shit

Merging with yourself is an all around better idea, and was completely accepted until that flash, which actually makes me think that Hussbus big lips McGee made a mistake and then just ran with it. It wouldnt be the first time in the story he did one thing when another wouldve been better.

There was an idea I personally liked and wrote down for later. pastebin.com/dXXUJm5i

The thing I've always struggled with here is that Sburb starts out as a bunch of basically single-player games. And it seems like it wouldn't work well by just throwing the party together at the start, since then only one party member is following their quest at a time. Anyone thought of a better workaround?

problem sleuth is objectively better in all aspects to homestuck

Honestly, if you're going to stick too close to the canon you've already fucked up. The whole idea is that every session is a trainwreck on top of the already backwards rules of the game.

Go apeshit.

The art and music is worse.
Though I do find the art more charming.

whats sburb

Problem Sleuth was so good. Short, sweet, and pure. Homestuck started the same way. It fell fast after the second year.

What coulda been.

Once upon a time in a lost end, it was about kids and fun, and a Sims-style riff game that turned into a divine comedy.

If you pretend Cascade is the ending then Homestuck is better (if a little dissatisfying).

Pretty much the best thing to do. I had fun coming up with a ton of better ways Homestuck could have gone. I'm content to end my own game on a note of hope and ultimate selves to spite Hussie.

I've also thought about this.

In short, the best way to run it is to just do it. Take any basic or universal system with a God-Tier GM, or a really good GM and good players, then it will work.

The inherent problem is the entire ruleset is far too complex to be made into a simple game. For example; what objects get programmed into the kernal sprite greatly change not only the enemies but their items. You can specialize in feather dusters and other ridiculous weapons. The magic system is basically 'do whatever you want related to your aspect', and so on. These rules work great for a weird little webcomic story, but are pretty much anathema for trying to create a game.

I stopped reading it after the whole trickster mode stunt so I've always considered cascade the proper ending.
A way "out" was a victory in my book.

How do you design very early game? Like, pre-entering Sburb and grouping up.

I actually ran a Sburb-lite game one time. I essentially changed it so everyone could manipulate their own homes before getting into the 'shared game world' server. Obviously it wasn't exactly faithful but it helped with gameplay.

Then the game world was formed and it was all the 'lands' like Land of Trees and Flowers and shit but they were physically connected to each other so the players could meet and decide where to go to do quests and stuff, with each player house being like a hub in each world I guess.

If I did it again I would probably make everyone start in one house (or maybe apartment complex, each person has one apartment) so the building and management aspect was easier.

Obviously not faithful, as I said, but the comic does it that way so it can introduce characters over time and have separate viewpoints to craft the story. Not for a group-oriented gaming experience.

I know this is not a system per se, but I am fond of the way this "walkthrough" is written and the depth it goes into regarding potential game mechanics. Though the inclusion of non-canon aspects/classes pains me somewhat, along with other speculative leaps, I believe this would make an excellent reference document for anyone intending to make a SBURB system of their own.

archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606

I miss the Sburb Glitch FAQ. I miss the old Sburb Glitch FAQ RP and I miss the autists in it, even if I hated them at the time.

It had a lot of genuinely cool and clever stuff. Tragic that it got abandoned.

Homestuck was wasted potential. They set up cool shit that they then dropped like a log.

I notice no-one's mentioned Sylladexes and Fetch Modi, which I always thought were pretty cool.

Amber Diceless. Nothing else could come close.

i played in a homestuck RP waaaay back on a shitty text-based byond game and we used a 1d100 for fights, and not much else.
it was a 12 player session and to be honest i only remember like four of them, and there were some idiosyncracies because we either didn't understand stuff or things just plain weren't explained yet (i was a 'maid of faith', for example), but it worked out pretty well and gave me some good memories and my first female character - a character i really fucking loved to RP as for years to come.

anyway, as far as running my own game goes, i think it'd be downright necessary to run it online, for one.
as for system, something light and flexible's for the best.
a short while back i thought about how i'd run a HS game and i briefly considered gurps although i think it might require some rejiggering, but the worst part to stat out would be class/aspect powers since they're rather broad, if you stat them out at all. maybe just using skills for them, like how magic works?
other stuff can be largely abstracted though, and there's neat little features and hacks you can do like ablative DR to represent vitality gel (ignored, of course, when fighting other players or being backstabbed) and psychic abilities being pretty easy to handle.

FATE might work, but i'm iffy on it because of how poorly the games i've played in have been ran. not entirely sure about other systems, but i hear there's a conversion made for one of the D&D editions, which i'm not sure how i feel about.
seen mutants and masterminds suggested, but i haven't checked that out yet. i probably should.

anyway, overall i think just running it with virtually no system as a text-based RP was probably the best decision made way back when, even if it was because they didn't even think to run it in a proper system.