Valorous Dominion
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I've never heard of Pendragon before, and so when I entered CG and saw the lack of attributes (especially intelligence, etc) I was gobsmacked. Not gonna lie, I closed out and was like bye.
"So the only attributes here are FOUR types of physical aspects and how hot you are. Great. Just. Great. Nope. Bye."
Then, I read through the PDF and saw they addressed the whole "No Intelligence?" sidebar, had a chuckle and could understand the reasoning behind it. Actually, I love it - if you are an idiot, you have to play an idiot. There's no escaping it. Don't know you're an idiot? Great!
So I joined, this time in earnest because I can't /wait/ to see how that plays out. There's no common sense skill, no "hey let me roll this to see if I know better" rolls.
Bringing us to skills, other things did bother me a little about this, as there is a whole swath of 'em that overlap and man do I hate me some skill overlap. I will overlook the shit out of this for good RP and intrigue though.
Lastly I was warned that this system is highly deadly, maybe I should have put more effort into making a survivable character but I'm surprisingly happy with how my sheet turned out.
Can't wait to test drive the character. I hope she doesn't trip and fall on something mildly pointy because she is probably not going to survive it.
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On a secondary note! The staff members are super helpful and the player base warm and welcoming. And understanding of n00bs with silly questions, like myself.The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
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Going to echo @nyctophiliac - the friendliness of the staffers and the friendliness of the playerbase is a big part of what reeled me in after the amazing setting had me hooked. I am a little nervous about the long term health of my delicate gothic ivory tower character, but I already have backup concepts if she does trip and fall and catch the bubonic plague.
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I like that explanation for intelligence, actually.
It's harder to 'play dumb' than it seems -- and frankly, most people in this hobby are well enough above average intelligence. (And some people won't 'play dumb' if their character is less intelligent than they are, and some will go so far as to say that making the choice as a player to play to the low intelligence stat -- something a lot of folks consider the only 'fair play' of it -- and screw up sometimes is actually player-level unethical if it ever in any way impacts any other players in some way.) That really does sidestep that neatly.
That said... any time something is set in a different era or non-standard-earth modern world, I do lean toward inclusion of some kind of 'common sense' stat. We wouldn't think to boil our water every time before we use it in most cases, for instance, but plenty of people who came before us knew it was necessary, and so on. Similarly, your character may reasonably know that everyone from <fictitious country X> doesn't eat meat, while that setting detail may not have made it into somewhere visible (or simply have been forgotten OOC when it would never be forgotten IC) and thus asking for a steak dinner in said vegan land would be a bad idea, etc.
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@nyctophiliac said in Valorous Dominion:
Then, I read through the PDF and saw they addressed the whole "No Intelligence?" sidebar, had a chuckle and could understand the reasoning behind it. Actually, I love it - if you are an idiot, you have to play an idiot. There's no escaping it. Don't know you're an idiot? Great!
I was actually in a scene yesterday where someone with a Read of only 3 failed their roll so thoroughly they became Disheartened over it. My character ended up later being like 'Well, why don't we work on deciphering this coded document together?' to try to cheer him up a bit, despite his state of 'Well, I can't actually READ my brother's books on the topics, but I at least know they're books!'
(I, on the other hand, with a read of 10, rolled 20 and botched the roll... so played that my character was too distracted in the moment to try reading the parchment and tried to play it off cool as 'haha guess I can't read it either')
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@nyctophiliac said in Valorous Dominion:
Bringing us to skills, other things did bother me a little about this, as there is a whole swath of 'em that overlap and man do I hate me some skill overlap. I will overlook the shit out of this for good RP and intrigue though.
Some of the overlap is actually for "people from this culture take skill X, people from this other culture take skill Y." Most of those are listed on the game wiki's skills page, so make sure to double-check. Or even if you don't, it's not a big deal, they'll let you fix it after the fact if they don't catch it in approval. (This is totally what I did.)
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@roz said in Valorous Dominion:
@nyctophiliac said in Valorous Dominion:
Bringing us to skills, other things did bother me a little about this, as there is a whole swath of 'em that overlap and man do I hate me some skill overlap. I will overlook the shit out of this for good RP and intrigue though.
Some of the overlap is actually for "people from this culture take skill X, people from this other culture take skill Y." Most of those are listed on the game wiki's skills page, so make sure to double-check. Or even if you don't, it's not a big deal, they'll let you fix it after the fact if they don't catch it in approval. (This is totally what I did.)
And there's some subtle differences in them, too! Like intrigue/manipulation are cultural skills, can get you the same outcome, but through very different means.
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This place sounds really interesting, but how's the population for off-peak hours? The biggest limiter for RP for me is always the fact that I'm rarely available during US prime time and tend to only be around when the other Euros or Aussies are.
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@rebekahse It's pretty good! At the time of writing this (just past 1AM US Pacific time) there are seven people on, and just earlier we determined we had players from pretty much all over the globe, Europe, Middle East, US west coast. I think I heard someone being Canadian around here too, but that might just be an urban myth. During US daytime I'm seeing 22-25 on regular.
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I currently live in South Africa, so "odd off peak hours" are basically the only thing I do - I see there's moderate activity but I'm sure if me and the rest of the weird hourlings stick together, it'll just get better from here on out.
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Okay, cool.
I'm giving chargen a shot at the moment, and I'm already lost. You only get 10 points for traits, and every adjustment to one of the 13 paired traits takes a point, so...are you supposed to start with just a very minor tilt in one direction in only a few traits, or what?
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@rebekahse said in Valorous Dominion:
...are you supposed to start with just a very minor tilt in one direction in only a few traits, or what?
It kinda plays out that way. You're only allowed to tilt to a 14 on one side out of chargen anyway.
It sounds limiting, but it hasn't been a hindrance in my play so far.
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Ack! The game went down. @Lotherio - Everything ok?
EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN: chunk swap file write, 57308 remaining, errno 28: No space left on device
Going down - ByeStatus: unable to connect to this site:
( #10061 ) The connection was refused by the server, verify your address and that the game is currently operating. -
@kay I got the same.
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I'll post here when the game is up again. Woke up to this just now, sorry everyone.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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Back in business, restarted, sorry about the time it was down.
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I suspect there might still be some people lurking around wanting to play but not sure what. Perhaps I can help!
I finally finished up the story for House Ganza, and a little prompter at the bottom on what we're looking for. Embrace your inner Goth. http://valorous.wikidot.com/house:ganza
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I am going to be making a character here at some point soon. Been poking around at things. Not there yet, though.
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@sunny It took me a while to work out a concept based on what is both interesting to myself and needed. Folks are hella friendly and they'll brainstorm with you.
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@sunny I could easily fit in another sister (who would likely be heir)
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@sunny How do you feel about being part of a gothic, spooky, geeky bunch of weirdos?
