The State of the Chronicles of Darkness

[Coin]

You're getting bonuses on three social Skills "where movement is involved", which while nebulous, can translate to something ridiculously useful, if you're playing a game that uses social rolls (a whole different issue we've discussed before and probably will again in the future).

I'm not arguing other Kiths aren't better--I just don't think it's particularly bad; unless you're trying to apply it to a medium of RP that isn't going to see any consistent practical use.

I can also argue that I've seen more practical situations where distracting people in favor of keeping whatever other PCs are doing from being noticed than situations where "understanding anything written in any mortal language". By this I mean situations in which it actually matters. Because being able to read anything in any mortal language in a social scene is about as awesome as being able to dance really well in a social scene, i.e. fluff.

I concede that it's one of the more narrow-scoped and nebulous and badly designed Kiths, but there's heaps of this sort of "practically useless" stuff in the games.

[Miss Demeanor]

@HelloRaptor said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Both and mechanic. Same stupid bonus to dance-related rolls. Having played a Dancer for years, I can tell you just how little it actually comes up. >.> Or matters.

Needs more Persuasion Spec (Seductive Breakdancing).

A++, would read again.

@Coin Again, I will say, as someone who played a Fairest Dancer for YEARS... I have a pretty goddamn good idea of how often it comes up. Which is to say, almost NEVER. I have not ever been in a single plot where distraction of others was even useful, let alone necessary. And the three Skills that gain that bonus? Persuasion, Socialize, Subterfuge. So... seduction, the skill that's never used, and... lying with your feet? I would say misdirection, but there's a whole Kith that's WAY better suited for that. When people can walk through walls, teleport, become invisible, and a whole host of other 'sneaky' abilities.. distraction doesn't even get considered. Dancing, as a skill, is used in one of two ways on a MU*. Its something to drop a couple points into for a profession (she works hard for the money), or its a way to force everyone in a social scene to stop what they're doing and stare at you (so hard for it, honey). The one useful thing that -used- to be part of the Dancer Kith was the +1 to Defense. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's gone. Instead, you might just gain yourself a bevy of Obsessed stalkers! Yay! Just what every Changeling should hope for, a group of mortals trying desperately to force their way into their private life. What an amazing boon that is! Wait, you mean I -shouldn't- want a throng of crazed fans trying to follow me everywhere I go, exponentially upping the potential of exposing myself as non-human?? Oh, well, guess that's not so awesome after all...

I like you, man. You generally have some good ideas, and I really like what you and Eerie have done with Eldritch. But this is just blatant refusing to see how absolutely terrible of an idea this Kith is. Its not just 'practically useless', its borderline dangerous to use that Kith Blessing.

[Pyrephox]

Me, I would take the combat specialization (Sword Dance) and be the ultimate crowd control combat monster. That's right, bastards, stare at me while I stab out your eyes!

[Bobotron]

@Miss-Demeanor
Eh. I'm going to be the dissenter here and, once more, say, we're splitting hairs about something that is NOT DESIGNED for MU* being NOT SUITED for MU* environment. Quelle suprise!

Kiths are meant to cover specific situations from fairy stories and fairy tales. In this instance, it's very much The Dancing Shoes. However. Using dancing to add to socialize, persuasion and subterfuge, IMO makes sense. There are plenty of media examples where someone dances super close with someone else, in order to wheedle information out of them while they're distracted, or plant false information, or whatever. It's meant to be a representation, IMO, of 'that dude there is distracted while I'm dancing him six ways from Sunday'.

It can be useless, yes, especially if social rolls don't matter, and in a MU* environment which they aren't built to be used in, but it CAN be useful if the ST makes it useful. MU* STs just seem to have a hard time finding out who will be there beyond 'I can throw eleventy-seven dice of damage at it AND become invisible while I do so!' and account for that or, better yet, build challenges that will take someone's unique abilities into account.

[Coin]

@Miss-Demeanor

That's all right, I can agree to disagree. Or just disagree! I played a lawyer for YEARS and the amount of times actual lawyering came up were really really slim. I usually used it more as a springboard for behavior and topics of conversation. But my character was a lawyer, even if all his lawyering went on off-screen.

@Bobotron

Pretty much, yah.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Bobotron There's a reason Bards are largely considered one of the most useless D&D classes. Even tabletop GM's don't tend to address social situations much, if at all. Its not MU* specific. Look at a handful of premade modules, let me know how often socializing or even social rolls REALLY come into play vs going on a monster hunt (cause we're not afraid!).

Also, yes, I'm kind of stuck in this mode of working song lyrics into responses... not sure why, but they keep popping up.

[Arkandel]

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Even tabletop GM's don't tend to address social situations much, if at all. Its not MU* specific. Look at a handful of premade modules, let me know how often socializing or even social rolls REALLY come into play vs going on a monster hunt (cause we're not afraid!).

I won't go over table-top GMing but on MU* it's a fairly common theme that social situations are allowed to be hijacked by physical types who happen to also have good conversational skills - or at least you wouldn't know they don't from the way they are posed even if their +sheet wouldn't support it.

Part of the fault for that lies with players. My werewolf is no negotiator - there have been multiple situations where he's screwed up considerably simply by opening his mouth. It's not that he's dumb but he's not good at reading or talking to people in stressful non-violent situations. And yet I've seen the opposite happen a fair bit, which undermines other characters' concepts for whom this sort of thing is their bread and butter, where they can excel and shine.

The other half is Storytellers not requesting dice rolls (or, at least not doing so if they spot a mismatch between PC ability and actual poses). When in doubt there should really be more rolling, especially since STs don't always know what the strengths and weaknesses of characters in their scenes are supposed to be.

The real tricky part for me is players whose own skill with posing is misaligned with their characters' abilities. I've ran into more than a few folks who, for example, ought to be excellent at inspiring others or being manipulative but their actual poses are neither that inspiring nor manipulative. In contrast it's harder to screw up posing throwing a punch.

[Ganymede]

@Coin said:

That's all right, I can agree to disagree. Or just disagree! I played a lawyer for YEARS and the amount of times actual lawyering came up were really really slim. I usually used it more as a springboard for behavior and topics of conversation.

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Remember how we all bitched and complained about how stupid the Autumn Mantle 1 bonus was relative to every other Mantle 1 bonus? That's applicable here. The Dancer Kith is shit.

So, like, House Rule it, you nobs.

[Coin]

@Ganymede said:

@Coin said:

That's all right, I can agree to disagree. Or just disagree! I played a lawyer for YEARS and the amount of times actual lawyering came up were really really slim. I usually used it more as a springboard for behavior and topics of conversation.

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Remember how we all bitched and complained about how stupid the Autumn Mantle 1 bonus was relative to every other Mantle 1 bonus? That's applicable here. The Dancer Kith is shit.

So, like, House Rule it, you nobs.

I don't know if I was terrible at it or not because the few times I played it out, I wasn't really worried about accuracy in my portrayal beyond "would this fly in a fly-by scene on a lawyer show?"

I did have actual lawyer friends who gave me advice on things, however, and one of the reasons I like lawyers as characters is that most of their work is not going to involve other PCs. My character spent time in court, in his office, in depositions, in deal meetings, etc., and all my scenes were, "coming home from court" or "on my way to a deposition" or "can we get on with this, I have a client meeting in ten."

My only real challenges were when other PCs were in situations where having a lawyer in that moment doing lawyer things in scene would be crucial (getting arrested, needing legal advice in a scene where handwaiving it would be cheesy, etc.), and most of the time, I looked things up or asked actual lawyers for advice--or informed the person: "I am not an actual lawyer so I'm going to pose this, and then if I figure out differently we can edit a little".

It's not that difficult to play a professional of any profession if you're willing to keep the actual minutiae (which tends to be boring as fuck anyway) out of scenes and as a base for the character rather than forefront details.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said:

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Play a hacker in my presence more often! You will be mocked.

(...then I wonder why people don't wanna play with me ).

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

@Ganymede said:

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Play a hacker in my presence more often! You will be mocked.

(...then I wonder why people don't wanna play with me ).

Hopefully, after Mr. Robot, people will be less stupid about this.

(No, they won't.)

My hacker on The Reach mostly sat around writing scripts and programs that he never used. And the one plot with hacking (used here as the much more nebulous "doing things with computers most people can't," not the specific definition as differs from, say, "cracking") involved the storyteller actually knowing about this shit and making me make rolls and spend time--at one point he was like, 'okay, now pose waiting around bored for a while'. It was fun.

[Arkandel]

Hackers in MU* are a blessing and a curse. As a ST I love them because how do I expose the information of where the bad guys' secret warehouse is? The hacker, that's how.

They're a curse because once that information has been dispersed unless the player is actually proactive they're stuck posing being the person sitting at a corner staring at a laptop. One of the things I hate most in the world (*) is playing in a bar scene trying to interact with the person sitting at a corner staring at a laptop.

(*) Nah.

[Coin]

That's why if you play a hacker you inevitably have to play a hacker who does something else on top of it. Which is probably why you get hypersocial hackerz.

[tragedyjones]

I like to think I am doing a dope job of a hacker who still interacts. Even f at least once I spent an entire scene invisible...

[Coin]

@tragedyjones said:

I like to think I am doing a dope job of a hacker who still interacts. Even f at least once I spent an entire scene invisible...

Honestly, it's only a problem if your lack of IC sociability is hindering the scene. If two other people are playing normally and you're Obfuscated or whatever--you're the one missing out, ultimately. But if you are in a scene with a person and no one else... you need to be able to interact.

[tragedyjones]

Nah, I usually interact. Especially in smaller scenes. This one was 6ish folks. @Arkandel was there. I did mess with one mortal...

[HelloRaptor]

@Ganymede

Remember how we all bitched and complained about how stupid the Autumn Mantle 1 bonus was relative to every other Mantle 1 bonus? That's applicable here. The Dancer Kith is shit.

So, like, House Rule it, you nobs.

Right. ;D

Hell, even if you just changed the first line to 'A Dancer gains the rote quality on all Athletics rolls, as well as adding his Wyrd to any Expression, Persuasion, Socialize, or Subterfuge rolls where movement would help. If a Dancer purchases the Parkour merit, they do not need to pay for the fourth dot.'

Annnnd done. Dancers can leverage their mastery of physical movement and coordination on Athletics rolls even if they aren't explicitely dancing, which has a pretty wide range of uses in and out of combat. Yes, they could use the Rote action on Athletics for throwing things or archery, but getting either of those isn't difficult with Professional Training folded into the normal list of merits (and no longer 'just for mortals', fuck that was stupid) and there's rules limiting how useful it is blah blah blah.

You could in fact play a Dancer kith who completely abhors dancing anymore (something the general writeup on Kiths indicates is totally a thing). You'd miss out on part of your Kith bonus, but still make use of what it drilled into you, just like an Author could refuse to ever write another story, but can still read anything in any mortal language. Honestly the handful of Kiths with more narrowly defined Blessings that don't include at least something like this, really should if they're serious about it being totally normal for Changelings to disdain the specifics of their Kith.

For instance, the Nightsinger Kith is already pretty good, but is entirely restricted to singing. Instead let them use their listed ability when speaking as well, but make it resisted by Resolve+Composure instead of just Composure, and the Condition fades Wyrd minutes after they stop talking. You've opened it up to concepts where the Nightsinger who once loved to sing now rebels against the idea of performing after what was made of her, but can still leverage the power of her voice. They'd be better at it if they sang, by far, but not completely denied a benefit of their Kith by choosing to do what the game says is not uncommon to do.

I just woke up so there may be implications to the shit I'm throwing out there that I'm not seeing in terms of rules interactions, but the basic point remains: Supposedly your Kith can be something your character totally rebels against, but that shouldn't be the same thing as it becoming mechanically useless (or so narrow in scope it might as well be, in the case of the Dancer's silly 'where movement counts' clause), so those Kiths with such strictly defined Blessings should have them widened a bit or allowed to be used in a less potent state as well as what's listed.

[Arkandel]

@HelloRaptor said:

I just woke up so

<looks at his watch and sobs>

(Yes, that's what I took from that post )

[HelloRaptor]

@Arkandel said:

@HelloRaptor said:

I just woke up so

<looks at his watch and sobs>

(Yes, that's what I took from that post )

I started playing the Tresspasser DLC for DA:I yesterday evening and got so absorbed in it I didn't realize what time it was until like 5am. Derp.

[Cobalt]

If Mage 2E doesn't come out soon I'mma cut a bitch.