[Eldritch] Sphere Caps & Waiting Lists

Thenomain

In this case it's pretty hard to please everyone. Even a compromise stands the risk of not being acceptable by either type of player. So it's not a truism; sometimes you got to make a choice for your game even if it means some players really hate it.

Thus making the score in this thread: 7-nil.

Short story, relating to the scoring of this game: There once was a horse, noble and proud. It had a race-horse's name, which are always silly but may shed some light on this story. That horse's name: Not Everyone Is Going To Be Happy With Your Decisions.

Cutting to the chase, horse, dead, beat, dead, horse, beat, etc.

I don't really understand why we need to be reminded how things don't need to conform to every possible world-view What's the purpose? To make people feel okay with their decisions? Wanting to make things as solid and as clean as possible isn't a valiant goal? It doesn't have to be for everyone to do this. But this is what I'd like, what I think @Eerie and @Coin would like, among others.

I'll even posit that it's not okay to simply accept it, but like idealism, one musn't go too far. The horse is dead at either extreme. The best, fastest horse lives somewhere in between.

Miss Demeanor

I gave my opinion because its something that's bugged me about Werewolf for ages. I don't expect my viewpoint to be popular, or enacted as rule on a game. If @Eerie and @Coin feel that Renown should be justified in some way, whether through written justifications or logged scenes, that's up to them. Its their game, they get to make the rules.

Eerie

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I gave my opinion because its something that's bugged me about Werewolf for ages. I don't expect my viewpoint to be popular, or enacted as rule on a game. If @Eerie and @Coin feel that Renown should be justified in some way, whether through written justifications or logged scenes, that's up to them. Its their game, they get to make the rules.

And not having really thought this out yet, I'm glad to hear what people think. Irrespective of popularity or what we ultimately decide to do with renown after reading the final product and talking it over both internally and here, I'm still of the opinion that its better to wring all the good ideas out of as many people as possible before making a decision. Let me suck the smartness out of your sweet, sweet brains, @Miss-Demeanor and @Arkandel. Worst case, we can always fall back on our stated policy of reviewing stuff down the line and tweaking whatever it is needs to be tweaked, which is intended to involve lots of player-staff participation.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said:

How was it received on Oathcircle?

Pretty well, I guess. It left whether or not someone went up in Rank to the players. If you're around and active, it made going up simple. Minimal effort to meet the milestones.

The process still satisfied the need for justification. I was not a staff member there, but staff had to approve of the stories too. They did not have to be particularly long-winded. If people played through the story via PRP, that was fine; if not, that was also fine.

If the purpose of justifications is to chronicle the adventures of Werewolf X, then the need is met. And really, that's what Renown is about. Even if you repetitively bust the heads of minor threats, your reputation of "beating the shit out of small, but necessary problems" ought to get you pretty far with the spirits. If anything, they'll probably worry that you won't let petty shit go by -- which is kind of what the Bone Shadows are about.

Arkandel

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel said:

How was it received on Oathcircle?

If you're around and active, it made going up simple. Minimal effort to meet the milestones.

That sounds reasonable to me.

I felt the same way about accruing Arcane XP on TR, to be honest. It was a little too easy to get them if you were a ST as well but that's probably a happen problem to have as long as people didn't run faux 'plots' just for that reason - otherwise if you were active and playing, you got them.

I'd be happy with a similar implementation. Or, to reverse it, if someone is active and playing but can't get Renown in a reasonable amount of time, something's seriously broken.

Coin

@Arkandel said:

I'd be happy with a similar implementation. Or, to reverse it, if someone is active and playing but can't get Renown in a reasonable amount of time, something's seriously broken.

I guess that depends on what you consider "active and playing". I have no issue with people mostly playing relationship RP or bar RP, but that doesn't mean I think that them not getting Renown in a reasonable amount of time is a symptom of there being something broken.·

That said, I have some ideas on how to handle it and offer some compromises between choices, but I am still going to wait until I have the book to read. God dammit, it needs to come out already.

· I suppose this might be precluded by the term "reasonable". Maybe.

Arkandel

@Coin said:

I have no issue with people mostly playing relationship RP or bar RP, but that doesn't mean I think that them not getting Renown in a reasonable amount of time is a symptom of there being something broken.

And yet I believe it it is. Allow me to detach the matter from Renown per se (although after reading posts like http://theonyxpath.com/gifts/ I don't see how that aspect of the game will differ in the 2nd Edition, unless they've been invalidated since they were written) just to not be distracted by the lack of an actual book.

Here's my reasoning:

IC achievements take IC work, so introducing OOC factors leads down bad roads. Unless the intention is to make the barfly/TS hound vampire unable to raise their Cruac because they never go roleplay that stuff out, since the reasoning is that their character went and did what they had to behind the scenes (while possibly explained in a justification) this is fundamentally inconsistent; why is one trait more sacrosancth than another? The character who bought Cruac through a justificataion and the character who bought it after a PrP went through the same amount of anguish for their insights.
Not every player has access to the same resources. People from the wrong timezone already have smaller access to plot. Folks who're not OOC connected have less access to PrP invitations. OOC gripes between players often dictates IC inclusion. People work long hours, have children to take care of or whatever else and can't necessarily make the prime time 20:00 invites or stay at the keyboard for that 3 hour big PrP (but they can still play regularly over the week otherwise). Force advancement exclusively through plot and you are excluding part of your playerbase who might want to play but can't keep up with the additional requirement.
I don't believe something substantial is gained through these systems. Or, to reverse the statement, I don't think anything is lost when you let Joe Crone buy Cruac 4 with a justification. Someone who wants advancement strictly through plot can still do exactly that (in fact you can make it cheaper when done this way, thus offering additional incentive) but forcing someone to attain traits through any given hoop turns it into a chore, even if the deed itself in isolation is fun. But if it's not fun then why force it? Who benefits? How is the game made better by it?

Just some thoughts.

Coin

@Arkandel, my main issue is that Vampire isn't necessarily about "learning Cruac", even if you are an Acolyte. But the majority of Werewolf, its core theme, is The Wolf Must Hunt. It is that hunting that becomes Renown. So as the person deciding this, I have to find a way to strike the balance between letting people advance with minimum actual activity that would warrant it, and getting people to actually put forward the effort to play the game they apped a character into.

If all you're doing as a player is putting your werewolf in a bar and posing taking shots, then you're not really playing werewolf, and thus your rise in Renown becomes hard to swallow for me. If all you are doing as a player is having wild monkey TS in your Haven, then you're not really playing vampire, and thus shouldn't expect to rise in Status.

I get that Status and Renown are different in some fundamental ways, though, which is why I am putting so much thought into ways to ameliorate the situation.

Arkandel

@Coin

Argh. I won't try to explain after this post, either I'm not communicating it well enough or we're simply disagreeing. There's no need for me to spam the thread further though since we're just going in circles.

Here: Whether your character is hunting through a staff-accepted justification or through a PrP, it still happened IC. The Wolf Hunted. The character went ought, tricked enemies, killed them, negotiated with them. It took place. You are sacrificing no part of theme for it.

No more from me about Renown until the book comes out.

Coin

@Arkandel, I get it. I actually do.

But at that point, I can just say my character did a bunch of things and ... forego roleplaying the themes of the game I allegedly wanted to play.

"My vampire goes out and manipulates people. Give me Status!"

"My Demon makes some Pacts and trades information. Give me more Cover!"

"My Changeling goes on an epic adventure and gets a super-nifty Token sword that flays enemies alive!"

"My Mage reaches deep into his Oneiros and finds his True Core, discovering hitherto unknown depths of his being, becoming a better person, and attaining higher levels of mystical understanding! Give me Arcane XP!"

I'm not really playing in the game at that point, am I? I understand the need to compromise for those that can't spend as much time in the hobby as others, which is at the forefront of how I'm going about considering this stuff. But at some point I just have to ask "why?" Especially since this is the sort of thing that turned me off of The Reach.

Wizz

@Arkandel
With Renown moving to front and center in 2.0, I get your frustration, but it's such a huge mechanic now that I gotta agree with @Coin. It just doesn't make any sense for players to be able to write it off. This probably means that playing a wolf inherently requires more investment and thus it might be the smaller, less popular sphere, but on the other hand that investment is a huge draw for players like me, even if it means my own progress might be relatively "slower" than other players'. Maybe it's a matter of deciding how much that specifically actually matters to your own sense of enjoyment.

Glitch

@Coin The answer is: that is not the RP they want to focus on.

Your examples are hyperbolic, but I can see where people just want to bump their gnosis, or make the job rolls for a token or just burn that XP on a new pact and cover.

Whether you agree with that or not, they might prefer to let the pact thing happen in the background so they can instead play with other demons or a particular cover. A mage who doesn't want to go on a spiritual journey PrP and would rather just offscreen it in order to keep playing with their cabal is reasonable to me.

People come to a game for different reasons and one of TR's strengths was allowing you to focus on the content that you found desirable. I think RP'ing out the things you describe would be more fun, but is it really such a hard thing to believe that people don't look for the same thing in their RP?

Deleted

You could do a system where you have wait times to raise renown/etcetera if you don't RP it, but you can avoid that if you do a PrP about it.

That way people who don't want to RP that? They don't have to. People who do want to RP It? They benefit from it but not excessively so.

Ganymede

@Coin said:

But at that point, I can just say my character did a bunch of things and ... forego roleplaying the themes of the game I allegedly wanted to play.

Why would any reasonable player want to forego roleplaying the themes of the game that they want to play? The answer is simple: they don't.

Limiting renown to only what one receives through plots isn't unreasonable, but it makes the gathering of Renown tedious and boring in practice. This is because, whereas werewolves are generally spending 100% their time being hardcore spirit-bashers, players have less time to get their badass-ness on. And sometimes, a player just wants to sit around, smoke awakened plants, and talk some real wisdom with others -- or plan pack activities, or otherwise roleplay outside of a plot.

Allowing players to "fill in the blanks" with submitting Renown stories allows players to play what they want to play when they want to. Otherwise, they will be killing themselves, figuratively, getting into plot after plot, just to meet Renown demands. And that's probably not what you're aiming for.

If your only reason for eschewing alternate systems is "I don't think that's right," then I don't think you're giving the suggestion due consideration.

Coin

@Ganymede

If your only reason for eschewing alternate systems is "I don't think that's right," then I don't think you're giving the suggestion due consideration.

I guess you missed the upteen times I mentioned trying to find a solution that achieves a compromise, then.

Ganymede

@Coin

That's the beautiful thing of contingent statements.

Anyhow, I present Oathcircle's system as a compromise. The players have control over their Renown raises, but only to a certain degree. Additional Renown XP can be given for stories that are actually run as plots., thus incentivizing plots without forbidding raises by stories. You can also limit the amount of Renown stories that can be submitted that are not run as plots.

Miss Demeanor

I would accept the Renown XP -only- on the condition that it is not tallied separately from normal XP.

HelloRaptor

I don't know if I would assume they'll be the least popular sphere.

See Renown-talk.

See Packs in Werewolf being vastly more integral to playing Werewolf than subgroups in most other spheres, and how much of a pain in the ass schedules are for multiple folks.

So on and so forth. Werewolf suffers from a lot of issues more than any other game, I think.

Creepy

@HelloRaptor said:

I don't know if I would assume they'll be the least popular sphere.

See Renown-talk.

See Packs in Werewolf being vastly more integral to playing Werewolf than subgroups in most other spheres, and how much of a pain in the ass schedules are for multiple folks.

So on and so forth. Werewolf suffers from a lot of issues more than any other game, I think.

You're right.

Part of that suffering is due to pack ooc stuff, like folks leaving or RP schedule issues.

Part of it is the intense focus on territory, which can be difficult in a MU setting as most games don't allow players to make significant changes to the grid.

You can plop your pack down in a high crime area, spend a RL year running daily scenes with logs that show you fighting that crime, but the crime level will likely not be changed by staff. At best you'll buy retainers, contacts, and other influence merits for your territory. Get a +note set saying you pissed all over the place and there are tags marking the place as yours. But dynamic changes based on the pack's actions? Nah.

Don't even get me started about cleaning up Wounds.

Territory and packs. That's the core of Werewolf. Renown follows actions taken by packs and keeping territory.

Coin

@Creepy, the Neighborhoods system I've written up for Eldritch is in part geared towards fixing this sort of problem. Besides that, I know how frustrating not being able to change a grid space is even through effort, and @Eerie and I managed to convince @Thenomain to code for us by pitching the game as a place where the players can and should make every effort to change the area.

At the same time, if you're trying to make some gross changes to the area, staff will take notice and use IC resources to try to stop you. Because that's challenging. Because that provides conflict. Because if all you have is a bunch of people running smooth-and-easy PRPs for each other in which they Change [their slice of] the World, what's the point?

Hopefully, people will push forward to help us achieve this sort of gameplay, instead of sitting around and not interacting with what we've built and want to do.

It's a pet peeve of mine when players sit around and have no goals. Plot is important, I absolutely agree; but the best plot often has personal stakes, and for that, the character has to actually, you know, want something.