Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[saosmash]

Personally I love reacting to stuff so much that I played a character with composure 1 and I loved it so much that the first thing I did after he died was create another character with composure 1. I HAVE NO CHILL. IT'S GREAT.

Re: XP, I DO think the XP tax helps more than you realize new vs not-new. My character who died, I blew a LOT of XP on him for combat reasons -- A LOT -- and I was HURTING on buying new skills. Dodge 3 was going to cost Pietro a LOT. What you may be seeing in terms of people with ridic high skills is people specializing over and above what makes sense for their social position -- or the athletics/survival/dodge triptych thing -- but the XP tax does really work. Especially for combat skills that are always twice as much as social skills.

(Although it does make me more likely to raw buy social skills because I'm recovering from combat skill sticker shock.)

[Arkandel]

@Roz said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Oh yeah, when players do it of their own accord it's even better! But if people are playing the whole cool cucumber game, it's totally fair to call for a check. (Then again, Unflappable Cool Cucumbers are like one of my least favorite things ever on games. You know the ones I'm talking about: players who never want to lose face at all in any way by being less than Perfectly Cool.)

But see, in the context of plot participation it's not just about composure; what I am after isn't so much freaking out, it's engagement, for which there are very few metrics. I'd know things are on the right track if I get a raised brow and a "fascinating" for instance, but if there's a relative OOC radio silence after a scene is over other than for thank-yous (which is the norm) then it's really hard to know how much things worked or to what degree. Am I engaging these characters? Are they getting enough leads to chase after once the PrP is done? Is it interesting for them?

I do make a point of asking, but you should know... actionable feedback is rare.

Anyway, my personal benchmark for success is introducing story seeds that generate RP after I'm done with a scene.

[Crysta]

Recipe for an Arx combat beastie:
SR 8/9 (for the starting xp bonus)
5 strength/5 dexterity/5 stamina/4 willpower (who needs social / mental stats amirite)
Weapon skill at 4, a smattering of other combat skills at 1-2
Excellent quality HQ steel sword and armor, leather with you wanna be dodgey I guess

The combat skill tax will make you cry when you start investing in it. There's still very few people on the grid capable of teaching most combat skills above 2, too, weirdly enough. I'm not sure if it'll -stay- that way, but it's not an easy climb even if you dedicate yourself 100% to combat-oriented stuff.

[3543thrh67]

@Arkandel In a plot on another game I had someone /actively/ trying to stop my bit from interacting with a plot. Multiple times I was 'Look! Something weird is going on!' not in those words but purposefully trying to draw attention to it. I guess it amounts to people waiitng for things to directly happen to their bits?

[Arkandel]

@icanbeyourmuse said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Arkandel In a plot on another game I had someone /actively/ trying to stop my bit from interacting with a plot. Multiple times I was 'Look! Something weird is going on!' not in those words but purposefully trying to draw attention to it. I guess it amounts to people waiitng for things to directly happen to their bits?

Can you rephrase that? You mean they tried to stop your PC IC? OOC? Was it during the scene or while it happened?

And @Crysta, that's quite true... the upgrade path is a bit skewed because the cost/benefit curve scales really badly (you spend a ton of effort to improve very little).

But in a non-PvP game why does it matter? It just seems like a massive waste of effort trying to become the best when XP is inexhaustible and you can't even compare dick sizes with the other guy because that gets you nothing, you know?

[3543thrh67]

@Arkandel They tried to stop her IC, yes. Like I forget what happened exactly bu I think someone got hurt and my bit was tying to help and the person was like 'LEt the proper people handle it' and ordered her to stop (the other bit had a position of power over mine). So, I was like.. What is the point of being in a plot if you're not going to, you know, get involved in what is being laid out?

Edit: Acting was /slightly/ off my bit bu I was just explaining it away by her finding herself some how concerned for something happening right before her eyes.

[Arkandel]

@icanbeyourmuse said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Arkandel They tried to stop her IC, yes. Like I forget what happened exactly bu I think someone got hurt and my bit was tying to help and the person was like 'LEt the proper people handle it' and ordered her to stop (the other bit had a position of power over mine). So, I was like.. What is the point of being in a plot if you're not going to, you know, get involved in what is being laid out?

Those are the worst players. There are mitigating circumstances based on theme but they are, generally speaking, the worst players if you don't count the bannable kinds of assholes.

It happens though, I agree. "Yes, I see what happened here in this plot. Okay, I'll now take it over and put it behind closed doors so the important people can deal with it. Thanks everyone else". I'd like to say it's up for the ST to take care of it but it's more complicated than that unfortunately - I know I usually have too much on my plate to really pay enough attention and catch that sort of thing, for instance.

But yeah, fuck'em.

[3543thrh67]

@Arkandel I tried multiple times to get involved and kept getting stopped each time. It was exasperating fro the GM too because no one was actually doing anything so my attempts to call attention/get involved was appreciated but because no one was doing anything the more subtle attempts to draw people in were met with more obvious ones. Then I was /still/ told to let others handle it and then to leave.

[Lisse24]

@Apos I feel like that's an indication that there's a lot of people chasing after the same things, but I suppose I would need to correlate by looking at which clues are known by a certain percentage of the population.

[Noodle McDoodle]

@icanbeyourmuse I can think of half a dozen reasons why someone might ICly try to stop someone else from doing something. Maybe it was dangerous and your character wasn't equipped/skilled/prepped for it and the other person was concerned. Maybe they have a secret IC agenda that leads them to want you not to do it. Stopping someone ICly can be entirely in character, and if there's a conflict, it's probably best to work it out OOCly rather than assuming the other person is just a dick.

@Arkandel I think it's important when running PRP (which I've done a little of and look forward to doing more of) that the GM remember that they may not know everything that's going on with the player characters in the scene, too. Speaking for my own alt, who I think is involved in the one you're running, it's just really bad timing right now. She watched her fiance die horribly like two weeks ago ICly, and she happens to be a Composure 5 cool customer, so she's going to be generally far more low-key about anything that isn't immediately threatening her life. I've been hoping to loop some of the vassal PCs in to give them more to do, because I think that's important for characters in a higher ranking noble house to do when they can, but so far it hasn't shaken out much. (I'll keep trying, but I have a business trip coming up that's going to nuke my availability.) I am very sorry if you feel as though it's not going well, though!

[saosmash]

Fwiw I didn't identify the prp scene in question based on the original post, because I didn't notice anyone playing wall in a non-reactive way??? But I've also only been in one scene so for this prp on account of, I assume, reasons. My character did rp with a couple other characters about it afterwards bUT I guess I haven't kept you apprised.

I'm used to games where logs get posted, I guess; sorry about that.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

For instance my character got a cool secret and then was shared a neat also top-secret @clue; I thought I'd be able to milk both for some roleplay... until I went out there and tried to discuss them both. Four out of four PCs he went to confide in and involve in them already knew everything about them, plus some. So what I thought was important going to prove to be great leverage to get roleplay out of forming alliances were proven to be duds.

I think this problem would creep up on any game where info was important. People in general have very poor information discipline and PC in RPGs tend to be far worse then the average person.

[Meg]

@ThatGuyThere

Eh, to be fair, we've been encouraged not to make /too big of a deal/ about keeping everything secret, either. I mean, we're all facing the same threats, we want to stop them.

[Ominous]

I was surprised at the spread of info too. I was treating each clue as a precious secret and only sharing with like one or two people at most and only if I felt they needed to know. Then I realized people were basically holding classes where info was committed at participants. I think a little more traitor element would help here, like in cooperative board games with potential traitor mechanics. Maybe have some agents of Fable amongst the PCs. Give them a clue and suddenly you forget all about it or maybe you start getting hunted down.

[Sunny]

Personally, I think the spread of information is a good thing. It means that people are getting included. If you start bringing down actual consequences on folks for sharing? They stop sharing, plots grind to a halt, blah blah blah.

[lordbelh]

@Arkandel I think big scene events on every game, unless it comes with a build up, tends to suffer the same half engagement from a sizable portion of the participants. If you want people to shine at their best, they need a smaller stage on which the stakes seem personal.

re: Combat Dinos. I certainly play one of them. That said, being a complete and absolute dino from there were only a handful of players, and probably with consummate advantage of xp.. I still can't do it all. I can do combat (and with only two combat skills above 1) , and I can do stuff related to war. That skill cost increase really, really, really slows you down. Anyone who invests in combat is going to be unable to do it all. It just isn't possible.

What is possible is for a rank 8-9 to be top tier combat pretty much straight out of the gate. After everybody collecting @randomscenes from them, they should be able to bump their weapon skill to 5. If they play a noble it'll take them a bit longer, but not that long.

Same with being good at anything.

Where newbies get the short of end of the stick, I feel, is in clues. Clues are a great gateway into plot and feeling included, and roleplaying about, but instead there's this artificial wall that directly discourages dinos with lots of clues to share with the newbies.

When you talk about AP limiting people; it limits me. I can't see myself sharing a clue again anytime soon. Perhaps once every blue moon. And if some newbie stumbles onto some of those clues, and comes to me with star eyed joy for their shinies, I'll feel a bit bad about robbing them of that joy. Because if it was related to something I should've probably clued them into, they could've been building on the clue instead of sinking a lot of time and effort (now that investigations take way longer) to just duplicate.

[Ganymede]

@lordbelh

While AP might discourage you from sharing clues, it does encourage folks to recruit new PCs to their faction. This is how I got in at RfK: by being a peon that did what he was told. And eventually, by outlasting everyone else, my peon became more and more important.

[lordbelh]

@Ganymede Oh, don't get me wrong. I was advocating an AP style system since day 1. I didn't get traction from staff then, but I was pretty confident it was going to come sooner or later if the game in any way achieved the kind of popularity and metaplot activity of RfK. By and large the AP might need some fine tuning, but its a solid premise. I've always been a delegate/cooperate type anyway (or so I like to think), but now its even more important.

The clue part I feel is one of those classic instances where staff has echo chambered themselves into a decision that runs counter to the playerbase and frankly their own stated intentions for the game. Massive clue dumping in scenes were determined to be a problem (I can accept that), but the response to that was absolutely out of proportion.

[Sparks]

@Ominous said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I was surprised at the spread of info too. I was treating each clue as a precious secret and only sharing with like one or two people at most and only if I felt they needed to know. Then I realized people were basically holding classes where info was committed at participants.

I think part of the problem is that originally a lot of players believed @clues were very much just "you know this thing". A way to track who knew what bits of lore, and so if you discussed the thing, the @clue should be shared. And the staff had very much encouraged people to spread secrets and plot around; there was initially a lot of "you'll only be able to learn what's going on and figure out how to deal with it if you share information and work together", a lot of people—me included—shared @clues around as we discussed topics with people.

It later emerged that sharing clues should actually be more like a thesis defense; it's not just "here's the information" but "here's the information, all the footnotes, three primary sources, and why I believe this is accurate". Given that, limiting how much can be shared at once makes perfect sense.

@Ominous said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I think a little more traitor element would help here, like in cooperative board games with potential traitor mechanics. Maybe have some agents of Fable amongst the PCs. Give them a clue and suddenly you forget all about it or maybe you start getting hunted down.

I don't think they'd want PC agents of Fable since they've said they really want the game to not be PvP, and that would be a pretty PvP element. However, many of the folks who did get a lot of clues now apparently are being actively watched/hunted by Fable. And staff's said there's a very real chance the afflicted individuals will meet untimely ends; as Apos evidently told several folks, "This is meant to mean 'grue incoming, you may be eaten'."

[Thenomain]

@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

It later emerged that sharing clues should actually be more like a thesis defense; it's not just "here's the information" but "here's the information, all the footnotes, three primary sources, and why I believe this is accurate". Given that, limiting how much can be shared at once makes perfect sense.

I'm confused by this statement, because it didn't look like anyone was advocating not sharing as much as possible (though it appears some may be hoarding information). Can you elaborate?