@misadventure Oh the latter, just prompts. I don't know, like maybe the flight attendant armed with a sonic toothbrush comes up with some really great idea. That person knows their character's strengths and if they can use them in a way I can't think of for myself then right on. If they can pull off the rolls they gotta pull off, equally right on. If the rolls go bad, I proceed with making their character's day that much more complicated. I might raise an eyebrow when the non-combat glass jaw shows up at a scene that I think looks like heavy combat, but if they can find a reason to be there and a way to contribute, great.

Now what I do get irritated at is when Captain McGlass Jaw gets mad at me for not coming up with some specific way for Captain McGlass Jaw to shine. Like...dude that's your job, I'm over here being the rain and the engines and the guy with the gun, you tell me how you Awesome.

yaaaaaay

Good luck! 😁

@Ganymede
Thanks for tending the helm!

@ganymede said in City of Shadows (2.0?):

It sounds like someone was goofing around with sheets.

It wasn't. It's a very long story but the TL;DR is that there were a series of unrelated events that occurred in a sequence that caused some red flags, but it was quickly found to be a non-issue. No bad guys this time.

@runescryer

Okay. I’ll start writing. Let’s PM.

@masterreeve I would possibly be able to work on staff. Desc/builder possibly, grunt work possibly. I just know nothing about SR: Anarchy so let me start there, but wanted to drop some potential interest.

@zombiegenesis It'd be so good. Would be fun to go full reboot/AU on the MK story and let people play out the cast there.

@silverfox

Babies!

I inadvertantly mischanned/mavved/xchanned (all the same deal) about contrived/meaningless death and about how it would probably kill my future muse to carry on. More so, though, it is the emotional connection through that specific character that I would miss (even though I would be really upset about having lost a dear part of my own self, too).

I have not lost many of my own PCs (a rare few who were mostly jokes and had not yet made meaningful connections), but what I have lost are those amazing people like my own muses like Famous Outlaw (about whom @hobos recently wrote).

Way back in the ye olden days (MUD/RPI times), I used to generally cop a badass/hardcore attitude and totally deny my personal feelings -- and sometimes do whenever I am covering up and just being 'too macho' -- about these things, but deep down and when being more self aware: it all really hurts.

Right now, I am -- after more than a season's time -- still grieving the unexpected disappearance of a PC's SO after 8 years of being RP pardners. Cannot go a full week without a sudden cry at least every other day or so.

We were building up to eventually tackle background/family matters, but one day, they were suddenly gone. Right after their PC's birthday.

Although I still play my own PC, it is emotionally difficult for me because their other half is currently missing in an OOC sense (but still together in an IC one because I do not really move on very quickly, and it is highly unlikely that this one ever will due to the sheer longevity of that IC pardnership).

Anyway, the main point is that it is seriously painful to lose characters (worse than reading Old Yeller or Where The Red Fern Grows) after the strong bonding to both your own character as well as Famous Outlaw(s).

@zombiegenesis I don't know too much about Transformers, (having seen only a couple of the movies and the Rescue Bots kids show) but I can speak generally about combat in FS3.

The weapon/armor behavior is complicated (described in detail here), and is probably the hardest part of the system to balance.

Skew it too much one way, and bullets bounce off bulletproof vests like Superman. Skew it too much the other way, and bullets tear through them like paper. With a wide variety of weapon types all having different penetrative capabilities (pistols, shotguns, knives, rifles, etc.) it is incredibly tedious to tune everything to generate a "fun" balance.

The built-in BSG configuration does have two "classes" of weapons and armor built in - personal and vehicle. This works because:

The weapons and armors of each class are balanced against each other. Cross-class combat (i.e., a rifleman versus a space fighter) is pretty uncommon thematically in BSG, so the quirks of the system can be hand-managed by the GMs.

I think you could make the transformer robots work similar to the vehicles in the BSG setting, but having it also tuned for titans would probably be a bridge too far.

@arkandel said in Don't Join Discord Servers!!!:

@faraday Yeah and that's the thing, too. Some of us do have friends who send weird messages, start playing new games, join different guilds etc... and from whom randomness like that wouldn't be completely out of place.

I get that, but that's just indisputably risky behavior in this day and age of phishing scams.

Friends can help each other out by not just sending random "hey check this out" type messages, but instead providing context.

You can help yourself by turning on your "sus" radar even when the random link is from a friend. Examine the link to see where it's actually taking you (wary of typos or google.somewherelse.com type scams), double-check the lock icon in the browser and security certificate, be extra suspicious of anything asking you to provide login creds or click on a "trust me" popup.

There are no guarantees of course, but there are good practices.

ETA: I don't mean to trivialize, because this crap is hard. Scammers are expert at manipulating human behavior. Even security professionals fall victim. All we can do is take steps reduce our risk.

@misadventure said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@runescryer I will require that you use the old Mercenary/High Guard/Scout/Merchant Prince to generate life events for plot arcs. Death/discharge optional.

Right now, I'm trying to sort out the mess of system designs. I got the latest version of Traveller 5, but holy crap, that system is near indecipherable...

I'll probably just go with TNE, since I'm looking at that as the setting, anyways. So, all that material should be doable or already included. Also looking to adapt Aslan, Vargr, Zhodani, and possibly the Denaar for PCs. Hivers as Staff PC (since they're running things Just As Planned). K'kree have huge entourages as PCs. And Droyne also have the link to the Ancients that make them potentially problematic as PCs.

@derp said in How do you discover books?:

@reimesu said in How do you discover books?:

@derp Luke? No. Leia was, but that's because she was adopted by royalty.

Yyyyeah but their mom was a queen, and then went on to be a galactic senator.

Right?

Padme wasn't royalty, that was 'just' the title she got as an elected representative of her people. Her children, if Anakin hadn't gone uh a little off the rails, wouldn't have had inherited titles even if she had lived to raise them.

@derp I'm holding out for the Appalachians. 🙂 There's going to be a whole book about that!

@Voice#3134 If anyone wants it. I am more likely to respond in less than 3 months there.

This is hilarious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness

TL;DR: Dude 'translates' Dracula into Swedish in 1899. It takes people just about a century to realize he didn't translate it as much as... basically write a whole new fan-fiction version of it with more eroticism, less vampiric stuff, and some kinda social Darwinism commentary.

@kk

Oh and I am attracting lots of bees, which makes me happy, I have little houses for them and stuff too.

@formula-409 A whole season! Missing you lots!

@faraday

I've never seen any system like that. It always distinguishes between action and speech in what I've played, so you'd see something like:

At the bar, Bob looks at John with narrowed eyes. "Y... t me, pu..?" He yelled, "G...O..! Now, ... .... .... ch...."

Or whatever. And if people really wanted to yell, they wouldn't use tabletalk for it, usually.

Anyway, reading your layout of rationales, I think that's very well said.

It's very interesting to me that you would distinguish immersion and story. I've never thought of them as very separate concepts before, but now that I see that, it's enlightening. They're not the same thing. Most systems tend to prioritize one over the other to some degree, even while trying to have both, like being bilingual -- there's going to a first language in most cases.