Shadows Over Reno

[Auspice]

@Miss-Demeanor said in Shadows Over Reno:

@Auspice Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. So much this! Drove me batty, to the point I finally gave up on playing a Hunter because I am sick unto death of nothing but social/bar/hangout scenes.

I get around it (as have others) by making up my own 'baddies' or by fiddling with the rules a bit. Human who has some spirit working for/with him? Eh, it's a one-off antagonist, I don't need to fully justify his sheet. I just need to know what he may roll.

I try to focus on the storytelling and make the ruleset adapt to me (another reason I don't run much for games at large: rules lawyers). I do wish Hunter could actually have more of an effect on the game setting itself, though. Or be able to go after those people kidnapping and killing NPCs throughout the city.

A part of me wants a Hunter-only game someday, but so many people need their Mage/Vampire/Wolf that I don't think it'd work out.

[Arkandel]

@Miss-Demeanor I think that's a byproduct of our collective policy of copying what others have done before.

So the Hunter sphere is subject to TR's rules on hunting, and the possibly misguided notion it'd all become a cesspool of PvP in an instant otherwise.

I am not saying it wouldn't go down like that. Just that I'm not convinced staff in each game with Hunter in it had a conversation from scratch considering the angles from scratch, proposing alternatives and possibly allowing the sphere to exist without the tether; my suspicion is each generation just goes with the safe option.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Auspice said:

@Miss-Demeanor

Oh, I wholly agree. Law gets the same issue. PCs can blatantly murder people in broad daylight and Law sphere is told 'oh just find a way to work around it' or to ignore it completely.

I get why Staff may sometimes be leery of PVP type situations, but you are entirely right. Supers can fux with Hunters, but not vice versa. Worse than that... on many games, Hunters aren't even allowed to use NPCs of the other spheres. So you can't, say, have Hunters deal with a pack of WW moving in on the area.

Yeah, I got told this the last time I tried to play a WoD game, as a hunter. Not even in small prps that are ONLY for my hunter friends, not allowed to hunt the same types of things that the game supports. I've had 100% underwhelming experiences trying to get into the WoD rp sphere, and this was the one that boggled my mind the most. "Oh but if you kill a vampire NPC in your story, some vampire PC might get mad!" Well..tell them not to? Tell them to mind their own business? Stay out of it when me and my hunter friends kill that vampire, too? I just feel there were so many options that would have left things open for EVERYONE to have fun, and none of them were the solution they went with.

Just, like - if I have to leave this dumb tiny Maine town to do any hunting, what in the name of FUCK are you putting forth as the plausible reason there are even hunters here? Like, what. The cells just all decided to move to a backwater, supernaturally infested hole...and then they just commute all over to do the actual hunting.

?

[Auspice]

I think using NPCs or other creatures from a splat should be Ok for Hunter. It'd be easy enough as saying 'Don't use someone else's NPC or an NPC that would be connected to a PC' (aka don't say they're from someone's coterie).

I think any Vampire or WW that'd look at a Hunter PRP going after NPCs and get pissed off are probably problematic in some other ways... and why should we cater to problem players?

[Kanye Qwest]

@Auspice What a question.

[lordbelh]

@Arkandel I signed up, but even I sigh at the 20.00 EST timezone even as I soldier through.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Auspice Oh sure, you can run one-offs... but as was mentioned before.. I'm looking to create a -story- with my character. An ongoing, interactive narrative. Doing nothing but baRP and one-off's make for a very disjointed and disappointing narrative. Its like in movies when they don't do the 'multiple stories all tying together at one crucial place/time/etc.' thing well. You just feel like you're being jolted out of the immersion, for no good reason and to no real effect, then dropped right back into where you left off.

@Arkandel I agree with you. But since that continues to happen, why should I want to make a Hunter anywhere since the policy is likely just ripped wholecloth from the place that came before it that I didn't like? I'm not trying to change the policy, I'm just relating why I avoid Hunter these days.

[Arkandel]

@Auspice said in Shadows Over Reno:

and why should we cater to problem players?

@Kanye-Qwest said in Shadows Over Reno:

@Auspice What a question.

Hmm. However in that pose tracking thread we were totally catering to problem players, just in reverse, by not offering legitimate perks to perfectly good players because the bad ones would maybe abuse them.

Why isn't that exactly the same thing?

[Kanye Qwest]

@Arkandel said in Shadows Over Reno:

@Auspice said in Shadows Over Reno:

and why should we cater to problem players?

@Kanye-Qwest said in Shadows Over Reno:

@Auspice What a question.

Hmm. However in that pose tracking thread we were totally catering to problem players, just in reverse, by not offering legitimate perks to perfectly good players because the bad ones would maybe abuse them.

Why isn't that exactly the same thing?

You mean the Arx thread, in which I was stating the problems I see with having a game-tracked pose order?

Is this for serious? I mean, I'm hesitant to give a thought-out response because either I wasn't making myself clear in that thread, or you weren't actually reading my replies.

[Arkandel]

@Kanye-Qwest Yeah, it's a serious question. I think I'm reading your replies unless I misunderstand something - I don't want to revive the debate here though since it'd go off-topic.

My inclination is to not disallow reasonable things for good players because a bad player might take advantage of it. And I don't see the gap between that and catering to the later being that significant.

[peasoupling]

I enjoy running PrPs. I haven't tried any on Reno because there are bits of second edition I'm still not completely comfortable with, but I'll probably try something simple on the Hunter/Law/Crime/Mortal side of things.

Reasons why I haven't signed up to any PrPs other than the starting Hunter plot yet:

If I see 5 characters signed up to a PrP, I might begin to think that's plenty and I shouldn't take up room unless it's a scene that really appeals to me. Outside social scenes, with the understanding that people are just mingling and may go off to do their own thing, 6+ people in a scene can start to look overcrowded. I may still give it a try, but I'm just less likely to.

I can't justify my character being there. This happens with some contrived scene setups or events that require a character to have taken some sort of off-screen initiative to be involved. I'm not complaining about this, I think it's great and it often helps move scenes along, it just means that sometimes I won't be feeling creative enough to come up with an excuse to have my character there.

And sometimes, something about the tone of the writeup suggests it's not for my character. This is a good thing! Sometimes (particularly with Mortal or Hunter) I have a character that is relatively low-key on the weirdness meter, your average Jane getting used to things, who goes on a PrP with a harmless description and is suddenly thrust into a world of fiery tentacle alien-demons taking over bodies for their Venusian dragon king, in grand explicit detail.

And there might be an amazing story to tell there, but I have to RP the aftermath of that. And I feel like politely requesting that my character take a blow to the head and suffer cartoon amnesia.

Which is why I like to suggest what kind of scene it's going to be in my +event descriptions, so people can avoid them or join them as they please, and I like it when others do the same. If I avoid a scene because of something like that, it's not you, it's me.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Arkandel I don't think it's at all relevant. I'm not advocating letting bad players spew bad behaviors all over a game, and I never will. Obviously.

So my objection wasn't that I preferred, instead, to cater to problem players. My objection was that I don't approve of anything that might enable problem players to start policing for themselves - and yes, I view anyone who will go off on someone in OOC for skipping pose order a problem player. I don't want to enable people to squash other peoples' fun. I want to encourage people to be accepting and tolerant and even MINDFUL of others' enjoyment.

So in this case, my suggestion would be to enact sane 'don't be a dick' rules, let hunters hunt NPC badguys, and ruthlessly kick anyone who can't calm the effin heck down and let people live.

[cirim13]

I'm liking Shadows Over Reno, but I'm new to WoD 2.0/CoD/whatever. So I made normal mortal+ while I learn more about the system. This isn't going to get me into most +events and I'm doubtful it'll mean I do major plots, and I went in knowing that's a thing. Even if the events weren't mostly Hunter/Super (which makes sense) I would avoid the public events because I don't want to slow down the pace with questions and my book-flipping while things are getting exciting.

As for not-me people, RL holidays and staffer-rl keep cropping up. Plus, I see a lot of people getting their bearings in the game, deciding what and who they want to play and how. Especially with alts being open: it's the first week of a new mu* all over again, with people popping in and out of chargen and debating second or third faces.

[Arkandel]

@cirim13 said in Shadows Over Reno:

I would avoid the public events because I don't want to slow down the pace with questions and my book-flipping while things are getting exciting.

Would you say not being familiar with the mechanics is a major factor in not queuing for +events? Or to rephrase, if you knew the system inside and out would you have been?

[cirim13]

@Arkandel

Oh, absolutely, especially weekend ones - weekdays I usually don't get home till 9PM EST, so I'd be late for a lot. I like bar/casual/downtime RP more than most, but the events give you something to talk and wonder and brood about in that off time!

[Cobalt]

Anything I run is going to be open-to-anyone most likely, and will be at my schedule's convenience, which may not be to other people's convenience. That being said I'm having a difficult time transitioning between Spring/Fall this year, and basically as soon as the sun goes down here I'm ready to go to sleep (which doesn't work very well since I work nights Sun-Wed, which means I don't sleep much during the week, and then sleep A LOT Thursday - Saturday). So I schedule events for mid-evening PST / night EST, and then it's time for the event and my brain is mush and I'm like "i can't be bothered with rules and rolling right now, no event tonight, sorry".

[Auspice]

I swear the timezone thing is a no-win scenario sometimes.

You either start early enough for the EST folks and no PST can make it (since they're all still at work), or you start late enough for PST and the EST peeps have to leave early. I work from home and I've tried a broad spectrum. 5:30p PST / 8:30p EST seems to be the sweet spot, but you've gotta be able to jump right into the action in 1 or 2 rounds.

The way I've been trying to juggle it is:

a) to mostly run on weekends (1p PST start on a Saturday is 4p EST and generally manageable for more folks than weeknight scenes).
b) I skip ALL the setup. I skip the 'You all gather here,' the 'figure out who is riding in what vehicle,' etc. We spend a few minutes OOC (or in advance of the scene time if possible) figuring out who has what and is doing which in advance... and then I start with the 'As you roll up to the abandoned Radio Shack, you see...'

Because I swear, for every person that's awesome in the 'setup' by including everything in one pose, there's a couple people who take 2-3 rounds of posing and that alone can add an hour or so.

[Arkandel]

@Cobaltasaurus said in Shadows Over Reno:

(which doesn't work very well since I work nights Sun-Wed, which means I don't sleep much during the week, and then sleep A LOT Thursday - Saturday). So I schedule events for mid-evening PST / night EST, and then it's time for the event and my brain is mush and I'm like "i can't be bothered with rules and rolling right now, no event tonight, sorry".

Been there. Yeah, the early evening zzz's are hard to reconcile with "oh, time to juggle 4-5 players paging me through paragraphs of poses and assorted game spam".

Having said that, yours was the only plot I got to join lately so... thanks for that.

@Auspice said in Shadows Over Reno:

You either start early enough for the EST folks and no PST can make it (since they're all still at work), or you start late enough for PST and the EST peeps have to leave early. I work from home and I've tried a broad spectrum. 5:30p PST / 8:30p EST seems to be the sweet spot, but you've gotta be able to jump right into the action in 1 or 2 rounds.

My take on that is very simple - I leave work at 5:30, get home at 6:30 and need to eat something. So I run them at 8 - all EST, all based on my availability. It's the best I can do.

I skip the 'You all gather here,' the 'figure out who is riding in what vehicle,' etc. We spend a few minutes OOC (or in advance of the scene time if possible) figuring out who has what and is doing which in advance... and then I start with the 'As you roll up to the abandoned Radio Shack, you see...'

Because I swear, for every person that's awesome in the 'setup' by including everything in one pose, there's a couple people who take 2-3 rounds of posing and that alone can add an hour or so.

I wanted to take a bit more time here because that one's important... the setup.

In the past I had at least one person complain to me because I launched a multi-part story in a formulaic way - there was basically a quest-giver who handed the PCs some initial task, and that was apparently not good enough. To such people I kindly say fuck you too; beginnings are hard, k? When no character knows each other so I can't even draw on existing alliances to hook things into, players need to give the ST a chance and suspend their disbelief just a little to leave room for the plot to roll. Else we'll spend the first hour (maybe the first session) just trying to figure out how everyone got involved and isn't that a lovely way to spend a Tuesday night?

Obviously if I railroad the whole plot and characters are just bit parts in a story without choices and agency then yes, that'd be a good reason to protest.

Anyway, these days I @mail interested participants in a new plot a day or two before it starts with some suggestions about how they might get onboard; ideally they get in touch with me and we work something more elaborate out as needed. Almost no one has ever actually done the latter but hey, I try.

What's much harder is hooking new people after the plot is ongoing, especially if it's not a Hollywood production with cars exploding and giant monsters coming out of the deep; if there's an overall veil of secrecy or discretion about the affair but I only have three players for my scene on Thursday and I need four, or someone asks "hey, I heard about the ninja thing, I want in on the ninjas" then it needs to be done. And I hate asking the plot's participants to suspend their disbelief again so Bob can show up out of nowhere for that thing they're trying hard to keep under wraps.

I haven't found a reliable, universal way to get that one done so far. It's just all case by case - but it's obviously much easier if the players themselves do the work for me ("Hey Bob, I need a favor man... we need extra muscle for a job"), but that's relying on them to do some of the legwork which... I admit, isn't always something I'm keen on counting on. The vast majority of players just sit on a plot until the next scheduled +event unless I'm specifically targeting an already well-knit OOC/IC group with the plot-fu.

[Killer Klown]

I actually tend to sign up only for sphere-specific events, largely because cross-sphere stuff is either, invariably, a social scene that explodes unmanageble size or tends to be bogged down for rules reasons stated above that it feels unmanageable.
The other reason is that I signed up to play Werewolf, so I want to play Werewolf. I might be in the minority, but you spend the majority of your time in social scenes or situations where you have to ICly hide who and what you are; I tend to figure that events are points where you can let loose; which is not something you can do in mixed company, safely.

[Arkandel]

@Killer-Klown Challenge accepted.