[Eldritch] Sphere Caps & Waiting Lists

[Coin]

@Arkandel, it is a leap when doing barbell squats or whatever the fuck you weirdo lifting healthnuts do is a commonplace event, and doing something that earns you something as specific and important to your society as Glory is... well, specific and important to your society. So, at the risk of repeating myself, yes, it is totally a leap. Or at least, it's too much of one for me to just handwaive.

It is my hope that we will have enough plot to go around. It is my hope that people won't need to request Renown scenes, because werewolf plot (and metaplot) will give sufficient chances for werewolves to be fucking awesome, as they should.

So we'll see!

[Bobotron]

@Thenomain
I don't think you'll get much early access to the WtF2e book unless you go beg OPP for it.

[Miss Demeanor]

Nnnnnnnnnnngh... hate Werewolf Renown. Renown is why I DON'T play Werewolf. Glory Renown is about the easiest damn thing in the WORLD to get. Beat up a vampire and took his blood money? Glory. Had a lesser spirit talk smack so you slapped it into place? Glory. Pure bitch got stupid and you spanked her til she ran home? Glory. So to me, not really the best example.

Should Renown expectations change in 2E, I will be more than happy to look at them and reevaluate my opinion. But until I don't have to spend IC -years- watching over a locus to get a dot of Purity? Meh. MU*wise, some Renown are just easier to gain than others by current standards, and it makes playing anything but a 'rawrkill' character something you HAVE to pester people for scenes over. Which in turn leads to Ark's point. I don't want to have to ask someone to run a scene for me just so I can advance normally within the splat. Especially when no other splat really demands such things.

[Creepy]

Meh. There's stuff you do on the grid once your character gets approved, and then there's a lifetime of crap your wolf did prior to entrance onto the grid. Sure, you can pimp smack a Pure for a low level dot of Glory, but there's no reason (in my opinion) that you can count something you did pre-grid towards a higher dot of renown. That's why backgrounds are a great thing to write for your wolf. It gives staff more information so they can weigh your request for Purity 5. Meh again, I say. Guess we'll see.

[Coin]

Sure, you can pimp smack a Pure for a low level dot of Glory, but there's no reason (in my opinion) that you can count something you did pre-grid towards a higher dot of renown.

Can or can't? You post is a quite ambiguous.

[Wizz]

OP hasn't mentioned the mechanics behind gaining renown to a great degree, but a lot of the mechanical changes to having renown are pretty damn cool. Werewolves can inflict conditions on people like vampires, and also flare their power like mages. I'm pretty excited for it and genuinely torn as to whether I want to make a Demon or a Werewolf first.

[Coin]

@Wizz, yeah, I'm super excited about some of the stuff I've seen for Werewolf, too.

[Saulot]

@Coin I think @Creepy meant can't.

[Creepy]

Can't. Sorry. Long day.

[Arkandel]

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Nnnnnnnnnnngh... hate Werewolf Renown. Renown is why I DON'T play Werewolf.
...
Which in turn leads to Ark's point. I don't want to have to ask someone to run a scene for me just so I can advance normally within the splat. Especially when no other splat really demands such things.

That's pretty much where I stand. But I think the case for this has been well stated, and since the books aren't actually out it's a waiting game. I think nothing will change in this manner because the actual material is meant for table-top where there's always a Storyteller so by definition you get custom-made content but who knows.

If all else fails I can roll a bloodsucker or join the bandwagon for a Demon, I guess. But I hate the current way of gaining Renown enough to not participate in it.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Arkandel I find myself in the same boat. I just do not care for the current Renown system, and without some serious adjustment in 2E Werewolf, I can't see myself slogging through it to play one.

@Creepy That was sort of my point. In order to gain Renown, you need actual events or plots to happen to get those dots. Which inevitably leads to you either having to wait in the HOPE that what you're looking for will HAPPEN to be in a given plot being run... or you have to request someone run the scene specifically for that Renown. Which, as Ark mentioned earlier, takes the spontaneous fun out the RP. Its railroaded plot, regardless of it being beneficial, and railroaded plot is rarely that fun to take part in. And there's only so much you can logically put into your BG before it becomes an obvious bid for more Renown. Besides which, as I believe I said in a different thread a ways back, I prefer to barebones a BG so that I can determine fun details in RP.

[Eerie]

We legitimately haven’t talked about how we might modify werewolf yet because I think we all want to see the finished product first, but I understand what everyone is saying about renown, and I’ll just reiterate the bit @Coin said about how if it remains a problem we’ll try our utmost to strike a balance between Renown being meaningful and it not being a giant pain in the ass to deal with. Nobody wants to constantly have to beg people to run PRPs, for sure, and we get that.

All that being said... I know that @Coin and I have fairly ambitious goals for plot in general on Eldritch. Part of the reason for sphere caps is that we’re hoping for more ST involvement in most character’s lives, more involvement in plot for more people who are interested in that kind of thing, and as a more intimate experience rather than all staff-run plot stuff being unwieldy 20 person free-for-alls that happen once in a blue moon.

(Along these same lines, eventually I’ll probably be pleading for additional ST help to help execute this vision, but honestly, I think smaller scenes will make Sting a lot more fun for STAFF too, not just players, so I think it will be good for everyone. And we’ll be happy to lend tons of support to people who are uncertain but willing to give it a shot, and stay out of the way of people who know what they want to do.)

So really, don’t abandon hope just yet. Again, this is meant to be a cooperative process so it’s not like we’re not interested in listening and working out kinks if people are like ‘this is ruining it for me’. But I think that more non-PRP plot will actually help solve a chunk of this too.

[Coin]

or you have to request someone run the scene specifically for that Renown. Which, as Ark mentioned earlier, takes the spontaneous fun out the RP.

Curiously: how does being able to buy Renown without having to do anything to justify it qualify as "spontaneous fun"?

I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just sort of curious as to why A is preferable to B when A does not alleviate the problems found in B.

[Deleted]

Because you know going into the scene exactly what's going to happen. You're going to do something glorious, or cunning, or wise, or whatever.

It takes the fun out of it to know you're just grinding for dots.

[Ganymede]

I understand why folks don't like how Renown works, especially on a MU*. Oathcircle had an interesting way of handling it, and it can be adapted as follows.

Like Arcane XP, create Renown XP. Award Renown XP to PCs whose players write up "Renown stories," which are submitted once a week. Those stories can then be attached, like logs, to a Wiki-page that is kept for each PC. That XP is the only way to raise Renown.

Award Renown XP based on two criteria: (1) who it involved; and (2) what was done. Encourage packs to come up with Pack Renown stories, which may give each PC a little more Renown than if the story were purely personal.

Yes, this is like the dreaded "report writing." But it puts the burden of advancement on the PC's player. It's no different than playing through "Renown PRPs," and achieves the same goal: creating a rich history for each PC, which ought to exist for high-Renown Werewolves.

[Arkandel]

@Eerie said:

So really, don’t abandon hope just yet. Again, this is meant to be a cooperative process so it’s not like we’re not interested in listening and working out kinks if people are like ‘this is ruining it for me’. But I think that more non-PRP plot will actually help solve a chunk of this too.

You can't make a game that will appeal to everyone, so it's not about hope. For all I know there are other players who desperately want a game based around the idea of 'earning Renown' as it's been implemented by HM and TR rather than how it was on Reno.

I like your guys' policies on many things. I disagree with others, such as not having XP transfers for character retirement. That's not a bad thing.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said:

I understand why folks don't like how Renown works, especially on a MU*. Oathcircle had an interesting way of handling it, and it can be adapted as follows.

Yes, this is like the dreaded "report writing." But it puts the burden of advancement on the PC's player. It's no different than playing through "Renown PRPs," and achieves the same goal: creating a rich history for each PC, which ought to exist for high-Renown Werewolves.

How was it received on Oathcircle? It seems interesting (and Arcane XP is always a challenge to implement on MU*, since it's one of those things clearly developed with table-top in mind).

But it reminds me - another issue is that running PrPs takes a huge chunk out of STs' time. I really enjoy running them (or I wouldn't do it) but the time I do have left for RP I'd rather spend it on things I legitimately enjoy doing rather than crossing off boxes ('is this good enough for Cunning 4? Dammit, it seems more like a Cunning 3. Build more cunnings!"). I imagine it's the same with other regular MU-related activities - building, +job monkey stuff, whatever. You know?

Anyway, I need to stop ranting, the point is well received that the book's not even out yet and this is already being argued to death.

[Miss Demeanor]

And is really no different than running tailor-made prp's to gain a dot in Renown X. Not to mention it calls up the same kind of unrest that Arcane XP brings up on TR. That idea that this splat is 'special' and will have more normal xp to spend on other things because that XP goes specifically towards that one type of stat.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said:

You can't make a game that will appeal to everyone

That doesn't stop people from saying what is and isn't, what should and shouldn't, and other forms of academic entertainment. The number of times someone has said "you can't please everyone" should be a score-counter at this point.

I feel that it's becoming cliché, in the true sense of the word: A phrase repeated often enough that it's becoming meaningless. Idealism leads us toward seeking out better solutions, as long as it doesn't overwhelm us.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said:

@Arkandel said:

You can't make a game that will appeal to everyone

That doesn't stop people from saying what is and isn't, what should and shouldn't, and other forms of academic entertainment. The number of times someone has said "you can't please everyone" should be a score-counter at this point.

I feel that it's becoming cliché, in the true sense of the word: A phrase repeated often enough that it's becoming meaningless. Idealism leads us toward seeking out better solutions, as long as it doesn't overwhelm us.

But it's true. In fact I gave an example about this very thing we're discussing.

Sure, I and others like @Miss-Demeanor have an issue with the traditional way of achieving Renown to the point we don't play Werewolf because of it. But others arguably like the sphere specifically for that reason (I've heard it being referred to as 'hardcore mode nWoD').

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.