Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!

[Cobalt]

@thenomain said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

@vixanic

Thenomain on Gmail.
And Skype.
And Discord.

Not all the tests are in the right place. (Sorry.)

Contact me for further input.

Pst.

For discord you need to give her the numbers.

[skew]

@Thenomain What @Cobaltasaurus said.

@Vixanic I'll DM you my discord information. BUT...

Most of those tests will never work. It's Thenomain's tests for Thenomain's system. They call objects that don't exist, players that don't exist, etc, because Thenomain was testing on himself. So, like, if you check and see a reference to *Thenomain being called, that means it's looking for the Thenomain player. Some of this is also out of order, per the tests... as in, it assumes you've already been through cgen before you finish installing cgen.

All that said, it's ok if most of it fails. But there are a few spots along the way that are broken, mostly due to the things like /* in the code.

Discord me. I help, best I can.

[Pacha]

@zaroot

Hi there!

Mage is a little bit of a tough one for me for a few reasons.

Firstly, I don't think any of us know Mage particularly well. My experience is that if you're going to have Mage you need a staffer who is very committed, can give time to it every single day and knows it inside out and back to front or there is the real risk of having people run rings around you and finding yourself out of your depth very quickly.

I think mage has a very bad reputation, some of which is unfair and some of which is wholly deserved. I think the lore of 1e mage really didn't help with that, but I am aware that a lot of it was reworked in 2e to make it less 'definite' which is good. As I mentioned though, I am far from an expert.

So yeah, I am not against adding mage eventually. I would just want to be in a position where I had a very knowledgeable, very committed person to run it and to make sure we had done the groundwork to ensure it sat well within the theme of the rest of the game.

Hope this helps!

Pacha

[Arkandel]

@pacha said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Firstly, I don't think any of us know Mage particularly well.

Aside from a few people with PhDs in Mageology, no one knows Mage well. That splat is a nightmare.

[Ganymede]

@pacha said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

So yeah, I am not against adding mage eventually. I would just want to be in a position where I had a very knowledgeable, very committed person to run it and to make sure we had done the groundwork to ensure it sat well within the theme of the rest of the game.

I nominate @SunnyJ.

[Zaroot]

It's a catch-22, really. You won't get many experts because no one wants to staff for Mage, and no one will staff for Mage because no one has it in their games enough to learn it.

I wouldn't call Mage a nightmare by any means, but not many people have tried 2E Mage in the MU community.

I'll keep an eye out on this though.

[SunnyJ]

@ganymede

I did my time, man!

[ThatOneDude]

@zaroot said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

It's a catch-22, really. You won't get many experts because no one wants to staff for Mage, and no one will staff for Mage because no one has it in their games enough to learn it.

I wouldn't call Mage a nightmare by any means, but not many people have tried 2E Mage in the MU community.

I'll keep an eye out on this though.

Sounds like we need a 2e Mage / Mortal game... >.>

Why did the last one shut down?

[skew]

@thatonedude Assuming that's an honest question...

Me and @SunnyJ found Mage was extremely difficult to ST for. Plot required a lot of thinking and a lot of adapting and it was really tiring. Add in that most mage plots ended up taking a very long time, due to the nature of mage (I have 30 different spells I could cast, let me think through each one, I take 15 minutes to do my turn in initiative).

I'll add that single sphere games are difficult to sustain. Few players means fewer people RPing means fewer people coming around means few players... you get the idea.

All that said, I believe 100% that Mage can be done in a multi-splat MU in a way that's fun and exciting, but requires a lot of house rules and modifications and, at it's core, nerfing mage either through mechanics or "IC Consequences".

[Saulot]

@thatonedude My only and best guess is lack of activity.

[ThatOneDude]

@skew said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

@thatonedude Assuming that's an honest question...

Me and @SunnyJ found Mage was extremely difficult to ST for. Plot required a lot of thinking and a lot of adapting and it was really tiring. Add in that most mage plots ended up taking a very long time, due to the nature of mage (I have 30 different spells I could cast, let me think through each one, I take 15 minutes to do my turn in initiative).

I'll add that single sphere games are difficult to sustain. Few players means fewer people RPing means fewer people coming around means few players... you get the idea.

All that said, I believe 100% that Mage can be done in a multi-splat MU in a way that's fun and exciting, but requires a lot of house rules and modifications and, at it's core, nerfing mage either through mechanics or "IC Consequences".

I think we should split this off into a thread. I was reading on the Onyx path forums a thread about how to allow mage to play with other game lines. There was some good stuff that came out of that discussion:

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/1236317-crossover-issues-doubt
<I like this response>
The splats are made to be internally consistent, balancing them against each other would take a lot of homebrewing, experimenting, frustration and even then it might make certain players feel the powers they imagined fall short. A game like D&D is designed from the ground up to not only be there to tell stories, but also to be a war game, running the numbers, optimizing and seeing the ensuing absurdity is part of what builds the experience. CofD is designed to be more focused on telling great stories. So I propose a paradigm shift: seek perfect imbalance. Here are some thoughts about how to do it:

1- Have each player fill a niche. A werewolf Ithaeur and a Thrysus can both fill the spirit shaman role, yet the Thrysus will have a harder time because, even with an honorary spirit rank, because he is an outsider, so he needs to play a dangerous game of bribes, coercion and intimidation that the werewolf are much more equipped to deal with, but as he reaches Mastery this could invert. That would make it so one of them will always feel like a dead weight at some point. But if they each have a different focus, that changes entirely. The Eleventh Question can be the detective, the Daeva can be the face of the party, the Rahu can be the combat specialist, and so on, there are many ways to go about it, the splats are flexible enough to accommodate all types of builds. Now when their powers peak, each player will feel satisfied and you will have a balanced party, ready too tackle any complex problems you send their way.

2- One of the coolest things about the Chronicles of Darkness is that there is always a bigger fish. If the players go too overt with the power displays, then they have to deal with the consequences. Maybe you called the attention of an Stryx, or disturbed a Seer operation, or that artifact you stole belonged to a mummy's cult, maybe that street gang's operation was unknowing infrastructure to the God Machine or maybe an archmage saw some interesting new pawns. Let them be free to make their choices, but be bound by the consequences.

3- Remember that each splat comes with drawbacks. Mages are crazy flexible, but they are also very squishy if caught off guard. A werewolf can heal quickly or become a death machine, a vampire has a tough undead body, a Geist just comes back from death and a Promethean is a juggernaut that can heal with electricity. Sure you can kill werewolves at high Arcanum, but do you have the mana to keep doing it if things escalate ? What happens if the attacker is a vampire who sent armed Sleeper thugs or an Obrimos who also warded them with Prime ? Are you sure you should be Reaching that much ? The Paradox just keeps building. By the same token, the method a werewolf used to keep Harmony in balance might go against the Oath of The Moon, or it might be fine with it but be a horrendous act by human standards, certainly illegal. Having to deal with those helps flesh out a character.

4- What is good enough for the players is good enough for the antagonists. So they braved the Shadow version of the villain's hideout to get the McGuffin ? Hopefully they covered their tracks. Otherwise ghosts will slowly scout the city for it, and when they find it, the Geist behind it will slowly have them posses the neighboring people and, when the time is right, spring an attack on the player's base. While they are dealing with it, they sneak by Twilight and take the items back. Hold on, where is the Beast ? Your player's phone rings, its from their house, its going to be one of those night.

[Ganymede]

@skew said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Add in that most mage plots ended up taking a very long time, due to the nature of mage (I have 30 different spells I could cast, let me think through each one, I take 15 minutes to do my turn in initiative).

I would say that is due to the nature of Mage players, personally. I ran a few small crime-fighting PRPs that took a fraction of the time.

Then again, my particular PC didn't rely on her magic. Her thought process:

1. Is there a problem?

2. If YES, can I destroy it with my fists and feet?

3. If YES, destroy it; if NO, try to destroy it anyway, and catalogue success as a Mystery solved.

[tragedyjones]

@ganymede said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

@skew said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Add in that most mage plots ended up taking a very long time, due to the nature of mage (I have 30 different spells I could cast, let me think through each one, I take 15 minutes to do my turn in initiative).

I would say that is due to the nature of Mage players, personally. I ran a few small crime-fighting PRPs that took a fraction of the time.

Then again, my particular PC didn't rely on her magic. Her thought process:

1. Is there a problem?

2. If YES, can I destroy it with my fists and feet?

3. If YES, destroy it; if NO, try to destroy it anyway, and catalogue success as a Mystery solved.

While that is a valid playstyle and from what I remember of your PC was pretty dope, sometimes you play a wizard because you wanna cast fuckin' spells

[Ganymede]

@tragedyjones said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

While that is a valid playstyle and from what I remember of your PC was pretty dope, sometimes you play a wizard because you wanna cast fuckin' spells

Thanks.

And that's fine. I like casting spells. But if it takes you 15 minutes to figure out which one to cast, you're fucking deadweight for the scene.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

But if it takes you 15 minutes to figure out which one to cast, you're fucking deadweight for the scene.

FTFY.

[Coin]

Best way to play Mage is to give the players a time-limit to decide what to do.

A mage doesn't have an eternity to figure out which spell to cast, they're gonna cast the first useful-ish thing to come to mind. Giving a player ten minutes to pore through their list and figure it out is silly.

And if they have a spell that lets them think super fast to justify it, make them prep ahead of time with lists of spells for each occasion, not waste everyone else's time.

[Thenomain]

It took me four months to decide I couldn’t make a Mage, but that was the terrible nMage1e system, so 15 minutes to pick out a spell is pretty typical.

Anyhow, Shadows of Paradise, amirite?

[Lithium]

I think the problem with mage is there are simply far to many of them on a MU most of the time. Having /dozens/ of mages running around the same section of space (The game grid) expands their power exponentially. A smaller group of mages, yeah, attrition becomes a thing. When there are as many or more mages than there are Vampires, Werewolves, Etc, then it's less about attrition and more about: Even if I manage to take out this one asshat, there is twenty four more of them who are going to smack me around.

So it's one of those things where it just doesn't balance well in a MU environment imho.

I do agree with @Coin that timelimits are the way to go though. Keep the scenes moving, don't give them time to peruse every last book for what they can do, etc.

It's not only polite to everyone else, but it also adds tension to the scene.

[SunnyJ]

Time limits will make new people feel very unwelcome on any Mage Sphere, unless you also run 'learning scenes'. Time limits are quite frankly just going to make new players hate the Sphere, and make experienced people take over plots, regardless of it they want it or not.

It solves none of the problems Mage inherently has, aside from 'lol noob pose already', which, in my experience, is as likely to be from searching spells as it is due to people going AFK during plots. When I STd Mage, the confused players buried me in pages, but we figured out.

[Wizz]

Oh god...it's happening again...the Magening...