Posts made by AmishRakeFight

NYC is oft kicked around as a setting second only to New Orleans but both settings tend to have fatal flaws in terms of game longevity and staff taking on too much.

Also voting for Hunter.

But I'd like to see a Hunter game where consequences really have teeth. A lot of people say they want a Hunter game with high stakes intrigue.

But.

Often what they mean is they want a serialized version of Supernatural, with regular Deus Ex Machinas that unmake consequences or undo death. And that's not a wrong thing to want but it does cause some to only run monster of the week challenges that aren't going to result in a body count, faction rivalries gets reduced to sneering at each other from isolated corners, and people generally avoid any sort of threat interception that causes real risk.

I've always liked Hunter because it operates on the assumption that your PC will die, sooner than later but there has been a fairly long tradition of games that skitter away from this outcome.

I don't think its nepotistic to allow a player to play a role, if they have a proven track record of having a solid grip on the rules, know how to think critically about those rules apply to the concept, handles conflicts well (because most of the time this allowed role comes with a dump truck full of conflict), and isn't a gibbering loon with a grip on reality and reason.

For example, if you need someone to play a Vampire Elder who operates the way an Elder should when it comes to Camarilla hooha, you want a player who can come correct in that role. If you know someone who can handle this job, then you'd offer it to them. You wouldn't, in reverse, hand it over to the unknown quantity unless you really didn't care how that ended up.

But lets say you end up going with person you don't know: you'd probably end up having to clean up a huge mess and unruffle a lot of feathers and unbend bent feelings after things exploded because the potential for WrongFun with these things, is always pretty high.

And generally never worth the clean up.

If you are exclusively only hand picking the same people for these kinds of tasks to the exclusion of other players who've proven an ability to do it well and handle it, then yeah, now you're getting into nepotistic waters.

@Derp

Too much frockdrama.

@Wizz

I wish someone would run a MU* based on Dogs in the Vineyard in Utah, because that's in part the game's actual setting, so I suppose that's the root of my angling but yeah, the Mormon religion makes it so easy in terms of weird as shit backstory.

I'll second my experience that Mudconnector is dodgy at best. I'm not sure of the algorithm that the site uses but the cached activity reports for games seems to be highly delayed. But its still possible to find some interesting places if you have the patience for sorting through things.

I'd like to see more games set in the American Southeast that doesn't rhyme with Pew Moreens.

Utah, for some reason, suggests potential but I think its mostly because that's a state that was founded on utter batshittery as a religion. It makes it easy for almost any wackadoo premise for why this town is soooo evil, guys! as a setting.

@BigDaddyAmin I'm never going to be warm again.

Once the holidays pass and its freezing and miserable and its never going to be shorts weather again, people will be more active to avoid going outside.

@Misadventure I played a police PC on TR for a hot minute. There was more than one I AM THE ULTIMATE SOLDIERCOP character that couldn't figure out the most basic shit about military service or working for any sort of LEO.

Like, shit that a brain damaged house cat could Google. They were in general competition with the players that Googled terminology only once and vomited up any term that could remember like the house cat had speech aphasia post brain damaging stroke.

In the city I live in, drivers and cyclists more or less kind of hate each other. This is a lot of cities. But. Anyway. The city here on some problematic streets installed bike lanes. It took a lot of money and 3x the projected time to finish. This is a lot of cities.

It was done in order to give drivers a line and cyclists a lane with a median between that would keep one out of the path of the other and also prevent cyclists from getting doored by removing most of the street parking. Mostly, its been an expensive eyesore. Drivers avoid the street now because the traffic flow is all effed and the timing of the lights, which also has to account for light rail, is super effed. And you have enough cyclists who refuse to use the cyclist lane to make a point about their right to the road.

I am mostly in awe of people who try to cycle in this city because its so dangerous. The whole thought makes me squeamish but I do get irrationally angry at the cyclists who fling themselves into commute traffic to make a point about their right to be there. I totally support your right to be there when you're not blocking traffic and potentially causing accidents to make your point, dude.

This happens about once a week, like today. I hate this city sometimes.

So it looks like AEG and John Wick are reviving 7th Sea. No real plans announced on what they want to specifically do but it does sound like they'll be releasing new and updated material for the game. Sounds pretty positive to me since a lot of people love this long out of print game.

Press Release Here: http://www.alderac.com/blog/2015/11/03/a-return-to-7th-sea/

@Sunny I define metaplot as episodic, as well. It would be ideal if it was the overarching story of a game but I think the ideal and the application fall apart.

A serious, long term metaplot requires a lot of static factors which for most games is the french kiss of death for a serious, long term undertaking. It has to be so adaptable that it can withstand shifts in player population, the exit of PCs who might know important things, the loss of staff, the overall enthusiasm for a game to exist because games don't do anything but change.

And lets not even get into the biggest plot killer of them all: Plot Runner/Staff Exhaustion.

Over time a lot of very long metaplots have gotten into a corner where the staff running it get worn out by the demands and expectations and diva moments and freakouts of players participating. Sometimes players completely miss incredibly salient details and spend four hours of your life in running a scene where they stay fixated on the wrong thing and will not be gently or jarringly pushed towards the missed detail. A couple times is annoying but couple that with weeks or months of players refusing to roll with things and pushing back on a lot of fine details? A lot of staff understandably throw up their hands and say 'fuck it'.

So I think serialized or episodic metaplot works best. You get a taste. You get a rest. Taste. Rest. Etc.

I feel like metaplots are successful when:

• They are short lived. The story is over and done within six months or less.

• The game population is small. I'm talking 50 PCs or less.

• There is a total common understanding of the goals, aims, and story from start to finish from all levels of staff from plot runners to scene STs.

• The overall story needs to have some flexibility so that if a key PC with really important information dies in character, idles out due to RL, or leaves the game for OOC reasons that nothing hinges on one person or group.

• PC actions may completely alter the course of things and staff should let this happen, even if it results in mass PC death. Staff are up front about this, remind PCs this could really, really happen, and there will be no Deus Ex-Machinas if they really cock it up. Put another way: no rails to save feelings.

Assuming that their perspective was a defense of the practice, I really can't math out anymore why anyone fails to see how racist that is?

Even if you exist in some extremely non-diverse reality where your contact with people of any color is minimal and the groupthought of your community doesn't know better because they've never had to personally examine this issue, there have been so, so, sooooo many embarrassing and newsmaking instances of people doing that. Even then, if you still can't grasp why its wrong, the public humiliation and shaming would likely inspire people to re-think solely to avoid said humiliation and shaming.

So I'm deeply curious: What is your affection for the name Magnes?

ETA: Oh, I missed your preemptive explanation but if you still want to answer the question (which is srs and not actually intended to be snide), feel free!

@Ganymede

I've thought about it but for now, its not where the reality is at. I work for a tech company but they have strangely not terribly progressive feelings about telecommuting. They're slowly coming along but several key upper management individuals come from that old school of productivity only happens in the office. (Which given how much the person to the left of me is on Facebook and how much the person to the right of me is away from their desk to socialize... not so much but I digress). But I really like my job and I have a solid, long term future here with increasingly better scale and more than decent stock options if I just stick it out a few more years.

I can afford to pay that much in rent a month but there's no sane reason to do it. I have years to go on my student loans and I'm the child of immigrants so I've had beaten into me that it all could immediately go to shit tomorrow so pay for things in cash and avoid living on credit as much as you can.

The real estate market prices here were driven up by people rushing to buy before the interest rates were going up because everyone was certain they were. Now that they're not, the inflated sense of urgency is predicted to flip on the market and go from seller to buyer and inventory will go back up. Also, a major international corporation was all set to move a major North American operations base here and transplant employees were paying cash for houses and waving inspections to rush closing in anticipation of that happening. This was making it harder for people wanting to buy with Homepath loans and wanting inspections for basic thing like y'know, your house not having a foundation made of prayers and cheesewhiz. That deal has soured and the corporation is likely going elsewhere now.

So, things are probably going to get better. I hope.

My local housing market.

I'm trying to buy a house. Trying. The inflated prices on what are 900 sq. ft. heat traps with dubious ability to stand up to an earthquake are insane. The condo market is better but $700 mo. in HOA fees on top of a mortgage payment on a building constructed in 1969 and looking every minute of it?

Ugh.

Well, I guess I can always pay $1900/month of a 500 sq. ft. box with paper thin walls and additional per month parking costs. At least its got laminate flooring!

shoots self

Personal horror's main mechanism is in the phrase. The rub is that one PC's paralyzing issues about abandonment isn't going to make another PC blink but they may be terrified of going broke.

Having a player articulate the things that drive their PCs to avoid their idea of personal harm (real or imagined) and ruin as part of app process or as part of pre-event 'homework' allows the GM to drop personal horror bombs as appropriate and meaningful to player/PC experience.

This comes with a 2-fold caveat though:

1. Players can't ignore what's happening to them. They can rationalize it or get a raging case of denial about it IG or the like but they can't straight up ignore it happening to the PC OOG and they should be informed of that going in in terms of what to expect and an attempt to ignore it won't escape consequences. If the player doesn't want to sign on for that kind of RP experience then they have an automatic out and it saves a lot of sturm and drang down the line.
2. That most things are on the table but probably some things shouldn't be, like for example rape or incest or child abuse or whatever it is that's a hard limit. These things are deep seated denizens of personal real life horror but in a game setting, the benefits are totally overshadowed by the piles of OOG drama and upset that eclipses the focus on IG.

Dogs In the Vineyard