Best posts made by Arkandel

Kobe's reaction means more to me than who actually won it.

@ganymede said in Silly things you'd been tempted to do on/for a MU*:

@thenomain said in Silly things you'd been tempted to do on/for a MU*:

I once quit MUSHing.

Then came back.

We thought you were a goner, but --

Whenever someone says they're quiting MUSHing I feel like Ben Affleck talking to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

@ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@arkandel

It could also be that you're a lazy, slow soccer player too.

I mean, just saying, bruh.

I'd say I ran at least as much as my fellow players, with a couple of outliers outrunning me.

Which is to say we are all slow, old fucks.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

@Olsson And that gratification HAS to come in the form of xp?

What's the alternative? It's not a rhetorical question - how else do we get more Storytellers to throw plot? It scales very well (one ST can create RP for 4+ people) and yet there is rarely enough supply to meet demand.

Your character, which has zero to do with the plots that you are running, should be allowed to become more powerful simply because you as a player have the ability to tell a good story?

To be fair, players who have the ability to tell good stories get all sorts of perks even when they don't run PrPs.

I don't mean to repeat myself either but I haven't seen an answer to this yet (and please point it out to me otherwise); XP from Beats in nWoD 2.0 is by far the superior method to advance. A player who gets himself involved in ongoing affairs more than bar RP can make a true killing way faster and easier than having to be personally responsible for hours' worth of plot.

Is that also a problem? Because I see it as a feature.

@Paris Oh no, it wasn't free, you spent a lot of time in it that you could have spent doing other more fun or productive things.

... That doesn't help, does it?

Reddit came through today with these gems. I... I lack words.

@thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Sheesh.

Indeed.

@Lithium said in Sin City Chronicles:

I have played on many a multi-sphere game an enjoyed it, but there are times when I want to play just Werewolf. Or Just Vampire. Or Just <insert splat here> and sometimes when trying to play that sphere on a multi-sphere game doesn't give the same feel because things are spread to thin.

Not every game can or should be all things to all people.

I like multisphere games. For starters it gives people more room since not every niche is super filled because the number of reasonable concepts is limited by definition, and for another it's fun to explore boundaries raised by miscommunication, manipulation or of course good ol' fashioned tribalism.

The danger with these games is having the spheres end up isolated from each other because then yes, it's an issue. If Changelings are discouraged from hanging out with Werewolves because reasons then the game with 20 players becomes a game with 10+10 players... which is a problem. But that can be solved, and I doubt the folks running this game will let it get to that.

Say what you will. The first season of Star Trek: Discovery kicked some serious ass.

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Well. I mean - yes, I think what we're saying here is that we're putting in considerable effort to keep this from happening, because it's weird to have Combat Joe Who Has No Social Skills And Does Not Afraid Of Anything in charge of diplomatic efforts.

I think it's a great thing to focus on.

How do you deal with the (obviously exaggerated) example I gave above though? The House Voice who's a combat-character, and thus has the authority (but not the coded skill) to be part of or even lead diplomatic missions because of their rank?

@Lisse24 said in Sin City Chronicles:

@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.

Unfortunately CoI and players OOC maneuvering on behalf of their PCs is as incredibly common as it is impossible to chase down due to how widespread it is. Metagaming in political games is probably my top peeve in MUSHing, yet I recognize it's awfully hard for staff to intervene on something that's basically impossible to not just prove but ultimately even reasonably know happened.

The heart of the issue to me is that people have friends - OOC friends - and they like playing with these OOC friends, something which can convey advantages when that neonate hangs out with the Prince all the time because they OOC love playing together. Access itself is an advantage, regardless of the nature of that relationship.

Yet what can be done about this? What should be? In most cases absolutely nothing, and the line that separates impropriety from perfectly acceptable behavior is very blurry and subjective.

Batman: Ninja.

@ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I mean, that's why Fifth Kingdom was so much fun for me for so long: my high lord PC was socially awkward, but enjoyed getting drunk and wrassling. He was once dragged through the market trying to wrassle a boar down that had escaped from a pen.

Yes. But.

1. It ends up having an effect on the game in general, because it can lead to many positions being occupied by characters who don't belong there but without any real consequences depending on how they are played. Sure, my skirt-chasing swordsman is funny when I pose him, but the House is doing A-okay (or not noticeably worse than your House led by someone with high finances and social skills). Path of least resistance, right?

2. It still overshadows characters built for this, but the other way around doesn't happen or, even better, does have real tangible consequences when it does. If I bring my likable class clown to a real fight someone's going to physically cave his head in with a hammer, not just draw a few chuckles yet overall get the job done.

3. This sort of thing absolutely relies on reasonable players realizing their own characters' limitations and playing them accordingly. The real fun begins when that doesn't happen, which is very often the case. Obviously great roleplayers choosing an angle will result to positive results, but that's not the rule - it's the exception.

@Tempest Yeah, these are social games in their hearts. Certain kinds people players have an advantage - social ones, good roleplayers, there are all kinds of edges folks have just because of who they are OOC. How many times do we see some neonate nobody be incredibly popular just because they're playing the hell out of their concept? Same political situation as the guy next door, same clan or bloodline... but one of them is just better.

But there's the flipside of it... I'm getting outmaneuvered on a political game and so I send @Tempest a PM here to make an alliance together, so we work the details out and just assume it happened or just play it out with the understanding that it will happen. Or I just flat-out ask you to create a character so that I can get some backup.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43330356

Susan Sarandon has revealed that Paul Newman once gave her part of his salary. They starred together in the 1998 film Twilight, with Gene Hackman. Sarandon discovered that her male co-stars were getting paid the same as each other - and more than her. Newman said, "Well I'll give you part of mine."

@ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Do you have any idea how many people in history rose to positions that they didn't deserve?

That's neither here nor there. We're talking about a game which needs to have interesting choices for players to make. If those choices don't exist everyone is poorer for it.

Or to get back to the original cause for this tangent in the thread, social characters need to have a strong niche, the same way as physical characters do. Else there will be way more of the former than the latter.

2. It still overshadows characters built for this, but the other way around doesn't happen or, even better, does have real tangible consequences when it does. If I bring my likable class clown to a real fight someone's going to physically cave his head in with a hammer, not just draw a few chuckles yet overall get the job done.

Then your clown gets his head caved in. This is a problem because ... ?

Because unless a system is explicitly designed to prevent it, that doesn't happen in social scenarios. I can bring my grunt to a meeting and play him in a way that won't embarrass himself or bring any disadvantages to his cause because he has no training in economics, politics or anything that doesn't involve swinging a sword at people.

But, if I'm reading you correctly, you're essentially arguing that it's a bad thing to have socially-inept combat monsters in court because the average player isn't going to realize their own characters' limitations and play them accordingly. That seems a little patrician to me.

I'm arguing the system itself should be built to prevent socially inept characters either from rising to power or to wielding that power without causing tangible consequences to whatever they are trying to do. In other words the end result should be equivalent to what would happen if an unskilled character took leadership of an army, or rode with that army into open battle.

As it is, in most systems - I am definitely not saying this is specific to Arx, and in fact I realize they are trying to fix this - you can have the pie and eat it. I think that has a negative impact on gameplay.

The upper staff echelon (no offense @Sonder) is what kept me before from joining Fallcoast, and what continues to.

But I mean! From the scenarios described in the Fermi Paradox (the OP link!) which one would you say is closest to what you subscribe to?

I kind of like the ant-hill theory; you have ants living next to a super highway. How would the ants know to recognize it for what it is or figure out the reasons for which it had to be built? Even if the ones who're building it wanted to communicate, how would they? What would there be to talk about?

Ants!

@sunnyj said in The trappings of posing:

3 paragraphs +

20~40 minutes per pose is perfect

Wow, and I thought I was all hardcore about this. I admit that, while I like long poses anything over 10-15 minutes starts grating on me since the scene just starts to move a bit too slowly for my tastes, and it won't get far in the 3 hours or so I tend to allocate to RP when I'm actually playing.

I mean it's just numbers, right? In a scene with 3 people each of whom take 20 minutes to pose that's 1 pose from each an hour.

That's just my preference though. Even bringing it back to 10 minutes, that's 3 poses an hour per person, so the scene can flow a bit more.

If you are metaposing, give me insight on your character's mindset, even if I can't pose about it with my own char. I like to understand the thought process of characters, and really love when my partner puts thought into that. If you are metaposing bitchy shit or flowery stuff just to pad your pose, RP gets harder.

Metaposing should probably warrant an entire thread on its own but we can host it here. I'm torn on it, personally. Sometimes it feels hand-feeding this stuff in my poses feels a bit like cheating - I should be conveying things in a more ambiguous way, opening them to interpretation (and even better, misinterpretation) but on the other hand there are notions I've love to unveil about my character now and then which might not have an obvious venue to use for it otherwise.