Best posts made by Arkandel

@lisse24 Something else you can do in general is add an "I'm not sure/I don't know" option. It beats making it up if it's an otherwise mandatory answer.

Also remember a lot of people are holding their collective breaths waiting for spheres to have open slots for them.

The difference between the NBA and the NFL when it comes to social justice protests.

@ganymede said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

That's Rule No. 1 for me when it comes to just about any game.

Try to figure things out before resorting to dice.

Because, man, dice totally suck sometimes.

See, I'm torn on this, and not because I disagree.

For starters I hate using dice, and very rarely roll anything unless asked to, in a 'contest of will'-type situation, or in PrPs.

However the one compelling argument I've found people who support dice and mechanics have, and which I am swayed by, is to facilitate the possibility of occasional failure and provide a scale to success. Even the practiced politician will misread a situation or say the wrong thing at the wrong time after all, so a roll could make for an interesting scene since the result is truly unexpected by all participants.

Is that enough of a reason to include them? I don't know - I'm just saying it's worth considering, because to me if not for that, the only reason I'd ever roll anything at all would be what I described above.

@coin Didn't all but one die in the comics?

That could work, or their link be severed, etc... and roleplay the fallback and consequences of finally being alone in your own head.

@jibberthehut said in Good or New Movies Review:

Am I some weirdo who doesn't go see movies for it's message that may or may not actually exist or to compare to source material and just go... to be entertained and enjoy?

We're all weirdos here. We just bicker about our favorite flavors of weirdness.

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

The #1 reason people min/max IMHO? Players have a vision and your system gets in the way.

I'm a min/maxer. I'm also pretty unapologetic about it - it's like a minigame for me, I just simply enjoy optimizing stuff, having spreadsheets with numbers and tweaking them around until I get more bang for my buck. As such I wouldn't think a system is getting in my way when I do this but rather that it attracts me.

In other words if I don't like it, if it's too complicated or if it gives me insufficient options to customize then I won't get into it, which in my eyes that's a failure to engage me.

Diablo 3's first season with the Necromancer class has started! Endless waves of those pale-skinned freaks around, skeletons are flying in everyone's faces, it's fun.

@bobgoblin I think the Celtics currently have everything they need to succeed. They just need time and health - or maybe eventually trading up for a Horford replacement when he gets a bit older.

@pyrephox said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

One thing to consider is that a lot of players, when considering what makes an 'effective' character, aren't comparing themselves to an outside metric that measures their PCs against the NPC hordes, but rather directly measure themselves against other PCs. So that 'great' rating doesn't mean much if every other PC is also 'great'.

Yeah, quite agreed. In fact this is a very common staff pitfall where they offer things (thematic secrets, theoretical niches, whatever) which end up being completely irrelevant in-game to their players, and are then surprised when they play out the actual results of their implementation than their intention.

For example: "In our world healers are treasured and highly regarded."
Actual play: "One out of every three PCs is a healer, so it's so saturated they're stepping all over each other's toes".

The same principle definitely applies to skills. It means nothing to be 'exceptional' at something compared to NPCs since I don't play with NPCs; I play with PCs, who are all as 'exceptional' as I am at $skill.

@sg said in General Video Game Thread:

@faceless I'll keep my eyes peeled, then. Canadian game prices are nuts the last few years.

Gotta love our "sales", too. BLACK FRIDAY, MASSIVE SALE, 15% off.

@tragedyjones said:

The few friends I have use Skype. Anything cross over with that?

To me that's the determining factor. Even if I find an awesome, light, interplatform robust chat client with a great UI it's completely useless if no one I know uses it.

So my own answer is Google Talk with FB chat as a fallback.

@roz said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

I think you're misunderstanding what "make every part of the system important" means. It means that if you have standard stats/skills that everyone is taking points in, there should be places for all of those skills to be important in the game. If you have social skills, there should be places in the game to use them mechanically. Don't make standard skills and let people put XP into them and then refuse to let them ever be useful in a situation.

Yes, and that's where game-runners - and occasionally, players - get it wrong. Sure, you can blame the powergamer for not buying Drive and putting those XP into more Brawl instead, but how about taking responsibility for the fact Drive is completely useless and no one in living memory remembers rolling it in any scenario other than super rare stuff completely created to force its use, yet people get to use Brawl routinely?

I really think the only feasible objection we can make here is for players who don't buy stuff, but roleplay them. Yes, that's an issue. If I don't buy Drive I shouldn't drive better than a random person on their commute, else I'm cheating. However it still doesn't mean players need to be paranoid about it - just because you don't have Expression it doesn't mean you can't use big words. It takes more than a vocabulary to make someone an emotive speaker or adept tale-teller for instance.

@faceless Witcher 3 might have been the best RPG I've ever played.

Woke up with no internet connection. It's like the light has gone out of the world. The ISP's tier 1 support (good people otherwise) insisted the problem was with my ethernet cables (both of them?) until I pointed out the cable modem's error logs.

So now I'm at work, thinking tonight is gonna suck. Hopefully they won't need to mail me a new modem.

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Guess what - if you make chargen use XP costs? It won't be. I've played systems that have tiered costs in chargen. It's a PITA to figure out how to spend your points, and personally I've found that it penalizes people who want to be expert at something.

The true cost to this for many games - which you wouldn't have encountered while implementing your own system - is that the original mechanics use something different, and each time you depart from it there is an adaptation cost your players have to pay in terms of ease of use.

The main reason to using, say, nWoD 1.0 is that people are already familiar with it. You don't need to explain how it works too much, you can just point out which books your MUSH will use and... that's it. You can then count on veteran players to guide others right from the moment you open your doors, something home-grown systems don't have - no one's a veteran. But open a nWoD 1.0 game and you'll get a bunch right up front.

Obviously not every house rule or diversion from the material-as-is will ruin this effect, but the more you depart from it the less useful it is. And when it's right at the first time a new character is being rolled it's even more emphatic.

@packrat said in General Video Game Thread:

I have been playing Kingdom Come - Deliverance.

I've been looking at it... and the one concern I had was that it required a lot of micromanagement? like I'd need to wash myself constantly or be penalized in social interactions, pay constant attention to my encumbrance or be unable to move in plate, etc.

I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of commitment.

@auspice You had me at Alyson Hannigan.

@killer-klown And that's why I love everything about that work. Also why those who don't are wrong and should be ashamed of themselves, and rethink their life choices.

@sunny said in General Video Game Thread:

I am already thrilled with the changes made pre-xpac in the leadup. The scaling zones is pretty much the best thing ever.

I'm pretty ambivalent, even in alpha for BfA.

On one hand I love how now you can basically pick the zone you want and stick around until it's done (or you are done with it); there's no more dropping a questline when it's incomplete because you just outleveled it. Hell, you don't even need to do entire expansions at all - don't like Northrend or Outlands? Don't go there! Which to be honest used to be annoying since you had to fly to portals, take zeppelins, etc.

But on the other hand leveling really is so damn boring these days as all of the carrots are being taken out of it. I don't look forward to the next level up since... well, nothing happens other than that a number changes. Woo-hoo, I dinged 24 to 25... but so what? There are basically no new talents (there are but very infrequently, and they usually don't change gameplay), the mobs don't get any easier since they scale up to you immediately, and if you have heirlooms - which yes, is optional - you rarely even switch to new, better gear.

For all vanilla was annoying in many, many ways every time you dinged mattered. You got better every time you got a level.