Best posts made by Arkandel

@Vorpal I bet my country of origin can give your country of origin a run for the money it doesn't have.

@Coin said in Finding roleplay:

I like both styles, frankly; I think they both have their place. But it's absolutely true that one style has completely taken over the hobby, leaving the other as a rare, endangered practice we're all too old to really push forward with.

Yeah, this. For starters though anyone who'd complain because someone else threw unexpected plot - as long as it's not terribly unthematic of course - on 'their scene'? Oh no, things are happening instead of being in a barely glorified bar scene in which nothing happens!

... Anyway.

What I like about the presence of a Storyteller running a PrP is the idea there is a point to it; either self-contained or part of a series, there is an identifiable story being told. It was introduced, characters get to witness it unfold and it will hopefully have a resolution. Those are not all elements one necessarily gets to experience in organic 'normal' RP.

On the other hand of course it's always fun when stories just... happen. Sometimes I've had a blast because chemistry was just right and while surrounded by creative players we generated very high quality roleplay; I hold my days in HM's VampSphere with the Carthians very highly in that regard, for example.

It's likely criticism to either kind of plot-running can be traced back to doing it badly. Either the 'story' involved is shoved down people's throats ('you will fight orcs and you will LIKE it'), someone enriches a scene with me-me stuff that derails ongoing roleplay when it was already working just fine ('my character comes in bleeding, won't someone bring him back from the brink of death? Oh, you were busy before? too bad, now you're dealing with me'), but I think what still must be said is that even those frustrating examples are still better than idling. I'd be quite grateful to the silly ST who runs one of those self-contained PrP which is 95% combat with a 5% excuse for it than sit there stalking +who trying to find RP.

@Vorpal Not for that one in particular but have you seen http://partitoures-news365.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page.html# ?

@Coin The idea of being anything but grateful to someone willing to come in and volunteer to run things for me makes no sense. Unless it's an absurdly bad or implausible plot there's only one valid response to that and it's "thank you".

The other reason for it is that if the scene is public anyone can come in and 'derail' it. If people want to do their thing just grab a temp or private room, sheesh.

But I'd guess the same players will still bitch the next day because nothing ever happens and they're bored.

@Warma-Sheen You are a monster.

@Coin said in Finding roleplay:

Not to mention that, in my opinion, any storyteller worth their salt isn't going to run an epic, game-breaking plot in a single night--so anyone wanting to do a one-off fun outing for a night will more than likely be able to easily use whatever is freely available without requiring staff consultation. If they can't, chances are they're not very dedicated storytellers and will flake anyway.

I was fine within the system Eldritch used so no issues here.

I'm also quite fond of systems which don't front-load the checks - look at the logs after the fact and decide, was this thematic? Is this okay? If not (and most will be just fine) then run adjustments as needed, even if it means some retcons. Any reasonable ST won't mind too much (the cultists only seemed to summon a tentacled demonic abomination, in truth it was a mutated sea-creature due to those chemical waste spills) and you can probably have the cake and eat it.

If I had to have actually raise a complaint though? It'd be because of players like, well, me. I've started multi-part plots in the past which for one reason or the other didn't go anywhere and that fact - not the story itself - created logical inconsistencies.

For instance on Eldritch (since we were kinda talking about it) I had a big thing discussed and approved by Eerie, but near the end of its first chapter many of its participants went inactive; that killed my enthusiasm so I let the whole thing die down. However that creates all sorts of continuity problems, wasn't the head villain's plan going to result in Very Bad Things unless the PCs stopped him? What happened to that, huh? Huh?

In other words if I disagree somewhere with @The_Supremes it's that unresolved plots are the ones which arguably create the biggest problems as opposed to finished and almost-but-not-quite wrapped up ones. More multi-part PrPs fail than are completed.

@Vorpal I'd watch the fuck out of that.

@ThatGuyThere said in PVP games/elements?:

Now I would not play on a game were I distrusted staff, but my default setting for staff or any other person is pretty much wary observation when it some to trust.

It still doesn't make sense to me, because most of the reasons I'd have to mistrust staff for would involve things that are impossible to observe. Are they looking at +jobs they shouldn't be? Giving their alts more XP than the rest of us?

Those are not actions which can be monitored by players, and issues like favoritism are extremely difficult to judge objectively even if you're watching very closely since you can't know what's going on in their head; did Bob become Primogen because they thought he was the best candidate or because of some ties to a staff alt?

I mean it still depends on the definition of 'trust'.

@tragedyjones said:

People still working their way through Daredevil S2?

I am. Epi 9 atm.

@ThatOneDude , @ThatGuyThere , your usernames are giving me a headache.

I clipped my thumb nail too far. Contact with the salt from my fries alone is not making my life more fun.

If I can't get into a character I am excited for I probably won't be on the game much.

What usually motivates me is the company though more than either my PC or the game is the group of players I'm associating with. If I feel disconnected I drift away.

No thread about fitness should go without at least one mention of the strength training bible.

Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength.

@acceleration said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

Maybe some of this could be solved by requiring PCs to spend XP in ratios or something. Idk. Doesn't solve the unused system problem but might promote less overall ridiculous concepts. OTOH dictating to that extent what players can buy probably won't go over well.

Forcing the parts of a system which aren't working on players will hurt more than it can fix. In this case it wouldn't even treat the symptom (i.e. that people respond to players' roleplaying ability as much or more as stats).

In case you haven't seen it yet, Spider-man will be part of Marvel's cinematic universe from now on.

I really liked the banter between him and Logan in the comics so if someone like Whedon can tap into that, it'll be comedy gold.

I only care about theme. So this is what a game needs IMHO - to pick a theme. One theme. One, easily identifiable continuity. No guesswork, no hodgepodge of everything. PICK ONE.

I hate the DC/Marvel hybrids with a passion - what the hell is going on? It doesn't make much sense, I have to keep handwaving things.

Maybe it's just me but... if you want a superhero game, make its theme consistent.

@Coin What the actual fuck is going on there?

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Scrutiny? That's nothing!

Certain players were endowed with PC vision, allowing them to distinguish between the millions of random NPCs in major metropolitan areas (who'd never get stared at either for three seconds or sixty) and the special few who, despite being strangers, merited a hard staredown for being actual PCs all on the merit of some superficial excuse - maybe they 'made a weird comment' (because there are no oddballs around in cities) or 'dressed funny' (unthinkable), but they got examined by the convenient power that let you know things about them.

Now that's a power.

It's a good thing we have scientists doing important research in the world.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/04/06/0128211/people-feel-weird-about-touching-robot-butts-researchers-find

@secretfire A lot of grimdark fantasy the last few years has no magic-using characters at all, they are only antagonists or quest-giver types.

It's also a fact a lot of fantasy systems are very unbalanced in favor of spellcasters so maybe games are trying to get away from that trope?