I wonder if there's ever been a fictional relationship as shipped in advance - before the characters even met - as Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow.
Best posts made by Arkandel
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RE: Good TV
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RE: Social Systems
@faraday said in Social Systems:
The kind of metagaming you hate? I love. I view MUSHes not as games first, but as a collaborative storytelling community with some mechanics to keep things moving smoothly.
You might be misreading my preferences though. I can't remember the last time I rolled in a non-PrP - and I mean anything at all, not just social stuff - unless someone asked me to. I prefer consent based systems to anything else.
But this thread is about a social system! So I'm trying to come up with stuff I might like - which means, typically, which enrich my experience. I don't just want something that works, I need to have something that makes it better, which lets us do more stuff than what's available now.
It definitely doesn't mean I'd still like it. But it's fun to debate what could work.
As for metagaming, the definition of it (for me) is playing the MU* as a game-within-the-game. Of course it's a collaborative experience, but I don't view "getting my OOC friends to vote for me in the upcoming IC election" as collaboration, for example.
Are the lines thin though between that and 'my OOC friends are who I usually play with, so they're my IC allies as well, which means they're more likely to vote for my character' thin? You betcha!
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RE: Good TV
@SG I already watched it (crappy quality but I couldn't resist... plus that way I was immune to spoilers).
Holy shit.
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RE: Charging for MU* Code?
@thenomain I think the first question would be to ask yourself what you're doing it for; either you're a professional getting paid, or you're a hobbyist making a buck on the side.
If it's the former then you need to be paid the usual way; market price for your time investment. That means having a contract, a deliverable goal set in advance, a timetable, and as little maintenance after as possible; this is where many coders for hire realize they got screwed, when they spend twice as much on a project that's over implementing "oh, and one more thing" things.
If it's the latter I'd be very careful. To some degree you're enjoying and taking pride in what you're doing, but getting paid for it brings in some extra burdens - dealing with expectations, obligations and financial haggling; you
probablydon't want to get in a situation where you need to nag a friend, or someone who's friendly, for money owed, or to withhold features from a live game for that reason.Personally I think charging $20 for an uncoded sphere is insanely cheap. Even the $$ per hour price is really low, but at least consider protecting yourself with an estimate of how long it would take beforehand. We all know how time can get away from you while you're coding.
I hope this didn't sound discouraging.
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RE: RL Anger
@Auspice I feel ya. On an abstract basis I want to RP; in more practical terms I'm finding it increasingly harder to justify sitting in front of a PC for 3 (or apparently more?) hours at a time posing, or at least until a MU* grabs my attention hard. I'm still doing some small scale personal scenes but it's not the same.
Conversely - reading. Ever since I stopped commuting via train where I've been going through my backlog of novels I've essentially stopped reading too. Which I dislike, but I haven't convinced myself so far to take it up during my 'free' time either.
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RE: Creative Outlets
I've never gotten a character right in my head until I played him in at least 5-6 scenes with different people. It just takes me that long to stretch him out, see what makes him tick and experiment with different voices until one just feels like him.
Artwork can help. Photographs - the kinds we use for PBs - almost never did it for me. Now and then I use one of my saved quotes (I keep a small document of ones I like) and in that case it can inspire something... but it's short-lived. Once a PC hits the grid and stays there long enough he departs from the original concept, by design.
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RE: Good TV
@Coin And the lack of Ghost. Poor Ghost. "We can only show majestic fire-breathing dragons or a big white dog, so."
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RE: Creative Outlets
@lithium said in Creative Outlets:
Yes people respond to what people look like, but there are /so many/ multi-descers out there that are /easy/ to use and manipulate on the fly. There's absolutely no reason to need to pose it every single time rather than set a multidescer up.
The assumption you are making is that there needs to be a reason to pose things. Posing is the reason for it; I can have a wrinkled shirt in my @desc yet bring it up in a pose with some extra emphasis to draw attention to the fact my PC is a slob, or always late, or add an extra detail for just this scene (it smells of too much detergent! its front pocket is all stretched out! it's losing its color around the shoulders!) to help set the mood up later in the scene.
Hell, there doesn't need to be a reason. Roleplaying doesn't need to be efficient - writing perhaps does, but when it comes to character actions I appreciate details that might not even come to be important. Put as many Chekhov's Guns as you like and only use one or two of them in the end, make me wonder why they're there - feed me false leads and red herrings. Go for it, I'll like it.
Because we don't all like the same things, and eventually RP finds a way for those who do appreciate similar ones to group up together.
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RE: Good TV
In the Defenders did anyone else think the Hand's end game super-soldier - the Black Sky, who we get very little information about - wasn't that impressive?
Elektra is deadly but she wasn't overpowered at all. We saw several characters hold their own (Danny punches her through a wall through the opening scene), and I kept getting the impression that without extensive plot armor Luke Cage could solo her - hell, he might have soloed most of the Hand.
These dudes aren't going to take over the world.
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RE: Fading Suns 2017
@packrat Yeah, usually in games staff have a different view of their own MU* than players get to see.
To a bird's eye view "this guy can punch hard" is at most as useful as if not quite inferior to "can generate cash and bribe people with it".
Yet in practice cash is rendered mostly useless, bribery involves jumping through time consuming bureaucratic loops at best and the effect isn't worth the hassle.But a punch is one dice roll long, immediately rewarding and never goes out of style.
It's good you're taking this into consideration on the early stages!
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RE: RL things I love
@Faceless Thanks for the story! That's the text equivalent of kitten pic shares first thing in the morning.
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RE: Descent Reboot
@mr-johnson said in Descent Reboot:
In my humble opinion they completely ruined the clans beyond recognition, and ruined any possible incentive for me to play. That's all personal opinion of course, other people are more then welcome to enjoy it I just wish there were more cWoD games because that has the clans I love, and the lore I can actually stomach.
Although I personally prefer the oWoD lore, it sounds like your complaint is closer to "this isn't the oWoD!" than something wrong specifically with nWoD. However, it's unfair to judge a setting based on what it's not trying to do - which in this case is imitate/copy its predecessor.
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RE: Activity and Aid
What @Tinuviel said is true. What I'd add to it is try to coordinate 'activity pushes' like that for when you also expect to have the most staff and/or PrP runners available.
Basically the way it works is people give games very few chances if they aren't already well populated - sometimes even just a single chance - so if you want to keep them, you get an equally very low number of chances to do so.
What it comes down to is... if I see a post like this then I might log on tonight (for example). If it happens to be when you're busy IRL taking care of perfectly important stuff, things no one can possibly blame you for prioritizing, it could still mean there are no plots being ran or things happening, and I'd just spend a few minutes bored before logging out. Well, you lost me. It's not your fault, it's not mine either... it just happened.
However if you make a big push for it during a couple of weeks when you know you'll be around and so will all your plot runners, and there's entertainment shoveled our way very regularly, maybe I'll stick around. Then @Tinuviel decides to also give it a try, and I'm there to play with, so he sticks around. And then others come, see us both there... and they stick around.
Then you don't need to coordinate constantly, because we'll generate our own RP and everyone's happy. But kick-starting this perpetual RP machine takes effort and time upfront.
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RE: RL Anger
In short? Way to make it about yourselves and not support of the team, assholes. Claiming support of a sports team does not automatically entitle you to support for every last drip of your political endeavors.
Especially in Europe it always is about the fans (or whatever the fans want a rivalry to be) than the team. I mean what is a 'team spirit' anyway? What 'ideals' does Manchester United represent that are different in any way than Liverpool's? But they'll happily go meet their rivals in a street and beat the living shit out of each other.
It's 100% about them.
You also see it in professional sports but in different ways. Kevin Durant leaves OKC - fuck that traitor! Derrick Rose destroys his knees on-court playing for the Bulls and his performance diminishes - get that bum outta here! Isiah Thomas gets traded against his consent from Boston and some fans are burning his jersey!
Fans are assholes.
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RE: World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings
@распутин said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@selu Anything that requires actual research is going to be a hard sell to many.
The entire hobby of roleplaying is a hard sell to many.
Yeah but there are permutations within those pools.
It's hard to get someone to roleplay, sure, but it's easier to get someone to roleplay a character who starts in a familiar setting and whose theme borrows from popular works ("you're an Uber driver in NYC who manifested mutant powers, like they do in The Gifted TV show you're already watching") than sticking them somewhere they need to do considerable more work upfront just to begin ("you're a seamstress in Elizabethan London whose husband died in the Desmond Rebellion") since they might not have any idea what the technological level of that time was, what kind of rights widowed women had or what the hell that rebellion was about... or seamstressing for that matter.
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RE: Good TV
@Wizz Thankfully climate change denial in the interest of short term political benefits belongs solely to the domain of fantasy fiction!
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RE: World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings
@faraday said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
Theoretically, a niche game could generate more enthusiasm, even though the audience was limited. In my experience, that's still not enough to overcome the lack of people.
Worse; woe to you if you're a casual who's trying to play themselves into a tightly woven niche and you're caught doing it wrong.
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RE: Good TV
Also the way he crumpled and begged like a bitch seemed way out of character.
We don't know that - he'd been made of teflon for so long with nothing sticking on him that he was never in a live-or-die situation before. By the time trouble went near him he had either already ensured he had won or he was ready to bail.
Also the crying part might have been a ploy.
But hey, at least Arya has his face now so maybe we haven't seen the last of the actor, who really is great.
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RE: Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat)
@derp said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
I think what needs to happen is that games just need to decide whether they're using social dice or not, and then actually put the effort into making those dice matter. If certain players don't like the idea that there are social dice on this game that could be used to influence their PCs mindsets and behaviors? Cool. Play on one of the games that don't.
As I've been discussing with Gany lately I've been changing my view on social attributes. I used to think they are meant to be the equivalent of physical dice, meaning that their use in real-time RP should be as good as a punch.
This is probably not going to work because of its complexity either in mechanics or social dynamics, all of which are things we've seen highlighted - correctly - in this thread. There are just too many unquantifiable factors, too many things you'd need to call in staff for, and that's not a recipe that could work out in RP. Nearly all RP is social and you just can't keep interrupting its flow to try and figure out where dice fit in it - not without fucking it up.
It's like the observer effect in physics. The very act of using social dice themselves changes the social scene.
What I am starting to think is social attribute should be balanced in relation to their physical counterparts. Not in the same way, because that's comparing apples to oranges. The more we try to shoehorn a more direct equivalence the more we'll be bashing our heads against the wall.
So for instance have social attributes give you other things and place a tangible value on those things. Make them count for status (but make status mean something). Make it more efficient to mine resources (but ensure those buy you in-game things you really want). Ensure they get you more contacts (yet the information, secrets and access that yields should have a practical impact).
If you do then yes, the problem is solved without ever needing to run into those "u want to sleep with me lol" situations our hobby is so infamous for. But to do that it takes games designed from scratch to utilize those systems and staff willing and able to facilitate them. Feeding me a secret about the Sheriff's ghoul that's utterly useless in practice then calling it a day is futile compared to the buying power I know I'll get for that third Vigor dot.