Best posts made by Arkandel

Just Survive Somehow was the best The Walking Dead episode I remember seeing in forever. Carol is badass. That whole episode kept going from strength to strength.

@Entropy said:

I get all of that. And I'm not expecting any sort of problem free environment. Again, I'm not naive. I don't expect to do the impossible. I'm literally just looking to give a group of players that I see with a lot of good people a place to play that is not run by a batshit tyrant. If I could, I'd happily just open BNW2, for example, and keep everything the same, but without the dictator. That's not possible, so I'm just wanting to do the next best thing.... provide an alternative/haven for those players who are less than satisfied but stick around for the other players.

Your goals are noble but you're focusing on them rather than on the means to achieve them. In doing so you're making assumptions such as having access to an inexhaustible pool of staff players who are emotionally stable, active, competent and get along with each other.

These factors can be present, yes, but rarely all at the same time. The nature of the job is that it wears you down; it's not lofty aspirations and good intentions we run out of, it's patience.

Think of a MUSH as an instance of Ship of Theseus - you know, you keep changing parts when they wear out until none of the original ones remain, so in the end is it the same ship? In our games the grind staff faces is tough and endless, so once attrition sets in so and everyone who started out is gone is that still the same game? A Dictator, for better or worse, provides a sense of continuity, of an original promise still kept. Nearly any given M* which has survived more than a year has done so because a person - or very small group of them - stayed at the top in charge of a rotating cast of administrators, and that's for a reason.

Which isn't to say having a Dictator is a panacea. Boy, hah, no. But it's easier to find certain qualities in 1-3 people than to expect them in a whole lot more than that, and over time to boot.

The most metal deaths in Middle Earth.

@WildBaboons The WoT in general suffered from a bad case of the power creeps, where they kept discovering channelers, angreal and tricks more powerful than anyone we'd ever seen before.

Thanks for creating this thread! Some comments from me.

SPOILER ALERT - EPISODE 4 - SPOILER ALERT

For starters there is some great chemistry in this show. I'd say Lan and Moiraine, Lan and Nynaeve... uh, I guess the dude who plays Lan seems to be killing it. Ila's scene was right on the money, I thought, as well.

When it comes to the plot itself I think they are trying to simplify how the One Power works. For example I don't think anyone has said 'Saidin' or 'Saidar' once. That's perfectly okay as long as they stay internally consistent; for instance Logain knew how strong Nynaeve was when she channeled (in the books a man can know if a woman channels but that's it) yet he was captured in the first place by Aes Sedai who infiltrated his camp and Shielded him before he was able to defend himself.

It's creating some issues for book readers (such as myself) since I don't know how much of it they just haven't explained and how much is actually true in the show-world; for example I don't believe they've actually said male channelers are stronger on average than female channelers. Logain specifically was but that could be because he was an exception.

Also why would the Red Ajah hunt down all false Dragons if some are female? Wouldn't they rather train or use them against the Dark One's forces? There's no taint, there's no risk they'll go mad and kill everyone around them.

The focus on 'who is the Dragon Reborn' subplot is kinda weird. The books have been out for thirty years, that's a really easy thing to spoil. I just hope they don't try to make someone else be that person; that'd be a massive and very unfortunate departure from the books' story to the point of just making the story a completely different one. Character arcs like Min, Aviendha and Elayne's would be massively changed or made irrelevant in the process as well.

@Sunny I wish they would stop rebooting so often though. I honestly have no idea if or which of the stories I really liked about the X-Men, Spiderman or Batman have even happened at this rate in current continuity.

@surreality WILL.

@Apos However it is also known in the hobby there is a type of player who wants to have the pie and eat it; they want to be playing with that-one-friend-there but also enjoy the benefits of establishing an IC foothold in the game's niches.

For instance on TR I remember this person who held rank... I want to say it was in the Circle of the Crone but I could be mistaken. He was always behind closed doors, but kept buying up Status every chance they had, and was running for every rank available for the Praxis based on the aforementioned Status; when he finally attended a meeting required for that position and he confronted with "uhm, who are you?" he pointed hard at the +sheet merit points to justify his contributions.

So the question of how inclusion into the metaplot depends on a player's personality, the character's achievements or coded traits does still exist. Which combination of those should exclude someone from participation? At which point do I come out of nowhere and tell the GM I want to go north of the Wall with Jon Snow to capture a wight and get told I can't because none of the squad knows me?

This is not a far fetched scenario at all - it's in fact quite common in many games even for 'regular' everyday PrPs, where PCs show up in the middle of an +event series without taking either OOC or IC effort to figure out the plausibility of their inclusion causing the person running it to make an awkward call.

@runescryer I am just trying to not nitpick. And there's nitpicking! For example Warders were kinda... nice? Pleasant people? They smiled a lot?

You are supposed to be stone-faced violence-on-a-short-leash people, you guys!

Also the fight scenes... the show can use better choreography in general, I think. It's an expensive show, surely they can afford that. Like, at no point did I feel just from watching that Lan is basically the best swordsman of this Age.

As for the Saidin vs Saidar I get it though. It's hard to push out that much exposition when the show has more than enough of it as it is, and to be fair the rules about channeling can literally fill books - in fact they have :).

I just want to get a clear understanding of how the show's 'rules' work. Like are men and women able to see each other's weaves or tell how strong each other is? Hell, can women tell if another woman can channel by sight? Are male and female channelers supposed to be on par, strength-wise?

... Also why did that Warder's axe break the Shield on Logain?

I like KD. People are friendly and +jobs are processed quickly. Those are two benchmarks many games fail at.

@Tyche They did the math on reddit (as they do) and it apparently checks out.

But really, George Martin himself in the context of the books said the exact reason he's not giving time frames in the novels is so people won't worry about the logistics, and just enjoy the story.

Are there plot holes? Sure. Is it entertaining? Damn right.

@Pyrephox said in Making Territory Relevent:

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo I would argue against encroaching characters being forced into a scene for 'trespassing' for the MU* environment, unless the grid is large, and has clear demarcations between public spaces where everyone can go, and private territories where trespass will be punished.

I feel though not forcing the consequences of being somewhere you shouldn't be on the grid diminishes the value of having territory in the first place. Mechanical benefits and drawbacks nonwithstanding, the actual effect of feeling like you're somewhere you don't belong adds another dimension to gameplay.

Having said that, it probably doesn't belong in every game. It's perfectly thematic for Werewolf packs to bicker over turf for example, but maybe not as much for Mages.

@three-eyed-crow Btw did you read that Mat's actor is changing in season 2?

No explanation was provided that I know of.

@lordbelh Are you guys interested in something more aimed toward pseudohistory (or even semi-following something fictional such as a TV series or novels) instead of actual history?

I'm just concerned it'd be hard for regular players to follow something trying to follow actual history since that'd involve a whole lot of information to absorb - from the names of nations, rulers and religious leaders at the time to the political climate, etc. It seems easier to make up our own or use something very well defined or fixed due to already being made popular.

Also, we'd need to pick a setting where women were afforded agency and self-reliance so that excludes whole chunks of actual medieval history.

My sister pocket-dialled me from overseas... at 5 am. Since there's basically never something good anyone would call at that hour for I freaked out, and by the time it was clear it was an accident ("hey, what's up?" "uh, you called me." "no I didn't." "...") it was too late to get back to sleep.

Meh!

@Thenomain You gotta admit it explains Vader's breathing... if he's a french bulldog underneath that mask.

@rucket Given that we're already at half a season I think the pacing will have a major issue making us care about the identity or fates of some very good and sympathetic characters.

This was one of the things Game of Thrones achieved with flying colors. Not just about characters like Ned Stark, Jon or Tyrion but a lot of secondary ones; Syrio Forel, Lord Varys, etc. They were patient and let us become acquainted with them before shit hit the fan.

Siuan is definitely in that category. How much time will we have to even meet her? And once things start to uh, happen, will we care?

No flights, no tights.

@Lain It's by far my favorite TV show this season so as far as I'm concerned - yes. But it's okay for people to like different things.

How do we emphasize the characteristics above in order to keep our games fun and entertaining?

Most games I've seen ultimately suffer from creativity suffocation. It's often well-meaning but no less stifling - either staff enforce theme and a game style they see as appropriate and flagship characters attain positions of influence over IC affairs and hog the spotlight. At the same time stories being told by non-staff are often self-contained (essentially ran in a sandbox) so they don't stir the game's direction in any new direction, thus refreshing it.

A game has to remain dynamic and its direction fluid. Some ideas in random order:

• Review PrPs ran on a regular (say, monthly) basis. Allow them to affect the game's direction by integrating them along with staff-ran plot.
• Don't let any small group of PCs to hog the spotlight. Charismatic players will still shine without ranks or basing stories told around the same people all the time. Do not open the big ranks to PCs.
• Recruit and incentivize Storytellers as much as humanly possible, and do everything to get out of their way by eliminating red tape and thinking hard before saying 'no'.
• Allow ways for newcomers to catch up in power to your dinos. Some games are very static since a new character could take a year and still be unable to catch up to oldbies.
• Make the OOC impact of death count for less by allowing XP migration toward new alts. A PC's demise should be incentive to refresh, not an event with game-ending potential for the player.
• Let the game be played, staff must not intervene unless there is absolutely no other way even if players request it. The outcome of IC actions should be determined by characters played on the grid.

What is our goal, really? Are we here to play? Are we here to tell a story? Are we here to explore a gritty urban-fantasy-scifi world? All of the above?

What it comes down to is that different people have fun in different ways. Some want violence and gritty themes, others want to meet at bars and chat, others want erotica, others want more politics etc. Overall direction should be stated and be felt through the game, from its wiki to its history down to its plots, but there's a balance between giving players room to breathe by doing their thing and letting players without any direction until they rely on having a pocket Storyteller or be reduced to doing nothing, because nothing happens spontaneously.

Sometimes a game is perfectly fine, well-coded and ran by good people but it falls flat because it's too open-ended and lacks internal coherence. So whatever the goal, there should be an overall theme if not metaplot, and the environment itself should somehow confront the characters' choices by applying pressure on their outcome. By no means should things be safe or quiet; that's how boredom is generated.

Are there any other characteristics worth adding to the list? Or any of the above that really don't apply to MU after all?

The sense of community, perhaps. The players I see most often being lost in the shuffle are those who feel disengaged from the MU* because they have no ties to it. They may be in a faction in name but how does that translate to RP? They are offered a bboard to search for a pack but what happens if there's no one forming one?

Building communities should be considered an integral part of running a game. Yes, of course players should be responsible for themselves, use the resources at their disposal etc... but they don't. Sometimes - often - they sit in a room and wait for something to happen, and if nothing does they stop even sitting in that room. That is a loss. Plenty of players are good at posing, less great at taking the initiative, generating RP, starting a coterie/pack or too shy to even make a post and I've seen in sphere 4-5 people all complaining at the same time they're unable to find anyone to group with.

A systematized effort to play at match-making can make a ton of difference. Scale it down to the faction level so that it's not all depending on a huge bottleneck by staff (who have enough things to do); prominent characters in a Covenant can be IC handed the obligation to whip their lone wolfs into cohesive unit, for example. Give tangible benefits on top of that (say, a free locus for every pack of 3+ PCs) and try to make sure to either run or offer incentives for PrPs to be run that bring such groups together.

That's all, from the top of my head.