Posts made by Arkandel

@wretched said in Respecs.:

I don't really agree with this, i think gamer min max culture has more to do with it seeming like it's like that than it is.

And yet underestimating the culture is a bad idea, and on top of it PrPs will be balanced around that, which means you would end up walking into plots you're poorly matched for.

A single success is a success. A skill at 3 is 'you are a professional in this skill' an attribute at 3 is you are /good/ in that area. Dex 3 int 3 medicine 3 is a damned good doctor, add bonuses for tools and operating rooms and whatever, you are almost guaranteed a success MOST of the time.

Again that's true, only power in the nWoD doesn't merely come from skills rolls; your strength+melee roll is only a portion of your roll compared to your modifiers added by powers like Potence, and on top of that there's a dearth of supernatural abilities to do things your attributes can.

In other words who cares if I can get a couple of successes from my Wits+Medicine roll on average when @surreality has Life 4?

@surreality said in Respecs.:

Like, somebody stuck with a permanent leg wrack tilt in CoD might want to drop that Expression.BallroomDancing spec after a while. Yeah, they still know how, and how they became unable to use it is IC, but it's still now a waste of points that's additional OOC suckage for the player on top of the IC suckage of the tilt.

I think that is different though, and would classify it more under a sanctity-of-merits clause - where you never spend XP on something that can be simply taken from you and waste those XP - than a respec.

It makes sense from a wider perspective of not punishing characters for accepting in-game setbacks, too; sure, I might be upset my SL4 model had a glass full of acid thrown in his face, but I could get excited about the possibilities for growth and RP from that, and it sweetens the pot if I had the XP back to invest in something else.

A common case for respecs was the nWoD 1.0 CGen freebie points. Someone who knows how to use them could save obscene amounts of XP by using them to max stats compared to another who'd try to make the exact same PC but 'misuse' those points then have to buy up the traits with XP in game.

Another, using that same system, was people who didn't realize how powerful fighting styles were - if you and I both made gunslingers but you bought CM5 and I didn't, your character would be waaay more effective than mine. That's easily something a newbie wouldn't realize until much later, and 30 XP aren't easy to just come by.

@kanye-qwest Fun is a zero sum game. This is known.

Multiple sources are reporting Kawhi asked to be traded from San Antonio after today's meeting.

This is huge. There's zero way the Spurs will not honor that and risk him just walking next summer for nothing.

This summer's trades, between him and LeBron, can reshape the league depending on how they fall.

How do you feel about players using respecs to be more mechanically powerful in what they already specialize in?

For example let's say I make a swordsman in nWoD rules but I don't know about/realize how strong the Fencing fighting style is, so I don't pick it and now I'm capped in XP. Should the game give me the option of shaving XPs from elsewhere to buy the merit?

Also, what about games where the rules aren't publicized?

For example I make my swordsmanon a MU* with a custom fighting system whose mechanics are hidden behind commands, then down the line it's shown that swords suck but daggers rock! Can I switch?

@bananerz said in Respecs.:

A character purchases and invests XP into their character based on rule sets, using said advantages (perceived or real) to have fun. When another player suddenly is able to abandon choices they no longer wish to be stuck with, it can create a sense of being upset or jealous by other players who for whatever reason desire to stick with their spec.

That part seems pretty unreasonable. Unless those players are somehow deprived of the same choice then why would they feel jealous about someone else taking advantage of a documented in-game process?

That said, I absolutely hate the vote XP system on any game. Every character should have the same XP given to them as a pool. GM's who make a roster system shouldn't punish those characters who the playerbase say aren't as relevant and hence not picked.

I should point out that if the playerbase considers someone to be irrelevant then their XP is the least of their problems.

Feel free to make a vote XP thread though, we might get a good debate out of it.

This will be a very open topic.

How do you feel about allowing/offering respecs - rebuilding an existing character using their current XP but picking traits, powers etc from scratch - in a game?

Should there be limitations? What problems can arise from the practice? How (and if) does it affect the game at large?

Discuss.

@bananerz said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

I'm guilty of all the above. I'm going to change. No more.

I used to use artwork for PBs. I was told that was weird.

It's all weird, dammit. Why is that hard to grasp?

@gangofdolls Partially that's game runners' fault too. But let's discuss it somewhere else (if at all) since this thread isn't about that.

@gangofdolls said in San Francisco: Paris of the West:

Instead, what I did experienced was that most PCs were hugely siloed into their situation. Many of them didn't leave their builds, except for plot participation. There was very little public RP and while some players were open to new PCs, many people seemed to be satisfied with their IC networks as they existed.

That's an endemic problem for nWoD games. I don't have good theories about why it happens, other than it's perhaps a cultural entrenchment - i.e. that it's roughly the same crowd migrating from MU* to MU* doing what they've always done, which is play mostly with each other and avoid uncontrolled interactions unless there's a carrot involved.

@autumn One more caveat: "Spots" should be offered on a first-come first-served basis starting at the same time. No reservations or special deals - give X more slots starting at whenever based on when applications are submitted (which shouldn't need to be 100% complete, but which shouldn't just be placeholder ones either).

@coin said in RL Anger:

I suspect abandonment issues are to blame. Your departure from his life had destroyed him. It's all your fault, @Arkandel, if only you hadn't been such a horrible person.

At least your track record remains consistent since this latest theory is as terribly and obviously flawed as the rest of them.

My best friend from childhood has turned into... not a great person, and it bothers me even though we haven't spoken in years. But we used to be really close, and it's upsetting to see him on FB (I guess I should just unfriend him) posting really inane things.

A few days ago he was making posts about Athens Pride 2018 that were ignorant at best, he supports goddamn neonazis openly. The hell, man, you were never like this when we were 14. Dammit.

Personally I find it liberating if someone else has picked my character's PB. I don't really care too much, and I feel kinda awkward if I happen to pick a contemporary/popular person to base a PC's looks on.

This way someone else could get judged for the shirtless picture!

"I grew up so poor we had to play Dungeons OR Dragons."

@wildbaboons said in Questions of Etiquette:

You page someone and they don't respond. How long do you wait before paging again to see if they disconnected/missed your pose/chose to ignore you?

I'd stalk the +who list to see what their idle is. They might be using a keepalive or something of course, but if I can see they are 5h idle then I'd know they aren't just not talking to me specifically.

But generally speaking if I tried to talk to someone a couple of times and either got no answer or uninterested ones then I'd stop trying, unless I had reasons to believe it might be something I did in which case the last page had better have been an apology.

@saosmash said in What isn't CGen for?:

A lot of these questions seem WoD specific and I dunno. I've apped two different WoD games and never plan to do so again so I have no real input on that besides I hate WoD CG. >.>

I'm a mostly WoD player and that's the reason - but you can add your own!

One of my long-term peeves about game running is the idea that we sometimes either inherit procedures and flows from past games without examining them, or we think we are working towards a goal by introducing a requirement, but we then have no metrics in place to tell whether it's achieved.

For example (and it's just that, I actually like writing BGs): What does a background give me, as staff? Some potential answers:

• A way to hook future plots. Maybe I'll use @Coin's Sire as an NPC villain!

Does that happen? I'm not being facetious, but does that happen unless staff is familiar with the player? Maybe the way I run the Sire isn't at all like her player envisioned it, or he had a different Storyteller in mind to use her.

Add the usual practical implications, too; staff changing hands (am I going to go back and read everyone's backgrounds when I sign up as the new VampSphere staffer?), backgrounds changing over time ("And then... @COIN'S SIRE WALKS IN! <big reveal>" "Uh, dude, my Sire was killed four months ago."), etc.

• A way to catch problem players. Hey, maybe that new Vampire will try to claim he was a Mage before the Embrace!

Does that happen? I mean it could, but isn't it just as likely for that kind of unique snowflakeness to occur during unsupervised normal play, PrPs... anywhere at all? Furthermore isn't it overkill to burden every single person who creates with having to write this up just to catch that one guy who's going to pull something off?

• A way to encourage people to create in-depth characters.

Speaking for myself here, although I enjoy writing backgrounds... I don't really get much traction out of them in actual play. Maybe for the first couple of scenes, but once I get into a character that stuff rarely comes in handy, and what I come up with in collaboration with others around that PC is what actually fleshes out his past and gets used as a hook for future growth. Now, that of course doesn't mean some people can't/don't get more out of BGs but... again, should they be optional?

And so on. Personally I like short, easy and more than anything quick CGen flows - get the player to the grid so they can start playing the game as soon as possible, and if they aren't very well versed in the system it's better to teach them through play than to require it upfront. I'm curious to see where y'all stand on this.

As the title says, this is about what staff should not try to do during Character Generation rather than what they are doing. I think we should steer away from going too far into the interface and more about what a game's staff might be doing wrong by trying to have it settled during CGen.

I'll start with a quote by Theno since I really liked it.

@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

I'm not interested in one more moment of making a character for you, staff. I want to make a character for me, and that means finding out what this character is about during play.

Here are some questions I'll throw in the mix. Feel free to add your own and we can discuss them. So should CGen require...

• ... a background for the character? What should be a dealbreaker and what should not be? For example should you have to come up with who your Sire, Keeper/Fetch, were etc?

• ... secondary sheet aspects detailed? Writing up Blood and Bone, statting Keystones, writing a Masque and Dirge?

• ... all/most XP available to be spent?

• ... justifications for high attributes, Renown, merits, etc?

Some of us sketch out a character in detail in advance and others do learn what the PC is about on the grid. What I'd like to discuss is how much of the CGen process is there to perform sanity tests, how much translates into improving the roleplaying experience, and how much should be optional or deferred to a future time.

Thoughts?

@vulgarkitten said in Arkandel's Playlist:

I wish you would come back to Arx

One day!

@misadventure said in Arkandel's Playlist:

Now I almost wanna try to play the Sin-Eater I had who didn't end up doing much.

You almost want to not do much. I like it!

Let's see if this one sticks. I have a good feeling about this guy, and I need to get back into actually playing somewhere.