Posts made by Arkandel

@kanye-qwest I'm ambivalent about Sanderson.

On one hand I like his books, and The Way Of Kings is one of my all-time favorites. It's also really amazing from a logistical point of view how goddamn reliable the guy is - he's writing like a machine at the same level, and keeps churning out new novels right on schedule.

On the other hand I find his works are increasingly ... well, teen-friendly. Maybe it's because a lot of his novels have specifically been aimed at that demographic but I still wish he'd write for adults as well.

@thatguythere There's been a worry for years George Martin might 'pull a Robert Jordan'.

@kanye-qwest said in Book Recommendations:

I want Rothfuss to write more, though.

At this point I don't know what will happen first - George Martin's next ASoIaF book gets published, Doors of Stone does, or the thermodynamic death of the universe puts an end to all things.

@krmbm said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Starting to feel like this is diverging from your "simple and easy" original post.

It should be simple and easy from the player's end. Or a better way to put it is to keep it easy to grasp but hard to master - that way new players or those who just don't care about mechanics that much can make a character without too much hassle and they'll be just fine, with no real chance of screwing themselves over, yet someone who wants to surgically build something else has the option to do so.

All systems and no roleplay makes Jack a sad panda.

Well, this is a thread about systems. It doesn't mean roleplay isn't the ultimate main focus, but unless the game is sheetless... it's a valid conversation.

Hopefully though those same mechanics can emphasize roleplay. For instance nobles minding their economies which drives them to make alliances, being able to afford their troops, and make the choice of supporting or opposing each other in the Great Game are all major, major tropes in the WoT.

I find - and hope - that making those resources part of a system improves and drives RP; that way a noble can't just do and afford all things magically, but they need to go out there and secure alliances in a world of limited resources while everyone else is doing the same thing.

@seraphim73 said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Which means that you need an economy, and you need lots of things to draw money out of the economy, or everyone is just going to be rich.

Yes, money sinks. Only two are semi-obvious; troops (which to everyone but specific organizations such as whitecloaks will cost money), and crafting (for materials, and depending on how deep the rabbit hole goes, recipe research). But more will be needed, perhaps tied to the other pools.

I need ideas here, folks.

I would actually say economic, military, and social resource management systems, actually. Because using social skills on NPCs in scenes (or for investigation requests or whatever) is all well and good, but if you can gain resources (favors from NPCs, information about plot, economic resources, military support from NPCs, etc) with social skills, they'll be valued.

I like social skills but they will definitely only work on NPCs. Same as all mind-controlling weaves and those a'dam thingies - I don't need the grief, and I definitely don't need the jerks who'll use them on PCs.

I don't know that I would work too strictly on closed archetypes like that... because most people are going to want to be some mixture of them.

Yeah, I probably phrased it pretty badly. That's what I meant - it is, after all, the whole point of a system based on 'making interesting choices' that they are allowed to mix and match, then wonder what could have been with a different template.

So if folks want to play the quintessential highly trained Aes Sedai? Buy all the channeling things. Do they want someone who was Accepted and then left to go back to her lands before Tarmon Gai'don hit, and now she's a Lady with some Saidar tricks in her bag? Awesome. A blacksmith who followed Rand and his Aiel around so he picked up some TFL fighting skills and toughness even though he's not actually Aiel and now he's going back to making stuff for a living? Great.

I do agree that the three general "buckets" that most skillsets will tend to fall into are Channeler, Fighter, and Expert (commander, socialite, crafter, investigator, etc). I just think that most PCs are going to want to have a primary and a secondary--most book characters have two primaries. And yes, there'll have to be a good balance that allows someone to have a primary and a secondary, but not two primaries, and for someone who just pours -everything- into one bucket to be somewhat better than someone with a primary and a secondary, but not nearly as flexible.

Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind, minus the 'primaries' and 'secondaries' - whatever people can fit in their build should be fine in whatever mix. The only requirement should be to make sense for their chosen background, so if you spend some XP on Black Tower training then you'd better be a male channeler who trained with them at some point.

I do like the idea of a shifting cap. You could also arrange that with a shifting -bottom- cap: characters created after X date start with Y XP. You could even have a combination of the two.

Yeah, plus this way lets us make adjustments on the go, especially on a brand new system that looks a certain way on paper but then players come trying to optimizebreak it to make super characters. I don't mind that, mind you - I would want to plug any broken builds, but one of the measures of success is allowing folks to get creative.

You could even integrate it into every other bucket, so you could take, for instance, a weakness in Fireball (assuming you're a channeler), but a strength in Military Rank and become a Dedicated. That would be exceptionally difficult to balance, but... it would certainly lend itself toward choices.

Yeah, the balance would be my issue here. To be honest my original reason for this system was to try and recreate that Gateway adept Asha'man - I like the idea that weird edge concepts like those can be perfectly doable. And if people want to create a pretty decent combatant who can occasionally bust out some channeling why not? As long as they're not as good at either as those who specialize in those things.

@bad-at-lurking said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

For trading, one option that might work is to tie building and equipment into a resource system. I've never played Arx, but I understand they do that and it's a great idea for a long-term game and giving players long-term goals. If you want to play Daes Dae'mar, you have to build up a warchest to bribe, gift and impress all the right people.

My concern here is that these things will be honored in theory and not in practice. After all sure, the gift of a beautiful jewel is very important IC so you theoretically should befriend the master tinker who can fashion it into a bracelet... but will you risk pissing off the kickass warrior whose dice pool can take care of other problems of yours? One is more tangible than the other, so how do we make the bracelet's effect be tangible as well?

For lore masters, there are so many examples in the books of Rand and company going after a goal because one of his sages or scholars mentioned it. In game terms, sages might earn 'plot points' of some kind, which they can turn in for long-lasting game effects arising from staff or player run plots. And they can assign the benefits of those points to others.

Hrm, can you give some examples of how plot points could be used in practical terms? What would they do? How would Storytellers utilize them?

If lore is a resource in and of itself, what does it buy and how do we make it as useful as ordering around cavalry units? Because that's what we're talking about here, right? Making fun choices... so what could make you think "damn, I bought those horsemen but I kinda really wish I could have afforded more lore!".

Basically my philosophy on MU*s these days is that it's all about cultivating RP circles and things that give you narrative reasons to do that are usually good.

I agree. Now let's see how we can turn that excellent perspective into a usable mechanic.

@krmbm I'm not looking to do it as much as I'll have to. Be the change you want in the world, etcetc.

I'd much rather just play a modern tech WoT MUSH, but c'est la vie.

@lotherio said in Book Recommendations:

For me personally, Name of the Wind being on the list, let along the top, blows my mind. To each their own, but the book just reads as some snowflake character developed by Patrick Rothfuss who, in each new 'revelation' of the main character it just seems to be how much more special the main character can be made by the author.

Yes it does, doesn't it?

But as you're probably aware, that might be done by design. All we know about Kvothe's life comes from him; he's not necessarily a reliable narrator.

As a story, told as-is, it was incredible. I loved those books and I wish we'd get more out of him... but, well, you know.

And by comparison for me, I was ready Farland's Runelords about the same time I picked up Name of the Wind. Runelords was way better for and those characters are arguably more snowflake'ish (ridiculous power levels), but they had more character each alone, there were more characters in the spotlight, and they included the necessity of supporting cast that Kvothe lacked other than the lone dark maverick with backstory to make him even more lone dark maverick.

I'll need to read that series. Meh, I need to get back into reading, period.

@faraday I have somehow managed to not add a single line of code on mushcode in my life so far and I'd like to keep it that way.

I chose Ares, and I don't see why picking something else to implement an entirely new system from scratch would have been easier than any of the remaining alternatives, so that's not a factor I had to consider too hard.

@bad-at-lurking said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

One thing that I think might help with character diversity, if you ever get the point of having a population that sustains it, is making crafting, trading and lore specialties as demanding as the One Power or earning a Blademaster reputation.

Yes, that'd be great. But (and this isn't WoT-specific), what makes it worth it for them? What can they do, in practical terms?

Crafting is easier in a way - they can make cool swords and staves. Trading requires an economy, and we haven't discussed that at all, but I'd very much like to. Finally... lore.. I don't have anything here. What's going to come in as handy as the stuff we've been discussing already?

It would be interesting to see these very powerful characters who basically have to build up their networks of merchants and tradespeople if they want to be able to maintain a Great House or build (and sustain) an army. Or have to consult scholars to get clues as to where McGuffin X might be, etc.

Resource management is where that's at. But it's hard. We'd need a robust system from the ground up.

If all those specialties come out of the same base pool of points and count against some theoretical maximum, (which may be absolute or slowly lifted over time), you have characters who have to make meaningful trade-offs. Sure, it's great to be best in breed at something, but if that's ALL you are, you need a support network.

I don't like maximums, I prefer... choices. If you over-invest in one thing you won't be as good in others - and then the challenge is making sure what you don't buy is as significant as what you do. You'll never get it quite right - ultimately a 'build' will be the 'best one' compared to the rest - but as long as the power gap isn't too large I think I'd rather have that, than everyone having to be cardboard copies of each other.

Thoughts?

@seraphim73 said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

I'd like PCs to purchase overall potency, individual Powers or weaves directly, with each purchase becoming more narrow but more impactful.
I'm trying to figure out a system that allows PCs to buy sword forms directly to improve their fighting

Neither of these sound easy in the slightest, and they both sound like they would result in a great many "filler" skills/weaves/forms that very few people take (and some that everyone takes).

Yeah, after some thought I don't like the early take of actually buying up individual forms. If not for the reasons you listed but because it's a headache from a design point of view to balance out all those dozens of forms, and from a player's perspective to even know what to use at any given time.

I think that your idea of "second-tier" skills is an interesting one, however. Say you've got specializations in Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and Spirit for Channeling; Offensive, Defensive, One-on-One, and Group for weapon skills; Charm, Convince, Intimidate, and Bargain for Persuasion; Quality, Decoration, Speed, and Cost for Crafting (I'm making these up as I go along, you would want to change the details, of course), etc... it might work. But again, you're no longer anywhere near as simple or easy as you might be otherwise.

The design challenge here won't be to keep the system simple since I think as long as we keep it consistent it will work; the social equivalent of a channeling build means you just pick different Tier 2 skills ("Military Logistics" instead of "Fire" for example to greatly cut down the costs of maintaining troops).

It's making sure every single choice on the tier is, at least roughly and within thematic reason, equivalent to the other. I'd love social skills to be a real thing since it's such a strong trope in fantasy, but can I provide players with returns for those purchases that can compete with stabbing people really well? I'm not saying I can't, or that it can't be done, but we're missing the other piece of the puzzle - the economic and military resource management.

What if we broke things down into three distinct ... let's call them templates? Then we can see what each can do. And if we can add a forth then let's do it.

• Channelers.
• Non-channeling combatants.
• Military and social prodigies. Let's merge these from a design perspective although they are separate skillsets IC, to keep things simple and not add too many skills - remember, the more selection of useful skills we offer the less power these archetypes will have, since they will need to spread out their spends compared to a physical character who can specialize better.

Then we can go into resource management - namely skills which modify how much gold it takes to keep an army, what it's generated by, etc.

There are a lot of games that do the Heroes Journey well, all it really takes is a high amount of XP given out, and a logarithmic(ish) cost scale to increase your skills.

One obvious way to curtail this - which we'll definitely need to for channelers else we'll have powerhouses on our hands no matter what - is to have XP tiers which can be increased as the game goes by. It's not that radical a notion, and it should work fine.

So at first (I'll use arbitrary numbers here) you might have 50 XPs as your cap, then in six months change it to 75, then... so newbies can always catch up - and we can speed up their progress until they do - up to the current cap before they proceed at the same pace as their oldbie-r peers.

This sounds very interesting, but also really hard to balance. What about something where you have a Channeling stat, with Elemental specializations, and then can just note where your character has particular strengths/weaknesses with individual weaves? Like Edges and Flaws-style? Then you don't have to have a full list of ratings for individual weaves (since there are likely dozens), but you can still have people who have advanced expertise (or weakness) in a given weave.

Hrm, so you're saying that instead of spending XP the 'interesting choice' we are asking players to make is to pick a flaw and edge? Be stronger in Water but weaker in Fire at the same time?

I guess I liked XP because it promotes the 'interesting choice' motif. You don't have to buy Fireball up but it looks attractive if you can spend that last XP to buy it up some more, doesn't it? Shame you can't use it then to purchase some lands of your own, or a military commission or... whatever.

That's the kind of MUSH I'd like to run. If players are always second-guessing themselves about what they could have bought instead of what they did, and we keep the system as simple as possible - easy to understand but hard to master, if you wish - then it'll be good.

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

I would be wary of doing anything with individual sword forms. While it is thematic there are a few problems to overcome:

there are a ton of them! Making them each mechanically different and balanced would be a chore.

I agree. The other option is to simply not offer that tier of specialization for non-channelers, but merge those modifiers on the second tier ("Offensive Fighting") - which saves them XP they can spend on other things.

What would you do for the non-sword users to create an equivalent system or balance? If you figure out the point above and end up with 50 sword forms to choose from.. what is the staff fighter going to get? The knife?

The way described above means non-sword users can simply get the same trait, but buy multiple levels of it which channelers can't afford to. So you could make an excellent assassin type who's a glass canon, or a careful defensive warrior who capitalizes on out-surviving their opponents. Again, choices.

We can even ensure different weapons have slightly different modifiers. A knife user has a better initiative, for example, but swords hit harder (and axes the hardest).

Ranged combat is going to be harder. Handling range in general on a MUSH... I don't think I've ever seen it handled well, but maybe some of you have.

Specialization absolutely makes sense though, both for channelers and non. Blademasters being the obvious example, but even aside from Talents on the channeling side there are plenty of examples of people just being good at stuff from doing it all the time. Windfinders and weather magic, that kin with the unbreakable Shield, etc.

What I was thinking was that Asha'man who wasn't very strong at all, but who had a true knack for making Gateways. We can definitely do that, and use it for anything - one trick, useful ponies! Then you can have a great healer who can't do much else but she can do that one thing like a champion - and she's a great spy on top of it. Stuff like that.

Half the fun of designing games is doing things better this time around, so what else can be done, even if we throw all the above down the drain and start over?

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/04/the-50-best-fantasy-novels-of-the-21st-century.html

Do you agree?

@thatonedude I bought it back then and it's been physically sitting on my shelf for years. It's not that good - I could use it, but it's not that inspired.

@tempest Shit, yeah, sorry. I meant @faraday, I had just read a post of yours and in my head wires got crossed.

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Me too! It's like the good ol' days of competing options.

I've no great interest in running a game, I just want a modern, well designed WoT MUSH to be around. If you get yours on the road and there aren't big conceptual differences I'd be happy to play there instead.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time mechanics:
My own ideas are still very vague, but thinking of doing something like Fate style stunts/more familiar Feats. The basic combat skills would be there, but then people spend XP for some specialty focuses like Spear and Shield for the concept of that style, but with Spear Dancing being able to be added atop that for the specific Aiel style.

How does this sound, to work work within the 'interesting choices' mandate:

A single unified paradigm for both channelers and non-channelers.

• "Aes Sedai training", "Three-Fold Land conditioning", "Channeling Potency" which give all of your actions within their scope a modifier. This has a very high price so if you buy more than one you're not going to able to buy nearly anything else (and it's our job as designers to make sure it's not a no-brainer either way). These things might actually be scaled; perhaps someone got training up to the level of an Accepted and then fled the Tower, for instance.

• A second degree of ability levels such as "Offensive/Defensive Sword Forms", "Fire/Earth/Water/Air/Spirit" which again, offer modifiers (more bang for the buck) than the previous tier. The fact non-channelers have fewer of these also makes purchasing them all more economical, which helps balance a bit more - you can make a somewhat well rounded, excellent melee combatant easier than a channeler (which is something the books point out - remember how many Asha'man didn't feel they should know how to use a sword).

• A third degree of skills such as "Apple Blossoms in the Wind" and "Earthquake". The number of forms is troublesome here, and I can use input, as well as trying to make them be distinct from each other; why pick the first one instead of Parting the Silk?

Thoughts?

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Are you looking at buying individual sword forms or just a style of "sword forms"? i.e. 1 xp for River Undercuts the Bank, 1 xp for Ribbon on the Air, etc or 10 xp for Sword Forms.

Well, that was one thought. The problem with that is that then what do Aiel, swordbreaker users, etc skilled warriors buy? I could make some shit up but it won't be thematic since... they'd be made up.

I'm looking for an alternative.

@wildbaboons I don't have a game. I have some thoughts and a port on a VM. Now I also have a thread!

@faraday Yeah, when I saw this thread today I went and git fetch'ed to make sure there are no mismatching files in branch v1.8.x... there aren't.

I'll look when I have time to see if, on nodebb's own server, there aren't reports of this since there are bound to be.

I'm looking to dip my toes in a Wheel of Time MUSH and I'm looking at a copy of Ares (with @tempest's kind help) to figure out what kind of commitment we're talking about.

Before I do much more I wanted to open a discussion about its mechanics. While knowledge of the WoT books and settings isn't necessary in it, I'd very much appreciate not derailing it into tangents too unrelated to this, since I'd like to use whatever I can from the debate to generate the system itself for such a game - meaning rolls, attributes, and so on.

Design ideas:

Overall:

I want players to make interesting choices. Forcing dilemmas about A or B should be at the heart of the system, which means as few 'filler' skills, talents and attributes as possible.

All systems need to be easy. Simple. If you have an idea of an amazing system that would require too much work to explain and too much reading to understand then it won't work for this. However additional complexity that can be automated and hidden beneath a coded roll is fine.

Balance between channelers and non-channelers won't be tackled directly (i.e. I don't plan to try and make them equal in power). However while channelers' power will be placed at considerably less than the book characters' with IC reasoning - no Nynaeve/Mazrim level powerhouses - I want non-channelers to be able and achieve the highest skill levels, including heron-marked blades or other cultures' equivalents.

Resource management should also be in the picture if it can be managed, since it can fuel the Great Game.

One part of the books I think is very thematic is the progression from trainee (in whatever disciple) into mastery. How do we, and can we do that on a MUSH convincingly? Aside from the timeline (obviously we won't require waiting for RL years for a Novice to become Aes Sedai), can this be done mechanically without turning it into a chore?

Channeling:

I'd like PCs to purchase overall potency, individual Powers or weaves directly, with each purchase becoming more narrow but more impactful. So for example you could sink one point (?) into your overall strength as a channeler which powers all your weaves, or put it into Air to make all your Air weaves stronger than they'd get if you had just purchased a point in overall potency, or even use it to buy something like Windstorm specifically which would empower that one weave far more than the former two options.

Not sure how I would handle overgrasping Saidin/Saidar enough to burn out. Maybe make it impossible for channelers to, but give them the channeling disease itself where they are impacted for a RL duration of time?

Non-channeling:

I'm trying to figure out a system that allows PCs to buy sword forms directly to improve their fighting but also not limit all fighting in the game to match that style. The Aiel don't use them, for example, and I don't simply want to give them a separate (but boring or unrelated to the books) system instead to achieve balance. One way to do it is keep forms completely IC separate from mechanical power, so characters can be assumed to know what they know based on their skill levels. Thoughts?

A trope from the books is fighting one-versus-many. I don't know if it's nostalgia speaking but in my own gaming past we gave NPC retainers to certain organizations - so for example a Whitecloak PC would have X NPCs with him, a Band of the Red Hand member would have Y (where Y<X) but with bonuses to Band-only groups, etc. These are hard to balance; is it worth having? Can you come up with or propose a system that achieves this?

Finally, what challenges am I forgetting so far that absolutely should be in a WoT game? Remember, let's keep it mechanical and try to focus on general rules rather than exceptions; channeling has a myriad of the latter but unless it's going to realistically happen in a somewhat day to day basis then I don't care about it too much for now, and it can be handwaved or summarized in a roll later on.

Thanks in advance for any input!

Sorry guys. As @Auspice noted we updated to the latest version of nodebb on Saturday - and it's as great as advertised.

For those affected, please make sure to try a different theme as well and see if that fixes the issue (then report here so others can benefit from it). I'm not sure what I can do about it until I get home at least, since this is the latest and greatest.