Posts made by Arkandel

@seraphim73 I was very torn about the game. For starters it was clear this was a labor of love - there was an immense amount of detail, obviously staff had worked hard on setting up the pieces, and the code was cool.

Two things did it for me.

The first one was that old catch-22; there weren't enough people to play with, which makes it hard to get people to play with. At times I looked around and the who list was nearly empty - maybe you guys need a bit more momentum, inviting groups of people who come in together, more advertisement, etc.

Bursts of activity work better than trickles of it, IMHO, especially since you can then coordinate running events at the time these people are around - then if you keep them, you're back in business.

But the second factor was that I think I was looking for something different than what it was. I was kind of looking for carrots to work towards and couldn't find any; a gear or skill progression, a political ladder to climb, something to aim for. My character felt already... done. It's probably a personal thing, but I really like having stuff to chase in games - if a MU* gets me to make a spreadsheet planning out my spends, it's got me by the short hairs.

However that second factor is definitely not something you can do much about. It's only a personal preference.

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.

@tat said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I coded something like this for Alpha & Omega. You hit +gmscene, and it spit out either an NPC(s) + an action, or a scenario.

Kind of reminds me of this Star Trek script written by a bot.

Kobe's reaction means more to me than who actually won it.

@lithium People who play/MSB from their phones are either superpowered mutants or masochists or something, but I can't even fathom doing that.

@cobaltasaurus And on my part, my nearly lack of taste is the reason I'll never bother figuring out which theme 'looks better' as kids call it these days. Auspice and Gany can mess around with that crap.

I curse @Auspice's name now! We'll get an infinite number of memes forever! As if we weren't enough of a dumpster fire. <fistshake>

@auspice What have you done.

@three-eyed-crow said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

In my experience, unfortunately, you'll get more complaints and bad feelings about "exclusion" if a private event is posted publicly where everyone can see, than you will if who can see it is locked.

I mean it's not so much a complaint, but I admit sometimes it was disappointing to sit in an Order with little to do while another had 3 Order-specific +events scheduled for the week.

But that's not a problem with the system, it's with the game not having enough plot runners.

@cobaltasaurus Change the template! We got a few. We can get more if needed.

Also, we're on 1.7.4 now which is the latest and greatest.

It's not very well done but a list of new features in this version is here. I wish they had an incremental human-readable list back starting at least at 1.5.x where we upgraded from.

@jennkryst Play a bit with the templates, maybe you'll find one you can agree with on a religious level!

We are back up. Please let me know of any fires.

@ganymede I'll speed up the upgrade. Emergency downtime at noon EST.

This isn't usable.

@icanbeyourmuse Yeah, it just started affecting me today.

What I think has happened is that the templates updated, but our nodebb version is older, so something got screwed up.

I'm tempted to merge the current branch and run the upgrade script from work, but if something explodes I won't have time to troubleshoot it.

Mondays, go figure.

@sg said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

When I get the rug pulled out under me it really kills any desire to do anything further. If I can't actually do anything to create a /lasting/ story, then it kills desire too.

That's because something has gone terribly wrong.

The issue used to be staff were super protective of their games and staff were fiercely protective of it. It took a long time if ever to get a plot cleared for running. At some point game-runners realized this was really stupid and relaxed their iron grip on everything, allowing PrP runners a lot more leeway.

This was a good thing.

The issue is that eventually game-runners started not giving much of a shit about their games past just getting them up. With the efforts of coders like Chime and Theno we saw a resurgence of nWoD MU* for example but they were really not that innovative (if at all), and not much actual work went into them. Little pride was invested in these works; we just started seeing one sandbox follow the next, with only cosmetic changes between them ("MY game is going to be ran in CHICAGO you guys!" "Well MY game is going to be ran in the SEVENTIES ooooh!").

Well, that hasn't gone well. One sandbox followed the other, resulting in short spikes of activity followed by idleness. Part of that idleness is what you're reporting - staff who just don't care. To quote Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, they're absentee landlords.

But I think it's a completely separate issue than the one discussed here. Maybe someone should make a thread called "proactive staff".

Tonight at or around 19:00 EST I'll upgrade nodebb, the platform this forum is using.

The downtime in theory should be minimal. In practice, who knows, so brace for impact.

I'll make an extra backup ahead of time. Thanks!

@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

Why is it so much to hope that people might actually take some initiative and go 'page storyteller=Hey, you said to let you know what we'd like to follow up on. I'd like to have a scene where we go talk to that museum curator sometime.'

Because that's how people are. It's also why Storytellers need to stop asking people what they want ran; in my experience if players know what they want - which is rare - they'll let me know. Otherwise I give them what I have in mind, and it just works that way.

The way I handle it at least is that if I'm making a multi-part PrP I have the scenes planned in advance, but they're in a very vague state so they can stay flexible. So if it's a three-scene PrP about a new drug based on vitae, it might be structured like this:

• Discovery (the PCs are approached by a concerned, shaken neonate who gives them some basic facts. This lets the group get together)

• Action (the PCs go to the warehouse they were pointed at in the first scene. There are goons there, who they either walk into surrendering or fight with)

• Climax (the PCs go visit the Ordo Dracul whose identity they discovered in the second scene as the mastermind behind all this. She either gets away, killed or is subdued and delivered to the Prince)

There are opportunities for proactive actions between scenes; they can go on fact finding campaigns about the warehouse or its staff between 1 and 2, or research the Elder by talking to some of her allies and enemies between 2 and 3, or whatever else.

Maybe if one of them figures out something whacky or brilliant then one of those scenes doesn't get to happen; perhaps one of the PCs secretly makes a deal with the Elder who gets away before the party gets there, and the scene becomes about raiding her laboratory and figuring out her ties to the Brood. Or maybe the party use their police connections to get the warehouses raided by cops ahead of time, and I need to come up with something else for them to do in the second PrP - there's always a possibility one of the scenes is invalidated by PC actions. That's fine!

But all things considered I want to have a 'next scene' in mind whether my players do stuff or don't. If they come up with their own plans that's awesome! If not, that's why I get paid the big bucks.

Let the hype begin! The Star Wars: Solo teaser trailer is out..

@coin I didn't even know there was a book. But the first episode of Altered Carbon kicked all kinds of ass.