Posts made by Arkandel

@tributary Fair 'nuff. See you guys when the issue is revisited!

@aphrodite To get this out of the way, how are you deciding who's going to play the 'big guns' of the DC Universe?

Or to slightly rephrase this, what's the chance those roster spots will be taken by the time/before the game opens?

@misadventure said in Darkwater: The Return:

I feel that it would utterly rewrite the game. Now, since most folks have already done the character creation work long ago, they may have the energy and patience to try to rewrite the same characters in new rules.

Or they may not.

There are some folks who never created characters in the first place.

@auspice said in Random links:

Are you magic?

I merely possess certain abilities which to you might be indistinguishable from magic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/my-year-on-mars/

@lisse24 said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Even in non-coded games, Combat plots are the low-hanging fruit. Anyone can show up to them and Do a Thing. It's easier to pull someone in. In diplomatic/social plots, you usually have to know the right people in order to get involved. It's also easier to keep pulling on the same group of people.

Although I obviously agree with you there I also don't want to blame MU* for this. Look at most published game systems; for something like nWoD, Pathfinder, D&D, etc... how many more pages does social engagement get covered in compared to combat?

It's just the place most of us have 'grown up' seeing as the focus of RPGs. What we're discussing here is more of an evolution of it, specifically geared toward MU* rather than table-top games where that sort of thing isn't nearly as important or even applicable.

@ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Pyrephox said this as well, but the path isn't putting up a roadblock to prevent socially-inept people rising to power. And that's what I was getting at, obliquely.

I never said there should be a roadblock. In fact you should be able to claim power through brute force - ranks aren't the sole product of social engineering.

But since you can do so as either Robert Baratheon or Littlefinger, yet being Robert lets you do so and be part of more types of scenes on a day to day basis (since Bobby can be part of diplomatic delegations but Littlefinger can't be part of combat), and as a bonus you are able to bash Littlefinger's head if he pisses you off, yet being Littlefinger gives you very limited venues to fight back... that impacts gameplay. It impacts theme.

And we're not even talking about the social consequences that should be attendant with being a combat monster, generally. No matter how genial Vlad the Impaler might have been in his court, one cannot forget that he was Vlad the Impaler, as reviled as he was feared, as he was beloved in hindsight.

Sure, and that's why Vlad should buy Intimidation. But he also should be an one-trick pony in that regard - sure, he can scare the shit out of people but he can't give a good speech to rouse the troops, tell a good lie, convince someone to make a bad deal thinking it's a good one, etc.

And in a good social system doing such things should have a value roughly equal to impaling people. Else why do the same skills cost the same XP?

@alzie said in Changeling the Lost 2e: The Huntsman Chronicles:

@arkandel according to onyx path it is in post editing.

So anywhere from 6 months to 6 years.

Given its current state would you say the system is likely to change that much in post-production? So if a MUSH wanted to use it, does it sound 'safe' they won't need to backtrack much?

@thenomain As an onlooker, my main question is... is the system close to being finalized? Is there a date for when it'll be released?

I don't know if there's an 101 on this somewhere.

@thenomain said in Darkwater: The Return:

@arkandel said in Darkwater: The Return:

@cobaltasaurus Something about Changeling 1.0 never grabbed my attention. If you guys move to 2.0 perhaps I'll make the leap.

You're probably going to be disappointed. I'll save the reasons for the Chronicles of Darkness thread, or any potential CtL2e thread.

edit: I should note that I'm not disappointed. You have to come into it fresh, though, else you'll start drawing parallels and then start hating everything and everyone.

I never disliked Changeling theme - in fact I was always fond of it, even though kind of from afar.

I always disliked Changeling 1.0's mechanics. I found most Kiths boring and most contracts either very situational or plain niche, with most of the powers they granted unable to motivate me into working towards getting them. With Vampire, Werewolf or Mage I never had that issue; there was always something I saw that made me go "damn I need this, and I can base a concept off of having or pursuing this".

I don't know where the current iteration of Changeling 2.0 is at now, but I'm hoping it can reverse that for me.

@saosmash said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I don't want to contradict anyone's lived experience.

Oh, regardless of what character's specializations are or what system a game uses, nothing trumps the player's ability to use what they have and leverage it to gain traction or convert it to actually having fun.

That's why anecdotes by players here must be taken with a grain of salt either way. An OOC well known player who's OOC social, maybe already has OOC connections in the game and who can put a decent pose together will find things to do. Someone who possesses fewer of these qualities will find themselves with less to do. That's a given.

What's important is that the game itself at least tries to correctly translate the sheet's strengths and weaknesses into what's actually happening on the grid. Not all MU* are able or willing to do this - many will simply blame it on the player and call it a day.

@ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Do you have any idea how many people in history rose to positions that they didn't deserve?

That's neither here nor there. We're talking about a game which needs to have interesting choices for players to make. If those choices don't exist everyone is poorer for it.

Or to get back to the original cause for this tangent in the thread, social characters need to have a strong niche, the same way as physical characters do. Else there will be way more of the former than the latter.

2. It still overshadows characters built for this, but the other way around doesn't happen or, even better, does have real tangible consequences when it does. If I bring my likable class clown to a real fight someone's going to physically cave his head in with a hammer, not just draw a few chuckles yet overall get the job done.

Then your clown gets his head caved in. This is a problem because ... ?

Because unless a system is explicitly designed to prevent it, that doesn't happen in social scenarios. I can bring my grunt to a meeting and play him in a way that won't embarrass himself or bring any disadvantages to his cause because he has no training in economics, politics or anything that doesn't involve swinging a sword at people.

But, if I'm reading you correctly, you're essentially arguing that it's a bad thing to have socially-inept combat monsters in court because the average player isn't going to realize their own characters' limitations and play them accordingly. That seems a little patrician to me.

I'm arguing the system itself should be built to prevent socially inept characters either from rising to power or to wielding that power without causing tangible consequences to whatever they are trying to do. In other words the end result should be equivalent to what would happen if an unskilled character took leadership of an army, or rode with that army into open battle.

As it is, in most systems - I am definitely not saying this is specific to Arx, and in fact I realize they are trying to fix this - you can have the pie and eat it. I think that has a negative impact on gameplay.

@tributary Any chance for Changeling 2.0 in the foreseeable future?

@ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I mean, that's why Fifth Kingdom was so much fun for me for so long: my high lord PC was socially awkward, but enjoyed getting drunk and wrassling. He was once dragged through the market trying to wrassle a boar down that had escaped from a pen.

Yes. But.

1. It ends up having an effect on the game in general, because it can lead to many positions being occupied by characters who don't belong there but without any real consequences depending on how they are played. Sure, my skirt-chasing swordsman is funny when I pose him, but the House is doing A-okay (or not noticeably worse than your House led by someone with high finances and social skills). Path of least resistance, right?

2. It still overshadows characters built for this, but the other way around doesn't happen or, even better, does have real tangible consequences when it does. If I bring my likable class clown to a real fight someone's going to physically cave his head in with a hammer, not just draw a few chuckles yet overall get the job done.

3. This sort of thing absolutely relies on reasonable players realizing their own characters' limitations and playing them accordingly. The real fun begins when that doesn't happen, which is very often the case. Obviously great roleplayers choosing an angle will result to positive results, but that's not the rule - it's the exception.

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Well. I mean - yes, I think what we're saying here is that we're putting in considerable effort to keep this from happening, because it's weird to have Combat Joe Who Has No Social Skills And Does Not Afraid Of Anything in charge of diplomatic efforts.

I think it's a great thing to focus on.

How do you deal with the (obviously exaggerated) example I gave above though? The House Voice who's a combat-character, and thus has the authority (but not the coded skill) to be part of or even lead diplomatic missions because of their rank?

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Which is not to say we don't run social plots. As GMs, we believe social/diplomatic characters are not only important but are important enough to build plot around.

It's just significantly harder to set up a successful social plot.

To run a good social plot you generally need to know the PCs involved, you need to manufacture a situation they can leverage their particular which in politics can take some effort, you have to come up with interesting NPCs and assign them distinct personalities to leverage those social skills against. The cynic in me must point out you also need to deal with players who try to fake having social skills through their ranks and poses even if their dice don't support it; if my high-strength duelist happens to also be the Voice for a House he can hijack the spotlight in a diplomatic meeting, but your quirky artist can't be in the frontlines of a jousting tournament as easily.

To run a combat plot you need a 5 minute setup ("orcs are raiding the village! go save them!") and your players are off to the races.

The path of least resistance mandates that while that's true more combat plots will be ran than social ones. Which means more players will pick combat-oriented characters since it provides them with access to stuff they can do. It's just how it is, unless considerable effort is placed in to keep this from happening (which would involve combatants not finding it as easy to rise to positions of authority as others can, for example).

It bugs me when people who know better have huge blindspots about how their behavior.

For example a coworker who's really a very nice guy spots me drinking a protein shake.

"Hey, you have one of these every day?"
"Yeah, I have one around this time to hit my macros."
"These things make more work for your kidneys you know."
"It'd just food, man. It's just a more convenient way to eat food."
"Yeah, but your kidneys."

Dude, if you spotted someone eating a chocolate or granola bar you wouldn't even think about going over to tell them your opinion of its effects on their health - I know you wouldn't. Why pick on this?

Similarly, and I've seen this happen almost exclusively coming from women, and it's typically a celebrity or actress.

"Ugh, that girl is skinny! She needs to eat a sandwich."

There is no way they'd ever say "that girl is overweight, she needs to stop eating sandwiches". What gives?

@sunny said in Table-top gadgets:

@arkandel If you're gonna play the new Star Wars games get the app for the dice.

I just noticed this - what's special about those?

I discovered this:

http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder

Holy crap this site is usable as hell.

@cobaltasaurus Something about Changeling 1.0 never grabbed my attention. If you guys move to 2.0 perhaps I'll make the leap.