@derp said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
@arkandel said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
I wish I had invisible voices double-checking my dumb decisions in real life.
...isn't that what we're here for?
Yes, when I want to figure out something important in my life I always ask myself "what would MSB do here?".
@tat said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
I mean, no, there's no cost associated - but something like Magic is also (presumably) doing a lot of their playtesting BEFORE they print materials. We had a pretty meaty Alpha period where we did the same, but we're a handful of people over here - there's only so much playtesting we can do before we go live.
One advantage Wizards of the Coast (and professional companies) have is playtesters picked specifically among powergamers. M:tG for example hires professional players who try their damn best for months to break and exploit the cards. They also have teams who have been working together for multiple expansions so they can learn from their failures and build up playbooks over time.
When it comes to MU* I don't think it's unreasonable to reach out to a game's playerbase and come clean. "Hey skill A turns out to be more powerful than we thought, and it's causing <X> side effects. We feel we need to fix this, but we can reimburse anyone who's bought if".
Which to bring us back on-topic is another weird thing that's different between RL and gaming. 
People feeling they can appeal to the GM and get a bad outcome overturned. I shouldn't have died falling off the cliff, rule 2.3 on page 105 can be interpreted as such!
Or, hell, the rest of the group intervening during the making of a questionable action even if a character is alone IC. "I pull the lever". "What? No, fuck, NO DON'T DO IT JOE I don't have any heals left!". I wish I had invisible voices double-checking my dumb decisions in real life.
@tat Also keep in mind balancing for a MUSH is much easier than doing so for a table-top RPG because you can always patch things retroactively, especially if it's automated.
If your 'real' metrics, unlike theorycrafting, show that +3 initiative is better than +3 defense you can adjust it on the fly. Maybe you'll refund some XP spends for those who invested based on the old system.
Once you print then ship rulebooks out it's a pain in the ass to create and distribute errata.
I play Magic: the Gathering which makes all of this even worse. You opened packs or traded for a mythic card that got banned? Well, sucks to be you!
@ominous And that the underlying game is still easy to understand, teach, and you know - play.
@mietze I really don't mind ambition at all. If people can get wealthy, that's fine.
It's flaunting wealth that bugs me a bit when so many people aren't doing well.
Be rich. Buy lots of toys, help your family out. Maybe donate some to charity. And shut up.
I was asked to play it. What is the draw? As in, what are some cool things it has over 'traditional' MMORPGs like WoW or FFXIV?
Is there decent content for PvE? Is the game aimed for raiding, crafting, exploration?
Can we please go back to pointing out unrealistic consequences of gaming mechanics trying to describe how the real world would work if magic and possibly inhuman races existed in alternate realities, then quantifying all of a person's skills and abilities with a flat number on a character sheet?
I used to play World of Warcraft with this guy like... 15 years ago. We were friends and hanged out on Ventrilo, so even though we eventually moved on he's still on my Facebook as a friend.
He's done very well with his career. He's like a CEO for a company now, which is great for him! But damn some of his posts lately are... shots of himself in expensive suits in front of expensive cars in Dubai. Or posing with a Rolex in front of an indoors swimming pool, tagging it with #statussymbol and #success.
I am hoping he is doing it ironically but even so splashing wealth like that is a bit cringe-worthy. I hope he knows, and it's just showing some kind of quirky sense of humor about where he is at life, but he posts these kinds of pictures semi-regularly.
@too-old-for-this But the person themselves wouldn't be asked for legal purposes beforehand.
I was thinking more of cases such as "wealthy person demands that the victim's family don't press charges, else he won't bring their loved one back".
You can have your dad back... or justice for his death. Pick one.
@too-old-for-this said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
@arkandel Yes crime! Resurrection causes a loss of 1 character level. To an NPC that's like going from a journeyman to an apprentice! That's their livelihood!
As it turns down even in fantasy you need to choose between your health and your financial stability!
@ganymede said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
As someone who religiously plays / played vampires, do you really want me to describe how you can quite easily set up legal vehicles in order to maintain a vampire lord's possessions over time without resorting to the use of Disciplines?
Yeah but that's if they know about it - and in the World of Darkness where there are institutions about that sort of thing.
What about in D&D? You get bitten by the wrong thing, WHAM! You're now a creature of the night.
Oh, oh! A rich guy is drunk when he rides his fancy steed over a poor half-Elf and kills him. The authorities arrest him, but he uses his money and privilege to resurrect the guy if his family doesn't press charges. No justice or... was there even a crime if the victim is in full health after?
Also laws. Laws just can't work the way they do in real life without messing up.
You die - but you become sentient undead. Do you legally lose all of your belongings? Do they go to your next or kin? What if you are resurrected, and back to the living, but your possessions have already been given away?
How do you even apply laws when there are spells, curses and magic that can make you do things against your will? How do you prove someone wasn't made to stab their friend in the back?
Some races live far longer than others. What is the age of consent!
Don't get me /started/ on the privacy issues mind-reading or scrying creates. How about prophecies? There are some real Minority Report-level headaches there.
Worried about gun ownership? How about your former adventurer neighbor who has a legendary artifact hanging on his wall as a souvenir from the good ol' days, and he's getting senile... so who knows what's gonna happen if he messes with it.
@faraday said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
The general indifference to wounds and deaths in both RPGs has always kind of baffled me. I get that everyone wants to be the hero, but even John McClaine was feeling it when his feet got shredded. And even though YOU know that your character has luck points/fate points/a kind GM or a FS3 combat system that won't kill you, your PC doesn't know that. They should maybe not be quite so reckless all the time.
My peeve is the opposite! It's the people wanting the attention from those wounds, and who will milk it to the extreme.
Most people whose PCs get a couple of dots of lethal damage? They may pose a couple of times about wincing as they sit, or just heal it in the background.
Some people will pose limping into an otherwise normal scene with garish (but always attractive or internal) injuries for which they require someone's immediate help lest they fade away.
@ravengirl said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
Or beyond that as well… holding a grudge for someone doing something evil to you or your friends and then some how ending up the bad guy because “Sure, I tortured your partner in front of you but that was THREE MONTHS ago, sheesh.”
Oooh you reminded me! Not so much a trope in (just) gaming but media in general, however all kinds of bad guys turning face and suddenly being huge fan favorites, ignoring the absolutely horrible stuff they did or tried to do in their previous career.
Sure, Anakin literally murdered children but he was redeemed in the end so 
!
One way could have been to replace one of the Fellowship members with her of course - Legolas would be the obvious choice in the books.
Can you imagine the number of shrieking early-00s nerdboys that would have resulted from that? I can. Ohh, I definitely can. It is the stuff of nightmares.
Oh I meant from the perspective of it being Tolkien's choice in the original works.
But yeah. On the other hand it really depends on how it's done. The Hobbit trilogy introduced an original female Elven character but she didn't fail because of that - her arc was just badly handled.
In the LotR films Saruman's story was altered dramatically. Significant characters like Tom Bombadil or Glorfindel were simply... erased. Fanboys will fanboy, but ultimately when the movie otherwise works no one gives a shit.
@faraday That made a small part of me die inside. 
@greenflashlight I'm not sure Tolkien had a real plan for Arwen other than being basically Lúthien all over again, and giving Aragorn a Queen worthy of him. But we didn't get to see her much in the books, only to be told of her.
On the other hand that figures in a tale as vast as this. The focus was on the Fellowship members and those they directly interact with after its formation.
The only way Arwen had a chance to get any 'screen' time was either the way Peter Jackson did it in the first movie (i.e. replace Glorfindel with her, which was fair enough). On the other hand I wasn't crazy about the 'her fate is tied to the Ring now' subplot. That was... weird.
But arguably she could have been a genuinely interesting character. She just didn't fit the spotlight the way this tale was told. One way could have been to replace one of the Fellowship members with her of course - Legolas would be the obvious choice in the books.
What about the casual disregard for death that comes with resurrection spells and services being somewhat widely available in certain games?
"Damn dude you died again. Have you tried, you know, dying less?"
@jennkryst said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
@arkandel said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:
Names. Very few characters are called Steve or Jen.
It's always Maximillian and Lillian.
Unless you're going to mandate logins be First_Last name, it will forever be the case.
ETA - Or even better, @name by SSN
What about D&D where people's last name is often "Drowslayer" or "Magicbane" ?
