Posts made by Arkandel

There is no pipe.

I only put Fallout: the table-top game here because I know one of you fools will be tempted enough to use it for a MU*.

@Ghost said in Course Corrections:

So, you mean to tell me your character with ZERO dice in investigation OR computer would think to browse fucking Tor of all things to get instructions on homemade espionage tools?

Two friends of mine were in a table-top campaign where one of them (who's a sound engineer iRL) was playing a barbarian stuck in a dungeon without any light or blind fighting skills. He claimed he could use the echoes of his own sound waves to ping the location of his enemies so he could hit them, and then also use the dungeon's accoustics to navigate its tunnels.

I don't know what bullshit stinks the most, that this would be a plausible plan at all ("you can totally do it, that's how sound works!") or that his illiterate barbarian from some shitty village would possess sound engineering skills to fight his way out of total darkness.

@Ghost What bugged me is that this doctor... well okay, he had never used a computer before - fine. Had he never seen one anywhere? At a store, an airport, in a movie? Did he ever see anyone waving mice around in the air?

But anyway.

@Packrat said in Course Corrections:

So history ramblings aside, I can both see why people would 'fear' gunpowder in their games

I don't think it's (necessarily) fear.

If I want epic high fantasy then guns just don't fit in that. It's not that they'd be overpowered, it's that thematically I want magical singing swords, not muskets.

Same thing with post-apocalyptic themes. Maybe I don't want to tell the story of how civilization was rebuilt and humanity claimed cities back, but gritty arcs where they're blocking tiny reservations with debris to keep the zombies out just long enough to not be eaten.

Not all games can be all things to all people, you know?

@tragedyjones I hate it (for non-mortals) for a simple reason: It's one of those must-have merits.

Basically it's like the multi-attack merits of old, where you get a massive return for the investment if you get it and cripple yourself if you don't. So it becomes an auto-buy.

I don't like auto-buys.

@Ganymede said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

In a system I'm working on, everything is related to time. You can convert it to XP to advance your stats, use it to harvest for resources, spend it to build shit, etc. But the more holdings you build, status you cultivate, the less time you have because of the implied maintenance of the same. The more you accumulate, the slower you can advance.

That's a good idea. It reminds me of EVE Online.

@Derp said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

See, this is the part that I'm getting hung up on in most of our systems that currently exist. You either start off as Pretty Damn Powerful, or you know you'll get Pretty Damn Powerful within X amount of time just because of the way the system is coded

Since I mentioned Arx's system this is how I'd do it:

1. Consider someone a newbie until they catch up {tm}. What you consider 'caught up' in the context of your game is up to you. Maybe it's the average XP on the game, or you base it off of the top earners' totals, or just for X weeks after CGen, whatever.

2. Make newbies be always eligible for +votes (or whatever you're using in your system) without most control factors. Give them the ability to vote back non-newbies, skimming similar control factors, but for fewer XP than normal.

That way you're encouraging scenes by making newbies attractive to oldbies and you're making them work for it. They make more for that work than anyone else so they can catch up but there's nothing automatic about it. They can't just sit around and wait for XP to rain from the sky.

@Ghost My (real and actually-happened-to-me) IT story:

Back in the day I was teaching ECDL classes, and the first lesson was going over the real basics. You know, this is a computer's main unit, this is the keyboard, the monitor, etc.

Now keep in mind this was a class offered to professionals, paid by their companies. In fact the majority in the class were doctors and medical personnel, and although I'm not 100% certain I'm comfortable with assuming the person involved in this incident actually was a MD.

So anyway, I picked the mouse up to show it to them and explain its general use by waving it in the air to demonstrate. Once I was done I set it down and asked students to do it with their mice as well and control the cursor on their screens.

Naturally one of them picked his mouse up and started waving it in the air just like I had.

@Derp Let me provide a counter-example.

On St. Petersburg they used a hard-cap XP system you could hit once you roleplayed for a reasonable-but-not-too-high amount per week. The exact numbers might escape me but it was something like "you gain XPs automatically as you RP and you can make a maximum of 2 XPs per week". Once you hit the limit that's it, you couldn't go any higher.

At least one person I knew back then wasn't motivated to play any more once they hit that cap. The player was completely reasonable by the way and never one I associated with "play to win", just the contrary, but that's just how the system itself made them feel.

Anyway, my thoughts these days on the matter is that no matter how you design your system you should make sure of the following:

• Don't fail to introduce diminishing returns or the players who can roleplay 24/7 will, and they are almost always the ones you don't want to take over. It's hard to maintain a healthy perspective on a game you invest so much of your life into.

• Make sure if there's systemic advancement not to let it get capped too easy for the reasons highlighted above. Again, diminishing returns can serve a similar purpose but allow people to keep playing, and just track smaller progress.

• Make damn sure to let your newbies be able to catch up. It doesn't need to (and shouldn't) happen too fast; let them work for it since otherwise it invalidates your oldbies' efforts, but make it possible. A system similar to Arx's @randomscene, tweaked to be a more long-term solution, probably works better than TR's massive auto-XP cron jobs since it also provides RP as well as XP.

• Finally, IMHO, don't penalize death or retirement. For all that is holy, that's one of the reasons drama exists; if a PC dies in action let them carry their progress to a new one.

Just some thoughts.

I use you jerks as my reference. Both to suggest good places and to warn about the rest of them.

@HelloProject said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

In an environment that has sheet based advancement, what is the most significant aspect of that advancement to you?

That it is meaningful.

For instance a game which mismanages the amount of progress you make for time unit can render progress irrelevant; if XPs fall from the skies like raindrops and everyone's special no one is. If progress is too slow and everyone wallows in the dirt then it doesn't matter. If progress is behind a wall your playstyle doesn't support (must play too many hours, run PrPs to justify expenditures, etc) then it might as well not exist. Etc.

On top of it a balanced distribution of advancement ensures you can reap the benefits of your effort - your PC has survived for six months but now that you can train others they come to you, turning your sheet into a roleplay-generating engine.

In other words a game needs carrots that get players to places they want to be.

@Thenomain said in Course Corrections:

Didn't see this until @Pyrephox responded.

I love the history of technology. I revel in it. It is super-interesting to me. I have probably watched every James Burke BBC show, certainly every episode of Connections and The Day The Universe Changed. Maybe I want to start an industrial revolution. Isn't it plausible that I pursue it as a character goal?

Plausible? Absolutely. Thematic? Well, maybe.

The question really is what kind of game you want to run. A gritty grimdark fantasy game might see some industrial revolution-styled arcs very favorably (some really nasty things can happen to pave the way to progress) but a high epic fantasy one might not, for instance.

Also consider the differences between our world and a make-belief one. We had to go down a certain path because it made every sense to; ships can only sail so fast on oars, we can only hand-craft clothes that fast. But add magic to the mix and is that still the case? When a wizard can make a portal or whatever to go from A to B would steam-powered ships have been necessary or even useful? When you can cast a spell to solve your problems (or build your castles) will technology evolve the same way it did?

Maybe.

But either way, my original facepalm wasn't so much that someone asked those questions but that they insisted. If staff specifically says 'yeah, we don't care if cement exists man, it's outside the scope of this game' then that's a pretty decent answer I think.

@saosmash How about style?

For example I find it mildly distracting (although it doesn't really bother me) when people use wiki codes in their poses. Or if they are using %t's to format paragraphs with tabs, stuff like that.

Do those count?

@Seraphim73 said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

Oh god yes. I agree 100%. I wish very much that more people would keep RPing after the "end" of a GM'd scene rather than just being like, "Welp, we killed the bad guy, and even though we're at the bottom of a collapsing mine, knee-deep in acid, with wounded to carry out and prisoners to rescue, we're gonna log out for the night and not worry about it."

If I run a scene which the PCs see no reason to play about after it's 'over' I consider it a failure.

Also consensus is a very funny thing. The norms we consider sacred here might not be elsewhere - such as "which tense do people pose in" mentioned earlier in the thread. I haven't RPed on IRC in probably twenty years but I remember it was a pretty common practice, so why would someone used to an environment feel the urge to change unless they wanted or had to?

It just strikes me as poor form to jump down their throats about it. That's gonna be a great way to make them want to change their ways to suit 'us', right?

@surreality I avoid watching somemost of my old favorites although it's mostly to avoid disappointment. In my head they are awesome.

Flight of Dragons is the one I'm most afraid of. The way I remember it it was a fucking masterpiece. Who knows what it actually is like, since I last watched in my early teens.

@Sparks I still am always irked when someone says "OK" in a fantasy setting. Every time. It's like nails scratching on a blackboard to me.

Sometimes people are just unable to form abstractions in the context of games. That doesn't mean all abstractions are necessary or even beneficial, just that some are.

There was a guy on Arx who insisted on figuring out if cement was invented in that world. How were they making the kinds of buildings they were without it? How?

But that's not a very interesting question to answer. And each time one is answered someone will push for more ("so if I have that, can I create asphalt? I can, right? Then we can have better roads! Then if we can harvest the power of steam we can have an industrial revolution!").

Just let it be, dammit.

@Ghost said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

as well as that 'wandering Kung Fu badass' energy is captured in a bottle.

That's kind of what concerns me about it, in that it's not easy to capture the high energy visuals of a kung fu fight in poses, let alone mechanics.

It's however the same issue I have with many similar hard to portray things I really enjoy. For example although in theory I'd love a Lord of the Rings MUSH, the cruel reality of meeting idiots who play horny Elves prevents me from even trying one.