Posts made by Arkandel

(Spoilers free)

Iron Fist is much better than the critics seemed to think. I'm currently at episode... 6? 7? I've been binge watching so I've lost track, but so far it's pretty enjoyable.

The first three episodes in particular were stellar, I really wanted to see where they go with the story. There was a slump in the narrative after that the show's working on getting out, so maybe they were setting up pieces to have a payoff later in episodes I haven't seen yet.

Overall I really enjoy the way Netflix structures their Marvel stories. Due to its format there's never a reason to pull off a monster-of-the-week deal, and the whole thing feels much more personal. There's no filler, everything is put in there for a reason - not every subplot is my favorite (especially in this one, I thought Jessica Jones hit all the right buttons for me for instance) but all the pieces do have their place.

@Tanyuu There's an entire forum specifically about posting MUSH ads: http://musoapbox.net/category/5/adver-tis-ments . I don't see why it'd be frowned upon.

I don't think there's any format requirement for it... but you can look around at a couple of posts there to get an idea of what and how ads have been posted up before if you like.

@surreality A very common way things turn to shit is because staff don't want to get their hands dirty. It's done so much it's cliche.

"No, I know Bob has been toeing the line of acceptable behavior but it's not a big deal. I have more important things to do than that shit. I have plots to run, good players are creating characters, a ton of +jobs to answer, code to make, a wiki to fix".

Then six months later the game is a toxic shithole through these miniscule escalations of petty grievances and players being mean to each other. That's when you get staff turning into hardliners. The banhammer will fall.

Yeah dude, if half a year ago you had squinted your eyes at those starting incidents instead of letting them get out of hand you wouldn't have to nuke from orbit now.

@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:

The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.

I mean the system absolutely helps. But there's a... relationship between the MUSH, the mechanics and staff that helps shapes the culture, and there's nothing more important than that. It's why some games feel like they are going somewhere and others are deserted wastelands with sandbox pockets of activity behind locked doors.

It's also the hardest thing to change. You can fire staff, or if you're lucky to hire good people. You can change the rules, alter the code, tweak numbers... but changing culture is a bitch, there's no guaranteed way to do it, and it takes a long time even if you do end up taking the right measures.

What's far easier is keeping it consistent from the start, stomping on behaviors you don't approve and rewarding things you do.

@GentlemanJack said in Fires of Hope: A Star Wars Story:

This looks like a fun game. SAGA is a bit complex but you start at level 4 so it shouldn't be a problem. I've never really seen a game that only had Rebellion and Civilian factions and was based on a single planet; that should be interesting.

I haven't played on Star Wars games much but in the little that I did it sounded really counter-productive to have the playerbase fragmented in so many ways; having a bunch of different planets and two major factions which essentially can't interact with each other most of the time without it coming to violence seemed like a bad idea.

IMHO this is a good approach, at least on paper.

@Killer-Klown said in Dungeons and Dragons:

Meh. I don't know what they're trying to accomplish at this point. Pathfinder pretty much stole their lunch money

They are trying to get their money back.

For many companies, not just WotC or even RPG makers, somehow figuring out how to monetize being online is the dream. Selling people conveniences through microtransactions - unlocking more than the basic classes for example, letting players download or export campaign logs and character sheets, offering GMs more options to create monsters and maps through a nice UI - might be it.

Or they might not go the microtransactions way but pick a different route? Ads? Players-are-the-product? Dunno. They probably don't either, and for now they don't have to - they need to hook us in first before they ask for something in return. If they don't get the users it will fail no matter what, so at first they'll need come up with an attractive honeypot.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

While it's not entirely lethal, a good IP for a MU might be "Into the Badlands", which is a mix of post apocalyptic setting and wandering Kung Fu badasses. Plenty of non-lethal is utilized in that setting, and your character getting their ass kicked in isn't so lethal.

Into The Badlands was fantastic. I'd play that shit out any day.

@Bobotron said in Dungeons and Dragons:

Didn't they try to do this when 4e was out and it failed outright?

Well, just because they failed once it doesn't mean they will again. When did that stop us around here from making new shitty MUSHes?

@Misadventure said in Where's your RP at?:

An alternate example that has been brushed upon before is the idea of professional criminals, and the risks they take of exposure and capture.

How would that be handled, along with the attendant culture paranoia vs stupidity and greed and of snitching vs loyalty when the authorities are involved. Do you just say the masterful careful criminal is considered valuable, and the loud destructive idiot is not, even though neither is ever going to be caught?

The only viable approach is to allow them to be caught, but also to make it part of theme - in whatever way - that they won't be incarcerated.This isn't a new trope; in fact it's cliche in comics. The villain robs a bank, gets punched in the face by Spider-Man and is sent to jail from where he escapes, only to try it again.

There can be a multitude of ways to allow this to happen in-game - make the authorities easy to bribe, for instance, so that your IC freedom is assured but it gets taken out of your bottom of line, which means you have to make sure to have something saved up (as opposed to spending the cash on those wonderful toys) or be forced to borrow from the Thieves' Guild which leads to owning favors.

Other methods and themes can impact the character accordingly without taking them out of play, as long as the game is designed around it. Loss of face and owed boons for Vampire, for instance (the Elder made sure you're not staked for a year, but now you owe her), etc.

The important thing though is that the game is designed so there is a cost. Without that there is no risk either. "Sure, I'll owe the Elder!" means nothing if you're OOC fully aware you'll never be impacted by it.

@Thenomain said in MU Things I Love:

I largely stopped enjoying myself in this hobby about four years ago. That what I do can help other people from hitting this point is pretty much all that keeps me going.

You are a weird, grumpy old man.

My first thoughts come after reading the comments about it on Slashdot. Some people objecting to these new forms - and notice this was on a major technology-related site, so we're not exactly talking about luddites here - was due to the fact this is online at all. Someone specifically mentioned the state of old character sheets, for instance, and how much they value them after they've been erased and re-written over years, how you could tell a character's age by the state of the sheet, etc.

It just reminded me a lot of people objecting to ebook readers because it doesn't feel and smell the same. I mean I guess I get it? But... that's nostalgia, something very subjective; a kid starting D&D today wouldn't give a shit if they don't get to use a paper character sheet, all other things being equal.

More reasonable objections can be raised about the loss of camaraderie around the table. Now that I can get into, since even assuming the players are physically present but just using their phones/tablets to keep track of the action there's something very distracting about the devices even being there (and yes guys who spend half the session looking at/pointing out youtube videos are literally the worst).

But, and this isn't irrelevant to MU* either, catching new players is probably much easier if some of the record-keeping and footwork can be made nice and become automated, at least optionally; a nice graphical GUI like in games can go a long way into turning some of those filthy casuals into RPG hobbyists. Some of you will grumble at me for saying so, but if they could even largely automate or at least speed up combat I'd be grateful.

And of course, the distance factor. Some of us just don't have RL gamer-friends willing to play, so something has to give. The more tools we have out there to play online campaigns (and I know there are several onlne) the better.

The thread name is intentionally generic so we can reuse it for D&D stuff, but...

I was looking at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/15/dungeons_dragons_finally_going_digital/ . How do you folks feel about that?

Completely off topic here, but the ongoing decades-old feud between Grant Morrison and Allan Moore is the pettiest, most legendary thing ever.

@mietze said in Where's your RP at?:

Except for no one has said those games shouldn't be allowed--but there has been lots of ZOMG IF U DON'T LIKE DEATH AT ANY MOMENT THEN U HATE RISK!

Yeah, I wanted to say.

My initial objection in this thread was "I wouldn't want to play a high-turnover game where your PC's death was basically guaranteed", and it somehow got turned around to "oh, so you never want your character to die or even face any setbacks?"

Thanks for the kind words @Ganymede, you sex-mad robot. You've inspired me once again to write good things about people, so I hope you're happy about that. Jerk.

So let's see... @Maira has to top the list - she's imaginative and fair to a fault, continuously second-guessing herself in case she's not treating everyone well, but also to ensure everyone around her is treated right; few people care when they are not themselves the targets of unfairness.

There are people I've met over the years with whom I had unexpected rapport, by which I mean we met and clicked without knowing each other ahead of time, simply on the merit of chemistry. @surreality and @caryatid definitely fall into that category, in that our playstyles matched well and worked right out of the box without trying.

But it's more than just RP; there are some of you that I rely to play the unofficial role of moral compass for me, @Ganymede, @surreality, @Emmahsue have all gone down that pit of snakes with me when I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing for the right reasons; I've only recently leaned on @Sunny for the same reason. Our hobby, for all that it's a game, also encompasses a community and I'd like to do right by it.

I thought about hitting the game design name-dropping here - @Misadventure would definitely top the charts there - but to be honest... we do that so often on MSB itself (and WORA before it) that it's hard to single anyone out. I feel there are a lot of talented and experienced people here volunteering their thoughts on a regular enough basis for us to take it for granted, but it shouldn't be.

Before I close this, I wanted to give a bit shoutout to @Thenomain. He's one of the people we are taking for granted and whose efforts have really made a huge difference. He's coded his heart out so many times and we - collectively - haven't given him his due until we've actually needed someone to make sure we have a game to play on, who would spend countless hours making it even possible to do so.

Thanks, nerds.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

I have heard (and seen first hand) some cases of the argument being made that a character has been rendered unplayable because an element the player demands be made available to them is not available. More or less, I've seen this leveraged as an argument for the people that do this to ultimately get their way.

I don't think it's unreasonable to want to play something specific, not in terms of goals but roles; for instance you might want to play Q as a Wolfblooded character for a Werewolf pack. That's what you rolled for, the reason you bought the skills you did, the idea of a character you had in mind - it's not about winning or losing, it's about the concept itself.

If something happens which makes the role unreachable - say, you're playing that pack's Alpha and you claim IC only full Uratha can handle gear - I might feel justified to page you and try and see if that's negotiable.

... Unless I know you OOC I probably won't say anything, but bear with me.

In contacting you it wouldn't be about pressure or guilt-tripping - perhaps you didn't think it through, or didn't consider the ramifications for my character. Or we can come up with a cool subplot where my PC tries to earn enough respect to be included anyway. Or at least you won't hear six months down the line that some arbitrary thing you said cost your pack a member but you had no idea anything was at stake. Wolfblooded what? Someone wanted to play what? You had no idea!

Yes, people can use all sorts of arguments to get what they want in games. But it's not necessarily the case. Some amount of OOC communication can lead to useful compromises, and the absence of it can do a lot of harm for no reason at all.

@Warma-Sheen said in Where's your RP at?:

Character death by bad die roll. I've never seen that happen.

I remember on Eldritch when @Coin rolled some ridiculous amount of successes on a roll and killed a PC. She wasn't upset by it, it was just a bit impressive - a classic case of ST-dice. It doesn't always catch headlines because someone wants drama, it can be something like... you just rolled 12 successes in 9 dice, and you just want to tell people.

Sure, everyone has their own idea and preferences for story, but I don't understand how anyone can come onto a medium with this many other contributors and still expect to have full control over everything that happens to their character. I know that mindset exists. I'm not putting it down. All I'm saying is that I can't understand it.

To give you a smaller scale example here. In nWoD 1.0 when two vampires meet for the first time they need to roll for composure, and if that fails you go into frenzy. I hated that fucking roll; it just derailed scenes, especially with newcomers (who by definition were the most defenseless - "hey, welcome to the spheARGHDIEMOTHERFUCKER") but it was also repetitive to boot. The first time you had to constrain someone until they calmed their shit down was okay, but over months and even years it got really tiresome. So I, and others, handwaved the hell out of it.

Control doesn't need to be absolute, it's not all or nothing. But sometimes I want to play a certain type of scene and I'd rather it didn't turn into something completely different because one roll went the wrong way if that diversion doesn't generate interesting roleplay.

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

I hope the person that takes over Victus plays the character in the same manner. He was such a great character. There is only one individual I would absolutely detest seeing play him. And I would leave my character over it but I doubt staff makes that decision! So I think it's going to be all gravy with whomever takes the bit.

Whether Victus is taken by a new player or he remains unplayed can have a ripple effect. For instance if that player chooses to go with a different direction that can have a significant impact on characters in Thrax, its vassal Houses and those outside of its sphere of influence.

I'm trying to distance myself from this. It left a bad taste in my mouth, which isn't fun to begin with, but also if that actually affects how I play my character then I'd be no better than the people I criticize.

@lordbelh said in Where's your RP at?:

B) Those special big moment scenes in which everything is on the line, and you're choosing (and there should always be an option not to choose, but with a cost to that as well) to risk everything. And more, if you fail in your endeavor and you lose your character's life, Staff still ensures it had impact and meaning. I'll give an example:

A sidenote, but death should be shorthand for "major negative changes to a character". It can be that the PC croaks but things like amputation, exile, basically anything that's permanent enough and dramatically alters how the PC can be played for the worse. A spellcaster who can't cast spells any more probably counts for instance.

@Misadventure said in Where's your RP at?:

For a player who does not really need dice or "consequences" etc, does it affect your enjoyment to see players living in a bubble significantly different from what you expected? From what staff expected? If so, how would you communicate more strongly what is expected? How would you make the core "what you do in this setting" more engaging, producing more variety of player actions and stories?"

Absolutely.

For starters not needing dice is not the same thing as not needing consequences; the idea of consent-based games is that you trust your fellow players to convey their characters' actions as well as their consequences.

But glorified sandbox games don't work well. At least not in an autopilot, which we've seen by several WoD MU* which launched in the past few years and quickly became inert wastelands with bubbles of activity behind closed doors here and there. They promote (perhaps even require) cliques and isolate newcomers; worse, they place the burden (again, perhaps even the blame) on players for it; what do you mean you can't find any roleplay? Why, I and my four friends are having a blast!

Games which reward being extroverted and are made from scratch to be inclusive work much better.