Posts made by Arkandel

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

What I did on Lost Stars (a private invite-only PennMUSH-based science fiction game ages ago) was a system I called DICE, where you had 100 units of 'time' per week. The system was then made of blocks, that would take an input, operate on it with a function, and then output something.

You could literally set up a block that said, "I have Skill X / Career Y, I will spend 40 units of my time this week making money at that." The input was time, the function was your skill/career, the output was money.

But if you wanted to train a skill up, that also cost time. (As opposed to XP; there was no XP to buy up skills, you just had to spend the time training them. It was level * 150 time, so level 1 of a skill took 150 time units, level 2 took 300, etc.) That was another block you could place in the system. The input was time, the output was progression towards a skill. (Basically, learning a skill had a 'meter' that had to fill.)

I like this. It's straight-forward and gives the player agency to make interesting choices.

How do you treat dinos? What happens to the newcomer six months after the game opens compared to them?

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

Well, the first thing I need is an answer to this question:

0. What does an economic system bring to the table that enhances my fun?

Because that's what any system added to a game needs to do: enhance fun in some way. I've not yet heard a convincing answer to this question. I'm open to the idea that such an answer is possible, however.

So, assume a Vampire or Werewolf game. It doesn't matter which for the purposes of this.

Domain ("our turf") is incredibly important to the theme but on most MU* there isn't really a reason why; holding or protecting territory - or gaining more - doesn't convey any tangible benefits to your character, so the only reason you might do it is because the book says you should.

With an economy you can provide that reason to characters, encouraging politics, exchange of favors (in fact favors themselves can be a currency and thus part of the economy), etc.

Just as an example, as requested.

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

I don't particularly like any alts, but I do not shy away from death if it comes. Like @Sunny, it just matters how death comes. I don't mind if it is a consequence to an action, but I sort of get pissed off if it is solely the result of a poor roll or random.

Two examples I dislike:

• Telenuke. Especially the dreaded +job version; I despise it - especially when it happens between characters who've never interacted. It just takes the whole fun of playing out a nice, dramatic, gritty or whatever else kind of death.
• The ST who thinks it's cool to kill PCs. I remember when I brought my 3-week old Gangrel on HM to this PrP someone ran (for which there was no setup beforehand, it was literally just a 'hey, I wanna run something, come play!') and he threw like 6 NPCs at the 3 us - like dude, that's not a 'hardcore plot'. Any GM can just toss hard mobs at characters, that doesn't make it cooler. It just means you're about to kill my character over nothing.

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

That's my mentality when I consider the issue: is death necessary to add risk to the game?

What I think, and I don't mean it as a jab for people who prefer a different gamestyle than I do, is there are players who don't like playing a PC for long. They keep rolling alts, trying different things, that kind of thing - so to them the idea of a high turnout game isn't just something they wouldn't mind, they'd prefer it because it fits their preferences.

I prefer having the possibility of IC death around, especially to balance high-reward choices - if it enhances risk then yes, it's worth it. If my PC's choice is to go through those orc-infested catacombs for the shiny at the end because, hey, shiny... that's great, since otherwise if survival was assured why wouldn't he get in there? It'd make the choice less interesting. On the other hand though if the whole setting is basically built to make survival basically impossible - as I understand some Call of Cthulhu games are built - that interests me way less, since I like to invest in long-term character growth.

@Faceless said in MU Things I Love:

Then the same person attempts to get experience points out of you, without fulfilling the basic tenant that there be some form of meaningful interaction with you beyond the briefest of glances from across the room. No conversation, no direct interaction, no slow jack and a ball rub, nothing.

Sorry, I can't just extend XP to you without RP. I'm not comfortable with that. Sweet, sweet justice.

I don't even care about XP grabs themselves but they devalue the incentive once they spread out and 'everyone does it'. Then people who don't end up being essentially penalized for it.

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

It's a collection of basically-IRC chat rooms based around ERP. That's all it is. However, there's a significant amount of players who are there to do non-sexual RP.

I don't care about what people do there, but I do wonder if the codebase is up for grabs somewhere. Because that would be very interesting.

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

I love post-apoc, but I wouldn't play on a game where you could lose your character due to fickle dice or staff whim. It's just too much investment to lose in an instant.

Well, technically speaking you could lose your character in almost all games' plots to bad dice rolls. I just don't think many people would play where it's practically expected (or even systematized) that this would happen.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

If the world is post-apoc, it really needs to have actual danger of death, dismemberment, getting your shit jacked, etc. or it just turns into sci-fi L&L.

I can't prove this, but my impression is that games with high turnover rates (i.e. lots of character deaths) don't draw that many players.

And the fewer players you have the less RP opportunities you can get.

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

So plan carefully and do lots of system research if you want to play a Force User. Or anything else, really, since the system seems to demand great attention to detail. Of course, this may take some or all of the fun out of playing a game...

That's what stopped me before. I want to play a Force User and once I get into a system I learn it... but the upfront investment in terms of learning the rules just to make a character, or use what you bought efficiently, was really too much for me.

I don't care about - or for - systems and mechanics that much. It's unclear to me if that's unreasonable or not. It's where I'm at, though.

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

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

staff ethics

What did they do wrong?

I'd really rather not bring it up here. The thread was asking about RP, not drama from specific MU*. Let's keep it focused please?

@Misadventure Oh come on, when did you ever see a tall stack of rulebooks you didn't like?

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

@Arkandel I didn't find it terrible. Just terribly unfamiliar. It largely requires a lot of use of the skills. Make them really important, rather than just the combat, which seems to be its bread and butter focus.

What did it for me was that to really get into it there were like... a dozen different books to reference and the whole thing has been out of print for years.

But to be honest I'm no @Misadventure. I like my mechanics extra light with a side of 101.

@Astrid Arx. For all my disappointment in staff ethics, there is too much roleplay going around and it's easy to tap into.

Alas, SAGA was too much for my delicate sensibilities.

@Misadventure said in Good Comics for People Who Don't Like Comics?:

Why I Hate Saturn.

Well?

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

What's worse? I think FB still considers photos of women breastfeeding to be "sexual nudity."

So, yeah, their standards are kinda fucked.

What offends me a lot is the double standards.

Nudity or harsh language being 'inappropriate' for whatever reason because kids shouldn't see it... I could stomach that. But in the same work (movies and TV shows are usual culprits) they show people getting violently killed, so what gives man? Are tits so much more offensive than killing someone?

I'm a podcast newbie, but I've found I'm getting a taste for it.

What are cool things to listen to? RPG, movies, comedy, give some ideas please.

@Autumn

1. Relevant username
2. Fuck snow.

I've yet to see a game in which non-physical stats were somehow as needed as physical ones. It tends to go completely one way or the other.

If your system has mental/social stats aren't filled with fluff that's at best circumstantial or basically just XP sinks you'd already be ahead. If it was handy to use in actual on-grid RP without a huge cheat sheet it'd be great.

All-Star Superman. You need to know next to nothing if you've already watched any Superman movie. It's a complete story, fully contained, told from beginning to end.