Posts made by Arkandel

@Sunny said in We Need a Game Set In the Roman Empire.:

@Seraphim73

Never even heard of the property before now, but at first glance that looks like it could be a lot of fun. You totally should do it. Totally. I think you'd find there was more interest than it sounds like you think. ^^

I remember this guy, whatever username Asklepios@HM used here, who was really into running a "World of Darkness in SPACE" thing. He went with a friend and and did it, they had space stations and ships code ready, all that stuff... then they opened a beta to find even staff for spheres and no one offered. It had to be shut down.

It's just a shitload of work, unfortunately, for something that might not pan out. I love people who take the risk, though.

@Seraphim73 said in We Need a Game Set In the Roman Empire.:

I've actually been working on a game system for Alera on and off for a couple of years. @Avarice coded up the basic levels of dice rolling, @GirlCalledBlu built a small grid... but there never seemed to be much interest from the folks we talked to.

Generating word of mouth on a non-standard kind of MU* is really, really hard. That's why we see a dozen WoD variations before one Arx.

Why Logan Worked So Much Better Than The Wolverine, According To The Writer.

The quote in question (spoilers free):

"We didn't have to connect it to any larger 'universe.' Or as Jim keeps saying, 'we didn't have to sell Happy Meals.' And so that was great. Whereas, the last one, my favorite part is where he's in the middle of rural Japan and with this woman and being a human being and feeling what it's like to be a human being. But we're not there very long before we're back to giant robots and stuff. And then it becomes just another superhero movie with a lot of CG stuff. And we were trying to avoid that this time around and the studio had changed studio heads and they were very much into the idea of trying something new, because otherwise what's the point? The only way these movies have value is if they become about something else. They can't all about saving the world."

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

@Arkandel

He also played Tobias on Haunted Memories, where a lot of people enjoyed his RP, and Ouroboros over at Fallen World.

I understand that his hospitalization was a suddden illness last week. His contributions to this hobby were varied and he will be missed.

That's really sad. I did know Tobias, we played on HM many times.

@Julia-Cornelia Oh! Oh, I'm sorry - I didn't realize you were trolling me. For a moment I thought you were trying to make a point.

Carry on.

@Julia-Cornelia said in Roleplaying writing styles:

I'm gonna assume meth-fueled rants unless you indicate otherwise.

I can't stop you! But what are you referring to?

I don't know where else to put this, but it was on a MU* Facebook group I'm subscribed to today, so perhaps some of you might want to know. I'll paste the post as-is:

To those who knew him, I have received word that Jerusalem's player (from The Reach) has passed away unexpectedly and suddenly yesterday.

I don't know anything further at this time, but if people happen to be looking for him, he has left us.

@Misadventure That reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote about a neighborhood in Ankh Morpork which had such a bad reputation 'not even criminals went there'.

@Ganymede The Fate guy would ruin it. "hey, lookie that, another natural 20... huh, what do you know."

@Thenomain said in Logging your activity:

@ixokai

I think you missed the point, so let me try again: I'm not against things evolving or changing, but I don't see any personal benefit to logging everything, or much of anything. In my use, the game is just as good with or without it.

There's a flipside to this though.

So as @lordbelh mentioned XP is a powerful motivator and we end up doing small things to earn it while chasing that ol' carrot. Logging itself aside, in various games in the past when I was given the chance to do small chores to gain a little more I found myself doing them; for instance on The Reach you could write justifications for your spends for a small discount, on Kushiel's Debut you could write a weekly synopsis of 'things you did' that gained you a bit extra, and on Arx there are journals you can write for about the same effect.

Without the incentive I don't do any of those; for instance not's not like I wrote a couple of paragraphs about raising Dodge on Arx just for my own use, right? But when I had done the same thing on TR I found it helped my roleplay - I gained perspective on my character's downtime, the reasons he found himself needing the edge, the things he did to practice, etc. Similarly on KD it offered me the opportunity to reflect back a bit and check out my overall direction - was I just doing generic bar scenes or was there a purpose to my character's dealings? Or even if there wasn't, could I extract an emerging pattern from it, something developed organically that I could use to leverage future RP?

Perhaps the same could be applied to other things - like logging. For instance, although I never read them myself after they're posted, maybe they can be used as a reference guide for the game's ongoing history as written by its players. For all I know there are people here who read other people's scenes for fun or even IC profit (if roleplay is on public record then by perusing it like that you can nitpick details to use for your PCs, the same way we look over Donald Trump's tweets iRL).

Or maybe they're just a waste, dunno. All I'm saying is, someone out there may find use for these little hoops we get to jump.

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Why fanfic and not... just... writing a story?

Because I was trying to be derogatory about it!

This becomes super fucking annoyingly difficult when people are so worried about supposed "conflict of interest" and other bullshit and set up rules that don't let you have your own character in scenes you run, or come up with super defined ways an NPC can be used, limiting the stories you can tell and otherwise making what you say should be a blurry line into something very definitive.

This is a symptom of lack of trust. Sometimes it's by staff toward the players ("no, I can't possibly release my precious NPCs to those Storytellers who might actually do something with them while I'm busy drowning in soul-crushing workload"), sometimes it's the attitude of players toward their peers ("you're going to use this to advance your nefarious agenda and get Sheriff for yourself, you plot-running asshole"), and I've even seen it be self-inflicted as well ("I've a crime alt, there are criminals in this plot, this is a conflict! sorry guys, I have to step out... it's for the common good").

I am not saying there aren't things coordination will make better - thematic consistency is a big one for example. But a little bit of handwaving can still allow for a lot of plot to be thrown at the starving masses, if they just allow themselves to be entertained.

@NightAngel12 said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Miss-Demeanor I have seen this happen many times when playing tabletop, and it isn't just dickish GM's either. A lot of storytellers tend not to take into consideration all possible avenues of exploration, so what ends up happening is that when clever players try to follow a thread... the GM panics and smacks them for not paying attention to this other thing they /have/ thought through.

Trying to preemptively think of all possible avenues a plot can take is an exercise in futility - if your players are worth a damn they'll come up with things you haven't thought of. That's basically the point of collaborative storytelling, else you might as well be writing fanfic.

Storytelling isn't something different than roleplaying... it's an extension of it. Ideally the lines between the two should be blurry. All you are really doing is extend the scope of the environment under your creative control and shaping it to tell a cohesive story. Punishment doesn't enter the conversation.

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

This is why rolls exist in situations like those. Noticing that the newspaper is out of place requires a roll. You succeeded, so the ST pages you, "dude, that newspaper is way out of place". STs that don't do this are dicks.

One exception: I don't do 'inception' rolls.

For instance in my last PrP a player specifically told me he was observing something and rolled on it; I gave him a pretty detailed description along with (what was supposed to be) a glaring hint about a story element there. He even specifically mentioned that story element afterwards but drew the wrong conclusion. I didn't give him a second roll on that - because I think when it's revealed later on it'll be a nice forehead-slapping moment.

Or I'm being a dick, dunno.

In order of more to less important:

• If I'm in a game where I need to log as 'evidence' in case something goes wrong during bouts of drama I'm outta there. No questions asked. I'll never 'log everything just in case'.

• I semi-frequently log scenes especially if they're PrPs that need to be posted... or at least guilt someone else into doing it for me. ("I run the PrP, you guys post it up!")

• I almost never reboot my PC so there's usually weeks of backscroll to wade through if I feel like it. While not exactly logging per se, it serves the same purpose.

• Now and then I paste weird or interesting things to friends... which thanks to Google/Skype's infinite memory means they are logged in a roundabout way. I've found stuff that happened years ago there.

• From the flip side I'd accept logs as evidence but if there's any doubt from a side about their validity then... probably wouldn't count it for much given how easy it is to fake. Having said that I don't even remember the last time someone seriously expressed the view a log was doctored.

@ThatGuyThere said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@EMDA said in Roleplaying writing styles:

B) Carl approaches Rick, sidling around to stand between the other man and the nearest exit. Crossing his arms, he asks, "Where were you on the night Christy was murdered?"

I'd want to play with the Carl in B way more than the Carl in A.

While I somewhat agree on your point on pose style, in a scene I would have huge issues with pose B. The reason for this is the assumed success that impacts what my character can do, by getting between Rick and the exit. To me this is power posing, granted not a horrible example of it but still unless you are dropping dice on the athletics roll pose the attempt let the other PC pose weather it succeeds or not.

Yeah, "closing" poses is one of the big no-nos of RP. Unless some accidentally there's never a good justification for it - and while I understand it's a pain in the ass to write in conditionals ("Bob attempts to stop Jane. If he's successful he'll try to put a hand on her shoulder if she lets him, else...") it still doesn't make it right.

The correct etiquette is to ask OOC, negotiate the sequence real quick and then get back into posing. Or at the worst case scenario, roll for it.

Trump: 'Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated'

@Ghost said in Roleplaying writing styles:

• I am not my character
• You are not affecting me
• My character's actions, beliefs, or opinions do not reflect my own
• (and, most importantly) There is a line made of tape that separates myself from you.

All of those things are true. I must however warn against needlessly generalizing about what it means to cross those lines.

You do get to have peeves. If second-person posing is one of them more power to you. I'll happily go out of my way to avoid triggering it.

You don't get to be right about it. I've used 'you' in poses in the past yet I have a better-than-average grasp on the difference between IC and OOC.

As long as people don't try to trash the current game or actively try to advertise/convince people to leave and go to theirs (through pages, using general public channels, etc) it should be fine.

Anyone starting on Torment: Tides of Numenera?