Posts made by Arkandel

@Coin said in Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition:

Ew, Generation.

I love Generation. It's one of my favorite things about V:tR thematically, that age begets power. It sets up the entire chessboard for what's to come.

@Kanye-Qwest I don't think it makes any difference, to be honest. +meetme doesn't invalidate the grid any more than @directions does, which I've used a few times already and can't say I was reading through the rooms' descriptions while I was going to the place people were waiting for me at.

It's a roleplay-finding tool, much more valuable in fact to newbies than it is to oldbies; the latter theoretically know how to get from A to B.

Hey guys, if I paid you a billion internet dollars would you consider adding a +meetme command?

@Coin I thought video games were the best means of sexual protection?

@Kireek said in Arx- Gareth:

C'mon @Arkandel man, I had written out why I was banned- and was accurate... and then... almost as if like clockwork, the standard WORA thing happened.

I'm trying to point out the same people can read the same situation - hell, the same text - and see different things. I won't go into who's right and who's wrong in your case because it literally doesn't matter; if staff in a game doesn't want you there then there's zero reason to stay anyway, ban or not.

But for example in one of your first posts you disagreed with... I think @Caryatid because you thought she was incorrect as you 'had the log in front of you'. That's not enough, as we are often very blind to our own shortcomings - it happens to all of us (other than @Tinuviel ) and don't realize we fucked up, especially if ego gets in the way a bit ('who are THEY to kick ME out? I'm a good person'). That was showcased again later on when you were debating the difference between asking a player for information and telling a player you were very curious about that information, but you couldn't get why that's just barely even semantics at that point.

All I am saying is that, well, you see what happened from your point of view and others from theirs. It's not big deal either way.

@Tinuviel I screw up enough that, on average, we all screw up.

@Kireek said in Arx- Gareth:

@WTFE In my second post.. I stated, I don't deserve sympathy, this thread was more to get into contact with people who might be looking for me. The rest of this thread.. was in fact an exercise in a mixture of trolling/seeing what I could get people to articulate.

I don't know if you considered yourself a victim (which is how you were coming off initially) or a villain (which is what you are trying to convey now) but what you're actually coming off is a cliche.

You know... "Yeah guys, this was all for my personal amusement LOL I'm not even mad". The only way you could have further boosted the cliche levels is if you had also added you didn't even care (but kept posting and replying).

Just let it go, everyone screws up, learn from it and find something fun to do next.

@BetterNow That's actually a good idea. I might steal it.

And again... giving Arx a try.

This thread has gotten weirder, and it started out pretty weird.

On celebrity obituary cartoons. Nice article.

One of my goals, especially on new MU*, is to let players strut their stuff and allow them to grow into their characters; everyone's got that fresh CGen smell on them after all, they're all adjusting, so I figure PrPs are a good way for them to establish themselves. Meet-and-greets in bars and sphere meetings have their place but they're large, loud affairs... whereas trying to avoid being dinner for zombies after they opened the storage locker filled of them they won at that auction makes for a good bonding experience.

So I agree with @saosmash that taking a few liberties isn't the end of the world, but we can at least make it...stylish. For instance, if staff help out a little this step becomes much smoother (@Coin went a step above and handed me a neat Texan Invictus vampire NPC to use once, for example) since then I get to play with established toys, but that only works if I trust them and feel they're involved in the story as collaborators - sometimes staff involvement past the initial approval can be a double edged knife. If it exists though then this entire step becomes much smoother and the plot is better integrated into the game's overall metaplot - it just feels less sandbox-y that way.

Hey folks,

I don't remember if we've had an existing thread for this but even if we did it'd be ancient by now so let's have a fresh one.

I'd like to discuss Storytelling tools, methods and forms to best achieve as many of these goals as possible:

1. Bring a story out to a potentially new or fluid mix of players. We can't assume anyone in the group will know each other IC or OOC, or that it will stay the same between sessions (think '+event' as opposed to 'page <A>, <B>, <C>=Hey guys I already know...').

2. The initial steps don't feel railroaded. People shouldn't feel like the NPCs have yellow question marks over their heads, but still get a decent idea of what to do next.

3. If characters become inactive the story can continue. Important clues will still be available, critical NPCs can still be tracked down and interacted with, etc.

My ongoing difficulties with the above actually start with (2) as striking the right balance between open-endedness and laying a yellow brick road for players to follow without ST hints is tricky. After a PrP series gets momentum that's a non-issue since it feeds itself through characters' own actions and everyone's - including the ST- increasing familiarity with the now-refined plot, but before then I've rarely been satisfied with it unless I was dealing with top-notch, creative players able to sink their teeth right away with minimal prodding.

For the most part (1) can be a thing too - sometimes I personally just give up and employ the ol'NPC-in-the-tavern super cliche to openly hand-feed the initial information. A tool I've used in several different MU* for example is the Narration Company, an IC group of highly competent consultants and contractors who hire local talent (ahem) to do specific jobs; it's sometimes worked pretty well, but maybe you guys have better ideas on how to achieve similar things. Use examples!

Finally, (3) is a practicality anyone on a MU* has to be mindful of; people lose interest, access or just disappear. If one of them has/knows the unique McGuffin the entire story is based on then you might have just gotten screwed; alternatively it's always annoying when the plot is to save the world/city from annihilation from a time-critical villainous plot and the people involved start logging on once a week; what happened? I guess it wasn't that big a threat or? This is actually the most common of my three bullet points (or at least it has been for me) since players are frivolous, and will give a new MU* a try for a few weeks then flake out, so handing the reigns over to a new generation of do-gooders isn't always/easily feasible. How do you deal with it, if you do? This also works against the idea of running customised plots for specific groups or characters.

If you have any thoughts please feel free to share.

Job interview over the phone this morning so I took a few hours off from work to field it from home. The idea was I just needed a quiet environment - good thinking - so I made sure to feed all the animals first, went to the office and shut the door.

My cat woke up in mid-interview and started mewling at me. Then she swatted at my feet while I was trying to answer stupid 'test' technical questions (which I despise, wtf are you asking me Google-able questions, are my memorisation skills critical for some reason? Ask to see my problem solving thinking processes since that's what I'd be doing for you! Anyhow).

I toss her out, she starts digging at the door. I let her in, she runs over to my ankles again. She never does that, she was probably responding to my being nervous, which obviously smacking me helps.

Thanks, cat!

@Kireek Did you by any chance use to play Asklepios@HM? I might be mistaken.

@Apu The other thing I love about Legion is the new mob/object tagging rules - it made things so much smoother. Are you in a world quest and someone is fighting a mob? I can help them and we both get credit without being in the same group. Easy and logical and it works, plus I'm told (but haven't tested it) it works for herb/mining nodes as well, there's a grace period of a few seconds before they disappear for everyone else after someone picks them up.

Ah, but the dungeons... I was laughing my ass off on launch night when my wife, tanking and unused to random groups, was raging about players. "What is he DOING why ...no NO NO, why did you pull that? Argh, he's gonna pull the patrol, WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS".

Also, a zillion Demon Hunters in every group, usually tanking without knowing the class yet (which is justified, it's brand new), which means sometimes I'm bored since the tank practically heals themselves and sometimes I can't stack enough HoTs on them.

@Apu True, but in this case it's permanent. They could have allowed a transfer between the same character's different artifacts, for instance.

It's a design choice though, so... so be it.

@Apu The one thing I don't like so far is that the way artifacts work makes it very tricky to have a well geared second spec let alone alts. Although trivial investments (up to rank 12ish) in the weapon is pretty cheap, doing it any more than has a huge impact on the main spec's progression, and having alts keep up would be a pretty time consuming endeavor.

But that won't keep me from leveling up a paladin at least to see their quests - and I mean, Ashbringer, man!