Posts made by Arkandel

I don't think population is that important. It's other factors which make horror very hard to pull off.

One of the major factors, also, is that in many ways being able to pull off true darkness is playing off of helplessness or of the great unknown. That's very difficult to do when your character has a bunch of powers on a +sheet which are specifically geared either at making them able to help or know things.

This isn't metagaming but actually roleplaying. If my Mage is a triple Arcana Master or an Elder with vast resources at his disposal then getting him cowed is hard - he wouldn't be where he is if he was easily cowed, and now he has answers; maybe they won't fix whatever is eating his soul but being able to throw a fireball at the bogeyman makes it a little easier than say, a Stephen King novel typical ten year old boy who witnesses the supernatural and not only does he have no tools to fight back, no adult will even believe him.

Add to that some practical considerations. For instance the fact STs sometimes don't know a lot about characters in their plots, or the tendency many people have on MU* to let their characters be extensions of their egos and mistrust STs who take liberties with them and it's not exactly hard to see why this isn't pulled off more frequently.

@Misadventure said:

Most of the supernatural is treated as superpowers now.

Yeah, +1 on that. Superheroes with fangs is the norm.

"Horror" of any kind is very tricky to get right on MU. This has very little to do with staff though, other than through their effect on how the game's culture is formed.

Basically 'dark' plots work when timing meets opportunity, same as most good things. You need a good, creative Storyteller who'll do more than throw gross poses at players, and you need players who're adept at and willing to take those poses and let their characters feel the full impact of the nasty world they're inhabiting - then be able to convey it back.

It's a tall order. It's also made even harder by the fact some players don't like portraying vulnerability of any kind (so they'll pose looking analytically at these horrors, whatevs) but also because some characters are - for some reason that's beyond me - designed to not give two shits about anything. So if you're playing the ultra-cynical seen-it-all 150 year old vampiric Lord with Composure 5 (7 with full buffs) good luck setting the right mood.

Does it all mean it's hard to pull off dark story rather than torture pr0n? Why yes, yes it does.

As I threatened, there's now a D3 Community called "MSB". Join at your own peril (if you're in your own lame Clan and don't want to join our loser one).

I find I like classes based on the time frame in question since the game's direction changes as new item sets are introduced.

For instance I hated Crusaders when the most successful playstyle was based on the Stampede build (where basically you... throw... horses at enemies? what the hell?) but the new Seeker set re-introduced Hammerdin again and that's a ton of fun. Or Barbarian of course - charge into an army of Demons with a huge two-handed hammer and lay down the law.

If by the way anyone's interested but already in a Clan they can't part with we can also have an MSB in-game Community. Just let me know - anything's better than grinding away in silence if we can chat while we're at it.

I made an MSB Clan (name: "MU Soapbox"), for better or for worse. Join it directly if you dare, or poke Arkandel#2399 and I'll invite you.

I'm pretty sure Clans are a feature of core D3 although I can't swear on it. But RoS is so good.

As an investment, D3 is an amazing one for its returns over time.

@Pyrephox said:
None of which will stop someone who isn't playing in good faith from abusing the system.

No system can fix people who intend to abuse it, it's the combined role of administration and other players to keep such checks and balances.

What systems can aim for is to not encourage - or even force - players to do so by getting in the way of playing the game.

Man, best money ever spent for what it gives you. They keep updating it years later and it's awesome. Fantastic multiplayer, too.

We should have an MSB clan!

Left to my own devices I'll spam other threads about D3 so the madness might as well be contained (plus whenever @HelloRaptor graces us with his presence again he'll want to see this ).

Double bounty caches this weekend! Let the demon-slaying commence!

@Coin I'm on a different boat than @Miss-Demeanor although we're headed in the same general direction. When it comes to social rolls my problem is that what gets rolled sometimes doesn't match what's posed.

For example a manipulation roll followed by saying something dumb and transparent - it's harder to go with it than say, someone who rolls brawl then poses a crappy one line about tossing a punch.

You can only screw up physical actions so much, you know? But some of the vampires playing politics I've seen... man, all those aeons of unlife and you didn't pick up any subtlety?

@Coin An issue with that is that in MU* there tend to be too many people whose status and/or appearance is special. When everyone you meet has Striking Looks, or Resources 5, or Status 3+ in games which allow it to be simply bought then such traits are cheapened universally.

I mean I want to play these things out but if my character is surrounded by revered wealthy supermodels eventually he gets over it. You can't be in awe all the time.

How about this: consider XP to represent a character's ceiling, their potential. Then time is the delimiting factor (as is on Eldritch); you can only go spend so much of it if raises are delay-locked. Characters with very few XP left to spend are simply those who are working very hard on realizing that potential.

So let' say I made a character today with the current system on Eldritch and he was given say, 40 XP on the spot, I wouldn't be able to custom tailor a sheet - sure, I could afford to buy a dot over what Obfuscate is allowed in CGen but not the one after that. I'd still be able to spread it out and be a jack of all trades but that's the opposite of min/maxing.

@Derp said:

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

It's very simple - let's say we're 30 weeks into the game. All approved characters have been given 30 'automatic' XP. That's the baseline.

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

So, using the same example as above, let's say you've accumulated 30 Beats on your characters through activity. You now also have 15 Paragon Beats which your alts may spend (each alt gets 15 Beats).

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

The idea is to promote activity but gradually raise the overall tone of the game. The design so far only includes the barebones of the system just to make it easy to discuss - you'd need to still have sanity checks in place such as diminishing returns and activity requirements to be eligible for automatic XP, spending delays and so on.

@Groth said:

Disregarding my objections to the goal of your system. I think it's worthwhile to question your premise.

Of course it is. Unchallenged systems are weak, thanks for the input.

What is the reason that you want to lower the gap between new players and dinosaurs?

Take HM for example as a (rather extreme at that) case. On HM there were zero catch-up mechanisms, and the game had been running for a long time, but XP was flowing in rather slowly for most people at least compared to later standards. That meant, on a nWoD 1.0 system, there were players with hundreds of XP spent dealing with characters playing for weeks or even months who weren't even breaking into triple digits yet; the disparity was enormous, and as long as everyone was at roughly the same activity level newer characters couldn't even hope to start closing the gap.

It created a deep divide in the VampSphere whose politics were contaminated by this extreme; while some people want to play the underdog relatively fewer seemed to want to never be actual contenders in power struggles. To make matters much worse, oldbies started risking their characters less and less - after all all that time investment could be wiped clean if dice fell particularly bad against them. I had players actually page to tell me they wanted to but couldn't come to PrPs if there was risk because they hated the idea of starting from nearly nothing.

What I want to do here is encourage activity (so newbies and oldbies aren't equalized, and not certainly not indiscriminately) but giving new characters a fair chance to catch up while allowing alts to be fairly good at whatever they'll do in order to perhaps see inactive spheres resurge somewhat easier.

@Groth said:

It's possible to be popular despite having various shitty features. I've almost never heard anyone say anything positive about TR or Fallcoast other then the fact they're almost the only place on the internet to play nWoD Geist/Changeling/Mage/Changing Breeds etc. The fact TR/FC remains the largest non-sex MU* on record after wiping everyone's XP seems to support that the XP was in no way the killer feature.
Now if you honestly believe that XP is a killer feature, why not just start everyone at 500xp and stop pretending you care about character progression? Ask yourself, why are you doing the 1xp per week at all? What purpose does it serve?

For starters, once again: There is no 'killer feature'. There are no silver bullets, no shortcuts to get everything working out great if only <X> is implemented. Nearly anything done for a game (one could argue for management in general) is a tradeoff; you take something away trying to maximize the gains from it. As for TR, there are certainly many positive things one could say about it; many of us here have worked rather hard for that game.

Now, I already stated why the XP income in the system I suggested would be in place; it's there to provide a steady source of income to casual players who can't be present for plots, offer the opportunity for newcomers to not be too hopelessly far back from existent players, but at the same time allow the latter to still be ahead as long as they are active.

Conversely that's the reason we wouldn't start everyone at such a high place in the XP curve to begin with - it would be taking the carrot of advancement away altogether. Considering GMC for instance given there are 52 weeks in a year, it seems like a reasonable amount to offer universally to players; enough to buy some things but not all the things. In the very long term inflation will still ultimately mean the baseline XP would be high, so it's likely diminishing returns would have to kick in after that first year.

@Groth said:

I'm willing to bet significant amounts of money that the end result of your system in action is a game full of semi-inactive powerful alts entrenched in all spheres because there exists absolutely no reason to not do that. It'll create a game that looks big but is almost impossible to get actual scenes in.

It'll also lead to even more insular cliquishness as there's no need to go outside of your friendcircle for anything, since at any time you need any particular skillset, you or your friends can just create a new powerful alt with whatever you need.

You can't resurrect an inactive sphere by making incentives for people to reroll alts into it. You resurrect a sphere by having it run by someone that's active, passionate and able to make the players inside the sphere genuinely excited about what's going on. No amount of XP rewards is going to help there and the kind of player that joins a sphere just because they can join that sphere as someone powerful, is not the kind of person you want joining that sphere in the first place.

There is no real one reason for which spheres are or are not active. It's a combination of factors and, as such, there is no silver bullet that I've seen to cause one to improve; you are quite correct in that it takes good/active staff (but the same could be said about anything) yet it also requires timing for some flagship characters to roll into your sphere and pull others into their orbit, Storytellers who will run things thematically interesting, actual players willing to roll into it (which is the part this system is trying to address), etc.

I think it's worthwhile to remember the reason we have XP systems in the first place. The reason that most games start you off at lvl 1 and let you progress instead of giving you everything you could ever want. That reason is because it's the progression that most people find exciting, that journey of going from nothing and rising to power.

I'd be very interested to hear how you reconcile the statement with the fact games which offer high XP right out of the gate - such as TR - are so very popular.

For starters because some people like playing alts. And there's no reason for a barrier to that which mandates they need to start off as complete scrubs; this system would encourage players to reroll into inactive spheres for instance.

But the other reason is that systemic stagnation in spheres, many times, comes from characters who are entrenched but inactive; that is, a PC rises and their player might not be excited about them afterwards (which I've seen many times) but doesn't want to start over either and at the same time is quite more powerful than newcomers. The system closes the gap considerably and at the same time encourages anyone interested in rerolling to do so.

Or that's the theory.

Following some chats with @Misadventure, how about something like this:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.
• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

I believe the above should result in a non-staggered system where dinosaurs are ahead of the curve but within reach of newer characters, where activity is rewarded but casual players are still given enough to advance, where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly, and where socialization and plot participation is incentivized.

Thoughts?

Let's take a look at a few things:

• You want players who've been contributing to the game, running plot and being active to have something to show for their achievements. Also if players have to earn things they will value them more.

• You want newcomers to feel like they can catch up to the oldbies else the game becomes owned by entrenched dinosaurs. This reduces the potential for fresh blood and causes game-wide stagnation.

• You want people who have busy lives and can't be on for every minute or every hour of every day to not be terribly outpaced by those who can. After all most games' cores are made of casual gamers.

• You want players to like and continue playing by dangling the carrot of advancement, roleplaying games' oldest trope, in front of them. There must also be ways to incentitivize wanted behaviors like PrP running.

I could go on.

See, all of those things are noble and completely reasonable things to want. They are also, to a degree or other, mutually exclusive; compromises may be found between some of them but they can't all be achieved at the same time. The proof for that is that it hasn't happened yet after several decades of people designing XP systems.