Posts made by Arkandel

Since I was just talking about this, I'm still reading The Vagrant. The writing is compelling but extremely unorthodox - it's all in the present tense with the majority of the dialogue described rather than being explicit.

The theme though is amazing. The world is post-apocalyptic in a setting invaded by demons who are corrupting everything, bringing about mutation and disease as well as their own contentious politics while the old stagnant regime led by the angelic self-righteous Seven is crumbling. The story follows the Vagrant, a Seraph Knight who never says a word but is carrying three things of note; an extremely powerful singing sword, a baby, and a goat.

It got really fun once I got past the writing style since it features very strong themes of corruption versus nobility without beating the reader over the head with them. Essentially it's Mad Max meets *<insert Samurai movie here>" in a backdrop of futuristic fantasy.

Nuance and subtleties are provided by the player, the broad strokes are offered by the setting. Werewolf concepts in 2.0 are extremely fluid - which fits its themes, I guess - but they give you just enough rope to hang yourself with as well; it's very easy to create monolithic one-dimensional beastmen who go around chasing things.

If there was one systemic shift I'd have introduced it's making Harmony actually be more volatile than it currently is, as it'd be fun to play characters who actually move up and down its scale; the mechanics make it so it's fairly improbable, but there would be a fun challenge in playing folks who are closer to their human or spirit ends of the spectrum more often during their lifetime as PCs.

Otherwise though I find the departure from the single-mindedness of playing spirit cop in 1.0 has helped me at least portray a more in-depth character in the end. The thing about Werewolf as a game which hasn't changed in the second edition is how deeply dependent it is on storytelling; unlike say, Vampire or even Changeling where sphere politics can (and I think, should) provide a layer of friction and set of goals between PCs without requiring much more, playing furballs makes way more sense when there are things you are IC struggling to get just outside their grasp; enemies stronger than they are, more elusive prey, secrets they can't understand.

Basically if you want to challenge your hunter, confound them. Then the concept gets to breathe - in my experience.

@Groth Yeah, I agree. What's even more so, it's not intentional. When I first make a PC I don't have a good handle on him - and making the background fuller can be a burden as much as an aide in figuring him out.

Most of the stuff I don't roleplay about on the grid tend to be made up after I have a grip on them. For instance after watching Whiplash it occurred to me it'd be awesome if my wolf had someone like that pushing him endlessly past the point of sanity, and he already had a Mentor stat'ed on his sheet, so I checked with staff and changed that relationship. That simple change has given me a great deal of leeway in adding depth to the character, but there's no real way I could have made the adjustment in the original background since I didn't know yet what made him tick enough to allow for such nuances.

In other words what I'm arguing is that overall games should be flexible after CGen not demanding during it. Just make sure people aren't playing something too weird for them and trust players to do what works for them.

Well,

1. Someone has got to make a plot about the massive new finding which someone already dubbed "archaeology on steroids".

2. We're full and don't have room for more henges, archaeologists claim.

@ThatGuyThere said:

@Arkandel
I can defiantly see not wanting to do a bg but to me it is an important part of the character as the numbers.

You are possibly either misunderstanding or using a strawman argument there. No one at all suggested to not have a background. Obviously you need one (as stated earlier in the thread) for sanity checks and so staff have some idea of what you're aiming to play. Just because it's not two pages long it doesn't mean it doesn't go over the basics and explain where the character is coming from.

I say this while routinely writing 2+ page backgrounds for each of my characters. Just because something is worth it to me doesn't make it a universal value which ought to be enforced.

@ThatGuyThere said:

I am one of those with no problem writing backgrounds i think giving the character a cohesive backstory helps me get into character for the first couple of scenes.

Sure, that's fine. The difference is between these two states:

1. Detailed backgrounds are not necessary. People like you can write one for their own use and others like @Misadventure can grunt their way out of it.

2. Detailed backgrounds are necessary. People like you can still write one for their own use and others like @Misadventure have to fake it, or just walk away.

You may notice (2) doesn't really convey any significant advantages. Just because someone is forced to write about their childhood favorite pet turtle, unless they are actually feeling it, it won't add anything to their character than a kbyte or so of useless text on the application. As the same time nothing is taken away from someone who actually feels like writing more in either case.

The same principle can be applied for the justification of just about anything anyone ever used on a MU*.

I think there are at least two factors at play here.

1. We all get different things out of the same mechanisms but when some folks staff they expect everyone to do things the same way they are. So for example some players (myself included) can get insights about a character from justifying XP expenditures, since one can use the opportunity to think just what "Animal Handling 2" means instead of it being just a dot on a sheet. It's when the practice is institutionalized that it becomes a problem ("*everyone has to justify all the things! it's for your own good!") as if it's unthinkable leaving it voluntary could serve the former without burdening everyone.

2. As I said, habit. A new MU* runner has seen BGs be used in the last 3 games they played so they honor the tradition.

The same principle applies to all sorts of hoop-jumping, inflicting a practice on everyone because it's served some.

@Groth said:

I've never understood the demand for background stories. Most players don't enjoy writing them, most Staff don't enjoy reading them and at the end of the day, poses are written in a very different style from short stories so they're not a great indicator on the quality of RP. All the relevant information can be handled through a Q/A format that's less painful for both players and staff.

The only purpose BG stories ought to serve is act as sanity checks. No, your PC isn't the former Prince of Washington, D.C. and no, she's not a former wolfblood caught and taken to Arcadia then Embraced when she escaped.

Otherwise I see no reason most background stories should be more than say, 2-3 paragraphs long tops, just giving out some basic facts about the character. Anything else is usually only done because it's been the way that's done and we're creatures of habit.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

There are no dishes in the dishwasher. So.

Fuck the fuck are there dishes in the goddamned sink?

They crawled out It happens all the time.

Arrogance. I love it.

"Nah, I can handle deadlifts after months of not lifting, I've been cycling a lot! That's kinda the same thing, right?"

Ahahah. No. Now my legs are stumps at the end of my torso filled with pain and aching in equal measure.

Thanks reality.

I hope that GIF isn't real, it made me angry.

@EmmahSue said:

I'm not sure what you mean by 'use their antagonists'.

I meant True Fae, BSD, Baali, etc.

Can we use them as NPCs in our stories? More importantly, can we use their antagonists in stories?

Any way we can have it not auto-scroll down to the latest post if one is made while reading something else in the same thread?

@Coin said:

You need a spellchecker badly.

A spell checker (which I do have) wouldn't help with typos like Beast/Beats. I don't always proof-check my posts when I'm at work (i.e. 99% if I'm posting on MSB ) which lead to those mishaps. Sorry!

Wow, that's a crazy amount of work!

Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced. Spread out the task of looking at Beast - anonymously - through the populace maybe. Better to have a few more Beast given out when they shouldn't than need so much manpower just to keep up with a never-exhausted pool of requests.

@kls said:

It's not that staff was discouraged from playing in their own game; it's that staff was discouraged from playing a power game:

• 4.2. Storytellers may have a single PC, who are subject to all of the disadvantages of Political play and eligible for none of the advantages. They may not act as a judge in any circumstance in which there is a conflict of interest (CoI). If unsure, the storyteller will divulge the possible CoI and ask all participants in the scene whether there are any objections. If anyone objects a different judge will be found.

I assume "Storytellers" in this case only refers to staff, otherwise it was even more draconic than I thought. But even as written that's pretty drastic; while taking yourself out of CoI situations when it comes to doing work as staff is perfectly reasonable, the policy above (well, the entire policy, I only quoted part of it) seems too drastic.

It's already hard enough to get good people without expecting those good people to be able and participate in the game fully. No one wants staff alts to be given unfair advantages but I see no compelling argument against being handed out unfair disadvantages - and in fact one good reason not to; they won't want to do the job a MU* requires someone to be doing. As (presumably) was the case here where the game eventually ran out of steam.

@Tempest said:

So the question is, what fucked up stuff was staff/the playerbase doing that made Shav go 'fuck ya'll, game is over'? She seemed to explicitly point towards being tired of player/other staff demands.

The way I read it, she ran out of resources and couldn't run the game the way she felt it should be run without them. And being in that situation isn't shocking if staff was discouraged/kept from playing in their own game as someone mentioned (no idea if it's true or not) as that's pretty draconic. Other interpersonal issues and a general lack of competent people willing to staff probably played into it too either way.

Custom powers in general aren't traditionally well received in most nWoD games. I don't know why for sure, since as long as they're universally available they can't be a balance issue between PCs, and they can always be tweaked later on if they prove to be too much.

Far be it for me to propose that on another game, though, right? Because who the fuck listens to me, unless it's several years down the road?

1. You're too mean to let not being listened to get in the way of proposing things.

2. Although I agree if brute force is the determinant factor in Vampire it's being played wrong, in my experience striking a good balance between subtlety, partisanship, physical prowess and general backstabbing right comes from chemistry between all major participants rather than the system being employed. I.e. you can implement the exact same ruleset in two different games and get completely different results based on the administration (how they handle different personalities, what they're prepared to tolerate/encourage, etc), players (are you getting flagship proactive leaders playing different factions, what's the general activity level between factions, etc) and of course if Storytelling creates the right momentum when the game needs it.

Many of those things are largely out of staff's hands and are a bitch to plan for.