Posts made by Arkandel

Sometimes spheres don't seem to get it going. At times Geist had been active but not involved, the same way that on assorted games different spheres never took off but did elseMU*, obviously using the same theme, mechanics etc.

It just happens.

@Coin said:

So I really dislike the whole "no IC masquerade".

You're going off a lot by what you dislike. What I'm trying to say is there's a non-zero chance other people like what you dislike.

And what I proposed above does nothing to change what you like, since what I propose is more a philosophical approach to sub-dividing PCs within culture, not a hierarchical set of organizations.

The issue there is that there's no definitive view of just what a Sin-Eater is or does within the game's themes. There's no one history (like Werewolves have, for instance) passed down for generations verifiable by objective third party sources. Geists themselves are notoriously unstable, ghosts are often damaged and terribly biased, Krewes contradict each other as much as not and generally Sin-Eaters are allowed - in a way, forced - to make do with what they have.

Which isn't to say you can't do that, of course, any more than you can't do any sorts of things with any given game. Personally I like this aspect of how it's set up.

@tragedyjones said:

@Arkandel I am pretty sure it means that, if there is a level of freedom or power granted to Staff Plot Runners, if they avail themselves of that, they do not get a perk and if they run a plot with all the possible hurdles of a player, they do.

I'm arguing under the assumption that most games allow for a whole lot of flexibility and 'freedom' for players. I.e. unless they break that paradigm and go back to restricting PrPs considerably more than has been the norm in the last few years, I don't really see a big difference between what staff is allowed to run and what players are. So that perk would be minimal at best.

@Coin said:

I'd probably also fucking do away with this "no real society" bullshit. It's annoying as fuck and uncohesive, and while it probably works okay in tabletop, it makes MUs a pain in the ass. I would keep the societies philosophical in nature and with plenty of room for interpretation, and try to allow for them to be able to intersect within a Krewe, while leaving the Krewes to make their own Mythos just as much as they can in Geist 1e.

Frankly, this is one of the things that drew me to Geist in the first place. None of that hierarchical crap that poisons MU* communities by drawing a certain type of player to them; the lack of internal cohesion makes Sin-Eaters the nWoD chameleons; they fit literally anywhere they see fit, with no internal Masquerade, no burdening overreaching metaplot to haunt (heh!) them. Instead they are each free to do as they will and find common themes within individual Krewes if they so desire it.

While I agree with some of your points on mechanics I much like this one as-is for the game itself.

@Sunny said:

Staff will not gain experience for their characters from running plots on the staff level

Care to explain what that means (and what the reasoning behind the decision was) ?

Why would I, as a player, gain XP from running a plot but BobStaffer who runs the plot isn't eligible? What happens when a staff member runs plot as their character? Etc.

@Coin Care to elaborate on what you'd have changed?

@HelloRaptor said:

Since he was using a comedian as a reference, @Arkandel, I don't think that part was meant to be taken seriously. Hopefully. Even Denis Leary doesn't think that's true.

I thought we were allowed to take humorous comments seriously and bash them this week.

You can't change the rules on me like that.

I may be biased because of my own exposure but the more well known a system is, the easier you make it on people to come and start playing without learning new stuff, the more players you can get.

Am I saying having 'more players' is a good thing 100% of the time? No. But I am saying having too few players is a bad thing 100% of the time.

Use WoD, D&D, Pathfinder... something big and well known. Then promote among those who'd know it.

@Coin said:

@Sandor said:

Something new and creative. I don't want to see some generic "here's our le game! Submit your apps for our rubber stamping!" Show me something creative. Some new twist on the structure of the game. Something... I haven't seen already a thousand times.

That's so specific and clear! Especially since creativity isn't subjective at all. Now everyone wanting to make a game will know exactly what to do! Thanks!

On top of that, many attempts to make something radical fail. There was a nWoD-in-space game someone was preparing a few months ago and tried to promote on WORA (I don't think MSB existed yet) which had gotten a bit of development in it, a grid, and it failed to launch due to lack of interest.

Sure, vampires in spaceships was a brand new concept - it turns out people wanted their north american metropolis by night more.

@Shebakoby said:

I had a relative that smoked like a chimney. He died at age 38 (heart attack). I had another relative that smoked like a chimney. Died at age 65 (cause unknown, thought to be stroke.). Then there's other smokers that live to nearly 100. It's no guarantee one way or the other.

What other people said. Also, go ask the majority of those 70 year olds if they don't mind dying years a few years earlier because "it's their tail years", see how eager they are to croak.

Contrary to (younger!) people's belief, folks don't get eager to die just because they're retired. They're not counting the days and they can enjoy life quite a bit, thankyouverymuch.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Geist and Demon can fight it out for which of its meta-settings are more obnoxious because when they're included on a multi-genre game, you can't seem to ignore them.

I dunno if I missed it in all the image spam, but did you ever explain what @Misadventure asked? How does Geist intrude on the meta-settings?

One of the (many) things about Geist I like is that it's very easy to add onto any other spheres since it has very little metaplot of its own in terms of cosmology and world-building. Basically it says "there's an Underworld, somewhere, where dead people usually go unless they don't" and that's almost about it.

Hell, you could probably gut the Underworld out of the game entirely and it'd still function with some patching.

@BetterJudgment said:

That can sort of work if everyone agrees to it, but it has repercussions. On Elendor, there were actually "tent" objects that you'd put your character in, and an admin would move those objects to locations on the enormous grid depending on travel time and dramatic incidents along the way. So, when you logged in, you'd be in a particular place, and that's where you played. I saw this work pretty well once. At other times, though, RP would peter out along the way and back in the home area, and I'd bet that just added to the slow bleed of RP that eventually killed the game.

Good grief. That's one of those ideas which sound great on paper and are probably horrible in practice. For a smaller playerbase it's utter death to finding someone to play with.

@tragedyjones said:

@Coin said:

@tragedyjones said:

Has anyone else been watching Mr. Robot? Currently airing on USA, it is a modern cyberpunk hacker-drama. I am actually really impressed with it thus far.

It's so Demon.

Don't you fucking dare make me want to play Demon, asshole. It may inspire a firebrand hacker Carthian Mekhet.

There are no spots on Eldritch now, and Eerie posted there won't be any again for months, so.

@Thenomain said:

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

@Thenomain - I'd eat dirt before I played with you anyway.

Um ... okay? Go you? This was a ... strangely attacky non sequitur. I'd ... rather know who you were before I responded in kind.

Hey, maybe @The-Tree-of-Woe likes eating dirt. Come on, let's not be too hasty here in thinking that's an attack.

@Ide said:

I was thinking about that yesterday @Arkandel when I was reading the Eternal Crusade wiki and they mentioned their 'dramatic time' (I think the gist is: illogical travel is OK as long as you're not running around with armies), which is functional but not interesting to me game mechanics wise.

So, could a kind of monthly travel budget system work, where every PC gets x number of travel points every RL month, and you can spend those as you see fit, but obviously traveling greater distances costs more points.

That works fine for table-top when all the important characters (the PCs) are normally in one place but not for MUSHes.

It won't do any good; those IC weeks you are spending travelling must be accounted for. If you played with Bob today and with Jim tomorrow but they are far from each other how is that to be justified? Either there's teleportation of some sort or... well, it can't be.

(I mean, the alternative is that you don't play for days/weeks at a time while travelling, which is absurd so I won't discuss it )

@Wizz said:

Daaaaaaaaaamn, shit gets DARK in the anger thread. But seriously if you need to roll on them let us know.

Pfft, oh yeah. So much this. If you absolutely positively need a bunch of competent, discreet people to help you get away with committing a crime then never mention it again, MSB is your community.

@Tyche said:

Obviously with the head tax, there will be those who cannot pay their fair share. They could be exempted on condition they give up the right to decide on how that money is spent. So instead of a head tax, we'll change it to a poll tax. It's going to put a much larger burden on the rest of us though, perhaps closer to $20000 a year. But that sounds like a fair exchange. I could go with that.

That... sounds suspiciously like you're suggesting depriving the poor of the right to vote. Maybe not the literal vote but a whole lot in terms of having a say.

Do I need to explain why this is a bad idea?

I kinda like the idea of players setting their own risk level when they make their character which also determines things regarding those same characters' potential.

Maybe not this particular implementation, but the idea is sound.

One of the main hurdles about most fantasy novel-derived games is geography.

A large number of at least the most popular ones - for a reason - revolve around things taking place in different locales around their world. That lets the reader become exposed to a complex political and social web of relationships, antipathies and plot lines as they are brought together.

This doesn't translate well at all to a game. If you have things happening in say, three very interesting areas on your grid which are separated by weeks of travel (and your setting doesn't allow for seamless, easily accessible teleportation or the such) then you're effectively splitting up the playerbase by forcing them to either be resigned to the fact there are people they will rarely interact with or stretch suspension of disbelief by meeting the guy who's regularly at Castle Black one day and King's Landing the next.

So that should be resolved before the game opens.

Joe Abercrombie's books would make for a hell of a setting, too. Somewhat low-level fantasy with bursts of OMFG-WHAT-IS-THAT in it.