Posts made by Arkandel

That kind of reminds me of certain gaming reviews from back in the day which went "I didn't like Command and Conquer, but I hate real-time strategy games in general". It's a fair point of view, but perhaps not pertinent in the current context.

I suppose I should add this.

My main expectation of a game is to entertain. That supersedes just about anything at all. If I'm playing and not having fun then no combination of theme, mechanics or character concept will keep me there.

The sole exception is if I'm expecting things to change, but it'd need to be pretty imminently. The days where I looked at games I thought had potential but were staffed badly and waited for them to change their ways are well behind me; these days it's no fun => no @Arkandel.

@Derp Way I'd do a Dark Sun setting is stick the PCs in an oppressive theme; a very powerful Sorcerer-King whose rule is lax, allowing plenty of corruption to seep into every level of local government. Characters would need to hide their true intentions from the law, play nobles working on their own agendas, work as Templars or be wizards on the run themselves.

Throw in an external threat (another slightly more powerful City-State is looking their way seeking to enslave/kill everyone) to give people a second long-term baddie and reason to not allow the inevitable resistance movement have a quick victory - unless that's also part of the plan. The challenge is to offer the latter things to do which are meaningful and go somewhere in a sustainable way without allowing them an immediate resolution.

By pinning PC factions against each other but giving them a good reason due to the dual threat to not simply go into an all-out war you can have politics (traditionalists versus reformists, loyalists versus rebels), variety of roles for PCs to play, and the unstable balance of power could allow for some interesting twists (if you have the chance to off your Sorcerer King, do you take it, since he's one of the main reasons the city's enemies hesitate to attack?). Etc.

I'd play that.

@spasticgoat said:

@Coin I know very, very little about Geists. I can count on one appendage the number of times I played one but it wasn't within the last two years.

Sin-Eater is the PC. Geist is the special ghost they're bound to.

This post has been made by your friendly pedantic former Geist-sphere staffer with a peeve. Why the fuck didn't White Wolf call the damn game "Sin-Eater" to begin with?

@Bobotron My wife (who works in the field) tells me they have a term (compassion fatigue) about burning out on empathy in the field just so they can function. Just because they basically can't be heartbroken every day, it's too much.

Wow. I like how he (she?) stopped in mid-hunt for some kitty things. "Let's lay down on my back and stretch while rubbing this stupid collar on the ground before I go cut a bitch".

That's one of the stupidest policies I've ever heard of. Wow. Talk about penalizing your players for having a life.

I mean some things make sense (you need to give up your rank if you go away for two months) but that's because they block other people's gameplay otherwise. This is just absurd.

@Ganymede What shocks me is goats. Man! On Crete I've seen goats walk up places where I can swear the slope is basically vertical to the ground. No shits given, these fuckers just go up there like it's a nice stroll.

They can't eat you alive if they decide to, though. I dunno, maybe they just haven't decided to yet because otherwise they are badass.

@Bargle said:

Even so, better a tiny but active and engaged playerbase that's enjoying themselves than a massive but bored one, in my opinion.

I would disagree. A large playerbase represents potential; as long as people are actually logged on you can engage them, run plot to get their interest back, offer them the chance to create new characters to refresh the theme, etc. You can't do that if they are not there, and getting new players to give a place a chance is really hard since it becomes a catch-22; they log on, find no one to play with (those super-active groups are often busy playing with each other) and leave, so the next person who logs on runs into the same issue.

All that means nothing about this particular game, of course. I agree that summers are a weird time, some players have a lot of free time and spend it on the MU* (but disappear come fall when they go back to class) and others vanish.

We didn't have a thread for this. We now do.

And I kick-start it with some feels! It's really hard working for a shelter.

@Alzie said:

https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/ - Yandere Simulator. now you too can be a yandere at school and cut a mutha when she gets too close to your object of affection.

I know those are all words but not what they mean.

@Misadventure said:

You and your game ideas that appeal to the players. I swear.

Hipster!

@Misadventure said:

Please unlink Fantasy from D&D, There is little about the system that is necessary to a fantasy setting, and it is full of character limiting mechanisms unless you get into the chaos of addons like Buy The Numbers.

I brought up D&D in particular because (as we've discussed before ) I like using popular systems people are more likely to already be familiar with as the source material for settings. Pathfinder would also work, for example.

@AmishRakeFight said:

ETA: They want them anyway because there no matter how tedious and friendship pyre inducing; a title has a significance. It suggests you deserve the role even if you don't. We all want to feel like we're good enough at what we do in these games to warrant this kind of recognition. It's not solely about ego but that's a big part of it.

Oh, of course. And the presence of those people is irrelevant - they're there in every game.

The problem was that they were openly allowed to get away with it. That was a no-no in my book.

What particularly bothered me at the time - and I expressed my dissatisfaction to staff - were two things.

• The blatant way it was happening. There was no subtlety involved, only entitlement; instant campaining to grab the seats, pleads on channels boasting their own worth, pushing hard for 'election' meetings - all while the game was brand new, while many players were still in CG or trying to figure out their characters. The shamelessness of that left a bad taste in my mouth even when I had nothing to do with that race myself (my character was a former Libertine, the last thing he pursued were positions).

• The complete lack of collaboration. When you want to be the Queen of Whatever by specifically trying to race everyone else to it you don't care about playing with others. You just care about 'winning' the game. And my specific problem with it was that staff didn't put a drastic stop stop to it - which essentially meant the worst people who could have gotten those positions ended up with them.

Those were bad signs. I was enjoying myself but once it was made clear this was being tolerated (and thus encouraged) I parted ways with the game.

@WTFE The forums we're using right now? Mu SoapBox.

I liked SHH. In fact from all the games I've played in the nWoD so far it has the strongest metaplot as it's nearly impossible to ignore and turn into yet another generic western world city.

But, as I told Ruin before I stopped playing, it's also incredibly cliquish. Quite possibly that was a by-product of its creation - the 'us versus them' angle they took by splintering from TR - but it was off putting for me even though it didn't personally affect me that much. But the combination of it being invitation-only, the frantic hard campaigning for seats at the table in every sphere (must... be... Spring Queen!!) before the game was even a couple of weeks old and, above all other things, the reminders on public channels about how some people weren't welcome there rubbed me the wrong way.

I like the people, the setting, the policies... yet it somehow turned me off anyway. That's all I got.

There were many times I'd have loved a fantasy (and in particular D&D) MU*.

What kept me is a combination of

• Small playerbases
• Different gaming culture. It's probably dumb but I've no patience any more to have to ask permission to run PrPs in advance, for instance.
• My friends aren't there.

If an MSB project started I'd be all over it.

Basketball is my bane. Fun-wise it beats any kind of cardio I'd ever do by a very, very, very wide margin but then again I can name a non-trivial number of times I came home with injuries. Ranging from several twisted ankles, a pulled hamstring which once had me limp for two weeks, a sprained tricep (most annoying thing ever) or of course assorted lower back issues.

Sports are amazing in every other way... but when you introduce factors outside of your control - such as other players, diving for balls, etc - the risk also goes way up. One advantage of weight lifting is that it's completely formalized; ideally you perform the same rep exactly the same way each time, minimizing the chance for injury by a lot.

Not that if I can go play this weekend I won't. Just sayin'.

@Roz Explain?