Posts made by Arkandel

Also remember a lot of people are holding their collective breaths waiting for spheres to have open slots for them.

@buttercup Hey hey, so, I don't have any RP scheduled for the next couple of nights. If you're bored enough give Daniel a page and we can meet if you want. Depending on your PC's affiliations maybe we can hook you up with more people too.

My shiny new bicycle and its sleepless, savage guardian - MSB, meet Daphne.

Timezones are a bitch and there's exactly nothing that can be done about that, really, than hope you luck out or aren't too far out of sync with the rest of the game's players.

But otherwise the only way to spread plot around is to have proactive players. Same as any other MU* ever, then, only with the exception that since Eldritch made the conscious decision to keep a small staff, that helps in some regards and hurts in others. One of the latter is that, when there's a ton of wiki/CGen/random questions/misc stuff to handle it can't be delegated, and the same people who could run stories are the ones handling those.

But otherwise it comes down to player collaboration. The pockets of the game a lot of RP happens (for werewolves the University is a huge hot spot for Eldritch, for example) might happen randomly just because but they can absolutely be arranged to generate momentum. For instance while the game was in the planning stages and we couldn't roll PCs a few players kept talking about running a group of students; this generated activity right away when the game opened - since several PCs were already in place with some common ground and made it easy for them to connect - then it took off. Now the place is crawling with college brats.

It takes some players to make the first step and start connecting possibly even before rolling a character. Not even that many, 2-3 outspoken active players pulling others in just by showing signs of life in a part of the game is enough to get things going.

@EmmahSue To be honest, I had kinda assumed you already had stuff planned out all along so you wouldn't have time to hang out.

ALSO also, I offered RP and you didn't know I was offering RP!

I find myself enjoying Eldritch. My werewolf has access to a whole lot of RP - his 'circle' is pretty wide and extends well past his immediate future-pack - and I seem to be receiving actual invites to play with people than I have the time and availability to entertain. That's pretty neat.

Do other players currently there find that to be the case since I guess this could be a skewed, circumstantial view of the state of things?

@Echx said:

Liana and I spent quite a while deciding Things about the wedding. Let's face it, weddings are about the single most boring Big Group Scene setup that exists. GRRM offered some helpful suggestions but since there was already a poisoning at the last big Royal party, that was out. A Dothraki wedding could have been entertaining but isn't really thematic for d'Angelines. In the end, we settled on something a bit more... hmm... Disney.

I laughed, then I agreed.

@Rook There are ways to advance characters without giving XP in particular. For example STs can be offered in-game benefits (gain the Prince's favor, a spot on the Primogen council, be deputized by the Sheriff), be offered tokens for game functions (instead of receiving 50% of your XP when your PC dies for next character get reimbursed of X% instead), etc.

But any social perks are very hard to regulate because it's so easy to discriminate despite the best of intentions ('PrP of the Week' always seems to go to staff's friends, because that's whose PrPs staff usually see in the first place) and because it takes so much work.

Handing a ST a Beat for a 3-hour long scene is easy; reading that 3-hour long's scene to determine its worth then coming up with a unique way to say thanks is a bitch of a task over time.

Until my 30s I had no issues. Then boom! A lifetime of sitting badly on crappy chairs for hours staring at computer screens caught up to me all at once, and when a nerve got pinched it'd last for ... quite some time.

I tried laser therapy, massage, medical solutions, gels, anatomic pillows... a good chiropractor seemed to be the best among those approaches. What worked for me in the end (?) was exercise and losing weight. These days once in a while I still do something wrong (usually lift something carelessly or just from sitting in the same position for a long time, as in a lengthy car ride), but the difference between now and before I was working out regularly is 4-5 days of pain/discomfort compared to weeks of it.

It's only empirical but that's what did it for me. So far.

Many people rolled mortal+ waiting to be upgraded on-grid (the Werewolf sphere is pretty stacked with Wolfblooded future Uratha, for example) so there's pretty regular RP happening, and since the first wave of CGen is pretty much over now I'm sure they'll open more spots soon for full supernaturals.

Also, good news everyone! @Thenomain implemented posebreak yesterday so all is good with the world again.

I get public transit cards sent to me by mail. This morning I realized I forgot to put the one for June in my pocket so I had to pay for a ticket like some peon. The indignity!

@Rook Oh, my bad. I thought you guys were running the same game.

So in regards to the thread, what are your thoughts on implementing incentives in general in a normalized spending system such as yours?

@Rook said:

I think it's a great approach, myself. The idea is that the player simply builds a 'queue' of Skills/Points/Areas that they want to spend XP. The game system figures out a time span that it takes the PC to learn each stat, mathematically. It timestamps the character with a secs() of when that training would complete if the PC has all the XP needed. When the PC reaches that timestamp, the skill training is completed.

It is a great approach. But unless I'm missing something, I thought you didn't have XP in your system and time was the only limiting factor there? Based on this:

@icanbeyourmuse said:

Just to help for where I'm coming from for my place...

We're not going to have XP. Earning dots/levels/whatever for skill ups and the likes will be done with a sport of tier system. Everyone will get X number of training points a week to put towards the next level of their skill/attribute/whatever.

Either way it sounds like it's pretty similar to how SHH handles skill raising, with the exception that your implementation handles this automagically (they simply open a +job when you put in a spend and make it come due when it'll be ready to go through), which is pretty neat.

It will still come down to the same thing if you plan to offer conveniences for Storytellers though. For example making the whatever-waiting time less for plot-runners isn't that different from handing out Beats in a traditional system, as the actual perk itself at that point is a matter of semantics.

@icanbeyourmuse said:

Just to note.. I'm not a huge fan of the PRP thing.

Can you elaborate? See, to me that reads like "I'm not a fan of chocolate", only chocolate actually has drawbacks to go with being chocolate-y.

@icanbeyourmuse said:

Everyone will get X number of training points a week to put towards the next level of their skill/attribute/whatever.

Sure, that solves the problem of forcing a ST to choose between either advancing their character (by playing) or running a plot (in which their PC, by definition, can't be part of). So that's a good approach in general in that regard.

You still might or not run into the separate titular problem of incentivizing PrP running, though. As mentioned earlier in the thread some Storytellers will simply run them because they want to, but some won't - it's a lot of work, after all.

I think social recognition could work if someone gets it right, since that's a driving force for many players in our hobby.

Additional non-XP related incentives could also include giving them access to things that aren't openly available for purchase otherwise. One of the suggestions I had given for the TR back in the day was to let PrPs 'unlock' spends which otherwise required meeting other criteria - so for example instead of having to find a ST to run a scene for you to buy a magic item, get a rare Legacy, raise Renown etc, you could run scenes for others.

Just some ideas.

@Luna One of the things I dislike about motivational pages meant for women in which they show pictures of females in bodybuilding competitions is that they propagate the (hilariously false) impression that working out will 'make them' too muscular.

The same stands for men as well of course although many males wouldn't have a problem with being too jacked, but for some women it could actually make them think twice before participating. It's a non-factor since, unless someone knows exactly what they're doing (and actively works hard toward it), their bodies will never look remotely the way a bodybuilder's does even if they're following a full lifting regime but it can still be an issue with some.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

@Olsson And that gratification HAS to come in the form of xp?

What's the alternative? It's not a rhetorical question - how else do we get more Storytellers to throw plot? It scales very well (one ST can create RP for 4+ people) and yet there is rarely enough supply to meet demand.

Your character, which has zero to do with the plots that you are running, should be allowed to become more powerful simply because you as a player have the ability to tell a good story?

To be fair, players who have the ability to tell good stories get all sorts of perks even when they don't run PrPs.

I don't mean to repeat myself either but I haven't seen an answer to this yet (and please point it out to me otherwise); XP from Beats in nWoD 2.0 is by far the superior method to advance. A player who gets himself involved in ongoing affairs more than bar RP can make a true killing way faster and easier than having to be personally responsible for hours' worth of plot.

Is that also a problem? Because I see it as a feature.

@Derp I don't see it like that. Most Storytellers would run plot when they get the itch for it no matter what.

The difference is in encouraging plot to happen. It's more than worth making an effort to tempt someone who's otherwise able but unwilling to do it, but who sees that next big spend sitting a few weeks ahead and going 'hey, I could run 3-4 PrPs to shorten that by a few days'.

Those 3-4 PrPs, if they involve 3-4 players each? That's a ton of RP generated out of that one decision.

But otherwise Storytelling is just one source of XP. If you're playing 2.0 the primary means is through Beats by a large margin. Should we penalize active players for having the audacity to go out and do things? They're getting ahead!

I suppose I don't understand the reasoning. Someone who is more able to get into interesting scenes (due to OOC connections, being a good roleplayer, having a great reputation) will also probably get more beats than someone who doesn't possess those qualities. Is that unfair?

As for running 4 PrPs in a day, unless they're gaming the system for XP by running faux-plots, I don't see how that's sustainable. Citation needed for even empirical evidence, please.