@Sunny Although Eldritch is opening soon (... maybe) and that'll eat my gaming time, I'm intrigued. How active/large a game would you say it is in terms of a playerbase?
Often I like a game but if only about six people play on it RP gets kind of circular and sterile for my tastes.
Wow. So if I understand this correctly, Steam really screwed mod creators badly this week. Evidently what happened (I can't readily find a link) was that Steam decided to make player-made mods for games like Skyrim sellable this week.
A few things about it were not quite awesome.
To paste from their boycott notice, the problem (in their own words):
Valve taking money from modders (75%!)
No system in place to stop stolen mods
No system in place to limit low-effort mods
Overpriced "micro"transactions.
No guarantee that the mod will be patched if an update happens.
Modders lose rights to their mod after uploading.
24 hour return policy which does nothing to ensure that a mod is compatible. Errors may only become evident days after "purchase."
Not even a minimum guarantee of Quality Assurance. At least developer-produced DLC is expected to have gone through QA.
I am bothered by all this because Steam has some some great things, such as encourage Linux game development and offering games at insanely low prices. But stuff like this make me mutter rude things.
@Groth I don't know that I like an implementation where one person screwing up could cripple a number of people for that long. It might be more realistic but from a gameplay point of view... a month?
Especially since it could happen by mistake (typo!) or someone could be a newbie to the system or... whatever.
Another scenario: I log on when your coterie is not around, go to your neighbohood and drink to my character's dark heart content. Yummy, and now your pool is depleted for weeks.
@Coin Nope! Because a game manual can be skimmed even if you don't want/intend/have to read the whole thing. Page 55 is where the powers are, woo-hoo! Page 115 explains how the vinculum works.
For a book series you really do need to read the whole thing since this information is scattered throughout the pages. Yes, you can read a compilation of all this stuff in a wiki or something but that doesn't include the wealth of theme, expressions, regional dynamics etc you'd absorb from the novels.
I played in a Wheel of Time RP MUD for years and we could always tell when an Aiel player hadn't read the material. They were played like soldiers-with-spears or barbarians-with-spears rather than Aiel.
I agree that you'd eventually learn from just picking up on what everyone else is doing though. Or uh, I suppose reading the books is always an option, too. 
Buttcrack.
@Coin That sounds like a good idea. I don't like thematic "islands" even when they make sense in a certain context, so tying different things together sounds like a good idea.
So a coterie or pack controls territory because that's just what they do - that's great, okay, it makes sense. But if they get nothing out of it than the fact this territory is concerned the impact to gameplay is limited, and there's no friction, no emerging need to clash (with NPCs or even PCs depending on where your game is headed) to expand it. If all we have is lines from a page ('Werewolves like territory because they're wolves, see?') it feels ... manufactured.
But if resources are tied to these blocks the game itself is made better. Suddenly your bloodsucking fiend wants control over that dirty mall packed with strangers, teenagers making out behind the building and hobos walking around in dark parking lots - that's an all-you-can-eat right there. And if there's an additional locus under the abandoned church then the pack will definitely want it, not just because the book says so but because they just wasted a ton of Essence fighting off the Pure last time, and they need to replenish - which is kinda funny because claiming the church suddenly means more clashes, more Essence spent to defend it, and maybe there's another locus in that graveyard nearby? How far do they expand before they're stretched thin or other packs look at them funny?
There's potential for solid RP right there, created because of resource management.
But yeah, the whole game has to be built around that, it can't be just an afterthought.
@Coin said:
I mean, not to drag it back to nWoD, but how many people do you know that play nWoD without actually reading the damn book even a little? Hint: way more than you think.
Reading a game manual is not the same as reading a book series, but I take your point.
Jerk.
The problem with playing on MU* derived from book series is that you must have read the series in question.
@Groth said:
I think that for Vampire, the resource management is a huge part of what makes Vampire feel like Vampire. The limited supply of easily accessible blood is a great driver of in-character conflict and narrative and requiring players to type +hunt every few days is a small price to pay for that.
A rule of thumb is to assess mechanics based on what they add to gameplay. How are players going to use it long-termly to entertain them?
When it comes to resource management and Vampire in particular it's not the thematic element that I think doesn't belong - because of course that's a driving force in Kindreds' existences - but the implementation itself.
How is typing +hunt every few days fun? What does that do for gameplay, how is it converted into roleplay? How can it be tweaked so that a PC doesn't simply starve because the player didn't remember to type the command, making them have to go out and drain buckets' worth of blood in one night to catch up when they realize it?
Some games had it so that a failed enough roll can alert staff who're supposed to create botched hunts PrPs but a combination of limited ST availability (it scales pretty badly, having to run one-on-one scenes when in that time they could run a more involving story) and repetitiveness (after you've ran the 13th such scene you might start sobbing into your hands) turn that into a chore than something entertaining.
As a superior implementation - I think there was a thread either here or WORA where we were discussing something like that with @Ganymede - but one which would essentially require the game to be designed around it, consider this:
Limit the availability of vitae but tie its pools to areas on the grid from which different amounts can be drawn safely, thus heavily encouraging PCs to exert influence over said areas. Having to maintain, defend or expand them holds some appeal and can likely generate decent RP. I'd also give a little freebie 'maintenance' nightly allowance per character too, something like 1-2 vitae acquired automatically, so that if the average person doesn't care to participate in the system they don't have to, but if they're burning through vitae faster than that they would.
But the +hunt command, no. In my opinion it's useless.
I've never in my life used any of the Virtue/Vice/Archetype/etc values for anything.
To be more heretical, I never liked alignments in D&D either, so there.
Every other time I read discussion threads about books I liked and encounter people who seem unable/unwilling to spell or use even basic grammar correctly. These people are supposed to be bibliophiles by definition, what the hell? Why is the content indistinguishable from a random WoW thread's? Argh.
I just finished the Skull Throne, book #4 of the Demon Cycle. Pretty good epic fantasy stuff, the whole series is very much like the Wheel of Time's earlier novels when it was actually good and going somewhere.
@Misadventure said:
Is ther training to exclaim various products and services at the right time when work is in session? Has this thread gone far into Oglaf territory?
Oglaf should be explored by more threads, not fewer.
(And yes, oh YES! Don't stop! that's almost as good as Mrs. Teahouse's baked pies, now available in three different flavors!)
@HelloRaptor said:
@Rook
I thought those were just elaborate pictograms to convey their pricing plans.
That's not a pricing plan, it's sponsorship branding. The advertisements on her back are less expensive than ones in more, shall we say, intimate areas.
@Miss-Demeanor said:
I think she's taken the smart path, really. Rather than storm through Westeros, burning villages and killing/trampling over peasants like most conquerors would do... she's building a reputation as a caring royal who has shown a distinct hatred for people being treated like chattel, which will endear her to the masses in Westeros.
From a meta-point of view I don't know Dany will end up sitting the Iron Throne. There's a very heavy investment in terms of narrative about her struggles across the sea and unless the next book spends a great deal of time with her over in Westeros dealing with the situation there it's not realistic she'll sweep in and take over in short order.
What I expect is she'll spend some time there, become aware of the situation on the Wall where the end game seems to be unfolding, then probably share the post-war power structure with a certain someone who knows nothing.
@Thenomain mentioned in a different thread we maybe should look at aspects of the nWoD and see what needs (or could benefit from) adjusting for MU*. That makes sense, so why don't we discuss that a bit here?
I'll submit some of the things off the top of my head. That's by no means a definitive list so feel free to shoot them down and introduce your own - all I'm asking is that we try to organize our observations on mechanics a bit, just to avoid long rants which are hard to comment on. You can use my format for that or your own, whichever, as long as there's some logic to it.
So here are some initial thoughts.
Resource management
Reasoning: Characters on MU* are often played daily, for months/years. It's tedious and repetitive, causing some players to not want to deal with it as an in-game mechanic. Implementations in the past have been iffy either due to the introduction of micromanagement ('my vampire is starving? just because I forgot to type +hunt it doesn't mean he forgot to eat!') or because they made it resources irrelevant by not ever running out.
Proposal:: Limit resource management to allowing characters to set it manually. Keep them as thematic elements but only keep track of them on a per-scene basis starting from the maximum per power trait, unless explicitly set by the players lower. Assume otherwise the characters are IC replenishing their supply during downtime.
Powers and effects over timeframes and locations
Reasoning: On table-top time can be handwaved very easily. On MU* - especially in Vampire - that's not the case since it's a shared setting; for example if a character falls to torpor for a year they might as well be killed. Similarly a power which exiles a character or group from a city is a blow in table-top but it marks the end of the PC on a MU*.
Proposal: Place penalties or limit the duration of such effects as appropriate. Reduce torpor to a matter of days (or offer thematic alternatives to awaken a slumbering PC), induce penalties for staying rather than forcing the PCs out altogether.
Telenuke
Reasoning: Oh, the beloved telenuke. On table-top it's a tool for the PCs, as it'd be a complete jerk of a ST who kills a character who can't fight back. On a MU* it's bad because it's been often used as a way to treat PKs with no way of fighting back and, worse, no way of even at least milking one's death scene for some roleplay.
Proposal: Limit it to NPC targets. For PCs it can cause damage, trauma etc but it shouldn't lead to outright character demise.
Arcane XP/Renown/etc
Reasoning: On a table-top game the Storyteller is always present so that 'special' roleplay happens constantly by definition, yet that's not the same on MU*. Players often have to resort to petition for custom-made scenes just to justify expenditures, leading to pre-scripted scenes no one present enjoys, or to plot starvation in the absence of people running PrPs.
Proposal: Allow IC justifications for the 'special' stats. Offer incentives to players who do go through the trouble of accumulating on-grid justifications to reward the behavior through extra XP.
That's what I had in mind to begin with. Feel free to add your own or shoot these down, whatever.
@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
@Coin said:
Tolkien had a huge hard-on for his own characters, which is to be expected, since many authors (and roleplayers) fall in love with their creations in one way or another. G.R.R.M., from what I've been able to gather, doesn't have that "problem". (I use quotes because sometimes it's that very passion that creates such compelling stories.)
From his interviews, I get the feeling that he does have this attachment to Tyrion. And Tyrion's one of the more compelling figures in the story, so that's kind of telling in and of itself.
It's quite likely. But also, there are characters who are probably integral to the plot and without whom it just won't work. Ned Stark had to die for the story to move in the general way Martin wanted, but if (for example) his plan is to have Tyrion eventually ride a dragon and take it to the Wall for the end game then that character is safe until that happens.
As for Daenerys she has to act like Daenerys. She's not perfect but why exactly is she supposed to be? She's making mistakes, learning from them and hoping she survives the experience - the reader/viewer can tell she's making much of it up as she goes along because what choice does she have? Her mentors are biased, many of them are untrustworthy and everyone has their own agenda, no one at all has any clue how the hell you're supposed to train your own dragon(s) and she's yet to as much as step foot on Westeros where she's supposed to be heading off to rule. She's an interesting character.
We have no generic 'movies' thread, mind if I leave this here?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-hamill-felt-forced-returning-040117082.html
Yeah yeah, this isn't a Marvel comic. I can't be bothered to make a new thread for it.
For Preacher fans: http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/dominic-cooper-preacher-seth-rogen-pilot-1201474784/
As for Dany, I think the series (and the books) do a fairly good job of portraying someone who's intelligent and whose heart is in the right place, but she's inexperienced and struggling to keep up while she has very few people to count on. There's no manual for what she's doing, next to everything she does is breaking new ground, from trying to control her dragons to dealing with deeply dividing social/class clashes in kingdoms she doesn't even want to rule (but feels she's responsible for).
I dunno, I like it. She's not supposed to be infallible. Only to be struggling to do a basically impossible job.