Posts made by Arkandel

@Luna I do ask! I think what happens often is that the person taking your order isn't the same as the one bringing it over, and if I'm in the minority they just put the ice/whatever in there out of habit. Bonus points if they ask for a refill, I agree with a hopeful smile and a "yes, no ice please" then by the time they're back being busy as hell, they just forget and do it again. Then I'd feel bad about being that guy so I don't say anything.

With the straw I don't care, I can just take it out. The rest though, bah. #firstworldproblems

Water. If I order 'just water' I just want water. Liquid water. Ice isn't called water, it's called ice, because it's not water. Slices of lemon aren't water. Straws aren't 'just water'.

I'm really nice to waiters, I've never in my life spoken abruptly to one. Why do they hate me and put stuff in my water when I ask for just water?

@Coin said:

Yeah. A small-to-mid-sized game is more like 8-20 players on any given night, with 14-35 active connections. Depending on alt limitations.

With the caveat that population density matters. For example some games intentionally split and enforce a geographical separation of its playerbase due to different reasons - theme (race A and race B shall not mingle!, very long IC travel times from King's Landing to Winterfell, etc) which practically break their players into different camps.

For them you'd need more people than usual to offer the same opportunities for scenes as smaller games.

Here's a question though: How about coming up with concepts from one sphere which has ties with another (or others) if you're aiming the PC for a multisphere game?

Do you think there are ways to do this which won't get you called names?

@Wizz Go to Shang and someone has already played that out, only with more ball gags and penis infusions.

@Wizz

Well, I guess what I'm saying is playing against type isn't the same as being anti-thematic. Take D&D for example, not every adventurer has to be a happy-go-lucky treasure seeker, do-gooder or glory hound; you could play very legitimate characters who're caught in situations against their will or judgment and just kept going despite really wanting to settle down. And ... hey that's kind of the story in the Hobbit which is as much of a classic blueprint for fantasy as a book can get!

The controversial part is that there's nothing wrong with an original take on concepts unless the player isn't very good at it, in which case there's lots that's wrong with it. But very few people are good about evaluating their own skill level, which is probably why everyone hates my totally awesome PCs.

@Wizz said:

Just out of curiosity, where is the Durance portrayed without at least some element of abuse/horror in the books?

You are looking at it too literally, I think. The material as written tells us what's expected, common, done. When it comes to characters, portrayal always trumps concept. In other words it's not (just) what you do, it's how you do it. Someone could take a character right out of the pages of the book and be horrible while another could make something which is not and make people think this is how the game should be played.

In this case one could focus on the line between Loyalist and Lost until it's blurry to make such a character; maybe someone who felt neglected and tossed aside, filled with arrogance and wrath to be treated like a broken toy, but who thoroughly loved the time they spent in Faerie. They would never go back now, their ego and belief system would not allow it any longer, and they would do whatever's in their power to harm their former benefactors or their agents, but the abuse wasn't in the keeping, it was in the discarding. Play it human enough, flawed enough, and you got yourself a concept.

It's not black and white.

On the off-chance some of you haven't seen them, here are some posts by one of the 2nd Edition developers. They are relatively recent so it's unlikely too much has changed from then until now.

Renown
Gifts
Rites
Wolf Blooded

There are other write-ups by the same author if you want to stalk.

@Bennie This sounds oddly specific - more like a peeve. Did you run into a Viking theme-dominated sphere or something?

@Pyrephox said:

Still looking forward to it, though. Changeling is the best game, especially when you embrace the nWoD and focus on urban fantasy and horror rather than the endless bitching about who IS the prettiest prince/ss in all the freehold.

That's the part that truly puts me off about Changeling. I mean the theme is pretty liberating - the sum of all stories is literally at your disposal to use as a toolbox - but I just can't stand how (some) players act in regards to achieving ranks. I don't mean the IC politics, those come with the territory, I mean the OOC cut-throat hard feelings superdrama that comes with it. Especially right as spheres open because, I guess, those people feel everything is up for grabs so they better grab it.

No, thank you.

@Coin said:

I was just so tired by then. It was past midnight and I woke up at 6:30am. >.<

Wtf inhumane timezone are you trapped in?

Double dipping! RL peeves plus MU ones.

Big climatic moment in the PrP I'm running? Of course my SSD decides to throw a fit, the system halts and I can't boot back in. Now I gotta see if anyone still has the log.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

What I would like to see is tighter theme control. No, your werewolf is not a fucking viking. No, your vampire is not a fucking viking, ignorant of the modern world, unless they're a thousand years old and have been in a dungeon for 800 years of that.

Although some background checks are mandatory there's a line between ensuring hilarity doesn't make its way to your grid and outright alienating people with your-way-or-the-highway.

You don't really need to go thousands of years back for anachronism - pick a peasant from the 1910's who got Embraced and he runs the chance of being truly alienated by all these little things people tap all the damn time. And if you forbid that what about that Elder who's acting like a sulky lovesick 19 year old (only it's not really an act) about his hot ghoul with a hot PB? Are they to be controlled too?

As for Werewolves, think about how modern culture might have influenced them. If your PC has been watching enough movies they might act like they think is expected of them - there is a precedent of sorts in that actual RL members of organized crime started talking and even dressing like they saw on films after the 30's.

I'm not advocating any of the aforementioned examples is right, just that you can still pull off and justify a reasonable concept which looks wrong, so trying to control too much can get the opposite result of what you might want.

@Ganymede said:

We handle our own finances. Fuck this presumption that couples need to share everything. Some couples are better off not doing so -- especially couples that consist of attorneys.

I'm pretty sure those are referred to as cabals.

One of the coolest things you can do with Werewolf is to play up and emphasize the redneck inbreeding factor. No other game has that (with the possible exception of Vampire with ghoul families even though that dynamic is pretty different) since in every other splat characters are pretty much on their own. They got abducted, they Awakened, they were Embraced, they died, but it's not hereditary with entire generations' worth of tradition and folklore behind it. You can do family in Werewolf in ways you can't in any of the WoD's other spheres.

That possibility of a closed tight-lipped community where you are known by name or reputation is something I always liked about the splat. It has some issues (I won't mention Renown :p) which make it a bitch to implement on a MU* though - you pretty much need a pack and a Storyteller. On table-top it's a kickass game though since by definition you got both baked in.

I'm not on Steam extra often but when I am my username is, shockingly, Arkandel.

It is a good pitch. There are some great pitches in the game books and I've actually come across some pretty inspirational quips in MU* wikis. In that way games are absolutely about the ambitious concepts and engaging themes which birthed them.

I don't know if I'm being cynical or pragmatic when I claim though that what games are really about is what people playing them make them out to be. A great RPer will make playing an ice cream vendor compelling; an average or mediocre one will make Kindred, Uratha or the such all seem like superheroes with fangs or extra fur.

To me, it's thus the community which defines a MU; if enough people play Mages as the Awakened rebels that they are, characters whose sudden and growing understanding of what a broken world they're living in their whole lives alienates them and the hybris of molding its remains to their liking is their greatest threat then that is a great paradigm to follow. If it's about how to better combine Rote A, B and C to get more dice in telenukes then nothing written in a book will engage me very much.

@Wizz said:

...What? WoD books, all of them, lay out the setting as written and then tell you "go nuts, take this or leave that." It's not specific to Changeling. The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

nWoD on table-top and nWoD on a MU* are different games.

@Olsson said:

Am I overlooking something major? I very well might be.

I don't know if you overlooked it or not, but I believe so. The stereotypes are such because the majority of characters fit certain criteria but such templates are not meant to be made of cardboard. A Fairest can vary in her concept or evolve during gameplay, for example. They are suggestions more than constraints; this is what is expected from someone from that group to act like, not what they are all like. In the real world we have an image of what a US Marine is like but anyone who's met some knows they are just y'know, people. They're not clones.

Similarly how a game should be played merits a whole lot of discussion because not everyone sees it the same way. In fact I'd even say it's a sign of a good game to fit more than one interpretation.

For example I really like SHH's theme, and I'm an elitist bastard when it comes to things I like; see, in my mind that means a constant shortage of essential goods, of having to watch over wells for drinkable water, wearing patched clothes that don't quite fit and coming to realize how much is lost since civilization has all but collapsed and so much human knowledge is gone for good. So I've often grumbled - in private - when other people played like it's any other kind of game and hold big celebrations where alcohol and food flows freely, and their biggest concern is who's dating whom. It doesn't fit my vision of the game, you know?

But that's a peeve. It's not my game (which I mean in the way that it ultimately belongs to its community even more than the people who actually pay the bills and run it), and so I wouldn't dream of enforcing the behavior. What I can hope is that through plot we could make it fun enough that more folks would want to play that way instead.

That make sense?

Sometimes it's also a matter of inertia. It doesn't need to be a rational decision.

For example GMC/nWoD 2nd Edition seems to be commonly considered a significantly superior system than its vanilla counterpart, but I'm still not using its systems for social resolution, filing +jobs for beats or anything like that. Others might be like that, I don't know.

However that's not a criticism of or problem with the system itself.