Topics created by Arkandel

For my current project, Tate no Yusha no Nariagari would be one of the many titles that one ought to give a read.

@arkandel Hee. I've used Carnil for a number of video games and MMO's over the years. That, at least, still seems to be obscure enough.

@lotherio Also, to bring it back into the context of 'how long should scenes last for', violence is very time efficient. I can stab anyone in the face very believably within seconds no matter who they are, but it could look completely implausible to change the Duke's mind about something huge within the time it takes for a PrP to run.

Hell, introducing NPCs can take a long time. I can produce an Elder y'all can stab to death very easily when all you have to know about her is that she means to drink your blood otherwise, but it would take considerably more for a party to expose her weaknesses and fears then to figure out a way to exploit them in any way that doesn't seem completely unrealistic or over-simplified.

@theonceler And the Red Queen's War, its side-quel? With events running parallel to the Prince of Thorn's events, but with a different focus and characters. Equally amazing, and the lead character was so much fun.

@jennkryst said in Respecs.:

Possibly others!

Just because a mechanical system has respecs built in doesn't mean that it makes sense/is good for a continuous, populous, online game as opposed to a tabletop setting of a handful of people. So it's still worth discussing, even for those systems.

Depends on the game.

While WoD/CoD has settings like this, so do other systems. This is a stat, like any other stat. That makes it very hard to omit. Things like Nature|Demeanor/Virtue|Vice/etc. have concrete mechanical effects within the system. As a result, I don't see these being something that can be hand-waved off to be set up later. Changed later if something else is more appropriate? Sure, provided the changes are kept to a dull roar.(1) Anything that has a mechanical effect is hard for me to justify hand-waving entirely in chargen, particularly if it's something that can be changed with relative ease at a later time and evolve reasonably with the story.

Background isn't as important to me as concept as it is initially envisioned, some of their initial goals as a player, and explanation of anything unusual in the character's history or on their sheet. The last is fairly sweeping and covers a lot of ground; this could be a high stat atypical for the concept, a stat typically high for the concept that's low, or something very unusual for the character as described. For instance, I'd want to know why someone's 16th century English noblewoman knows the ins and outs of the magical practices of the Mayans or similar, because that's not exactly normal. (And while PCs are generally exceptional, that's not the usual way 16th century English noblewomen are exceptional.)

I don't like the 'any unspent XP/starting points are lost' approach. At all. Never have. It's too easy to overlook something, realize very early on in play that it's missing and would be something the character would have, or with that small tweak they could fit perfectly in a needed niche in the game with a minor tweak that benefits not just that player and character, but may be the glue that keeps a group cohesive when that character can be tweaked to suit the group, or become the missing piece that completes their collective puzzle.

(1) "Dull Roar": Whatever terms someone is comfortable with to avoid changing between every scene to and for whatever provides the maximum mechanical benefit, because we all know that guy is out there. Somebody may be happy with 'no more than once every three months', or might like 'change at will if you think appropriate when the character fails (or even faces) a breaking point', logs of justification -- whatever they think is suitable. Similarly, things like touchstones should be somewhat malleable; X may fade and Y becomes elevated in importance as the story unfolds, and this is reasonable. It becomes less reasonable when this becomes a case of 'oh, well, that wasn't a big deal any more, now this other thing is' when it's presented to staff after something has happened to the original thing.

@chet said in Comics: Superman as a character:

So if you want to learn how to write a major DC Comics superhero, you have to master their archvillain, is my theory.

I have been saying this literally for a decade.

A hero is defined by his greatest struggle, which, in comics, is a super-villain. And the most compelling superhero stories have compelling villains.

Yeah, its pretty great. I picked the first one up on a fluke and couldn't put it down until I finished the whole series. He writes very believable characters who are complex and interesting, even the ones I don't like. I think Inevera is one of my favorite characters in a long time.

***=NSFW content***

It was also implied/suggested that demons weren't really supernatural so much as life that evolved down in the chambers nearer to the Core, so over however long it took they were just completely suffused with magic, as that was their natural environment. That sorta makes the Core neutral and, while certainly evil, demons (at least those not of the Mind Court) are just critters.

Its just more interesting to me that the Core isn't like "hell".

@faraday

Yeah, I can’t keep track of everyone’s personal definitions of specific phrases either. God knows I’ve clarified myself and had people not pick up on that.

Often.

In this thread.

By you.

People gonna be people. It’s important to work toward common ground whenever possible.

Plex? Really? Noone? Bueller?

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

It dosen't matter if someone walks in wearing a giant, neon purple, strap-on it isn't "forcing a kink" on someone unless that viewer finds it arousing and is made uncomfortable by that arousal.

In some cases, sure. But I wouldn't call this one a universal. (It's often easy enough to spot in the 'methinks thou dost protest too much' sense when this is true, but that's also not any sort of certainty.)

Some people are hot for gore and mutilation for sexual gratification; someone being made uncomfortable by that isn't necessarily going to be ashamed of their own secret sexual woo from gore and mutilation, they may simply find it horrifying and gross if they don't like gore or mutilation period. There are people into racist or sexist themes in fetish play; someone being put off by that isn't necessarily put off because they are ashamed they find it also hot, but because they're not fans of racism or sexism.

Even some of this is a RL vs. VR thing. If I walked into a fetish club and people were engaging in scat play, and that's allowed there, I may just be plain and simple put off by the smell and leave. Until we have smellovision in VR (OH PLEASE GODS NEVER NO PLEASE NO), that's not going to be an issue in the same way.

There are fetishes for damned near everything, so the reasons for an objection are going to vary a lot.

@pyrephox Don't spring RL Sexual torture on people either.

I've had some real darkness in my life, I don't need to be blind-sided by it on a game.

@apu It is and isn't. I mean on here, the movies talk, I go and look at unread posts and see the first few sentences of the latest Good or new movies thread. (as an example, not complaining!) but there are no spoiler tags and it's pretty darn spoilery to what's going on. it doesn't outright say the spoiler, but if you know the characters and what's going on, it's something I didn't know.)

Sure this is a minor-ish spoiler, I guess, because it's been spoiled all over the internet, not who but what, but it's not small.

So there are people who will purposefully do it, but people who casually spoil things as well.

Spoiling is just part of being on the internet, is what I'm saying, and either people will be dicks about it, or not. But even when people aren't the potential to be spoiled is there.

@kay I use it too. Of course it's such an ancient piece of software it's starting to develop its little quirks; for example copy+pasting out of it on Windows 10 works... inconsistently.

@arkandel I think that the player of any character who could threaten the vision that Staff has for the game should get some version of The Talk, whether it's recognized in chargen or after. If you're planning a long-term war game, you can't have someone wipe out the enemy in a single strike. If you're planning a hardscrabble survival game, you can't have someone creating a utopia in the wilderness. If you're planning a politically-charged CvC game, you can't have a someone whose first choice of actions is to murder their opponent.

This doesn't mean that the characters can't exist--so long as the players recognize that they will never succeed in their goal (okay, the last one still needs to be hit in the nose with a newspaper and told that that's not what the game is about).

I have no problem with PC action changing the story Staff originally came up with (they should, or else you're just playing on a train game), but they shouldn't change the theme Staff originally came up with, unless Staff is all behind it. I feel strongly that Staff gets to decide the type of game they want to run and to take every (ethical) action they want to in order to run that sort of game. After all, they're the ones who created the game. (Generic) You want to play on a different type of game? Find that game or make it. I think that I understand what @Apos is saying, and think that it's important to make it clear as Staff that (generic) you are saying "your idea/character is not welcome here for reason X" rather than "you are not welcome here."

I also totally agree with what @Pyrephox said--discuss the situation OOCly to avoid the player feeling like they're picked on when their IC actions fail repeatedly.

@coin said in Canon/feature characters:

Power balance - can OCs be as powerful as FCs?

Absolutely a decision that needs to be made by the game developers as soon as possible (and I would say before even beginning to work on this stuff). It will heavily decide who will be interested in your game and who will be absolutely turned off. Neither answer is wrong.

See, in most original works this doesn't matter at all, because newly appearing characters' power levels can flactuate tremendously but it's done with the intention of being used in a specific way - usually sporadically or in mostly their own book - or with an end goal in mind. So for instance you could create someone like Sentry who's more powerful than Thor or the Hulk or Lobo who could exchange punches with Superman and it's not a bad thing; it just depends on how they are used.

The thing is though is that on a MU* it does matter.

At a glance sure, a lot of OCs are going to be Mary Sue kinds of characters, but so could FCs; you could play up Superboy or Wolverine as whatever idealized perfect avatar for your personal empowerment fantasies as you like.

It's really the frequency of their appearances that can throw things off. Lobo isn't normally showing up everywhere, and the fact he'll steal the spotlight like oh-my-gawd is sort of baked into the character so if you're reading a book he's staring in that's probably because you explicitly bought the book knowing what you were getting into.

On a MUSH we know how messy things get - and the power level itself is only one of the issues, but I'm not sure they're due to the FC/OC disparity either. I mean sure, Thor could solve every problem Daredevil has ever had - he could stomp on the Hand pretty handily (hah-hah), but so could a cosmically powered OC.

If there are issues there should be one of three reasons:

The high-end characters, FCs or OCs, are restricted to the lucky few. Call me cynical but that's probably the most common reason.

The FCs are just played badly - and I mean 'badly' by whatever yardstick you choose to judge that from. Maybe Iron Man is played by someone crappy, maybe he's always shagging up with Black Widow, maybe he's a villain. Dunno.

The setting feels off because OCs are way more important than FCs. I can kind of see that if Batman and Superman are constantly outshined by DeathsquadRIP and Fragolas it could rub some people off the wrong way.

TL;DR: I think the power gap itself should absolutely be determined and made clear very early on, but also it probably doesn't matter too much on a day to day basis unless other things are malfunctioning.

@thatguythere LOL that's horrible.

Not to derail the thread too much about automated combats but I think it's at least vaguely relevant...

The nuts and bolts of automating combat are actually pretty easy. Entering your action, rolling initiative, and then iterating through the actions inflicting damage or effects... you could code that in a lot of systems. In fact, the original versions of my +combat were for B5MUSH (which used a sort of oWoD mortal-only homebrew) and BSP (which used FUDGE). There was nothing FS3 about it.

What makes FS3 unique is that the mechanics are optimized for MUs. There's no concept of "holding your action", for example - not because it's a bad idea, but because it would disrupt the scene flow too much. There's nothing like: "Oh, he just shot me, I'm going to activate my Iron Skin power to soak the damage better..." or "I'm going to allocate half of my dodge pool to this attack and save the rest for the next one..." or "I'm going to try to riposte..." or the other more 'interactive' combat mechanics that you might find in a traditional tabletop RPG. There are also no creative powers, like, "I'm going to put ice under his feet..." because okay, how would you model that effect with an automated action? (rhetorical question)

That kind of stuff is what makes combat systems difficult to automate, and why MUs trying to use traditional RPG rules for even GM-ed combats get so bogged down. There's just too much back-and-forth.

@rinel said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@kestrel I don't know how much I agree with that. What we choose to do with how we feel--the public restraint we choose to exercise--is part of who we are.

Fair point.

And it's not just a lack of consequences that influences our actions online; empathy is much harder to come by when you can't see or hear a person. And that's not an intentional issue--just think how many fights start on this forum because people misunderstood something written they'd never have misunderstood in a face-to-face environment.

It doesn't excuse consciously acting like a jerk, but I think it explains why people sometimes do. It's not that they don't care that people are upset; it's that they don't see it.

I think that empathy can be measured in the radius of a sphere.

Everyone cares about themselves. Almost everyone also cares about their inner circle: family, friends, significant others.

A little further out people care about people like them: their gender, their race, their political party, their country. Much further out people might/sometimes care about the wellbeing of their entire species, e.g. people from other countries, other backgrounds, other beliefs, social outcasts such as prison inmates, and so on.

Even further out people might care about sentient beings who are very different from them, starting with the family dog and expanding outwards towards endangered species on the other side of the planet.

Caring or not caring about people on the internet, who are theoretically on the other side of the world, and whom you can't see, would rank a little higher on the empathy scale, but I don't think that's any less a measure of the person in question. It might just be that they never even think about what the person on the other side of the screen is going through, but again, that's a lack of empathy.

It's similar to how some people are deeply moved by the horrors they see on the news, and become inspired to action, while some people shrug and move on with their day — or will even continue actively contributing to these horrors somehow — but would perhaps feel differently if they were transported into the communities and came face to face with the victims, whom they don't otherwise think about harming with their day-to-day choices.

I don't necessarily think that the latter category are 'bad people', but they're definitely less empathetic compared to the former. It isn't a binary measure.