Posts made by Autumn

@Misadventure said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

Would what you are talking about not work if for every scene (or big scene, or whatever qualifier) you pulled a card, and on some cards some unexpected direction was given as a prompt.

Not only would that work, it actually did work. You're pretty much describing Everway, a game Jonathan Tweet wrote before working on D&D 3rd edition; rather than dice, it used cards with tarot-esque imagery.

If the GM wasn't sure whether an action would succeed, or what might happen to the players next, or whatever -- she or he comes up with something on the basis of the card drawn. This does, however, require that the players really trust the GM, because, as anyone who's ever tried to read tarot cards can tell you, it's extremely easy to divine whatever result you want from an esoteric and allusive image.

@dontpanda said in Footballs!:

So, that's why I'm asking. Do they count losing a ball as the "cost of doing business," or can they force a fan to return a ball that went into the stands?

I don't see that those two options are necessarily mutually exclusive. Just because they could potentially compel fans to return balls, they might still opt not to if they thought it might generate sufficient bad publicity to outweigh the cost of letting fans keep them.

@Thenomain, or someone, has previously said that all World of Darkness games eventually become Generic City by Night. (Not an exact quote. Feel free to correct me.) But this isn't a phenomenon exclusive to World of Darkness games -- all games gradually become a generic version of their original concept, to one degree or another. So, if you want to avoid having this genericization take your game in a direction you don't want to go, make sure the high concept pitch is something that doesn't lend itself to going in that direction when stripped of nuance and detail. In this particular instance, if you don't want people to take "Christianity vs Islam" and run with it, then the less you talk about the Reconquista, the better.

Maybe I'm unduly cynical, but I can't help thinking that any setting close enough to actual history to make a recognizable substitute will not be far enough away to defuse the potential ethno-religio-cultural minefields. It might escape some of the people who'd be offended by the real world, but would probably almost make up the difference from people offended by ways in which they think the alt-world portrays a particular group unfairly.

What kills me (but hopefully will not kill them, however deserved it might be) is people who just stroll right across a busy street when there is not merely a crosswalk but an honest to God elevated walkway less than fifty feet away.

Yay for more games offering Mage! I'm sort of at my limit of active games at the moment, but ... well, hmm.

Once again, my imagination lags behind the actual level of cynicism in the world.

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

I suppose. And if that's the case, sure. But then again, they most likely bought the shirt, which means it was the product of a capitalist action, which Che would have probably at least sneered at.

Now I kind of want to put the Che photo on an iPhone case, just to maximize the cognitive dissonance.

@tragedyjones

True, but it's still not that big a deal. Since you have the rote for a level 4 lethal-damage attack spell, you take Instant Cast and Sensory Range as your free Reaches, and you don't even need to check Paradox unless you're getting tagged for it by Sleeper witnesses.

Direct-damage spells are actually more practical to use in combat in 2E. But fortunately it's much harder to do huge, huge amounts of damage with them.

@Miss-Demeanor

• Professor: "Its stats are the best I've ever seen! No doubt about it!"

• Silph Road: Attack/Defense IV 20 of 30, Stamina 3 of 15. "A little worse than middle of the road."

Someone's giving me bad advice here. ^_^;

@tragedyjones said in Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux:

Also, to cast a lethal spell in combat takes 1 turn, and a maximum of, +2 Yantra dice? Mages really need to prepare these days. Dangerous and versatile yes, but they did a wonderful job of balancing them.

You can draw upon one Yantra reflexively when casting a spell. If you have the spell as a Rote, you can use the appropriate Skill rating. If you have Potent Shadow Name and the spell fits your paradigm, then you can use the merit rating. As far as I can tell, there is no explicit limit to the number of dice your one Yantra can add, just the practical limit of which ones you have available.

To my mind the fact that ritual spellcasting is no longer handled as an extended action is one of the largest factors in depowering 2nd edition. You can still do some impressive things, but you can no longer bring a ridiculously enormous pile of dice to the table. That's fine with me -- impressive things are fun. Just winning because you have the biggest pile of dice is boring.

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

At least get mad at actual idiots, like people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but can't even revolt against their parents. "Viva la revolución, mom, now can you send me my allowance, my Twinky supply is low". Fuck.

I am reminded of the guy I once saw wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Che and the caption, "I have no idea who this guy is."

@Arkandel said in Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux:

Given the fact no one in the tread contests the fact Paradox isn't being used by the clear majority of players then you are suggesting almost everyone is a shitty player, which I can't accept.

Wait, what? Paradox has been a thing in virtually every Mage sphere I've ever been a part of. Where exactly is this clear majority of players who "aren't using it"?

That Paradox isn't enough of a hindrance -- sure, okay, it sort of depends on what you think mage characters should be able to accomplish, but I could at least in theory agree with that. There's a lot of stuff you can do in Mage that doesn't require Paradox checks at all, and even things that do require Paradox checks often don't amount to much unless you do a lot of them in quick succession. The mechanics of nWoD Mage Paradox are such that it isn't really a big deal unless you go absolutely crazy, and that's a perfectly reasonable complaint to make about the game. But that it's just flat-out being ignored? Not in my experience.

There's been a bit of an Instinct resurgence lately where I am. Probably more than half the gyms I saw today were yellow. It was a nice change.

I have a theory that Blue, as the middle and therefore sort of the default option, picked up a lot of casuals, which helped them dominate in the early going; but numbers're starting to become less of a factor now that more players are deploying Pokemon that are out of reach of casual players' attacks, which makes the relative numbers of serious players more important than just the raw numbers.

In the long run it may even turn out to have helped out yellow to be outnumbered at the start, as that might attract people who are looking for a challenge. But perhaps that's wishful thinking.

As Karl Popper once wrote, "It is impossible to work out in such a way that you cannot be perceived to be judging."

The upside of working at a university, Pokemon Go edition:

• Can reach two Pokestops without getting up from my chair.

The downside of working at a university, Pokemon Go edition:

• Every gym owned by insane people who live here 24/7.

@surreality said in Making a MU* of your own:

If those rules are not posted? Yes, that is a problem, and they need to fix that problem by posting those rules, and doing so clearly.

I don't like unwritten rules, but I will tolerate a rejection on those grounds, especially if it's some weird corner case where staff might not actually have thought of it before. Worse than just having unwritten rules, though, is having unwritten rules and not being willing to say what they are.

If your unwritten rule is that characters can't have more than 3 skills over 50%, that's fine, and I will redo the character sheet to comply with that (and possibly suggest mentioning that in the chargen rules somewhere). But for God's sake don't deny an application for "having too many skills over 50%" without offering some guidance as to how many skills over 50% is an appropriate number.

If anything 2E seems more complex to me, but this may just be because I've spent enough time cramming 1E into my head that it no longer seems quite so intimidating.

On the plus side, concept! Still needs a lot of fleshing out, though. Then again, if it didn't, it would be a "character", not a "concept."

Things have been busy enough that I haven't even really gotten around to coming up with a concept, much less think any further forward than that. I imagine I'll get around to it eventually, though.

Dear mister loudly-shouting, angrily-gesticulating, horn-honking guy in the car behind me: I am genuinely and sincerely sorry that you want to turn at this cycle of the light and cannot, but I am still not going to pull out into the intersection until I am certain the light won't turn red while I'm blocking it.