Best posts made by Bobotron

@Auspice
Sending good vibes, man. I know that feel.

@fatefan
There isn't, but it's not difficult to do fantasy with it. Just use all the medieval equipment stats from the Armory book, and look at REquiem for Rome to see some 'here's some ancient changes to skills'. From there, use the Second Sight book (or the CofD core) and reskin psychic powers as magic. But at that point you're getting out of gritty territory as you're getitng into nickel-and-dime damage portions and such things like that.

ETA: I just suggested the WoD quickstarts 'cause they're simple and quick to use. I'll link a rar of all of them to my dropbox once dropbox finishes uploading.

@Roz
Much love, Roz. I will light a candle for you. The sentiment still matters.

For myself, today?
Having a really good friend. And loving to hang out with them, except when it comes to gaming. Because of his 'My way or the highway' mentality regarding it.

@fatefan
I recall hearing that FS3 doesn't really do anything but scifi and modern very well without serious tweaking.

@ThatGuyThere and @Royal
Thanks for reminding me I need to get an oil change.

All this is beautiful discussion, but one thing to bring up: how? Or rather, how without it turning into the massive staff overhead that RfK handled?

Like, one of the things that I feel makes it work in my LARP is that downtimes are done as a 'period' thing. It needs to not become something that requires tons of back-and-forth, and also not something that is sudden, instant gratification; it takes a little time, and people seem to want things to go 'oh, I put in this Allies action, WHY HASN'T IT HAPPENED IN THE LAST TEN MINUTES?!'

@silentsophia
And this is why I am glad that I ended up stopping working for the stock portion when I worked for TRU (though that didn't always help, but the other departments at least dealt with it less). Assholes who wanted chase figures made me insane.

So you want to write a new Werewolf game that's not WtF2e, but uses WtF2e mechanics and some terminology and NWoD2e's mechanics/system.

Gotcha. It could be an interesting premise, but at that point, you're not bringing a lot of what people like about WtF into the equation.

@hedgehog
Lexington KY and The Bar Complex which has a nice upstairs dance floor that they look like they're planning bi monthly things at.

HRM.

• The 100, with better implementation and SLOWING DOWN of stuff.
• Falling Skies, blowing up aliens and each other!

@tragedyjones
I'm on episode 3 currently. It's been an interesting distraction.

@surreality
Vampire Hunter D is one of those guilty pleasures of mine, but I couldn't see how it would work unless you set it, say, during the height of vampire aristocracy, or a small area where a vampire controls a lot of territory and has room/openings for vampire underlings. But there's tons of awesome stuff with all the crazy shit that serves vampires. Barbarois can do ANYTHING.

@Autumn
There's tons of blue around here. But I live in Lexington, KY... so people are choosing that based on the insanity for all things University of Kentucky.

Also, I caught another couple of things stronger than that Tauros. I caught a pretty strong Ryhorn (which is one of my favorites in genera), in the low-300 range; and a Tangela, which was in the high-300 range, but i haven't caught anything else since.

@Roz
Except with instinct, you get the best of both worlds. You can be valorous and courageous and badass by your own instinct, and your instinct will tell you when something is weird and mystic.

@surreality

There there. It'll be alright. VHD MU* would really need some type of actual coded combat, rather than just die rolls. Honestly, the old Megaman/Transformers-style 'lots of effects and modifiers' angle and doing them up as choose/build your own would work for the sheer amount of stuff the Barbarois can do. Merge with and control matter? Check. Redirect damage? Check. Stick a dude in shadow stasis? Check.

OH, ALSO. Nightbreed for OWoD.

http://bjz-backup.droppages.com/archive/nightbreed.html

I don't know if everyone who believes in this stuff is 'roleplaying'. I know people who believe in real magic. And this is a common discussion on 4chan's Paranormal board, and... the level of 'tinfoil hats' that get into hyper conversations makes me believe that it's something people will believe in. It's origin is in Buddhist mysticism though, so it's not just a made-up thing like Slenderman (well, okay, not just a recent meme thing like Slenderman).

To me, there are characters that stay 'alive' insofar as I make plans in their headspace and such, but they aren't 'other personalities' and such things like that.

@tragedyjones

It's a constant question because everyone has a different opinion, and there is no 'one size fits all' answer for all games. Your answers depend on your staff, your players, your goals with the game, and everything in between. It has to be tailored to the experience you want out of the game.

Here are my thoughts, and what I like to see and anecdotes from my game history.

• Grid Design: I come from a history of games where huge grids were the norm, whether that be an entire Earth/planet grid built out like a RISK board (Transformers, Megaman), or large cities (superhero MU*s) or a combination of both (Multiverse Crisis). We used those things as guidelines. I feel like a mixture of easy to make (and destroy, or permanently add to the grid) temp rooms plus a minimalistic 'here are expectations' grid is the best option.
  This has to be tailored for your expectations of the game but also, what the staff plans to provide as utility. Myself, I'm a fan of a) minimalistic 'overworld' grids, which have 'here is what's going on' and b) more descriptive 'internal' grids, like inside of a mansion.
• An End to Bar-P: That requires 1) staff oversight and 2) player buy-in. Your problem with this is going to be 'who is going to constantly run the things that are not bar RP'? And where do you find things to run? Again, this requires tailoring to the genre and the game itself, and having staff willing to a) run things for the playerbase, and b) trust the playerbase to run things. This is where some of the massive overhead being bitched about in the random bitching thread comes from.
  When I ran Megaman X MUSH, we (both players and staff) ran stuff like 'random robots go out of control' or 'Mavericks need <X> resources, let's go steal it' alongside bigger things (Repliforce coup, revival of Sigma, etc.). Beast Wars: Transmetals had a steady stream of 'resources are needed, let's go find the thing' or 'new character introduction sparks RP by dint of being a fight between the factions for the new Transformer (even if the application dictated the faction)'.
  You have to be able to find something within the genre to run, and have people willing to run it.
• Homework: Again, tailored to the game. I come from a background where none of that was required, but we did it because it was fun to share logs. We did IC reports posts because, well, the other Maximals deserved to know the Predacons blew up the minitank prototype, but you got a sweet new flying Maximal out of the deal. We did... stuff... because we felt it added to the game based on the genre. I think if you can't get effort out of your players for OOC aspects of the game, you're going to have apathetic players who don't really care about the IC area. But I am weird, in that I view the players of a game often as more family/community, and try to treat it as such.
  Making Things Matter: This is the difficult one. This ties into the 'homework' issue above, and to be honest, this is one of those 'you need to trust the players' aspects, especially if you have a small staff. Perhaps, in the case of a WoD game, make sure people get a bennie for helping to report that stuff?
  Having records submitted was one thing we did at MMXMUSH; factions submitted AAR reports as part of something the players just... did... in that circle of MU*s. And we updated grid descs, room holders, etc. from the info there. But we also made it very clear to the players that 'hey, we are staff and not omniscient. Did you do a cool thing? Send us a log and alert and let us know so we can update stuff'. Treating players as part of the game, and asking them to help (not requiring, but asking) goes a long way to fostering community.

@Pondscum
You'll like it a lot. It also reminded me a little of, if you've seen it, Ever After (another Cinderella live-action, with Drew Barrymore). Which was fine, it's one of my favorite movies.

@tragedyjones
I'm not sure why that ISN'T a default policy. IMO, that should be. Is it that endemic of 'OH I DON'T TRUST ANYONE OOC' of the WoD MU* that 'hey we need an ST/Narrator, you know the rules, you wanna help?' is verboten?

I figured I'd share this here for... purposes. Mostly the reactions I expect from you guys.

http://bjz-backup.droppages.com

For those that don't know, BJ Zanzibar's World of Darkness was a huge fansite in the 90s/2000s. It disappeared due to a university policy where it was hosted, but I had a HTML clone of it and uploaded it. It contains tons of fan stuff, mostly terrible, but it's good for a laugh. There are a couple of decent things, but not much.

@Arkandel
Re: Player STs
Yeah, but how do you break the cycle of trust that @surreality and I were talking about briefly? The players need to have some sort of buy in, and not just some tangible reward benefit.

• Automation of some of this can be achieved. For example, Megaman MUSH had a 'restat yourself temporarily' as an enemy setup, as does/did Multiverse Crisis. When you made changes to your stats, it told the room, so you couldn't do it in the middle of combat without being VERY blatant about the cheating. And at that point, you have no real compunction of 'cheating' on rules since the system is automated, and you have simply 'the scene' to be run. NPCs that are grabbable, logins, however you want to do it. Lists like game rosters. Stuff like that can add to the trust of a scene runner.

Re: PC Rivalries
What do you do to incentivize a PC rivalry so that it doesn't turn into killytime? Having rivals is great and awesome, but it seems like people have no conception of escalation and process other than 'you insulted me, I'm going to blow you up now!' This also becomes harder in a non-factionalized game, where your rivals/enemies may be within the same group as you, and doubly hard in a game where PK is fairly trivial. Perhaps...

• Remove non-consensual death. Especially in games where it's hard to kill something that the players are.
• Have to have them 'work up to it' through a pre-defined list of escalations, but non-con is still a thing. The MES LARP group did something called 'He Had to Die (https://games.mindseyesociety.org/vampire-the-requiem/us-requiem-chronicle-he-had-to-die-pvp-system/)' which was an (optional) list of 'here's some guidelines of what shit leads to an acceptable PC death'.