Posts made by Bobotron

@zombiegenesis

I have never heard of Transmechs. Learn something new every day!

@zombiegenesis

I wouldn't call Mechamorphosis or Mechagenesis 'glorious' though. I do think a spy game that eschews Hard Gritty Spy and is more James Bond + GI Joe + Kingsman and those sort of genres would be pretty boss though.

@zombiegenesis

Well... I think Transformers Universe has/had a fairly active GI Joe faction? Bonus points for folding in MASK before IDW did.

@arkandel

No worries. Things may have also changed in the design phase, or some things may have evolved since last they were brought up and I may have more/better information.

1. Age is the biggest 'power' angle, for lack of a better term, for vampires. A vampire who was brought into the Blood during the French Revolution is going to, on AVERAGE, be stronger than a guy just brought into the Blood last Tuesday. This is mechanically represented by an Advantage players can take called Age, which costs some of their limited Advantage points. This will front-load the PC with some extra XP, but the PC goes into XP debt until it's paid off. This roughly represents 'they've already learned a lot, so they take more time to learn things'.

Regarding prestige, the current setup for Prestige does give a basic Innate Prestige to vampires who are more than 300 years in the Blood, representing that they have, in their time, earned the 'general respect' of the Republic of the Night (this is tied into the Age Advantage). This ties into how the plebeian/patrician split evolved from 'commoners and nobility' to 'earning your way into the nobility' as the Republic absorbed and jettisoned different aspects of society. I'm doing it this way because 1) the logic behind it, and 2) from an OOC standpoint, it's more difficult to divide the Houses into Patrician and Plebeian Houses and it provide as great an RP opportunity. PCs who don't take the Age Advantage can take a cheaper Advantage that represents you did something super badass for the Republic and got that same Prestige from your Consul or someone above the Consul.

2. It's a 'real world MU*', but I hadn't planned on writing 'And so and so of House Yahtzee singlehandedly started the French Revolution' or involving major real world famous people as vampires. As far as history and backstory, I'm writing things in a general 'this stuff went on in this type of era' setup after the mythic history. I am not adverse to players being involved in those things, but that type of thing will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

3. The antagonists of the PCs are many and varied. The most night-to-night antagonists of the PCs are going to be themselves as people jockey for position, party and exist in a decadent society (I'm going to be pointing out key things in the TV show Spartacus to watch from youtube to give an idea of what things go on).

• First up is the most important, the three (NPC only) Traitor Houses, who are the biggest threat to the Republic. While smaller in number than the other Houses, the Traitors tend to be ferociously driven and mystically stronger, when they show up. More VII than Sabbat, really, to give a WoD comparison.
• The Thousand Nights Brotherhood is known to be an apocalypse cult that wants to bring about an End of the World, and they believe that vampires are a key into that. They are the second most common antagonist (really, on par with the Traitors, but weaker mostly but more numerous), as the Brotherhood is known to kidnap vampires and somehow steal their powers, without becoming Servii in the process.
• The Order of the Silver Cross is a church-militant order that sends out supernatural hunters called Exorcists; the vampires have as much to fear from them as do other supernaturals in the world. Exorcists apparently carry weapons empowered to mimic the banes of supernaturals (fire, silver and sun for vampires, for example).
• Other supernaturals can be antagonists, as that's very dependent on the city. In the city I've developed, there are a few enclaves of other supernaturals as NPCs (Witches, who are roughly neutral if vampires don't fuck with them; Therians, who ARE territorial shape-shifters who can come into contact with vampires who hunt carelessly; a single Arisen, which are like The Crow or Cenobites depending on how their death fucked with them; and potential for Bygones and Fae, I haven't fully developed all of that; and all of this is subject to change anyway).

Ultimately, I'm developing these antagonist angles for staff and players to have a stable of things to go 'I need something to punch up tonight; oh hey, a low-ranking Brotherhood squad trying to grab the newly changed Ferdinand would be cool to let Ferdy's player get used to combat' for example.

An alternate idea if you want something that's not static, is a bid system. Each point in a stat gives an appropriate point to bid with, and so it's whoever is willing to risk more in a given scenario.

@admiral

Right. I'm just trying to find a way to make it fun to work with, rather than Ricean 'woe is me' Louis de Pointe du Lac, or RAAAAAAAAAAR I KEEL YOU YOU MADE ME MAD stuff.

@admiral

LOL. Humanity is the only analogue I could come up with in my sleepiness for a system where, your natural inclination for something (in this case to BREAK SHIT or GET SAD) affects you in some way.

As I've written things, it's turned out that Titus' morals and way he lives and loves lends itself to heavy emotions -- and when those emotions come to a head, sadness and ennui become a thing. While Licenia's the opposite; her emotional heaviness lends itself to a bent that shows anger and rage and mercilessness. This has also been evident in some of their spawn (Licenia's sirings are done on a level of anger; Titus' sirings are done in some way to stave off ennui or deal with emotions in some way).

Writing Music of the Moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQm76wFfKk

More backstory is done. In writing the backstory, I realized that half of the vampires are descended from a guy who has issues with ennui/sadness, and the other half from a woman with rage issues. I'm pondering turning that into some type of mechanic ala a Humanity-esque system.

Genitors (House Founders) are done, a couple of interludes in their history are written. Overall, informative... but not WALL OF FLUFF TEXT type deal. Just have to format it and dump it into wikiness.

Testing a couple of mechanics for viability (Lure, which is typically on Compulsion and Magnetism powers and, when used on a target, 'draws' their attack to you via overwriting the attack input, I'm having slight difficulty making this work with AoE attacks though; Exploit, which grants a bonus to END loss when used on someone who is suffering from a debuff, typically the purview of Aesthesia/enhanced senses; and critical hit/critical evasion mechanics for the autocombat)

We're chugging along! Anyone got any questions?

@taika

What's the codebase? Last time I was on a MUX, I had to set a timer client-side to send @@ every little while. It doesn't count as activity for the MU* but it does for the socket and so you don't get idledumped.

Writing something fluff and going 'Oh, hey. That... actually, that's an interesting thing to float into a mechanic.' and then brainstorming the mechanic.

@lithium
I love Don't Starve Together. I die a lot, but I have fun.

@lithium

YATO KOUFUKU BEST GOD!

@admiral

Yeah, but what do you do when you have the player spread you have in say, Fallcoast, and then you end up with 'Well, there's only 5 vampires on, but fifty mages and twenty werewolves; and I don't like playing the other games?' Feasibly it could work but somewhere, someone is getting the short end of the stick via that division.

@lithium
The community has proven time and again that it will have about 5 minutes of interest in a single-venue game, and then interest will wane and the game will collapse. That's the sadness in it.

@Alzie
I think a lot of it is less 'don't like' and a lot of it is 'the learning'. There are significant changes and things to relearn in 2E, and I would bet a lot of people feel that's a barrier, when they can just stick with the things they already know.

God and Monsters...

But not the Gods and Monsters with Zod-Superman, VampireBatman and Apokalyptian Wonder Woman.

That made me sad. I was almost hopeful for a superhero MU* there.

@thenomain

Sadly the OPP forums are more a sycophantic echo chamber when any criticism comes up nowadays.

@surreality

I would also venture that some of the focus and methodology of Lost 2e has changed enough that it may not even make for the same interest in the game for some folks too.

@sparks

... I will end you.

Cold pizza is a good breakfast too. No judgement, @Macha .

OH MY GOD. IT'S A NOSTALGIA OVERLOAD.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc started airing last night, full sequel to the original Cardcaptor Sakura. It hit all the things I wanted, including Syaoran's continued dumbness when it comes to Yamazaki's lies. And it's so pretty, as par for the course for CLAMP.