Posts made by Bobotron

@Glitch said in Crunchyroll Guest Passes:

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I'm snagging this guest pass, thanks @Glitch ! Time for new Digimon Tri!

@HelloProject
I think not catching the plothooks is endemic of not reading the room descs and treating the rooms as 'whatever you think it looks like that matches your need based on the name', rather than not realizing they're plot hooks.

I voted for medium with temprooms.
I come from games in the TF MU* circuit and superhero circuit with hundreds of rooms, which are large, BUT those are 'let's map the entire world plus cities' and sometimes multiple planets (mostly Earth and Cybertron). To me, small is up to 20; medium is 20-40 rooms, and anything larger is large.

My ideal is between 30-40. But I also am of the camp of building in concepts of districts or areas, rather than Fourth and Main and such things. Gives you a lot easier time of fitting X thing into the area, if you go 'okay, this area is the poor/low-income area; what goes here' and go from there.

Hrm.
Most of the points i'd bring up are covered. I would add...

• A willingness to integrate personal plot/goals into larger, long-term plots IF they fit. Steal that shit from the players whose ideas are better than yours.

On an 'works on things to apply on IC/in game'scale:

• We did some 'free retest' rewards in some of the LARPs I ran, rather than XP. You could get a few of them and they were a thing that people liked. Turn in your card, get a 'breaks the normal retest rules' retest. It wasn't even abused in a 40 person LARP. Something like that, spend it to get a reroll on a fail or somesuc.
• Ties to the 'world' at large. This is more difficult to put together, especially on a larger game, but having 'spend this to be tied to <X> thing, guaranteed'. People will come out of the woodwork for this, but staff must be willing to back it. This one worked out really well, as it turned more into personal plot for the players ('Wait... you're an Alastor? Holy shit, how did THAT happen?' ''Well, youseewhathahappenwas...') in my experience.

On an OOC scale:

• We did a 'player review' thing at a few of the TF MU*s I was on; you did occasionally get people who were assats, but most of it was a nice recognition roulette. We did the same with staff.
• Cookies. Like +reccs or votes, but for OOC. They weren't spendable, and we used them to make announcements like 'So and so has reached 100 cookies!' Mostly a method of recognizing people who were playing and active. So I guess like +recc's?
• MUSHwide awards. Mostly a follow up from the old Transformers newsgroup awards, where you'd do an Oscars kinda voting thing, and it had a TF MU* section. It was always cool to see people throw up your character and the criteria for why they put you up there.
• Working with players to enable their plots on a larger scale. I'm not talking just an open PrP policy, I'm talking 'OK, you have this idea. I like it. What can I do to help you make it happen?' or something along those lines. In my Masquerade LARP, I had a Giovanni player who ended up getting invested in the Underworld. Around the time that the Sixth Great Maelstrom/end of the Underworld was going to happen. He was interested in it, so I went out of my way to look up Wraith stuff. And he turned it into plot not just for him but for many other characters who he roped into helping him out. This type of 'player support' from staff isn't, perhaps a 'reward' but is something that more trustworthy players should be allowed.

Not in Portland, but congrats! If you're ever in Kentucky, though...

@Auspice
Kinda sucks for those people, but I get the decision. Plus, TBH, is there even really enough 'here's what werewolves, vampires and warlocks' do in the books? I'm on book 4 and very little has been provided of what they do on the day to day, except when they're shoulders-deep in Shadowhunter business.

@Ganymede
This isn't about ridiculing a concept for 'speshul snowflakeness'. It's about finding another way to allow something that is problematic, or should be rare, in a different way than an application, a cap, or staff fiat. It gives player agency to the choices they make. Sure, everyone on the game might go OKAY I WILL BE JEDI AT 6 POINTS or somesuch, but the THEORY behind it is sound, as many of us have witnessed first-hand. It could be applied to the Jedi issue in SW to help alleviate some of the above insanity.

@Arkandel
This is why the choices must be good. You must have solid choices to really make the 'Do I do X cool thing, or do I do Y rare thing' matter. Feat Traps ala D&D shouldn't be a thing, everything you spend a shiny on should be useful and add to the character in a useful way. Balance is a factor too, but solidly-built options can work with the balance and keep it marginally crazy.

@Ominous
Exactly. In METVtM you get 7 shinies ever. The concept of a top limit of shinies, plus good options, is a nice idea. Again, mostly posted here because of the explosions in the other SW game thread.

@faraday
You're right, rarity and advantage aren't always the same thing. From the source where I'm yanking this, it often is just by dint of the powers that are gotten by more rare things, in the case of VtM. Most of the merit aspects are advantages anyway. Jedi is an advantage. Force sensitive is an advantage. Other SW options would work as advantages too, which is the crux of it.

@lordbelh
Exactly. If done right (like I feel the new MET version does), it adds a lot of thought process, if not depth immediately, to the character, and also helps deal with rare stuff. 'Do I get Force power? Or do I Mando? Or do I <insert special Star Wars thing here>?'

@Tempest
Probably was using a mix of V20 and the MET rarity with some changes.

So the new Star Wars game thread, and getting back from doing downtimes and Influence for my LARP got me thinking.

Have there been MU*s that used a 'pay for rare <thing>' concept or system?

The reason I ask is, thinking about the constant back and forth about Force user concepts, or a hundred other things, got me to thinking about the Rarity System in the new MET: Vampire the Masquerade game.

To explain, it runs on a factor that the book calls 'the economy of cool.' All of your neat stuff is represented as Merits, and your character has a limited number of slots for Merits. In MET:VtM and MET:WtA that is a total of 7. Ever. No gaining more than 7 in play, no nothing. Merits contain standard WoD Merit stuff, rejiggered to actually be useful (I can name off MAYBE one hand worth of useless Merits). Things like Thaumaturgy outside of the Tremere is a Merit; Necromancy outside of Giovanni; Unbondable; special retainers; extra in-clan disciplines. That and more. All the cool stuff.

The big one of these is Rarity. Based on the setting, some things you could play may cost more. In a Camarilla setting, playing the Cam7 costs nothing. However, playing a Lasombra Antitribu costs 4 merits as a Rare Clan Merit. In an Anarch setting, playing a Tremere costs 4 as they're Rare to be in the Anarchs, for example.

I've been running a LARP for almost 4 years now using the system and it's worked out quite well. It makes players think about the 'cool stuff' that they'll get, as well as making some uniqueness in that there will never be 'one true build' (well, there can be because OTB is based on powers, but there's a lot more variety of Merits).

I think this concept would do well to help out with the Force user concepts on a SW game, for example; sure, you may have people who will do it, but not everyone. In the time I've run this game, we've had a few Ravnos, a couple of Setites, a couple of Giovanni (all cost 2 as an Uncommon Clan), a whopping two Lasombra Antitribu and Tzimisce (cost 4) and a couple of Salubri-posing-as-Crusader Ventrue (cost 4).

Most everyone has been playing core clans because 1) concepts and 2) other cool stuff that they want. Could be something intriguing to do on a SW game (I'm planning on using it for 'age and power' for my game, for example).

We have a lot of 'GOD THAT SCENE WAS AWFUL' threads. I'd love to hear about some of your favorite scenes on a MU*. I'll start.

• On Transformers: Genesis, I was playing a field medic, named Velocity (he was a Headmaster and a motorcycle). There was a lot of really fun RP on that game, but it was the first place I ever really had a lot of fun doing 'medic RP'. That is, the process of playing out the patching up/rebuilding of a smashed-up Transformer. Because it's an interesting social setup and dynamic. There was a plotline that ran on the game where an alternate-universe Rodimus Prime got blown into the game's universe when Unicron blew up. He was being driven insane by energy leaking from the cracked Matrix of Leadership. I got roped into, and headlined the plot, to repair it. Which involved cool flying around in space, fighting Decepticons as we tried to find a compatible crystal. Then I had to run like mad after we KOed alt-Roddy and I had to steal the Matrix from in his chest to fix it. It was one of the most fun series of scenes, and I had a really neat discussion on the concept of worthiness with the Jazz and Kup players.
• On Heroes and Villains MUX, as Astronema, getting Carnage to make Baby Carnage symbiotes to mix with my monsters. There was a lot of interesting scenarios with that and various heroes on the game.
• On Megaman MUSH, I played Rock/Megaman. There was a series of plots involving the Stardroids (godly space robots) judging earth as too 'evil' to exist. A lot of stuff went into this and, at the time, Rock was dating a human girl. Who sacrificed herself to end up saving the world. I think that's the first time I've ever cried from RP.

I... I am not sure how I feel, but HOLY BALLS. Netflix surreptitiously announces Castlevania series. WUUUUUUUT?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/netflix-has-announced-a-castlevania-tv-show-for-2017-1792131221

@Three-Eyed-Crow
That's always a good avatar. Almost as good as Ayla. Not quite, but almost.

I've been on a retro game (for me, anyway) kick lately so I broke out my DS and am messing around on Castlevania Aria of Sorrow.

I should really install the Steam games I was given and play them, like Hate+ and such.

@Jaded
Mrf, I get that. I send you all the solidarity too. It's good to know I'm not the only person who has weird dreams like that. My one last night was about getting a job composing for symphonies and somehow my fiance breaking up with me and not speaking to me. Not sure why. I blame the buffalo chicken from dinner.

@surreality
Solidarity upvote and love.

Nightmares. Nightmares that revolve around plausible RL things that could happen and you wake up crying because of the bad feels from the nightmares.