Posts made by Bobotron

@Arkandel
Yeah, I figured Resilience and Vigor would be something that changed peoples' minds about it. That active portion is boss on both of those. I also think that new Animalism can be extremely, extremely powerful and useful.

@Arkandel
What changed your mind, I'm curious?

@icanbeyourmuse
If you end up needing some further help, feel free to PM me. I'm not doing anything today but coding for my game in between bouts of stomach bug.

@Arkandel
Also, from an in-game perspective, someone under a vinculum IS NOT GOING TO GO PLAY THE DAMN VICTIM CARD. They are on the cocaine blood, they don't want OFF, and they have loyalty to that domitor. MAYBE if the vinculum had broken for some reason, BUT... geez.

@icanbeyourmuse
I am doing this with my @conformat on TheatreMUSH. Easiest way I found to do it was to do attributes with an if, and have a function that displays them separately. I have attributes on the exits: &grid (for directions) and &bldg (for going into buildings/locations), and the @conformat has two different listings to show things with those attrs.

I have it set a register for all the exits that have each type, then run those exits through the method of exit display (I use a table for building entrances, and an iter for directions). I also have it set up so that it only gives that split if a room is IC. If the register is more than 1 character long (as it'll be DBREFs), then it displays; otherwise it doesn't. From there, if you're inside a building, the exits just need the &grid attr to display (I'm setting these as I build, so it's a bit easier than if you're converting).

I'll post the codebit below for the table version (which displays 2 per line, with no 'leads to' notes). Do note that it IS written for Penn, so I use custom registers pretty heavily (but it's simple enough to adjust). line() is my display line. (And yes, Im sure there's better ways to do it, my code is my code).

&fn`locations Room Parent <RP>=[setq(BLDG,)][iter([lexits(%L)],[if([hasattr(##,bldg)],[setq(BLDG,%q<BLDG> ##)])])][setq(BLDG,[squish(%q<BLDG>)])][if([gt([strlen(%q<BLDG>)],1)],%R[line([ansi(hb,Locations)])]%R[table([iter(%q<BLDG>,* [ansi(h,[name([itext(0)])])],%b,|)],35,78,|)]

If you use @firstexit to move exit order around, any use of @exitformat in a flat line-by-line iter will still work correctly. It comes out looking like this:

@Olsson
Treat them as THE ULTIMATE EVIL THING! I suppose.

@Coin
If anyone wants to talk Werewolf stuff and things, I'm PMable here or on there as Hikaru.

DaveB is apparently posting stuff about Mage 2e on 4chan (of all places) in the current WoD thread. No idea how much, if any of this, is new stuff for you guys, but...

Will Mage 2e fix its problem of uninteresting political schemes?

We've talked about this a lot on the Awakening blog.

1. We're developing the Free Council into a viable third sect who are allied to the Pentacle, rather than eternal fifth wheels.

2. We have never (and will not) say how rare mages are supposed to be, but the political structures described in the Order books require dozens of mages each, which means a full setting with every Order in it requires about 150 mages. Now, that's fine for my games, but too many for some people, and the nWoD is moving away from the artificial "a city never communicates outside of itself" model of the early games, so Order Caucuses are now explicitly decoupled from Consilia.

3. As noted by anon, Awakening's theme focus / story generator is Addiction to Mystery. Consilia are having their emphasis changed to really bring out their role as nondeadly means of resolving disputes between Cabals. Most traditional "politics" is moved to Convocations.

4. Some cities use the Free Council's Assembly model instead of Diamond Consilia, even with the Diamond Orders. One of our sample settings has both of them, so there's the Arrow mages in the Consilium and the Arrow mages in the Assembly, and so on.

5. The Dual Arcane's new rules are based on 2nd ed's social mechanics, and are awesome. I think this is the first time I've mentioned that, so there you go - an original preview for you.

What possible changes could be made to streamline the magic system even more?

1. All spells use the same dicepool (Gnosis + Arcanum,) and are all single rolls even if the spell is taking hours to cast in the game's narrative.

2. All spells are hard-pegged to their Practices. No "this is a shield, but it's so powerful it needs three dots". Different kinds of life, force, matter and so on no longer require increasing dots. A weaving spell of life is always three dots, whether you're casting it on a human being or a potato.

3. No more distinction between Vulgar and Covert spells - our Paradox system is based on a concept called Reach, measuring how close to the edge of your comfort zone your spell is. This system absorbs all the other cases where spells required more dots than they should; the spell list no longer has duplicates of spells at a higher dot level for casting instantly, or on someone else. Obviously magical spells still add Paradox dice, though.

4. All forms of dice bonus and casting style have been unified into a "Yantra" system, which incorporates both Magical Tools and Rote bonuses, but also things that were protuding nails in the system like magical runes, concentration-based durations, high speech, and some of the special Order Merits.

5. All other rules exceptions, where they require dots in an Arcanum, are split off from main spellcasting into a class of powers called Attainments - Mage Armor, sympathetic range, imbuing items, spell triggers, counterspelling, and so on.

6. We have a clearly defined list of things that require Mana, which we are sticking to. This list is in the creative thaumaturgy section, for Storytellers' reference.

The end result is that the 2nd ed casting flowchart is much more of a straight line, with a few optional loops for Attainments that modify it.

When asked about extended action casting for rolls...

All spells are cast in ritual time, on yourself (or something you're touching, or as an effect you aim manually), last a duration measured in combat time, and and affect one subject by default. Making spells instant to cast, casting on a subject you can sense, affecting multiple subjects and making the duration narrative are all part of the Paradox system - how your Arcana dots compare to the dots required for the spell's practice determines how many you can do before you risk paradox dice.

A "ritual spell" in 2E is a spell you're taking time to cast because you have better things to spend your Reach on. Also, you can only use one Yantra reflexively, so casting in a ritual lets you get more dice bonuses than normal.

Imbuing Items is actually now Prime 4.

You can't stop halfway through a spell - it's always all or nothing. Even if it takes you a long time to do in-fiction, a spell is a single act, so it doesn't fit with 2E's extended action rules.

Also, this way spellcasting is greatly simplified. We only need one set of spell factor tables, and don't have to worry about spells moving between two sets of dice mechanics.

The other big thing to get your head around in 2E is that it now obeys the WoD's action mechanics - one success is all you need. Number of successes is only important if it gets you an exceptional successes. Anything that used to be number of successes (like dealing magical damage) is simply done with the Potency spell factor. You get free steps in the primary factor of the spell equal to your Arcanum dots, so a mage with, say Forces 4 will do 4 Lethal with an Unraveling spell no matter how many successes she gets, more if she bought extra potency by taking penalties to her dice pool ahead of time.

This makes successful magic have a bit of strategy behind it - for high-end spells you take penalties to get the spell factors up, use Yantras to get bonus dice to offset those and try to keep 3-6 dice in your pool so you're likely to get a success and have the spell work.

For unimportant spells ("I'm an adept of Matter. I should be able to open this lock") you use Down and Dirty spellcasting, which skips the factors and yantras.

When asked about attack spells and damage...

Yeah - spells aren't attacks, even if the spell does damage - you don't get Defense against a spell.

If the mage has cast a spell at self/touch range and is then trying to zap you with it (2E's equivalent of a 1E "aimed spell", which are up there in the leagues of rules no one seems to understand) they do have to make an attack roll, though, depending on what they're doing - aiming a lightning bolt they're throwing at you is Dexterity + Firearms, for instance, while hitting you with the palm of their hand when they have a "I paralyze anything I touch" spell up is a brawl roll.

But those aren't the spellcasting roll. You do the spellcasting roll then any attack roll you get. And casting at sensory range to avoid that althogether is the magical difficulty equivalent of making your spell last a scene instead of a turn.

Magic's always been assumed to use the optional "repeat attempts incur a dice penalty" rule, even in 1E. I've just made a note to make sure we take the dozen words needed to make that crystal clear.

Which has other rules implications - supernatural powers that work against any ranged attack do not stop a sensory-range damaging spell, as it isn't a ranged attack. Not really. They would work against an attack roll used to fire a touch-range spell at the user, though.

@Arkandel
So don't allow custom content that has mechanics? Seems the easiest solution.

@Zarkon

MUSH with Highlander rules

... Wow. Haven't thought about that in a looooong time. Makes me want to break out my BJ Zanzibar archive.

@Coin
More or less what I'm doing for TheatreMUSH. The grid itself is split into 9 neighborhoods, with 2-3 rooms each (one grid has 4 just because that's the stretch I needed for the map). Anything that's a location within the grid space is built separately (typically one room, but some locations, like Elysia or places I expect to be big hangouts, will have more, around 5). Specific areas can be built off of them at player request or staff need and go from there. I think we have 39 grid spaces for city/outlying areas and like, 7 for sewers/warrens. It seems reasonable, and I can add/subtract as necessary.

I'm also putting in place a system of virtual ownership; players will be able to build when given permission, but the stuff they build as far as rooms will be owned by a builder, and they will virtually own them (and thus can re-desc, add places, allow it to be set as a hangout in +hangouts/add, etc. via +commands, but it helps to prevent the inevitable AUGH SPY bullshit)

I like games with grids, but I'm weird. I'm also from a lot of games that expected use of like, the entire planet (typically Risk-map style), with cities parked here and there. I've also never really been on a MU* that had a lot of player-owned building stuff (most times you'd just @create an object, set it up, drop it and go). So that's colored a lot of my thoughts on it. But...

I like grids. I don't like grids that are Street Crossing + Street Crossing. It's difficult to navigate those for me, especially without a +map. I like grids that are neighborhoods/areas/districts. The rest of those are 'eh' for me (though I've been having to look at the most common denominators and options for the game I'm building), but I can see the use of them. Particularly if you come from a game with all of that 'locked personal property' stuff and it having an IC effect (good lord, now I'm having thoughts of the horror stories of coded locks interacting with coded lockpicking commands and my brain hurts).

@The-Tree-of-Woe
I actually might remake my young cub Forsaken I played once, a half-Japanese half-American college-age kid, who was a writer for an alternative scene/club scene magazine. He was an experiment in taking the 'territorial protectorate' aspect of the banchou/sukeban subculture and expanding on that as a Forsaken. He First Changed as a Rahu and joined the Iron Masters.

@Coin said:

@Bobotron

Its actual effects are different from the Discipline, so I'm okay with it. It just means the Spina will need their own new name for, and maybe some small changes to, their powers, if we end up going with that.

Well, if the Bloodline is in the book itself, I expect it to be treated like the other bloodlines. Devotions to mimic portions of the Discipline, rather than a custom Discipline. So it might not be a bad thing in the long run in general.

Relatedly, here's the mechanics from the playtest for Secrets of the Covenants.

http://theonyxpath.com/secrets-covenants-invictus/

I'm not sure how I like changing Courtoise into a merit/style, but...

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I don't give a damn about the Clan politics, that still exists in nWoD. My beef is with the lack of a playable evil faction within the nWoD setting.

No, I really don't. You will NEVER see a Brood/VII only Vampire sphere in nWoD, whereas you could and did see solely Sabbat Vampire spheres in oWoD. And no, its not up to the ST. Its up to whomever made the game in the first place. Refer to my previous statement about Sabbat spheres. There is no Sabbat choice in nWoD.

I don't really see how a Brood venue would be that much different from a Sabbat venue. Their book has a setup for them in the same way that the Sabbat books would lead to descriptions, politics, factions and such.

And when I say 'ST' there I mean 'the person who made the game' as a general sweeping term.. But yeah, you could see solely Sabbat games for OWoD. Just like, if someone wanted to go through the trouble of setting it up, you could have a Brood-only game, or a Brood aspect of a mixed game like many 'Sabbat/Cam/Anarch all in the same city' OWoD games. Which is the point: unless there's staff-created and staff-pushed support for it, you won't have those mixed, or a Sabbat-only game.

Because the 'default' is not that does not mean there's no choice for it. It's a choice that people haven't really bothered to explore. But I'll agree to disagree at this point.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I believe the 'larger organization/faction' he speaks of in that context would be the Praxis as a whole.

Okay. And I'll counter with: how is that different from OWoD backstabby clan politics and craziness of the OWoD? It's not, at the most base level, and THAT works out fine.

My issue is more that unless there is player/staff support for it, you cannot play an 'evil' vampire on an nWoD MU*. With oWoD MU*s there was the chance or option of either having both Cam and Sabbat as playable, or one or the other. So you could, theoretically, have a wholly Sabbat game. This option simply does not exist in nWoD. There's no for sure 'evil' faction that you can play.

Bold emphasis mine. You kinda contradict yourself there. The option exists, just as much as the chance/option of playing a combined Sabbat/Camarilla game was for an OWoD game. It's just as easy to go 'eh, no Sabbat, it's a nightmare' in an OWoD game, as it is to say 'Eh, play Brood! Play VII!' in an NWoD game. It's still up to the ST to allow such and to setup the setting and city and the WHY of the antagonistic groups being playable in a mixed game.

@HelloRaptor said:

Conflict between factions within the same larger organization isn't a substitute for conflict with other organizations.

What larger organization? Kindred society? Covenants aren't subsects of one big overarcing sect or organization.

@Admiral said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

What I miss of owod Werewolf and Vampire is Pentex and Sabbat. God do I miss those. In nwod, God help you if you want to play a 'bad' vampire. You will be staked. Then burned on a bigger one.

I was willing to deal with the folks who played BSD fetishists just to have some built in antagonism.

nWoD lacks teeth. But I've posted on that several times. And people railed against it and went on and on about how much conflict nWoD has and how much better it is than oWoD.

I still disagree. Firmly.

NWoD only has conflict if people are willing to USE the conflicts that are detailed in the various fluff, the things that are in various Covenant and Clan notes, backstories and writeups that lend to that antagonism. Which is heavy on the ST to set that up and design how the city functions.

Do the Crone and Ordo hate each other here, or are they at a relative 'I won't piss in your Cheerios if you don't piss in mine'? Are the Carthians trying to smash apart the stuffy Invictus socially, or are they more militant factions who are trying to smash them apart by destroying them directly? Do the Invictus have an alliance with the Sanctified, or does the Invictus Primus here have Crone leanings due to being raised in a time of pagan religions and acceptance? Does everyone fuck with the Dragons in some way because most everyone has some type of hate-on for the dragons (especially if someone knows the legends that Drac stole secrets from Cruac and Theban)? And are the dragons fucking around with the (hopefully NPC) other supernaturals because of Mystick Science!? Do you have any type of Brood presence, present or past; if so, which faction(s) and how many coveys? Do you have any VII presence, present or past? Which version of VII? It's a lot of work on the STs.

Doesn't mean NWoD doesn't have teeth or conflict. Simply that people aren't really putting that energy into the setup, or if they are, not enforcing it from the outset (if it evolves in play, that's fine, but if we have militant crazy Carthians in a turf war with the Invictus and all Carthian appers app for people who'd rather poetry slam and try out Carthian Democracy than the setting set down by the STs, that's another problem entirely).

@tragedyjones
Oh, derp, you're right. My bad.