@tragedyjones said:
Apparently a friend of mine just got engaged to his girlfriend. And I want to be happy for him but their combined age is under 40 and he isn't even 21. I don't know wtf to say.
You could have a talk with him and ask him why he wants to get married so young. But in the end, he's probably going to do it. People do dumb stuff.
@Gingerlily said in Eliminating social stats:
@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:
@Gingerlily said in Eliminating social stats:
I think social stats help in eliminating OOC politics and demanding that they be IC. Which in my opinion is a good thing, and also a crucial one.
I don't think social stats does anything to eliminate OOC politics. In some cases, it can make it worse.
I see what everyone's getting at: if you have social stats and force people to use them, you can keep people honest. Much like calling a bully's bluff, this is indeed something that can be done.
What I'm getting at isn't keeping people honest but keeping people fun. I find it fun to rp in situations where my character might get duped into believing something ridiculous, or frightened by another character when yelled at. It's also fun to have my character succeed at those things.
That can be done without social stats, sure. One of my very favorite games is Houses of the Blooded.. It's all about intense political and social conflict and vengeance and groups merssing with each other. The rules for social combat read similarly to improv acting exercises, with the 'yes and' mindset and technique. -That- is the real ideal, creating a world with tons of characters lying and betraying and sabotaging each other, and the players are making it happen cooperatively. It works super well when played by a group of people who know and like each other, because there is trust there that lets them dig in and enjoy. But 'an online rpg where the community trusts each other' is not a thing I have seen, unless it is run by a group of friends.
I'll dupe you. I'll dupe you so hard.
They could be Watchers who are also potentials, and the reason they're all together is a Methos-like immortal embedded in the Watchers has manipualted things to put them together and see what happens.
Once ONE of them becomes immortal, unless they keep it to themselves, they'll all know they're potentials (since immortals can sense a watered down version of the sense they get when another immortal is around, around potentials. This is why Duncan wasn't surprised when Richie c ame back after he got killed--and also why, retroactively, he "adopted" Richie in the first place).
@Lithium said:
@Usekh I've only cursory glanced over them to be honest, I mean I understand how it'd be possible in TT I mean on a mush wide setting.
For example:
In ShadowRun the PC's are usually a single runner team. On a MU* you've got runners, mafia, gang bangers, cops, fixers, faces, so on and so forth. It makes the game get diluted because there's not a single team focus anymore. You hope you can find a single team to run with but it never seems to work out that way. So nearly every run you go on you end up going with different people, which makes it hard to build a collective story and history between the PC's which makes it MUCH easier to just kill someone who pisses you off...
Which is the same issue I see with a Warhammer 40K MU* and it's a dilemma I am working on trying to solve myself for my own game so thoughts appreciated
This is pretty much the same issue all the games have. It's largely because pretty much every roleplaying game out there focuses on a "party". they call them different things (runners, coterie, ring, cabal, crew, pack, whatever) butthe game is designed for a cohesive group narrative that we lose almost entirely on MUs. It's especially difficult to build a stable and engaging group for roleplaying on MUs. And you can't get out of it by playing a system that doesn't use that, because even if you built it yourself from scratch--there's a reason the systems are almost universally built that way: it's good for the narrative focus of the game and story.
It's not really a Shadowrun issue so much as a MU issue in general.
@Cobaltasaurus
Eldritch was never the first place to do it. Neither was Darkwater, to be honest. I played on, uhm, Devilshire? And Devilshire didn't have stringent rules, but deviating too hard got you a hardcore frownyfase.
@Cobaltasaurus
Yep. It just ... it's boring. That's really what it is. It's just boring.
Person of Interest is insanely good. Like, I think it's probably the best thing on television lately.
Grimm is okay. It gets better the further along you go and the more you notice the writers have realized what sort of show they wanted to write, but it still has very wild ups and downs in quality, especially of plot.
The Lucifer pilot was pretty good, but I wish they wouldn't hammer the "every woman [except for her] is compelled to want to fuck him" so much. We get it, yikes.
I finally pinpointed what bugs me about Teen Wolf, which is a really good show, but something was really bugging me. It's that it feels, if using a MU comparison, like the things we see on-screen are just the "PRP logs", while all the other tons of roleplay going on isn't there. You see bits and pieces, but only because maybe a normal log turned into a "surprise! prp!" log in the middle. It's all-action, all-the-time, and while that should usually work, on a show with teens that has a lot of parallels to what it is to grow up, to take responsibility, i.e. coming of age, etc., it feels like it's missing something. There's no downtime.
I contemplated this a while ago but I just didn't do it. I wanted to run a type of Brakebills-y Mage game where the focus was on LEARNING MAGIC and all the fun shit students could get into doing that.
I was going to put a lot of emphasis on learning Rotes, put emphasis on courses of studies, etc.
You can get rid of Paths and Orders and just have everyone pick ONE Arcana as favored at the beginning of their studies, and then let them pick a second later (it'd be nice if the choice had to come from the --shit, I forget the terms, but the way path arcana are divided, the two types of Arcana), once they've advanced, and each combination of two Arcana should have two "opposites", one of which is their Inferior.
For example, maybe your student has Matter, they need to pick one of the ... uh... non-physical, I guess? I still can't remember the term--Arcana. So Maybe they have Matter and Mind. Opposite of Mind is Life and opposite of Matter is Spirit (EXAMPLES, obviously, do whatever). So the character developes one of those as their Inferior.
You can fine-tune it a lot, but I think academicism in Rote-learning (like, your course of study gets you X Rotes per semester, etc.) would be neat, and a GREAT way to justify "auto-learning" stuff in the background. Like, e.g. have you finished the Intro to Ghosts Seminar? Well, that means you probably have 5 dots to spend in Rotes of Death 1-2, or something. Or at least X amount of Arcane Experience to spend on Death rotes of ratings 1-2. Whatever.
I'm not picking nits over anything, personally. I just gave an opinion and people weighed in. I mean sure, it's super nice people are willing to apologize. But color me skeptical of the bandwagon effect, because some people will climb up on any cart just to get where they're going.
@Cobaltasaurus said:
@Coin said:
Marco Polo.
Maybe.
Hemlock Grove.
Watched the first season, I'm not positive what is holding me back from the second. But I've been filled with apathy to continue watching it.
Teen Wolf.
Maaaaybe.
Fringe.
Nah.
Defiance.
I really liked the video game, so perhaps I should actually try the show. (Also I wanna play the game again. Maybe I should hook my PS3 up and shoot aliens.)
Dollhouse.
I loved the first season, but something about the first episode of the second season quite violently turned me off of the second season. Not completely sure what it was. It might be that I just don't like Joss Whedon very much.
Eureka.
Too campy.
The 100.
Once the second season is on Netflix! Yes! I'm very interested in seeing what happens with the mountain place.
Humans.
Oh, I was going to watch the first episode of that and never did. I really should. Is the first season done and watchable all at once?
Orphan Black.
I watched the first season obsessively. I'm not positive what is keeping me from watching the next one(s). Might be the same thing holding me back from Hemlock Grove.
Warehouse 13.
I actually watch this occasionally with my roommate. I can only take a little bit at a time because I don't enjoy camp.
Torchwood.
No. All of the No.
Sliders (... heh)
Nope, watched it as a child with my father. Not interested in going back.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Maybe.
And tons more, just from the science fiction section. Except for Marco Polo. That's historical fiction.
Thank you for the suggestions. Aside from the ones that are firm 'No'. I might look at them. I'm very unlikely to look at Marco Polo, but I might. I'm not a huge fan of historical settings.
Sure!
Marco Polo has the saving grace that is KUBLAI KHAN and the fact that it should be really called Kublai Khan and his Fantastically Stupid White Servant. That said, it has kung fu and is very fictionalized and I liked it a lot.
I haven't actually watched The sarah Connor Chronicles. I couldn't get into Warehouse 13 (but enough people I know liked it that I recommended it). I can get not liking camp, though. I HIGHLY suggest you just sit the fuck down and watch Orphan Black, and Hemlock Grove just gets so crazy, it's great.
The first season of Humans is indeed done.
I mostly just used this to remind me of what shows I might recommend.
@wizz said in Mage 2.0 Conversion Discussion:
@ganymede said in Mage 2.0 Conversion Discussion:
Eliminate the Orders and Paths. No more favored or opposing Arcana. Or free point of Resolve of Composure. Just buy the Arcana and the Gnosis, and the rotes, and play.
Cutting Orders, Paths, and improv casting entirely would definitely be the easiest, most straightforward way to do this without really breaking anything.
I just like the idea of keeping improv casting, haha, because it gives structure to those "oh shit, I need to blow a hole in this wall/stop this monster/go Away" moments.
I also really like the idea (and might be the only person on the forum, haha) that improv casting with penalties could be used to experiment and justify spells unique to a character, or even roleplaying learning a new spell in class. There actually is a Down And Dirty Casting sidebar that could be used for this instead.
@misadventure said in Mage 2.0 Conversion Discussion:
Reskin spell building from Ars Magica, Masterbook, RuneQuest Sorcery, etc with WoD terms.
I actually don't think Mage's arcana and spell system is a horrible fit, if you invert the emphasis on rotes vs improv, and it feels a little more versatile than Ars Magica, for example.
@coin said in Mage 2.0 Conversion Discussion:
You can get rid of Paths and Orders and just have everyone pick ONE Arcana as favored at the beginning of their studies, and then let them pick a second later (it'd be nice if the choice had to come from the --shit, I forget the terms, but the way path arcana are divided, the two types of Arcana), once they've advanced, and each combination of two Arcana should have two "opposites", one of which is their Inferior.
For example, maybe your student has Matter, they need to pick one of the ... uh... non-physical, I guess? I still can't remember the term--Arcana. So Maybe they have Matter and Mind. Opposite of Mind is Life and opposite of Matter is Spirit (EXAMPLES, obviously, do whatever). So the character developes one of those as their Inferior.Making it a player choice makes a lot more sense than trying to lay it out by default by discipline, as I did above, haha. I like it! (ETA: Subtle and gross Arcana!)
Subtle and Gross! Thanks.
But yeah.
As for the Disciplines/Houses, I would probably just scrap the way Houses work in Brakebills and retool it to fit the system you're using, largely BECAUSE some of them just won't make sense (like Illusion). You can even do it with Paths, but have paths be something each student chooses via which Arcana they choose. I mean I understand canonical adherence but it seems like a small sacrifice to make so that things are a little less annoying.
In fact, my suggestion would be to compromise from both sides--you're getting rid of Paths and Orders, but you're sticking to Arcana, so the divisions of magic in Brakebills should adhere closer to that than what is canonical in the books, just for your own peace of mind and a lower degree of hassle.
As for improvised casting, I would combine it with an experimental casting system wherein students can cast things based just on their Arcana knowledge, but the risk is huge--the difference between improv and experimental is basically "experimental is done within the confines of certain safeguards, i.e. in class, with a tutor, etc., whereas improv is done without such safeguards and can end up fucking. you. up. royally".
Even minor improv casting should be really dangerous, and experimental casting should be the way in which they cast things that they will later have as rotes (so maybe a spell counts as "experimental" if they're currently coursing something that teaches it--re: Intro to Ghosts Seminar from my earlier example could enable the "experimental" casting of certain Death rotes the character is actively learning, while other stuff would fall under improv (and be more dangerous).
@Monogram said:
However, in the end, more original theme, sci fi that's not Firefly/SW/ST would also be a breath of fresh air.
I would love a Space Fantasy Opera setting--but really high-powered. Exalted in Space, if you will.
@Faceless said in The Apology Thread:
@Monogram here is my outlook on it. Do it. If you're sorry, apologetic, or otherwise feel as though you somehow slighted someone and truly feel remorse for it? Show the other party that you recognize your mistake and are attempting to correct it, whether that means moving on from it and trying to return to a sense of normalcy or leaving them alone.
Why do people hold grudges? The answer is likely as varied as the person holding it over the span of months or even years in our hobby and I'm well aware that I can hold grudges for decades. Why do people hold grudges repeatedly? Well, as we've saw with a member or seven of our community and as you indicated in your post "Oh, I can't believe that X and Y are friends again"; sometimes people act like asses. Repeatedly. We see X and Y being friends again after Y told X they hated them, then six months later they're enemies again when it gets out that X said they didn't believe Y over their self-diagnosed Asperger's. People attempt to forgive, forget, move on, and never stop to think maybe their personalities just don't coincide. Which spawns years of back-and-forth loathing-make up-loathing-make up relationships that we see sometimes.
Sometimes? It's miscommunication and the ability of some people to refuse to be adults in the situation, even only some of the time. Other times one or both parties just want to avoid the drama until it blows over, but it never does. Sometimes it's not even clear what the other party was pissed about, people are finicky creatures at the best of times.
Two or three years ago I was acting like a complete and utter dick to @Coin. He may very well have not noticed it, I only say this because he never mentioned it to me directly and I never brought it to his doorstep. I allowed it just quietly fester. At that time he was running his own game, with multiple people inviting me to come check it out. I refused because he was a (head, I think)staffer and I figured that he'd use his position to be an ass toward me. Fast forward a couple of months and I finally gave in to the repeated attempts to get me onto the game.
You know what Coin did? That jerkoff (I say this with love)? He was nothing but friendly, professional, and overall Chillzilla with me. Maybe he didn't know about our quiet beef? Maybe he didn't care? Regardless, if he did have some inkling of it he gave zero indication and took the high road. This, in turn, made me realize that I was being a childish dickhole. It was on me, not him. This made me reassess how I was treating others and as a result made me want to change how I behaved toward others; selfish, right? Well, change has to begin with yourself. Now? I pop onto Skype randomly to share pictures with Coin, check in on him randomly, make small talk briefly while I'm on there(which isn't often), and generally attempt to restore/maintain the sense of camaraderie that he and I shared a long time ago. Know what else? I've never actually apologized in written word, I've only tried to show that I was sorry for my actions by returning to a sense of normalcy.
But, if I'm wrong about showing rather than saying. Then you have my apology @Coin for acting like a fucking idiot by taking something that could have been resolved early with a simple conversation and blowing it out of proportion. I hope that my actions have shown this to be true.
Now that goes against my earlier comments in this thread about making an apology personal, rather than shouting it in the street. Which makes me a hypocrite now, I guess. It seemed appropriate, oh well.
I remember you being a dick, but I don't recall why and, I think, I did what I almost always do: just basically went 'all right then' and moved on.
In general, unless the dickery is repeated and has a malicious core, I don't really hold a grudge. This is not the same as not liking someone.
Holding a Grudge != Not Liking Someone.
For me to hold a grudge I need to interpret some sort of ill deed in my direction. You don't need to do anything to me for me to not like you. I will dislike whoever the fuck I want and for whatever reason I want.
Anyway, your kid's cute, so it's cool.
Van Helsing starts weird because they don't explain jack fucking shit until like episode 4-5, so it's interesting but you're not really sure why and that, now-a-days, generates distrust in viewers. I watched the first ep when it came out and then let it sit until season four was like three episodes in and I just binged the first three seasons without reservation.
It is a brutal, brutal take on both the undead apocalypse and vampires.
@Arkandel said:
@HelloRaptor said:
Though the Architect sequence in Matrix was fine with me too, so. >_>
You are literally Satan.
... duh?
@WTFE said:
Yeah, but it moved from "we're alive and wanting to move forward" to "shut down" in about a month.
Yeah. It's sad, considering they might have been a really good place for a 2e Changeling-centric MU. Plus, we all know how I'm a fan of more games.
LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE.
Uncle Eliot says sup.
