Posts made by Coin

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

The book explicitly states that this is a form of "scrutiny." It takes one success to notice something is up. It's "Extended" but 1 roll = 1 turn = 3 seconds.

In conclusion, you can tell someone is supernatural in some capacity in one turn. It's highly impractical to not do this if you plan on spending more than one minute interacting with this person.

Granted.

Of course, it's only practical if you're going to cast the spell every scene you ever interact with anyone--which means you're going to be either cloaking the spell or risking someone else going 'hey, what's that?'.

Or you have Mage Sight up as one of your permanent spells, which always seemed like a waste to me...

So really, practicality is subjective.

@Arkandel said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Scrutiny? That's nothing!

Certain players were endowed with PC vision, allowing them to distinguish between the millions of random NPCs in major metropolitan areas (who'd never get stared at either for three seconds or sixty) and the special few who, despite being strangers, merited a hard staredown for being actual PCs all on the merit of some superficial excuse - maybe they 'made a weird comment' (because there are no oddballs around in cities) or 'dressed funny' (unthinkable), but they got examined by the convenient power that let you know things about them.

Now that's a power.

Best way to get something under a Mage's radar is have your NPC act totally normal while other PCs get all their attention.

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

@tragedyjones said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Well, it pains me to say it, but tomororw, The Pack releases on DTRPG. This will make it so that Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition gets a supplement before Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition.

What the shit world.

Fucking crazy.

@tragedyjones said in Good TV:

Not looking forward to Jon and Sansa just missing one another.

I really hope they don't do it that way. It would be a horrible choice right now. They need to start consolidating, not continue playing the keepaway game.

More hyped for Preacher and American Gods, but I do like this new direction for Jon Snow.

@WTFE said in RL things I love:

"Zhang" in this context is just a surname without any particular meaning. In other contexts it can be used to mean "nervous" or "open" or even "string".

Well, in other languages surnames are often derived from word-pairs that meant something way back when, but don't within present context.

So Zhang as a surname might have meant something originally. Still, Nervous Dream Butterfly sounds like a great name.

@WTFE said in RL things I love:

After working with a young woman in two different capacities for over two years, I find out today that her Chinese name is the single most Chinese name that is even remotely conceivable: 张梦蝶 (Zhang Mengdie). Literally her name is Zhang Dream Butterfly.

Seriously, this is the kind of shit that makes me love living in this place.

What does 'Zhang' mean? (If anything.)

@dontpanda said in RL Anger:

@Jaded said in RL Anger:

@dontpanda said in RL Anger:

@Vorpal Just use autotune. You're welcome.

Noooo...@Vorpal sounds like they have actual talent and singing ability.

Fine. Lip sync to a previous performance. Who's going to know?

LL and Chrissy, that's who.

Recent reading of the Intimacies rules (and how they apply to Exalted 3's social influence system) have led me to think there are possible compromises. The problem with compromise, however, is that no one ever wants to compromise; it's something you have to accept, not desire, so it's often a bitter pill to swallow even if you're not losing as much as you could have otherwise.

That said, including some fail-safes into the Doors system isn't that difficult.

1. If someone is trying to open Doors to get you do so something that is diametrically opposed to your Virtue, you can spend a Willpower to lock a Door for the remainder of the scene. They can feel free to try again in another scene, but that Door will not open for that particular reason during that scene. e.g. If your Virtue is Loyal, then you can spend a Willpower point to lock that Door down when someone is trying to make you betray someone.
2. If the Social attempt is trying to make you do something that would immediately make you suffer a Breaking Point--you can spend a Willpower point to lock that door Down the same way as above with the Virtue. e.g. If your character's Breaking Point is 'Murder someone', which is pretty common, you can spend a Willpower to completely resist attempts to make you do so Socially for a scene. You may still suffer a BP if you witness the murder, but at least it won't be your doing...
3. Remove certain things from plausibility at all. The system cannot be used to force someone to have sex with your character through dice-born seduction without the consent of the other character's player, etc.

These are just two ways to safe-guard people who have convictions built into their characters and who don't want to be targeted socially, but that will still leave their characters otherwise open and vulnerable to other instances of Social systems.

These compromises go hand in hand with other compromises on the other end of the spectrum: combat. If your character is about to die, you should be allowed to negotiate with the other player--if your character surrenders, then the attacking player really should figure out a reason for their character to let you live--even if it's a bad reason. No one should be prisoner to their characters' whims.

@Derp said in Exalted Third Edition:

@Coin said in Exalted Third Edition:

I'm just gonna leave this here.

THE RED RULE
In almost all aspects, Exalted doesn’t mechanically distinguish between Storyteller characters and those the players control. Here’s the exception: A player-controlled character can only be seduced or otherwise put in a sexual situation if the player is okay with it.
Otherwise, any such attempt fails automatically. This is completely up to the player’s discretion, and they can waive this rule’s protection if they want their character to be seduced, if they think it would improve the story, or for whatever other reason. This is entirely up to the player, and on an attempt-by-attempt basis—waiving the rule once doesn’t void your ability to call on it later against the same character, or even in the same scene. If no one in your group ever invokes this rule, that’s also fine—but players don’t have to watch their character put into a sexual situation they’re not comfortable with.
Groups that feel comfortable in doing so should allow player characters the full range of their seductive prowess when entangled with Storyteller-controlled characters… although remember that the Storyteller is also a player and their boundaries should be respected.

Does it say anything about any other sort of social persuasion / leverage? Does Exalted have a system that even covers that? I'm not familiar with the game system, but this rule seems sensible if you're still allowed to try and persuade them to do basically anything else that isn't related to sex. Otherwise, I see this rule devolving into a lot of the same arguments we see here about whether a character can get persuaded to do basically anything at all.

It has a very intricate system, which also lets you straight up refuse things that are antithetical to your core emotional ties and motivations (called Intimacies).

I'm just gonna leave this here.

THE RED RULE
In almost all aspects, Exalted doesn’t mechanically distinguish between Storyteller characters and those the players control. Here’s the exception: A player-controlled character can only be seduced or otherwise put in a sexual situation if the player is okay with it.
Otherwise, any such attempt fails automatically. This is completely up to the player’s discretion, and they can waive this rule’s protection if they want their character to be seduced, if they think it would improve the story, or for whatever other reason. This is entirely up to the player, and on an attempt-by-attempt basis—waiving the rule once doesn’t void your ability to call on it later against the same character, or even in the same scene. If no one in your group ever invokes this rule, that’s also fine—but players don’t have to watch their character put into a sexual situation they’re not comfortable with.
Groups that feel comfortable in doing so should allow player characters the full range of their seductive prowess when entangled with Storyteller-controlled characters… although remember that the Storyteller is also a player and their boundaries should be respected.

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

@lordbelh I haven't watched it. I was up late watching the Raptors game so I didn't have it in me to stay up more. So I avoided the internet for the entire morning, I was super paranoid about being spoiled.

Then my freakin' niece from across the freakin' ocean PMs me on Facebook and spoils it.

Arrrrghhhhhhh.

LULZ.

Holden is a big proponent of rolled Soak because he likes the idea of "surprise" survival wherein you roll massive damage and then go "oh shit" when the other guy rolls massive soak.

What I would really like is a "background NPC" code that was available across games and that we could upload short descriptions of NPCs into. And then, if you want to fill your pub with interesting NPCs, you can type, like, +npc/load 5 and it'll load 5 superficially fleshed out NPCs that PCs can see and access the bios of to use in their scene. It would also warn people entering a room that this room has NPCs who might be paying attention to what they're talking about.

You could even systematize it further with types of places the NPC is likely to be at. For example:

Bob the Biker is a biker. He's in his late fifties, has a white bears and a blue bandanna. He treats his Harley better than he does his wife. He has a secret love of knitting and will only start a fight if he's had a couple of drinks. He's likely to be at BARS.

So if you do: npc/load 5/bars you'll get 5 NPCs, all of which might be found at BARS, among which is likely to be Bob.

@Bennie said in Finding roleplay:

I'm not so sure the solution to limited Staff time is really, I can see it all day and night on push notifications on my phone and constantly be tapping out job instructions to players on my hobby game...

I'm not sure where you get that, though.

I think one of the things I hate the most about +jobs is that they have to be accessed on my client.

If I could go on a website and look up the entire job on a webpage and scroll up and down and whatnot, etc., without having to interface with my client save but for inputting into the job? That would make it infinitely more tolerable, IMO.

But that's probably just a personal quirk.

More and more I start to think that the best way to give out XP on a game is by providing every avenue possible and limiting it to an amount during a specific time frame.

If we're talking, say, CofD:

Automatic XP
+vote
+recc
PRP (running)
PRP (participating)
Conditions
Aspirations
Dramatic Failures
Breaking Points

Just provide all the ways and then limit the amount you can get from each per, say, week--and then limit the amount you can get per week, period. That way, the people who like to play in large groups can vote for each other, the people who like to use Conditions and Aspirations can do that, and to really max out you have to participate in a little bit of every kind. It also stops people from feeling like one style or RP is running roughshod over another.

It requires more thought, obviously, but I am really starting to think this is better than some other stuff we have so far.

@mietze said in Finding roleplay:

To be honest, I've seen more /staff/ run plots that are anti-thematic, weird, and off the rails than I have player stuff. (It's why I tend to be leery of metaplot or staff plot unless I know the staffer's STing style--sat through too many 5 hour scenes of "dramatic audiencing" or things blowing up for no purpose whatsoever and creating a giant pain the ass for everyone while also making them care even less/feel even less hope about the sphere than they already did.

Most players are far more conservative with what they want to do. It makes sense. I think very few people feel empowered to just blow up a building just 'cause or have the big bads of the sphere running around kissing people or tea parties or have just weird nonsensical things happen. (Unless they're odd individuals, but weirdos are going to be there regardless.) Sometimes staff tend to get a little overexcited about the appeal of their ideas to their playerbase, and then try to force it, ect. I have seen that happen now and then in player stuff, but not really at the semi-regular basis i've seen it from staff folks. (And to be really honest with you? I've seen as much or more staff loss of interest/farting out/neglect as I have with PrPs. I don't think that's a character flaw or anything, but just the reality of burnout/timecrunch that frankly we all face.

Sure, but I think this is often the product of giving the wrong people staff bits (or, more likely, the wrong people being willing to staff, while smarter folk avoid it. Hurr hurr).

@Arkandel That's pretty good, actually.