Posts made by Coin

Sjögren: [...] Personally I look forward to see how the metaplot will connect all the great IPs from Vampire to Werewolf, Mages and Changelings and see that evolve over time without diluting the individual strengths of the very different games. But I’m actually most excited about learning more about the live action aspect of the IP which, even though I am well aware of the phenomena (it’s a pretty big deal in Sweden right now) have never before fully participated in.

Looks like people who like the nWoD system and oWoD metaplot-stuff will be getting something closer to what they like.

There is no "perfect system". i also don't believe that @Sunny is "bad at design" because of the system she chose to enforce what she wants. It's just a different desire. I've played in places where I disagreed with the policy even more than I do this one, so it's no big for me, and it really shouldn't be for anyone else. Just her (and whomever is actually putting effort into it with her). If they want it to. If they don't, that's good, too.

The only part of @Sunny's system that I thinkis a mistake (as opposed to my just not liking it, which isn't the same thing) is making the cap a yearly thing. It would be much better in my opinion to make the cap an constantly rising goal based on how long the game has been open. The following are examples only.

Let's say the "yearly" cap is "100 experiences". This is how much you can spend in a year. Every year. We can apply this to the first year wholesale, but the second year you'll just jump straight to 200. That's problematic if you have people who bank XP and just want to be able to spend all their XP when the limit goes up. Instead, after the first year, raise the limit per day.

100 divided by 364 equals 0.27->

If you raise the limit up by 0.25(-ish) per day, you can easily create a steadily rising "wall" without huge, sudden leaps of XP for those people who don't give a flying fuck about your transitory stuff, they just want MOAR POWAHZ.

Another thing to remember is that this system will undoubtedly generate further "front loading" on "useful" stats while people leave behind stats they would buy if it didn't mean it curtailed their ability to buy the useful ones. With wait/spend times being the arbiter of what you can buy, you still have people who just bought Brawl 4 buying things like Persuasion 2, because they can't buy Brawl 5 yet, and they have the XP for Persuasion 2. But if the arbiter of what you can spend is universal--a top limit of how much XP IN TOTAL you can spend on your stats--that Persuasion 2, which might actually make sense and be relevant to the concept, is gonna fall to the wayside for the more useful and commonly rolled Brawl 5.

Yes, I know, the difference to how it is now will probably be negligible. But it came to mind.

I believe it rounds up or down in order to have an even, non-decimal number from automatic gains every day or something. Theno knows.

@Arkandel said:

See, you're right of course, but it also depends on your PoV.

Example: I'm a bicycle rider and I'm often really annoyed by how some people drive as I don't cherish being ran over. But on the other hand I've seen cyclists go over sidewalks and turn left on intersections without even checking (at night! without lights! no shits given!) which makes me cringe.

Idiots are idiotic, news at 11.

That's not dependent on a point of view.

Shitty drivers are shitty, shitty cyclists are also shitty.

Breaking news: shitty pedestrians are shitty, too!

@Arkandel said:

I'm not opposed to a diverse number of sources such as @Coin suggested. So maybe something this, based on your max earnable XP per time period.

• a charity reward for very casual players so they can advance without playing regularly - say, counting for 25% of the max.
• a vote reward for active, social players. It's by far the easiest method even if it becomes a popularity contest - being popular and out there still counts. Another 25%.
• a submission system similar to GMC's Beast so you can demonstrate significant things took place through a quick explanation ('I punched Hemi in the face and resolved my Fuck That Guy Condition') for 25%.
• A PrP-running/participation system for people who dislike having to do bar scenes or whose schedules are easier to fit within an +event than looking for RP hoping there's a scene around. 25%.

There could be something to this.

I would allow for overlap. Instead of each thing being worth 25% each, they could be 30%, with 100% being the maximum.

@tragedyjones said:

Nah man Hemi won't make it home from Chicago.

Pfft.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin Yeah, I flaked out on you too. Just a bit burned out - I'll be back to fuck your shit up, 80s style.

Revenge.
Serving it.
Cold.

The Storm Lord awaits.

@Arkandel said:

"Hey, so now that mouthed off to that Pure and publicly humiliated him he'll come back and try to hurt people you care about - got any targets?" gives something to play about. It doesn't close RP venues, it opens them. Sure, your character is now marked but you can do something with it. The objective at that point for both the ST and player is to generate something fun, not flex some sort of ego-muscle.

Speaking of which, COME AT ME, BRO. (Well, maybe not too intense in November while I'm in the midst of NaNo. BUT DECEMBER.)

One of the things I often wonder (not for Eldritch, that ship has sailed at least for the nonce) if it would be possible to incorporate many different experience-gaining types in a lesser capacity. This requires a few things:

1. You out an XP limit on how much you can gain per [whatever time interval you want].
2. You determinethe ways in which people can and have gained XP in past games,
3. Determine how much XP each method nets you and a separate, smaller ceiling for each method.

(e.g. if the general Xp ceiling is 2 experiences per week, maybe you can only get up to 5 beats from votes, which means that yes, you can hold large events for votes, but there's only so far that that can take you, week to week. I probably would NOT make each vote be worth a beat. I would probably rather go with 5 votes = 1 beat. Yes, this sometimes generates a type of scene and roleplay some people don't like--but plenty of others do.)

This is kind of what RfK did, from what I gather, incorporating votes/noms/squees or whatever, plus conditions, aspirations, plot xp, etc. They just didn't use automatic XP.

As long as the ceiling was reachable on an interval-to-interval basis, this might help bridge the gap between how different types of players work.

And you can use automatic XP to bridge the gap between newcomers and oldbies, making it a higher award depending on when in the game's lifespan the character comes in.

I wasn't staff at the time. I was just given some creative freedom as to what plot to run and tied it to the larger plot of the game.

And you can scream "social convention, my feelings my feelings," but I can retaliate with the same, and we'll never get anywhere. My point is that yes, sometimes doing things that aren't the obvious easy choice get your character killed; sometimes the point of fighting something inevitable is being able to say "Yeah, it happened, but I did everything I could to stop it,"; and sometimes, just sometimes, it's good to remember that not everyone is "that one person who totally ruined your fun" and that many people are just trying to provide fun in whatever way they can, and the constant bitching and whining about "I'm not going to take a chance with you because so and so fucked me over five years ago" is fucking old.

And while yes, the seals would probably have been broken, etc., etc., not killing this particular Gentry would have allowed me to have a much longer arc (which was a definite possibility) and I would have pushed for it to matter in the grander scheme. But that wasn't really my call, was never gonna be my call, and even the people who had more authority (Lemuria, for instance) were unable (or too burned out to try) to make the repercussions of the apocalypse actually matter.

A decision to "shoot the Gentry and not care about the consequences because who cares" is entirely on the player. People rave on and on about how they love the personal stories and how their own character development is important. But suddenly, if they don't feel like they're affecting the larger narrative enough, it's "not worth it, because who cares?"

And to be clear: I'm not saying that the issues you bring up aren't true and things to work on. But there needs to be a compromise. We're never going to fix them if the attitude is "why bother" even when people are trying.

P.S. Sometimes storytellers like to be subtle, and players are dense as fuck. And even storytellers who are super subtle as storytellers are dense as fuck as players. So instead of assuming that a storyteller is boxing you in, it's sometimes a good idea to raise your hand and go, "uhm, is there something I'm not seeing? An option I'm not exploring? A danger I'm supposed to be aware of but haven't figured out?"

Sometimes plots that feel like they are on rails aren't.

I'm not saying this because I think people unjustly accuse some storytellers of this "too much". It happens all the time. But I have run things sometimes where people have said "this is on rails, I don't have choices!" when largely, it was because the choice they felt kept the story on "rails" was essentially the easiest choice for them (and their characters) to make.

For example, on The Reach's Changeling sphere I ran a plot linked to the metaplot of The Reach in general. It was about an ancient True Fae being released. This True Fae had power over Time (and I had to really consider all my options if I wanted to play with that).

Previously, I had run another plot in which someone actually acquired something that could (theoretically) kill a True Fae. I didn't know if they were going to use it, but the possibility was there. I provided it.

And then I introduced this time-futzing Gentry.

The players--of which there were many, which is a problem with running stories on MUs that I will gladly get into some other time--could have done a whole bunch of different things:

• They could have shot the Gentry to death with their Gentry-killin' bullets (mentioned above);
• They could have attempted to talk to him;
• They could have ran away really, really fast;
• They could have stood there in shock and seen what he did;
• They could have done any number of other things.

But the person with the bullets spent a turn staring--and no one said moo. So the person emptied the clip into a very confused True Fae's face and that was that.

This was the easiest solution to a very obvious problem: The Gentry are the worst thing to ever be bad, as far as Changelings are concerned, and being able to kill one who managed to show up in the Hedge near their Freehold was a no-brainer... right?

Sure. But it wasn't their only choice. It was the "best" choice. But not the only choice. (And it wasn't even the best choice, because they all also knew that the True Fae was one of the Seals keeping Scout at bay, which meant that killing the Gentry (best choice, typically) was a bad idea (choice).

Did that one person with the bullets have more power of decision over this than everyone else? Sure. Was that the best option? Eh. Maybe not. But that's how the plot turned out. I gave them those things long before--some people keep those things to themselves; other people share them. IIRC, she shared the knowledge that she had those with lots of the people present and no one actually objected to her having filled the Gentry full of magic lead.

What I remember is a lot of people feeling disappointed because killing the Gentry was "just as bad" as letting it live, because they had broken a Seal. So no matter what, they'd lost, and because so many other plots had gone wrong, they were tired of "losing".

But I don't really plan plots based on whether or not other people's plots are going well or not. If I did, I would literally never run a single fucking thing because fuck that.

TL;DR sometimes there are rails, yes, but sometimes people just aren't willing to make choices (or have their characters make choices) that would move the plot off the obvious, beaten path.

This has been your tangent of the day.

@Jaded said:

@Coin said:

@Jaded said:

@Coin said:

Well, given that Fort Rozz has Kryptonians in their ensemble, it begs the question a little more. But essentially, yes.

I think they're going to end up doing their own General Zod-esque reveal as well. That was the vibe I was getting from the last episode. I'm enjoying it enough so far. My only complaint with the most recent episode was obvious wirework was obvious. I think that will get better though as the show gets more popular and the budget gets bigger.

In other news the cancellation bear is chasing Minority Report and The Player, for those who watch.

Frankly, I prefer "obvious wirework" to "Supergirl doesn't fly because reasons". Fuck Smallville. Give me obvious wirework every week and I will love this shit out of it.

The flying scenes are fine. I was more referring to the up in the air DBZ throwing punches moments in her fight towards the end.

So was I. One of the biggest reasons Smallville didn't have a flying Clark Kent was because they felt that it would be too expensive to do aerial combat.

I don't care if it looks cheesy. Actual fighting can look extremely bad. I guess my point is that I can make do with a practical effect that isn't entirely convincing--especially since, well, we don't really know what people throwing punches while flying/floating would really look like... we can extrapolate but really, we don't know. I have a strong enough suspension of disbelief to believe she is not suspended by wires!

@Jaded said:

@Coin said:

Well, given that Fort Rozz has Kryptonians in their ensemble, it begs the question a little more. But essentially, yes.

I think they're going to end up doing their own General Zod-esque reveal as well. That was the vibe I was getting from the last episode. I'm enjoying it enough so far. My only complaint with the most recent episode was obvious wirework was obvious. I think that will get better though as the show gets more popular and the budget gets bigger.

In other news the cancellation bear is chasing Minority Report and The Player, for those who watch.

Frankly, I prefer "obvious wirework" to "Supergirl doesn't fly because reasons". Fuck Smallville. Give me obvious wirework every week and I will love this shit out of it.

Scion. Or Aberrant. Those would be my initial picks.

@Arkandel said:

Also that's the same answer as any other "why isn't <other, more powerful hero> dealing with <crisis another hero is struggling with>?". Why isn't the Flash defeating all of Oliver's enemies in the five minutes it'd take from his busy schedule to do so? Why isn't Iron Man smashing through SHIELD's super-powered enemies?

Suspension of disbelief is called for. They are busy with their own stuff, etc.

Well, given that Fort Rozz has Kryptonians in their ensemble, it begs the question a little more. But essentially, yes.

Not as of yet; but it's entirely possible that Superman just doesn't know. Fort Rozz crashed at the same time as Supergirl and maybe while he was handling her, the government scooped the evidence of Fort Rozz and absconded with it.

It's also that the prisoners from Fort Rozz have been keeping a pretty low profile, from what I've been able to determine, at least until now. They certainly haven't run around terrorizing cities.

@SG said:

@Coin said:

Supergirl made it out of the pilot and into its second episode intact and improved, for anyone interested. And Superman was name-dropped several times (hopefully they'll dial it back, but it was almost like they were letting us know they are allowed to say his name) as were Lois, Perry, and Clark Kent (separately from Superman, even! By people who don't know his secret!).

Plus, they aren't fucking around with their plot--it's moving at lightspeed, baby!

The name dropping was getting ridiculous in the pilot, like, be your own girl, Supergirl!

I think it would have been better if she was a welder or something instead of being a complete photocopy of Clark Kent.

I don't actually mind the comparisons. I think it'as the comparisons that will help cement her as her own character and as her own person within the narrative. The second episode has people constantly compare her to Superman, and while it is a little heavy (still the second episode and by far less of a sin than many other shows) it really was a part of the episode; in fact, it was a little bit the backbone of episode: her trying to live up to the legacy Superman built, but in her own way.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin: Deadpool stuff.

HE'S A SHARK, HE'S A SHARK HE'S A FUCKING SHARRRRRRRRRK.

God, I loved that that week. It made my otherwise shitty day so much better.