Posts made by Coin

@Tempest said:

Part of me likes the visible sheets thing, part of me doesn't. I'd go straight to 'not liking it at all' as soon as somebody presumes to tell me how to play my character based on my +sheet, and I'm sure it will happen.

What is much more likely to happen is someone won't like the way your character is too persuasive or you pose how they lie very well with only Persuasion/Subterfuge 1 or 2, which is both a legit complaint but also subject to you spending Willpower when they inevitably ask for a roll.

I think on a game where they won't have character who can have secrets, open sheets are fine. In Eldritch, some people have things on their sheets and notes that other characters don't need to know about, though.

Comic Book games (I think) universally let other people look at your sheet. It's rarely been an issue because it's part of the culture, really.

P.S. If it wasn't for the no-PVP, open sheet format might (might) drastically reduce the asshats who decide to start shit and then complain when whoever they started shit with has better combat stats than them. Haha.

"Oh, man, that dude has Strength 6, Brawl 5, and a Brawl Spec in 'Dick Ripping', I might not want to piss him off."

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

@Coin LOL LOVECRAFT.

He's a necromancer lich whose claim to fame was creating a magical preservative spell so he wouldn't get all nasty because for some reason in a kingdom ruled by evil wizards being outed as a lich would be a... social faux pas?

Honestly in a setting like FR where you could flip over a rock and find an archmage, the dude is/was kind of an also-ran, though most of them are dead and he's still kicking around.

I honestly never really followed D&D/AD&D/Pathfinder/Dragonlance or any of that type of stuff, for some inexplicable reason. Maybe because I always found other things that interested me more. I play it, but my buddy is the one that does all the high fantasy game-running and keeps up with that shit (and probably not past 3.5). I tend to stick to World of Darkness, while a third guy exclusively runs Call of Cthulhu.

But yeah, that sounds about what I would have expected.

You know what I would probably dig? A MUSH in the setting of The Death Gate Cycle books by Tracy Hickman and Mercedes Lackey. I mean, some parts of the books are hard to slog through, but the actual story and the settings are so neat. Especially if you tweaked it a little so people could travel through the different worlds.

I don't know what the fuck you nerds are talking about but "Szass Tam" sounds like a character name I would have used in the nineties, and that fills me with loathing at a basic level.

@Admiral said:

The post seemed as though it was seeking to have a large playerbase or at the very least a sizeable staff.

Given the non-PVP nature of the game, a sizeable amount of Staff STs is a must.

I highly suggest not breaching the veil for Demon. Secrecy is basically their raison d'etat and basically everyone knowing would ... fuck them up. Unless you're going to change really core, central themes of the game.

I would actually suggest, if you are going to "unveil" them, that you use the Translation Guide and use Descent rules for Demon: The Fallen.

Two cents, for you.

@ThatGuyThere said:

If you create organizations for Geist they will become hierarchical. because sadly that is what player tend to do.

This is the worst reason not to do something when it comes to game design. The absolute worst. You design a game with characteristics that reinforce the theme you want for it. Saying "adding organizations will make them hierarchical because people suck" is not a reason not to do it.

Also, it's bullshit, because in none of the games I've seen with Werewolf 2e, for example, have the Tribes been "hierarchical". In Eldritch, we have tribal elders, but it's a position of respect and experience, not "I am an Elder because I have Status (Blood Talons) 5". So not all players do that, and even those that do, don't do it in all games. Not to mention that if you're active and involved as staff you can put a kibosh on that shit without too much effort.

@silentsophia said:

I'm... not sure there is a spoiler code. I've tried looking around.

! There is. I just can't find it.

Never mind. There it is. You type:

>!<text>

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

So I really dislike the whole "no IC masquerade".

You're going off a lot by what you dislike. What I'm trying to say is there's a non-zero chance other people like what you dislike.

No, you're you just misinterpreting. I dislike people who say "Geist as a game as no masquerade". If the game outright said, "Sin-Eaters as a whole don't give a shit and tell everyone everything and whatever whatever we do what we want", then I wouldn't dislike people claiming such, because it'd be true. But it doesn't. I would still think it's stupid (unless the entire nWoD was different), but that would be different.

And what I proposed above does nothing to change what you like, since what I propose is more a philosophical approach to sub-dividing PCs within culture, not a hierarchical set of organizations.

The issue there is that there's no definitive view of just what a Sin-Eater is or does within the game's themes. There's no one history (like Werewolves have, for instance) passed down for generations verifiable by objective third party sources. Geists themselves are notoriously unstable, ghosts are often damaged and terribly biased, Krewes contradict each other as much as not and generally Sin-Eaters are allowed - in a way, forced - to make do with what they have.

Which isn't to say you can't do that, of course, any more than you can't do any sorts of things with any given game. Personally I like this aspect of how it's set up.

I maintain that none of what you're saying you like would be in jeopardy if someone applied something like what I proposed, especially if those aspects you like are kept in mind when designing it. Compromises aren't that hard if you aren't clinging to something nebulous as set in stone (an exercise in frustration at best).

@Thenomain @Glitch @EmmahSue can a mod move the Geist bits of this convo to a new thread titled "Geist Reconstruction" or something? We're wildly off-topic now.

@Arkandel said:

Frankly, this is one of the things that drew me to Geist in the first place. None of that hierarchical crap that poisons MU* communities by drawing a certain type of player to them; the lack of internal cohesion makes Sin-Eaters the nWoD chameleons; they fit literally anywhere they see fit, with no internal Masquerade, no burdening overreaching metaplot to haunt (heh!) them. Instead they are each free to do as they will and find common themes within individual Krewes if they so desire it.

I'm sorry, but no. There are entire passages in the book that talk about how if you're too open and you out Sin-Eater nature and stuff, other Sin-Eaters will look at you and go "fuck no" and punish you, or even put you down. Not to the extent and fanatism as other splats, but it's stillt here. So I really dislike the whole "no IC masquerade". It's bullshit. There is one, it's just not formalized, which is fine, but not the same as "it does not exist".

And what I proposed above does nothing to change what you like, since what I propose is more a philosophical approach to sub-dividing PCs within culture, not a hierarchical set of organizations. I see it more like Werewolf 2e Tribes (but lacking a thing like Renown to make them even a little hierarchical), wherein you have a philosophy and a general sense of purpose, but don't particularly have a hierarchy within the Tribe other than "this person just has more Renown and happens to be in my Tribe, so I defer to their experience and power".

TL;DR: none of what you raise up as concerns would be actual concerns with the way I would attempt to write what I proposed.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin Care to elaborate on what you'd have changed?

Systems wise, I would change how Manifestations and Keys interact in general. But more specifically, I would have done away with ridiculous redundancies, like the ones you find all over the Rage Manifestation. You do not need thirty different ways of doing basic damage.

I would do away with "shit loads of powers just because you bought a new Key". Instead, I would make the Key/Manifestation combinations open the door to different powers that you could now buy, and the powers would likely be a bit cheaper than they are now, because of it.

This would also allow for much greater variety. Instead of, say, Phantasmal Caul being a set of 5 powers borne from that combination, they could be a whole host of powers that follow that theme.

Rage would probably get the biggest overhaul in general theme; damage would certainly be a thing, of course, but again exemplifying: the Industrial Rage, as it stands, lets you damage people with technology. What? No. That should be Industrial Marionette (controlling tech to make it do bad things to people) or Industrial Caul (merging with technology to make yourself more dangerous or capable through it). Therefore, a perfect niche for Industrial Rage is raging against the machine. Use it to rip it apart. Make it turn on itself. There are a ton of things you can do: make it less useful, make it work backwards, make it explode, make it break, etc.

In general, I find the disparity between "some combinations have detailed, dot-by-dot powers and some are just one big effect that is weird and ambiguous" to be exhaustingly annoying.

Mementos bug me because they are given "levels" but each "level" is actually a specific type of effect, instead of an intensity of that effect. I would instead prefer a 1-5 dot level and different types of Mementos that have different intensities at different levels. So you could have Charms that aren't just 1-dot Mementos, but rather a 3-dot Charm that does more than a 1-dot Charm. Fetters are different. Vanitas are different. Deathmasks are different.

I'd probably also fucking do away with this "no real society" bullshit. It's annoying as fuck and uncohesive, and while it probably works okay in tabletop, it makes MUs a pain in the ass. I would keep the societies philosophical in nature and with plenty of room for interpretation, and try to allow for them to be able to intersect within a Krewe, while leaving the Krewes to make their own Mythos just as much as they can in Geist 1e.

I would give the Horsemen a more defined role and dig a little deeper into some of the weird shit in the Underworld, especially Anomalies. And I would very likely do away with some of the more "Krewe Hierarchy" aspected merits that only work if you're a Founder, etc., which just don't work out on MUs, where making a group is hard enough without having to worry that you can't have shit others can because you aren't a founding member.

I would make the Archetypes into what Mask/Dirge and Blood/Bone are for 2e Vampire and Werewolf, which is actually what they are in 1e, just given way more importance to the point where they feel like a Y-Splat (Threshold being the X-Splat) instead of just a trait that helps define the character's personality.

And lastly (but certainly not exhaustively) I would make it much, much less ambiguous that you don't actually know who your Geist was when they were alive. And I am well-aware this is mostly a pet-peeve of mine (and some other people) but seeing all these Geists with fleshed out "human lives" makes me roll my eyes so hard and go to my "ur dooin eet wrang" place, omg.

There's more. But I'm at work.

@Arkandel said:

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Geist and Demon can fight it out for which of its meta-settings are more obnoxious because when they're included on a multi-genre game, you can't seem to ignore them.

I dunno if I missed it in all the image spam, but did you ever explain what @Misadventure asked? How does Geist intrude on the meta-settings?

One of the (many) things about Geist I like is that it's very easy to add onto any other spheres since it has very little metaplot of its own in terms of cosmology and world-building. Basically it says "there's an Underworld, somewhere, where dead people usually go unless they don't" and that's almost about it.

Hell, you could probably gut the Underworld out of the game entirely and it'd still function with some patching.

While accurate, this is super simplistic. I really wish people gave Geist more credit. I also wish Geist was better written and its Key/Manifestation/Mementos system weren't so fucking redundant. It looks interesting on the surface, but when you get into it, it's a mess.

@Ganymede said:

@Sundown said:

I only let the game know through skype friends and the grapevine, in bursts of "I'm ok! I have RL! I will return!" I just had to say, fuck it, RL takes priority here.

Actually, @Coin and @Derp, this follows what I said numerous times previously. All you have to do is tell someone you aren't going to be around due to RL circumstances. That's it.

This really isn't hard to do.

RfK's policy is draconian almost by necessity. Staking or sudden departure does not cure a ghoul or thrall of their addiction to their regnant's vitae; in fact, in character, those PCs ought to be chasing after said vampire, desperate for their blood and affection. That's the problem with Vampire games.

There are likely many ghoul players that are happy with the "finality of disappearance" policy, whatever that is. I agree that the policy could be better defined.

I don't care if it follows, though, because it doesn't touch on the issue of the policy being badly written, which is my one and only complaint. I don't care how draconian it is, just be fucking clear about it. If you have to sit here and explain that 'if you just let someone know it doesn't count', it's not clear.

Oh, good, we're on to the next page. I was getting annoyed with looking here, reading half a post, and getting everything suddenly scrolled because the flood pictures suddenly loaded. Heh.

@Sandor said:

Something new and creative. I don't want to see some generic "here's our le game! Submit your apps for our rubber stamping!" Show me something creative. Some new twist on the structure of the game. Something... I haven't seen already a thousand times.

That's so specific and clear! Especially since creativity isn't subjective at all. Now everyone wanting to make a game will know exactly what to do! Thanks!

@Sundown said:

Not every game is the Reach, and not every game should be.

TR was a very fragmented, sandboxy free-for-all. Not every game aspires to that goal, and especially in a smaller game you won't have the same culture. The standards established there aren't necessarily the best way to run every game.

A major difference from TR is that on KM, the headstaffer is as approachable as any player. She'll give you input and advice, or just plain stop by to chat and make friends. That was my biggest culture shock on Kingsmouth.

There isn't as much sandbox distance as on other games, everything is much more tightly knit.

Here's my recent example. I've just returned from an unexpected two-week, three week long hiatus which protracted to a month of less-than-active play. I'd suddenly gotten a huge project and didn't have time to sleep or eat, let alone come to a mush and explain why I wasn't around. I didn't dare connect, actually, because I knew I'd get pulled into a scene and just could not risk screwing this up. I only let the game know through skype friends and the grapevine, in bursts of "I'm ok! I have RL! I will return!" I just had to say, fuck it, RL takes priority here.

I didn't get freezered or even considered inactive. I think I only managed to post an OOC apology after two weeks, when I managed to get up for air. Yes, in the third week I got an angry mail or two about abandoning a pretty intensive political position, but I still had my territory waiting for me, and everything was fine when I returned. Some things required patching up, and not everything is perfect, but I did /not/ get killed off.

What I'm trying to say is, even if the rule isn't formulated in a lawyer-perfect way, it doesn't mean it will be automatically forced on you. Sure, on TR nobody gives a shit if you're gone. There are too many players to care for any individual one. On Kingsmouth, there's no reason to apply the rule in such a cold, literal way, because it's not that kind of culture.

I see a lot of criticism levied on Kingsmouth which is completely misplaced, because it's a different kind of game in many aspects. There is actual criticism that I could give, that applies to the game from the perspective of someone who's actually playing it. Recently they've taken on some new staffers that I'm not so sure about. Apologies to them if they turn out to be awesome - which is quite possible, and I hope it goes that way.

Anyway, I don't understand the knee-jerk response to something just because it's different. Not every game has to adhere to all the same standards to be good.

Also, from what I've seen, the club13 rule seemed to fizzle out with nothing much coming of it. I haven't seen it applied, maybe I missed it, but I doubt it.

This diatribe is pretty pointless. We're well aware that Kingsmouth isn't The Reach. Nobody even compared it to The Reach. And your own personal experience doesn't actually make the fact that the policy is ambiguous and unclear any less true.

I can get behind different games with different cultures having different policies. But when it comes to killing of people's PCs because they idle out, I think just just a matter of common courtesy and basic respect for others that the policy be as clear as possible. Your 'may not necessarily be applied that coldly' or whatever is exactly why it should be clear.

I can't even believe anyone would argue that a policy needs to be clear and accurate. It's like... policy-writing 101, unless you're deliberately trying to be a jackass that wants to write ambiguously worded things that can be abused or not at your whim. And since I'd rather assume that's not the case...

@tragedyjones said:

Has anyone else been watching Mr. Robot? Currently airing on USA, it is a modern cyberpunk hacker-drama. I am actually really impressed with it thus far.

It's so Demon.

@Wizz Fair enough.

Or just a clear policy that doesn't care if you can or can't help it. If I app on a game knowing that if I get hit by a car and am comatose for two weeks, I will probably come back to a dead character, then if that happens, I will know. It would be awesome if they made an exception and worked it out for me. But forewarned is forearmed.

I don't know if they have changed the policy, but if they haven't, they should. Just to make it clearer.

Honestly, the only thing I would contest is that the policy needs to be more clearly stated so as to serve as a concrete warning.

If you idle out and you are [class of character subject to this rule], then staff holds the right to kill the character in whatever way they see fit to further or disinhibit the story of the game.

It isn't that fucking hard, and if you say it up front, it saves you from people bitching about it later.