Posts made by Coin

Superior Spider-Man was getting fucking old. That said, Iliked Ben Reilly's stint in Sensational Spider-Man.

@Maira said:

Get a room you two.

No. Our hate is for the masses.

@Arkandel

Except we're talking within a certain context of playing a game based on these things, and I posit that people who skim are even worse than people who don't read the manuals at all, because they take isolated information without the surrounding context and make stupid mistakes that make other people want to defenestrate them.

Turd blossom.

That's why I presented and designed the Neighborhood system early on. As soon as we can implement it via code, this will start being a Thing. I foresee some delay, but as with all things, delay is to be expected.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

I mean, not to drag it back to nWoD, but how many people do you know that play nWoD without actually reading the damn book even a little? Hint: way more than you think.

Reading a game manual is not the same as reading a book series, but I take your point.

Jerk.

Actually, when you're playing a game that is based on a fictional setting, where the context of the game is largely based on how things work in that world and there is no rules manual for that world, it is exactly the same.

If there is no Kushiel RPG System published, then reading the books is the closest thing you'll get to a manual regarding what is common, uncommon, possible, impossible, etc., in that setting. The source material becomes the manual.

Dickbutt.

It's my goal, for Eldritch, to eventually have some sort of passive resource management that can be circumvented for the purposes of PRP and that generally works on good faith.

i.e. Characters "regenerate" their fuel stats at a slow rate (probably like 0.3 per day or something). If they control territory where that fuel is prominent, they get a boost to that passive, daily allowance. You can circumvent this, but in general, this represents your day-to-day way you gain your fuel (hunting minor spirits for essence, feeding on your Herd for vitae, siphoning off or trading with other demons for aether, etc.)

@Arkandel said:

The problem with playing on MU* derived from book series is that you must have read the series in question.

. . .

First of all: nope. Ask anyone who's played on any of these. Hell, in this very thread people are asserting that you don't really need to have read the Kushiel books to play on this game. I've been invited to Pern games and been told, 'You'll pick it up quick without reading the books!' and you can go to any random Comic Book MUX and find people who've never read a comic book of the characters they're portraying. They use their friends's opinions, wikipedia articles, other wiki articles, movies or cartoons about them, etc.

So no. Not really. Not even a little.

I mean, not to drag it back to nWoD, but how many people do you know that play nWoD without actually reading the damn book even a little? Hint: way more than you think.

@BetterJudgment said:

@Arkandel said:
Why is the content indistinguishable from a random WoW thread's? Argh.

There's nothing quite like a grammatical failure in a post complaining about others' grammar, is there?

Actually, "Why is the content indistinguishable from a random WoW thread's [content]?"

Crow: It's what's for dinner.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

@coin I disagree. Decimating the existing noble class and filling the void with those loyal to you is an entirely legitimate, if brutal tactic, and in this case one she probably should've employed.

To paraphrase the War Nerd:
Buy the corrupt. Make sure they know to stay bought.
Spare the incompetent and the used-up figureheads.
Brutalize the ambitious members of the old elite, ESPECIALLY the most egregious, if your conquest had a moral imperative (like Daenerys' did). Do not spare them, because they will come back to haunt you.

To which I would add: empower those who have a reason to love you and loathe the old order. Make sure they stay empowered. Find the best of them. Give them land, titles, money, and men.

You're missing the point of my post (and giving Daenerys way more credit than someone of her age and position, with her upbringing, should get at this juncture). My point is, she's royalty. She's part of the nobility, and the fact that she sits on a throne and declares herself ruler is in itself an indication that she sees those differences and accepts them.

So howevermuch she may be against slavery, she's still entirely for the segregation of classes, which in the long run is not that different, and which makes her--consciously or not--pliable to the plight of the former Masters. What you propose that she "should" have done is entirely remorseless and contrary to her values as someone who was brought up as fucking royalty. You can't just turn that shit off, man, much like you can't just be ruthless for ruthlessness's sake.

She has had her strong moments, she has had her weak ones, and I hope she keeps having both. That's what makes her compelling. I find the idea of an implacable Mother of Dragons stomping all over everyone in perfect and brutal political fashion, the way you propose, pretty boring from an emotional standpoint, and I think Daenerys's story is highly emotional.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Coin said:

Tolkien had a huge hard-on for his own characters, which is to be expected, since many authors (and roleplayers) fall in love with their creations in one way or another. G.R.R.M., from what I've been able to gather, doesn't have that "problem". (I use quotes because sometimes it's that very passion that creates such compelling stories.)

From his interviews, I get the feeling that he does have this attachment to Tyrion. And Tyrion's one of the more compelling figures in the story, so that's kind of telling in and of itself.

Well, that does sort of lend creedence to my point, yes.

@icanbeyourmuse said:

But I am not a fan of thinking up answers for breaking points and aspirations and stuff. I don't know the answer until I play!

That's why there are generic options for Breaking Points that would fit just about anyone. And Aspirations can be so generic that this excuse has little merit. Both of those things are as integral to the character during chargen as the player needs and wants them to be.

Tolkien had a huge hard-on for his own characters, which is to be expected, since many authors (and roleplayers) fall in love with their creations in one way or another. G.R.R.M., from what I've been able to gather, doesn't have that "problem". (I use quotes because sometimes it's that very passion that creates such compelling stories.) This isn't to say that I don't think Martin doesn't like his creation, but I think he sees the characters as moving parts rather than individuals, which is good for what he's creating.

@Sponge said:

@silentsophia

What I found with SSRIs is that they just made my emotional spectrum more narrow. When I was down I was rarely crushingly down. When I was up... well, I was never really up. It was like they made a drug to turn down the volume on feelings. Makes sense for surviving bipolar, but I never experienced mania.

This, compounded with people who don't understand how someone who goes up-and-down a lot feels internally, is what makes so many people push meds on others, when sometimes oher approaches may work.

That's not to say I disagree with medicating; I was medicated and sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be good to go back to it. But other people's emotional comfort levels seem to mellow out when you're just an emotionally narrow husk of your former self, for some reason. /eyeroll.

I like Sansa. She's strong in unexpected ways. Littlefinger continues to make me cringe every time he's on screen. Jaqen is awesome. Daenerys is running into the easily foreseeable problems that someone who is royalty and wants to continue being royalty will run into when trying to rule a society full of newly liberated slaves and their former masters. Anyone who didn't see this coming isn't paying attention to class perspective.

@Sponge @silentsophia

Paxil fucks you up when you stop taking it.

For what it's worth, the Changing Breeds book actually presents non-uratha werewolves (The Vargr, IIRC) as "non-Uratha wererwolves". So, yeah.

I went and found it. It's deliciously vague; totally bland enough to do whatever with it. Like they were literally aiming it at people who wanted to play 'werewolves without all that other stuff'. Changing Breeds, p. 156:

Time and mystery obscure the origin of the Vargr. They have no ties with Father Wolf, and claim none. Some speak of a time when sound became form and a great howl spread throughout the young world and coalesced into the first werewolves. Others claim descent from Fenris Wolf (particularly if they favor Germanic or Scandinavian descent), while still others cite the legend of Asena, the small blue-maned wolf who nurtured a lost baby and then birthed a half-human/half-wolf cub that founded the Turkish people. Others simply shake their heads as if to say, “I’m here, and that’s all I know.” The Uratha call themselves the Forsaken; the Vargr claim their legacy as the Forgotten.

Little on the nose at the end, but whatevs.

Actually, the developers have said that the order they picked things to go in the book is the order that, according to their experience and the feedback from their target demographic, is the most common order in which the books are read. This is the reason that, for example, in both Vampire and Werewolf 2e, the Clan and Auspice write-ups come right after the introduction, followed closely by the Covenants and Tribes, innate powers, and then Disciplines and Gifts.

This wasn't an accident. This was by design to present the book in an order aimed at the largest amount of people so that they would read the book from front to back.

It has nothing to do with how important the writers thing something is over something else, or even how important things are to the players in relation to other aspects, but rather what is most interesting to read to the majority of readers when they first get the book.

@TNP said:

Similarly, non-consent assumes that players can't be trusted to play honestly (using consent to refuse consequences) and a host of similar situations.

I could easily make the case for consent assuming that players can't be trusted to craft a story unless every side has complete control of their little bit of it.

My pioint is that you're still arguing they are design flaws when they aren't. We just use them in a medium that makes them more difficult to apply properly. It's two different problems, the latter of which makes your post less of a "fix" and more of a "preference".

It also helps set a default. You are perfectly within your right to assume a scene is set with the +time/+weather of the game unless informed otherwise--and you should probably ask, if it isn't clear within a set pose.

@crusader, again, you're putting this on "Staff" as if these things are 'design flaws' that don't work because they 'only work in TT but not MUs'. I am so tired of saying this: these games were not designed for online play the way we play them. You do understand this, right?