Posts made by Coin

@EmmahSue, that works unless you're like me and hit the little <--> button at the bottom right of the screen to make the display more comfortably narrow.

AM I THE WORST OR WHAT?

@Ganymede
Some of these things change the way the game is played and designed at some fundamental cores, IMO.

Cover Experience doesn't apply to Merits and other such things, just Cover Ratings.

Oversimplifying Pacts as simple mirrors to Changeling Pledges is inaccurate, IMO. Pacts are an intrinsic part of Demon; it's part of their nature. Your changes make Pacts pretty much useless on the Demon's side because they don't give Cover Experience, which is their entire point. This is also why handling them exactly the same way as Changeling Pledges is contrary to what I would do. Especially since they are not Changeling pledges; it's not the same thing. Is it similar? Sure. But it's not the same. If you make it the same, it's Pledges, not Pacts.

Ciphers are not about keeping it secret from other people; that's not what I meant. A Cipher is the apotheosis of the Demon's initial character development post Fall, it is their first real stop on their way to Hell. It's not about "keeping it secret"; rather it's about the player and Demon discovering it, which is why the rules state it's the Storyteller that comes up with it (same as the Interlocks).

Essentially, with the things touched upon above, I think you remove some very unique things from Demon. I wouldn't, personally, and won't. But tastes is tastes.

• Cover Experience is a bitch. But you have to have it because if you make them use their normal Experience on Covers they'll rapidly hemorrhage Experience. (As an aside, I suggest finding a way to do other types of "Integrity" experience, if you're using a fixed amount of experience system, Gany.)
• Instead of having to track Demon-by-Demon how much a Demon goes about reinforcing each one of their individual Covers (which in tabletop would translate into Cover Beats), we'll implement Cover Aspirations that Demons can fulfill while in the respective Cover and that grant Cover Beats and Cover Experience.
• Speaking of Covers, it's a good idea to establish a questionnaire of sorts to figure out what acts are grossly out of character for each Demon's individual Covers, since every Cover is different and Compromise is subjective and situational.
• Pacts grant Cover Beats, which means you need a way of tracking that; plus remember every Pact is actually a physical piece of documentation, so each Pact needs to be accounted for.
• Pacts give the non-Demon free stuff. I suggest a cap on how much, since there's no limit to how many Pacts a Demon can have (and shouldn't be, since each Pact grants something that they're going to spend).
• Soul Pacts should probably not be allowed between a Demon and another PC. The first time two players who did this have a falling out, the amount of drama has the potential to be the hugest of headaches, since Demons can claim Soul Pacts whenever they want and it essentially would give the Demon's player the other person's character as a Cover.
• Gadgets are not like Fetishes: they don't cost Merit dots. You can either give them a Merit cost, or find a way to regulate their being distributed out into the mortal population, otherwise you might eventually end up with a MU filled with mortals with powerful Gadgets. Maybe you don't care, though!
• The Cipher is a highly personal thing for each Demon; you'll need a really strong grasp of each PC Demon in your game so that you can provide a good Cipher (which in itself is a lot of work). Assuming you care about providing that intrinsic part of the experience of this game. (A questionnaire might be good for this, too, I suppose.)
• Speaking of: Interlocks are essentially unique, custom-made powers, and each character gets 3, which are each made of combining two Embeds, which the Storyteller/Staff technically has to pick, so there's that to consider.
• Continuing on that train of thought: decide if you do want to give them a free dot of Primum with each Key unlocked of their Cipher (as per the book), that makes for a very quick rise along the ranks of power.

@Bristled-Thistle said:

Giving a single angry player the ability to commit suicide in a way that kills a shitload of other people (Going Loud, or whatever it's called) seems...let's call it problematic.

• This is a non-concern. First of all: it's not suicide so much as outing yourself to Angels. While it is extremely dangerous, you can survive Going Loud. The reason I say it's a non-issue is that we've had MUs for years and years with Mages who can telenuke people secretly without anyone being able to do nothin' about it, and do it often if they feel like... honestly, everyone gets up-in-arms about Going Loud, but the sacrifices are pretty steep--you lose whatever Cover you're in, after all, and then are Hunted by Hunter-Angels who are prety fucking terrifying. Assuming you're hands-on staff. Like Gany said, you can get rid of it, or you can also do what I plan to do: scrutinize it if it happens and if the person used it to be a dick, they get the boot.

@Corruption said:

My only super-serious concern is how /very/ staff intensive it will be. That would be less of an issue if Demon's basically the dominant Sphere on a place, but my read-over of it suggests that staff needs to be ready and willing to work hard to keep things moving, to keep up the sense of peril/threat, you really can't just tell the players that the antagonists are lurking 'out there' and being a danger - they have to /be/ threatened.

• It's my impression that not only are all the 2nd Edition games much more staff-intensive than their predecessors, but that this is sort of the thing that we need, frankly. But yes, if you're not willing to keep an eye on Cover loss and running Angels and Stigmatics that go after people who get Burned or whatever, then Demon is definitely not a game you want to run. It is highly staff intensive... that's sort of part of the appeal, to me, frankly. It's a lot of work, but so what? It should be, IMO.

All of the above are the reasons why we'll probably start with a small Demon sphere with a cap, so we can test it out and see how it works out.

It'll be fun, he said, before going insane.

@Glitch, there's no way to make it standard? It's not a big deal, anyway.

Demon is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is Covers. We've been working on some things and have come up with some tentative solutions we'll be trying, which I'll share in a bit. I just wanted to say I read it and will be commenting after lunch.

Because food.

@Jennkryst said:

With any sort of plot, there needs to be oversight of some kind. While I'm not a DC reader, I hear Flashpoint was kind of nuts. Flash, not being one of the big three, rarely got any oversight for story stuff. So they went balls-deep and went nuts with it, to the point where DC decided it would be easier to reboot their whole universe than it would be to sort out the mess. So, too, I feel it is with some PRPs. The problem is when people either 1) lack the scope to realize that no, what they're doing is wrong, but by the time staff get wind of it, it is a monster to retcon, 2) realize it, but don't care. Even SRPs could do this, but they have the benefit of having staff on hand to help nip things in the bud.

What? The Nu52 was not in response to Flashpoint, but rather the reason for Flashpoint happening at all.

@Glitch
Right now, some are taller than others because their summaries are longer/more lines.

@Arkandel said:

Come on, you don't think a large part of their client base doesn't ever intend to show these messages to anyone else?

I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of lonely people out there subscribing to this service. Hell, or its sexting equivalents.

... Damn, we need to pull our best TSers from these forums and form a sexting corporation. Finally, a niche for such skills! All those years roleplaying hot and steamy but dysfunctional relationships over text are about to pay off.

The sexting equivalents have been around since texting became a thing, dude. In fact, before, when online chatting was getting its start.

I prefer tidy, but I also want all of them to be the same size.

@Arkandel
Less creepy and more expected. People have been deceiving friends and family regarding their relationships and whether they have them for years.

I once dated a girl for a while who, when we met, told me she had a boyfriend that she lived with, etc. Eventually, our relationship grew and I realized that that "boyfriend" had somehow vanished into the ether, faded into the background, gone. He had never existed, but I had fallen in love and was a bit in a haze (and pretty young at the time), so it had taken me time to notice.

It was only a matter of time before they marketed it.

@Thenomain said:

@HelloRaptor said,

I am a giant whining pussy.

Fixed that for you.

Hey. This is the mildly constructive board.

He's a large, legitimately aggrieved vagina.

@crusader
This basically just tells me that people like that want to app in with power, not play the game to gain it. So no, those people aren't really going to have the BEST time at a game with NPC powers they need to overcome.

"risky" is one that might be good. Not really a "theme" but a good keyword for the scenes that might be riskier than others in terms of consequences for your character.

Oh, boy, where to start?

@Kireek said:

@Coin
Listen man, if it hurts your feelings, that's fine, but Reno has gotten basically a free pass for like 6 months with nary a word said bad about it on WORA and here. It was fortunate, and lucky because no ones been so upset by the game that they have to post something on it. (Which again speaks to how well things went that the game more stagnated than collapsed)

First of all, just because I think your attitude towards this advertisement was counter-productive and made damn sure that you were aware of it doesn't mean that you hurt my feelings. I have no feelings about this one way or another, because other than having a character that I don't play much on Reno, I have no investment. But I could, if I wanted to, and I might, now that there's something to invest in. So the point I was making was that if I had been someone who could be swayed by your comments (it scares me that there might be someone like that, but I have to believe in all possibilities, no matter how remote) I may have decided not to do so and been discouraged by someone who can't actually see positivity.

I got your point, but your issue here is that I'm discouraging people from playing... Nay, I'm just relaying the facts of what happened, if that upsets you.... if facts upset you man, than I can't help you. There were problems, and if they are trying to fix them, great, but its going to require work, a lot of work, a lot of effort to get trust back and it ain't easy. If you want to sugar coat everything man, that's your prerogative, but it ain't mine. If people are going to be buying a used car- they should know things about it. If that's discouraging for people, hey, that just means you have to double down with your effort yah? SHOW that I'm full of shit, instead of complaining that I'm hurting your feelings. The best part? If I'm proven wrong, I'll be right there playing the damn game and being like, THIS PLACE IS GREAT. And hey, the staff will get the smug sanctification from that I expect them to. It's only fair.

Again, it doesn't hurt my feelings or upset me. It calls up the part of me that used to go out and run for student body just so people like you didn't get to run shit in high school, but other than that, it doesn't hurt my feelings; the only one with hurt feelings here is probably you, since you apparently have a chip on your shoulder regarding Reno's activity (despite @tragedyjones being completely forthcoming and honest about its metaplot-lacking sandbox nature from the very start).

I have spent the better part of this month posting here and trying to express my views on what I think could be done to help the MU community. Guess what, being a negative jerk in the face of someone trying to drum up activity for their game doesn't even register as a 'way to help'. You're not doing people a favor when you run your mouth; you're just discouraging them.

I'm aware of what things are like now. I've seen all the staff members in question, and I'm aware of most of the things going on as RDC says its happening. Hey, new WW staffers, great, I've seen them, they've worked on some of my jobs for me, and Reno will be prepared for 2E..

Still doesn't change whats happened and what you have to work from. If they want help doing it, hell, I'll sign up and do whats needed, I've volunteered for things before, worked on things, but it doesn't change the past and what needs to change.

It may not change what has happened, but it sure as hell makes it unnecessary for you to rant about everything that was wrong on the place where they're advertising their changes.

It's also really easy to criticize people when you're not doing shit to help. So let me put this in the most traditional way possible: when people are advertising for their game, if you don't have anything nice to say, I suggest you don't say anything at all.

Go open a thread on the Hog Pit and rail against them all you want; but actually discouraging people in the very same thread they are trying to advertise on is a pretty dick move, dude.

So sorry if that hurts your feelings.

@Kireek
You failed to grasp the message I was trying to deliver with my reply to you. I will elucidate:

If someone who has gone through the effort of making a game--which I can tell, because I am in the midst of it, is actually pretty demanding--posts saying that they are going to try to ramp up activity actively, if your immediate response is to scoff and say, "Pfft, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it," then you're not actually doing anything productive. In fact, you're being counter-productive, because if you had any sort of influence, even if just passive, on other people who read this forum, they might decide not to go and invest themselves in the plot, not play there, and not give Reno the thing they need to make any attempt at plot work: players. You are actually discouraging people. You are, in fact, helping it to fail. For what? So you can then say, "see? told you so"? Come on, man. You could have at least said, "It's nice to see that they are attempting to step away from detrimental behavior," and left it at that, instead of the exact opposite.

@il-volpe
Gonna have this. Just saying.

@Kireek
Way to have faith in your fellows, brah.

To everyone else: get invested. If you have a character in Reno that mucks with vampires, or a vampire, get invested. That's the only way what TJ is trying to do is going to work. So get invested, participate, and make it worth his effort.

@Darinelle
All of that that you just said basically just agrees with Thenomain when he says that most games just need basic upkeep from coders. If he finished his "basic" nWoD code, games will be able to start up easily and without all that much help from coders unless they want something specific.

@Thenomain
Soon, your favorite grid will be ours. YOU'LL SEE.

@Thenomain said:

I want to be able to do things that may start off trivial and end up having importance and not have the connotation baggage of calling it a "plot".

For example, someone from an opposing camp was going to entrap my character's friend. This was obvious, but we went along with it in order to assess and possibly control the situation. We rolled our own rolls, we talked behind the scenes as to what a rule might mean. We resolved it ourselves. It was fun.

This scene itself was spurred by something similar, and before that something similar. It wasn't a player-run plot. It wasn't a staff-run plot. What do you call it? I want more of this.

I just call that roleplaying, Theno. Intricate, interesting, involved roleplaying, but it's just roleplaying. It helps if you can also, in that situation, if things get dicey (pun not entirely intended) with the other side, call a staffer and go "can you judge this? We don't need a storyteller, just someone to mediate".