@Sparks Oh, HELL yeah.
That's like 70% of the reason for any time loop plot of the Groundhog Day variety, isn't it? The other 20% being whiplash trauma and the other 10% learning important things that you otherwise wouldn't because you spend two thousand years in the same day poking at things.
@Goldfish said in Will it PrP? A place to propose PrP ideas and get feedback:
I was inspired by this trailer from E3 2019. The game is called 12 Minutes and is a thriller about a time loop.
I wanna do a time loop prp. Small scale. One or two people max. It has to have a personal touch to the character or else you don't get the punch of the first loop. Now, I've run only a handful of things so I have no idea how to make this happen, if it can happen.
My setting in mind is CoD or nWoD because it's the only places I play where it can fly. Open to suggestions here.
Find people who are cool with fast-forwarding through things. Time Loop stories are fun but not if you literally have to play every single one out; even having the same conversation again as they test variations can be trying.
Also, stick with the typical Groundhog Day loop (a really good, shorter-than-a-movie example is the episode of Stargate: SG-1). Make sure whatever is causing the time loop isn't obvious or they're going to figure it out too soon.
@faraday said in Empire State Heroes Mush:
@Ghost said in Empire State Heroes Mush:
Altogether though, I think the class of musher who prefers diceless all-consent games may be a slightly different creature than the one who is comfortable with stats and dice resolution.
I know many people who are equally comfortable on both, so I really don't think the gulf you're describing exists. Certainly, though, there are folks who only like one or the other.
I'm equally comfortable with either.
@ZombieGenesis said in Empire State Heroes Mush:
. You're saying: Why not just always be reasonable? And others are saying: Not all people are reasonable all the time and dice based/level based systems help compensate for that.
Dice-based systems don't force people to be reasonable. I've seen countless situations where players don't agree on what to be rolled, what modifiers should apply, what the outcome represents, etc. And that's just on games based on real-life physics. Throw in superpowers and I can only imagine the "But I should be able to X" arguments increasing.
Stats can be a tool to help people resolve conflicts, yes. But at the end of the day, unreasonable people are going to break any system and need to be dealt with by staff.
Yeah, can you imagine if dice made people be reasonable? God, what a world, what a world. That would be utopia.
@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@Killer-Klown These days, I take a lot of my GMing tips from watching really good movies and TV shows. Shows that deal with very competent protagonists (like Leverage, Person of Interest, etc.) give some very good tips on how to challenge characters like that without no-selling their abilities, and how to have setbacks, reversals, and complications that don't amount to 'and you find nothing' or 'this is a dead end'.
These days, I will sometimes literally sit down with a pen and notebook and watch an action movie, or a mystery show, and write down how it handles plot structure, revelations, setbacks, and clues. And try to translate those dynamics for RPGs. It's made for more interesting and dynamic games, to me.
Not long ago (couple years?) I was rewatching Fringe and I found myself taking notes regarding how they tie in all the conspiracy shit together in the long-run.
That show is a masterclass in "look at all this shit you thought was random one-offs or inconsequential information that is suddenly fucking amazing clues".
One of the things that stood out for me was how they didn't allow Doctor Fate because he was too much on the same level of power as Doctor Strange.
I just... don't get that. Even if you limit actual sorcerers to power levels below Strange's, Fate is a god powering a mortal magician. It's... not the same.
All that stuff is kind of hinky to me, but oh well.
@TiredEwok said in Dealing with bad actors:
Okay, you win. But no fair pulling the cute puppy gif card, damn you!
@faraday said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@Coin said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
Let me roll to find the right avenue of investigation or interaction.
There has to be a balance though. Everyone realizes that players don't have the same skills as their PCs. But without players making decisions as to the approach, everything boils down to just dice with no actual storytelling.
I play a lot of Shadowrun, which is often built around heists. Rolls are used to give you tips as to the feasibility of various approaches, but ultimately planning the heist is the whole point of the game. If you just boiled it down to "I roll to figure out what's the best way into this building" and then "I roll to figure out if we succeeded" then it's no fun.
Combat is often done this way too in most games. The GM doesn't make you roll to figure out what the best attack is. You choose the attack, and the dice tell you whether it worked. I don't see why investigation/bluffing/etc. should work fundamentally differently.
Yes, but there's a fundamental difference between, "we are using a tactic that may or may not work, and even if it doesn't work, moves the story along" (as could happen with planning a bad heist and having it go pear-sheped) and "we are taking a tactic that will lead nowhere, the storyteller knows it, and does not provide further avenues for progress". If you tack on a (common) smug comment about how "evil I am, bwahahah, I'm the most evil ST ever, bwahahaha" from the GM because they feel they are so smart because no one can figure out their plot, and you've you got a pretty frustrating time.
@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@Coin said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@Sparks Yeah. I think "no,
but" is a different but related problem. I am okay with being told 'no' if it's to save me time and redirect my actual efforts into something productive. If it's just a straight up dead end, though, it's super frustrating.Oh god, there is nothing more frustrating than being told, "Yeah, even though you rolled incredibly well at this investigation/whatever, because you aren't taking the right OOC tack, you don't find anything. Sorry!"
Except maybe being told that at the end of a four hour scene in which you try every possible method you can think of to progress, only to have the GM eventually say the above.
Yeah. Just fucking tell me first. Let me roll to find the right avenue of investigation or interaction.
@Sparks Yeah. I think "no, but" is a different but related problem. I am okay with being told 'no' if it's to save me time and redirect my actual efforts into something productive. If it's just a straight up dead end, though, it's super frustrating.
@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@SG said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
No-selling character skills and abilities. I don't want or expect a single PC ability to be an instant win button on any scenario, but the times when GMs have shut down or bent over backwards to decide a character's extremely relevant skills/abilities Just Don't Work because they didn't think about them when building the challenge is kinda silly.
OMG this is so frustrating. My current TT GM does this. Like 5e, rolling above 15 is supposed to be good for many things, but he constantly only gives good info for spots or history checks with 20+. Ugh.
This actually reminds me of another, more MU* exclusive, that's sort of a...combined GM/Player bad habit:
Threat Inflation/Arms Race: The tendency in MU*s, due to the proliferation of XP, for anything less than the 'absolute highest score' in a given skill or ability to be considered inadequate for contributing to anything. From the GM side, this often involves setting TNs/NPC abilities so high to challenge the top tier of PCs that anyone not at that level might as well not be there, and from the player side, this often involves a) racing for The Absolute Top as fast as possible, and b) being OOCly and ICly dismissive of a PC's abilities if they aren't the absolute best possible.
At one point I used to fix this in nWoD by aiming a bunch of low level mooks at the people with huge dice pools and keeping the reasonably-skilled antagonists for the more reasonably-skilled PCs.
It's amazing what you can accomplish with numbers.
@SG said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:
GM Bad Habit: Throwing a Big Bad in front of low level players expecting them to run away.
I get that having a teaser of what is to come is sometimes a great thing, but this is so overused(In mushes and TableTop), I've seen and am now a player who will almost never go for it because almost every encounter is a death sentence.
As a GM, it's taken me years to get my players to trust friendly NPCs, after having one screw the party over back in the day. I've also done a lot of work rehabbing my group with having realistic stats for bad guys instead of 'Scaling for level'.
Anyways, this came to mind saturday when my TT GM jumped our fresh 3rd level characters with a fucking Aboleth. We tried to run, but cultists teleported in and kept us from getting away and now we have a jellified illusionist in a bucket.
On the other hand: player bad habit: always solving things a single way and/or being unwilling to lose and try another day.
As a GM, I try to make it very clear when a situation is beyond their skill scope, and will outright state it OOC: 'in this scenario, violence will not work' (for example) mostly because I don't like to waste anyone's time.
That said.
Bad GM Habit: Wasting player's time when they know a lengthy and/or convoluted and/or complex action is going to lead nowhere. Especially on MUs, where that can take weeks or months of the player's time and effort. Just tell them.
"This isn't going to get you anywhere. Feel free to play that it is frustrating not to get anywhere for as long as you want, but also feel free to drop it as soon as you want."
It's not hard and it fosters a good relationship where players don't feel deceived and storytellers don't get annoyed being asked about some inconsequential shit.
Better answer is to actually make it consequential (to the main plot or as a side thing) but just by telling them "this isn't gonna get anywhere" you still avoid a lot of the problems.
@surreality said in Dealing with bad actors:
@Roz That makes a bit more sense, then. The only Shadow I knew of before that was @Coin, and he would never do shit like that.
Lucifer's been renewed for a fifth (and final) season. So, they'll have a chance to end the story the way they want, rather than leaving it on a cliffhanger when it doesn't get renewed at some point.
It's smart. They already had to save it once.
Lucifer was always slated to be a 5 year run, so they are just getting to finish it up like they always had intended to do.
I have a single word to say to that:
Supernatural.
Oh, I get that some shows go on and on and on longer than they were meant to (or should). I'm just saying that Luci was set for 5 years, and they (because of the grace of Netflix) got it.
One of my quibbles (which is really not because I prefer the new status quo) is that in comparison with the previous seasons, the character arcs develop so fast in the 4th season that it's a little jarring. But I prefer it, i just have to not compare it to the seasons before it.
Lucifer's been renewed for a fifth (and final) season. So, they'll have a chance to end the story the way they want, rather than leaving it on a cliffhanger when it doesn't get renewed at some point.
It's smart. They already had to save it once.
Lucifer was always slated to be a 5 year run, so they are just getting to finish it up like they always had intended to do.
I have a single word to say to that:
Supernatural.
Lucifer's been renewed for a fifth (and final) season. So, they'll have a chance to end the story the way they want, rather than leaving it on a cliffhanger when it doesn't get renewed at some point.
It's smart. They already had to save it once.
@Ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Thenomain said in Good or New Movies Review:
And we haven't had a lot of good enough outside MCU lately.
I presume you include Marvel's Netflix series in this.
That said:
- Wonder Woman
- Shazam
- Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
- The Wolverine
- Logan
- X-Men: First Class
- X-Men: Days of Future Past
Basically, anything that didn't have Zack Snyder's name attached to it.
I didn't like The Wolverine.
Shazam! was a delight.
@Thenomain said in Echoes in the Mists - Discussion:
@Ganymede said in Echoes in the Mists - Discussion:
@Livia said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
She was so close!
Then come visit and play! We have all sorts of fun 2E bloodlines to work with.
Echoes Staff: "Are you playing now?"
Thenomain: "Eh, no."
Echoes Staff: "How about now."
Thenomain: "Eh, no."
Ganymede: "I'm there."
Thenomain: "...Goddamnit."
Robots gonna robot together.
