I am eternally aware I fell into the same trap on Eldritch and thus is not a critique of anyone, but I really wish that games would cosnider using (on top of theme/setting appropriate Bloodlines) theme/settign appropriate custom Covenants, or Covenant off-shoots (in the case of the Sanctified and the Acolytes).
@cobaltasaurus said in Miami, Blood in the Water:
@sonder said in Miami, Blood in the Water:
Darc began coding for us before he made his own game. One day, Darc was gone and suddenly had San Francisco up which had references about The Reach’s news files. When I asked him how he got all of this stuff, he said that he was building a CG for Miami and was just testing it there. At that time I had not seen the other references to The Reach and have since been approached about Darc taking our flatfile with the shell access he had.
He won’t be on Miami staffing.
Hooooboy, I am torn between "I fucking KNEW IT" and anger. I brought up the fact that the code base looked familiar, and that he HAD some of my code and Chime's code for sure. (That +where is really fucking easy to pick up). And people were "no, no, darc's coded all of this himself!".
"No, this is Reach code. This is my code. This is Chime's code."
"No, Darc's coded all this himself, he said so!"
No fucking wonder he was so fucking insistent on not accepting any code help from me. I would have known without a shred of doubt that shit was our old code.
Let me be clear:
I don't care who uses my code. I have old code that I'll flat out give you. Pretty sure @Thenomain doesn't care who uses his code either.
But fucking stealing an entire flat file is a serious fucking scumbag move.
There's a huge difference between "I am using someone's code; I didn't ask because they have publicly said it's up for grabs but I am being clear this is someone else's code" and "I am using someone else's code and passing it off as mine".
Scumbag is light.
Well, that's the nail.
I'll be surprised if the game doesn't plummet precipitously after this.
@three-eyed-crow said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
@coin
I also love Hemingway and that style of writing which - along with all of my professional training being in journalism rather than fiction - makes me staccato and kinda boiled down by nature. I sometimes try for more lyrical flourishes but it just feels weird and I dun like it. I do think finding a unique voice through word choice/sentence construction is really fun, though, and reading good and varied authors takes me up a notch. I need to break deeper into my bookshelf.
I really like using Hemingway as a base and then kind of just poking at it with other stuff. Mix Hemingway's rhythmn with Lovecraftian word choices, for example. Super fun (and usually what ends up happening when I ST supernatural stuff, since I gotta keep it brief, informative, but also weird as shit).
Recomendation: read John Shirley. I really like him and you might, too. Mostly his short stories, though; his novels have left something to be desired. If you can find it (maybe Amazon???) try to get his Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories. It's divided into sections, each one adds a "Really" and they get, obviously, progressively more weird and fucked up. If not (or if you like it) Black Butterflies is another anthology, divided into "This World" (realistic fiction) and "That World" (fucked up shit).
@three-eyed-crow said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
@lisse24
I find the style of what I'm reading at any given time really creeps into my RP. Which can dry it out when I'm on a big straight non-fiction kick (which I have been lately for whatever reason).I make a conscious effort to vary the WAY I pose (mixing straight : with ;'s and @emits) but it's easy to fall into ruts. Cool thread idea.
I like to ape styles, when I notice patterns, and then try to apply each style to a character. So maybe I write one character in a Hemingwayan style, very informative and with little introspection and almost no metaposing (even harmless metaposing); and then another character will be nigh-Lovecraftian (though usually still concise) in word-choice and turns of phrases; and then another will be jovial and self-deprecating and everything they say comes with a witty metapose comment like something Dorothy Parker might do.
I'm obviously using popular writers who I can never do justice to, but I try for the lulz anyway.
@auspice said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
You can also always run your poses through this tool: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
It'll help identify things like legibility, passive voice, how many adverbs you've used (don't abuse those too much).
That APP is the best thing ever. I remember discovering it yeeeeeaaarrrrsssss ago and more than one character has had pretty much every word I type for them go through it.
Important: if you are a writer or fancy yourself a would-be writer and you are also RPing--do not treat RP like you treat your craft. I'm not talking about tricks and styles like what @Ganymede posted above--that's great and it'll help tons. I'm talking about rhythm, the dynamism of the scene, and otherwise treating RP like you are writing and wanting to use the same voice you use for writing as you do for RP. So many people I know have told me "I RP all the time and then when I wanna write something just feels off and I do it the same way I don't understand" and I am like--welllllllllllllllllllllllllllll that's because they're different.
Anyone who's played with me knows that I favor the concise approach to posing. Less is more. Hemingway was a lot of unlikeable things, but his prose style is something I've learned to really enjoy when it comes to my RP, because it makes my poses comprehensible and comprehensive.
Good tip: Count your commas. If you count your commas you start to notice what you use them for; if you're using them to add clarifications to your statements or main phrases, chances are you are just repeating shit that doesn't require it.
@zombiegenesis said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
I was this close (||) to creating a SW Rifts or Rifts-inspired game using the SW: Super Powers companion. My fear was it would be a decent amount of work for a game no one would play at.
I still occasionally poke at my ideas for converting Kindred of the East to CofD rules, so... yeah.
@zombiegenesis said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
Wow, The Strange looks very interesting. A ton of decent looking supplements too. Also found a game called Gods of the Fall for The Cypher system. I was gonna get Fate Dresden this week but now I'm not sure. Hmmm.
The thing I like about The Strange for a MU* is that each "shard" also has its own rules of (meta)physics. So the rules aren't necessarily the same in Fantasy Land as they are in Noir Land, Space Opera Land, Shoot'Em Up Land, etc., etc. So each storyteller can (within a certain scope) finetune a shard to meet what they want and you can just let them run stuff on their shards with almost little to no staff supervision. You can have a few standard rules ("must warn of potential for IC death beforehand," for example, via "danger ratings" or whatever) but otherwise, what happens in a shard, stays in a shard. (You can also get "Cyphers" so maybe staff, instead of actually having to approve plot details which would be inane in this scenario, just need to approve Cyphers designed by the ST that the PCs might acquire, so as to keep the Cyphers all balanced. That's it.
And staff can concentrate on, you know, running any metaplot that affects the entire multiverse or whatever.
I do recall that the Cypher system's experience system was weird from a MU POV, but I don't remember the details, so I don't recall how it was weird.
@zombiegenesis said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
@coin said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
Nobilis
I love these threads because they get me thinking about or looking at games either I've never heard of or hadn't given much of a thought to. Gonna check out Nobilis and The Strange(though I'm not a huge fan of the Cypher system, at least the Cypher core rules).
The Strange is basically: you live in Earth Prime, but you can transport yourself to shards/shadows of Earth Prime, some of which are based on popular books/movies/media and they vary in size (for example, Middle-Earth is all of Middle-Earth, but Sherlock Holmes might only be London--the shards can get bigger--and your aspects and defining characteristics, powers, etc., change to fit the world you're going to. So if you're a telekinetic, for example, maybe in Middle-Earth you're a wind-mage, or something like that. That's the hardest part to code, I would wager.
In Nobilis you play a Power--an Aspect of creation given consciousness that basically rules over all of that. You can be the Power of Love (very powerful) or the Power of Cardboard Boxes Used By Cats As Homes (probably popular, but not that power). You have different attributes that govern things universally ("Aspect" governs everything that's physical) and based on your rating in something you can do amazing things in that arena (and spend points of something--mana? I don't remember--to do bigger things. So with low Aspect you can do something like hiding a coin in plain sight and basic acts of legerdemain that even the most skilled mortals find difficult; with very high aspect, you can hide a mountain under your shirt.
One system I'd really like to see is Nobilis. It's diceless, but there's a few rules that make it more mecahnic than "consent" games. and you get to play gods, so.
@thenomain said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
I have outlines in my head about how I'd code a The Strange setting, as I think it's more approachable than Numernera. But yes, I like the system and would love to play it.
I was gonna say The Strange.
Especially because it's basically a storyteller's wet dream because as staff you can just let storytellers invent their own splinters where they do whatever they want and people can transport themselves into that splinter for stories and then pop back out.
@thenomain said in MU Things I Love:
To follow-up @surreality: The moment when you see people realize how much you can say with very little.
I love this one, to the surprise of no one.
@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
@zombiegenesis Not that I want a game to be delayed but come on man, if you have the option of launching this right on Halloween then g'dammit, you take it.
lolololololololol honestly yeah
I honestly just ... this is the first game that's come out that makes me WANT a PS4, and that's sad, because I don't have that kind of money not even CLOSE
@wildbaboons said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:
To me noir isn't really about the time period as much as the people and society... and all those would be gone. It would be orcs and elves with radio and Tommy guns instead of iPhones and ar-15s
As long as the orcs and elves behave in a way that harkens back to the themes and style of noir, then that society--which doesn't need to be human for it to be dysfunctional, depressing, and nihilistic--is still in tact.
If you need it to be human society, then that's just aesthetic.
Noir is a style and a theme.
The Big O and Cowboy Bebop are both noir in places, despite one having mechs and the other spaceships and lasers.
Sin City and Sam and Twitch, also both noir, despite not happening in the 20s (especially the latter, which happens in the 90s).
The Dresden Files and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are noir, despite the magic in the first and the focus on computer technology in the latter.
Veronica Mars, Jessica Jones, and Terriers are all noir despite happening in the modern age (and one of them with super powers, even).
And that's just stuff that has noir permeating its entire make-up, not mentioning things like how noir can fit into settings like Samurai Jack ("The Tale of X-9") or Adventure Time ("BMO Noir").
I think noir gets unjustly pigeonholed into the 1920s because that's when it was born, but its themes and the style are by no means limited to a setting's technology or inhabitants.
Shit, I would play the fucking HELLLLLLL our of a noir version of The Witcher, with witchers being akin to down-and-out detectives for supernatural shenanigans (which they are and I would actually argue that The Witcher, especially the third installment, is definitely noir in many aspects, just not with the trappings we commonly ascribe to it, and that combination is what would make me giggle and want to play. Silver bullets in one gun, lead bullets in the other, awyissss.)
@rucket said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:
How's the theme stuff going? Anything more you can tell us about the nightmarish cannibal people?
The nightmarish cannibal people are nightmarish and cannibalistic.
I'm quietly working on stuff for this in my head, I just haven't had a lot of time to put anything to paper. My next project for it is to finish the outlines of the elemental power sets, which I plan to do in the next couple of weeks.
@coin I just watched a teenage girl use a sewer vampire as a bloodhound to track down a sexy cannibal child molester bug lady. I'll be the judge of bad, thank you.
I've watched Buffy many times already, so I can judge as much as you.
It's almost like this stuff is subjective!
crawls out of her hidey-hole just for this
I feel like I'm committing some kind of gamer nerd sacrilege here, but @insomniac7809 and I recently decided to sit down and go through all of Buffy because neither one of us have ever seen the whole series. I mean, I think I watched Seasons 1-2 when they came out, got lost somewhere along the way for "paramilitary organization run by rando college boy" season, and popped back in at some point along the "Willow is a lesbian witch and Xander's girlfriend is a demon but a good demon now or something" arc.
We're only about five episodes in and ohmigod you guys, this is so, so, so hilariously 90s. And wonderfully, deliciously campy levels of bad. It's amazing, in a totally different way than I think people decided it was amazing 20+ years ago.
(However, please note: Xander is gonna squick you the fuck out. Especially now that he can be viewed as Joss Whedon's pervy self-insert. You've been warned.)
I don't think it was bad. It was definitely campy, though.
As for Xander... yeah.
